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Oliver grew up on military bases throughout the country and like all boys played good guys and bad. Coaxing him into an afternoon of baseball along Lake Erie, hiking the Southern California’s hills or paddling a canoe in the North Carolina backwater didn’t take much unless a book found him first.
His best friend and he joined the Marines and took a deferment to attend college. Herb left school finding stumbling blocks that seemed insurmountable at the time. A year after graduating, Oliver stepped onto a sweaty tarmac with a manual Smith Corona typewriter not far from where Herb had died. Fate usually finds a way of putting day-to-day frustrations into a cruel perspective, especially when lost in the haze of an ugly war.
Thirty-one young men flew days and nights in the mountains trying to keep the world safe for … well, says Oliver, that’s not really true, is it? The only reason we ever went into those dark, frightening places was to save our friends, most of whom we’d never met, and never would. That they lived, however, meant others died and that still haunts to this day.
He spent time wandering after he got home. Lots of young veterans did, some on foot, some on the rails. Many like Oliver make stops along the road life gave him. He never slept in the park or a bus station, although many did. Most eventually found a way out of the maze from that crazy period of time, and yet too many others did not. Oliver promised he was never truly at risk, but still believes pulling the right ticket is mostly a matter of circumstance and luck.
He did a bit of teaching on the Navajo reservation, spent a few years with the cops and a couple of alphabet agencies but never quit writing. The old manual typewriter became a memory when his first computer came along. A Lenovo notebook travels with him now, the wanderlust never completely leaving. Today, he spends days on the family farm and occasionally still follows the season around when a bookstore bids welcome. Sometimes he wonders if the Smith-Corona found a home, too. He hopes so, wishing his old friend happier days.
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