TV, Vietnam & Watergate

I have only the haziest recollections of Vietnam as it was happening. I have no indication that those memories are real; they may only be the ghost of all those Vietnam War documentaries that were aired over the years, slipping into their periodic place. I stand by the memory, though. Vietnam was on the news, every day, and I could not help but notice those little war movies on the TV every night after supper. They were confused with and jumbled up with WW2 movies and M*A*S*H until they were all one conflict, all part of WW2 in my mind.

Seriously, they were. I couldn’t unravel the tangle at the time. Indeed, I wasn’t even aware of the Vietnam Conflict as a separate entity, then. I recall watching a John Wayne war film on TV with my father: It was "The Green Berets,” his only film set in Vietnam. Watching it now, it's rather obvious that it's set in Vietnam. Glaringly obvious. Vietnam had even been named throughout, but to my young mind, John Wayne always fought in WW2, when he wasn't fighting Indians in covboy movies. Indeed, he was the face of WW2. He always fought against the Japanese in the Pacific theatre, too; never Nazis (the Longest Day exluded). And the Vietnamese looked deceptively like the Japanese, so it was an easy to supplant one in the other.
I know that the Vietnam war left its mark on me, because it has since become mythic in my mind, a confused array of firebases and jungle patrols, and firey plumes of napalm consuming all that adheres to. I remember a phrase that was strangely popular for a time, a cruel, insensitive, and horrific phrase: "Naplam sticks to children,"

I do have a solid memory of being absolutely pissed off about Watergate. Everything I wanted to watch pre-empted by all that bla bla bla Watergate Nixon talk. It was all too boring for the 9 or 10-year-old I was. Everything was preempted. Not “Hockey Night in Canada,” though. Never that. Nothing could preempt Hockey Night in Canada, not in Canada. I rebelled. I had a fit. I bitched about it to my parents, as if they could do something about it, but we were limited to two or three channels then, and Watergate was on them all.