Jerry Vincent in
Kalamazoo
Woody Tauke
1296 words
New York Times
Magazine
Jerry sits
in his office, a crowded painter’s supply closet, surrounded on four sides by
ceiling high shelves, covered with years and years worth of paint cans, on the
campus of a tiny liberal arts college in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Today, like most days, he’s flecked with paint and dust and is wearing white
painters pants and a grey “FacMan” t-shirt. He isn’t tall but he isn’t
short, he hasn’t kept his crew cut from his years in the service, and he
doesn’t have greying greasy shoulder length hair, like so many Hollywood
archetypes would have us believe. Jerry smokes almost constantly, is
quiet, and looks like he likes to read a lot. Jerry likes to read a
lot. His skin is tanned from the sun and his hands are broad and
calloused, he works with his hands. He uses them to wrench open paint
cans, to light cigarettes, to trim ceiling tiles, and to rip up carpet.
Jerry is always clean-shaven. He carries himself with the wisdom of his
years, smiles often, speaks very slowly, and closes his eyes to tell me the
stories of his life. One marked by a medium sized city in
southwestern Michigan: Kalamazoo.
In 1970, at 19, as the reality of the
Vietnam War was just beginning to permeate US culture, Jerry Vincent enlisted
in the Air Force and left his home: that medium sized city known as Kalamazoo.
The idea of enlisting in the Vietnam War, in retrospect, seems reckless,
foolish, some might even say suicidal, yet Jerry spoke coolly of the decision:
“I was on the verge of being drafted, I’d
received a notification and at that point you can either be drafted, or you can
join and I said ‘Well, I really don’t want to be cannon fodder at this time
because if you were drafted at that time you were in the army. You were a
bush beater. You were canon fodder. So I joined the Air Force.”
After his enlistment, Jerry was
packed up and shipped off to Texas for basic training. After four months
of being taught to obey commands and having to
“learn all these forms and requirements
and regulations regarding the process and the means to do the shipping of
people and things” he graduated and, in May of 1971, was shipped
away. Jerry was sent to war. Maybe war is a stretch, but he was sent
to the “tropical paradise” of Thailand, where he spent his service “—moving
people and their personal household goods around the world.”
Four years later the war was drawing to a
close and the Air Force did not need Jerry Vincent anymore.
Jerry reflects on and speaks of his time
abroad with little fondness. He smiles
occasionally, laughing to himself over old friends he once had, but there is a
sense of bitterness in his voice. Not a
deep resentment like we associate with the Vietnam War, but almost an
annoyance, as if the war and his deployment were an inconvenience. He didn’t have to wade through the jungle
swamps in Vietnam, but he did have to pack up and leave his home in
Kalamazoo.
After a short lifetime of moving people
and moving things, Jerry was happy to finally find himself stateside in
California, just outside of San Francisco. He spent his time wandering up and
down the state, going in and out of the cities—decompressing from his formative
years in the Air Force, Thailand, and the Vietnam War. He had time to
himself, and the opportunity to live with little responsibility, freely, like
most young men in their twenties do. Instead though, Jerry returned to
the place he truly belongs, a place he calls home, a place that many of us find
ourselves away from in that time of life, but a place robbed of him.
Later that year, shortly after his reunion
with Kalamazoo, Jerry met Hans, a German immigrant and hairdresser, and his now
partner of 38 year. Having just spent the past five years shipping
people and things around the world, Jerry found himself a job in the, then
booming, travel industry as a travel agent. For another four years Jerry
packed people up and shipped them to places like San Francisco, Texas, and
Thailand. Eventually he found himself exhausted by the frustrations and
tedium’s of the industry,
“I said fuck this.”
and Jerry quit in 1979. Out of work
and with Hans breathing down his neck, Jerry begrudgingly went to look for work
once again.
At a cocktail party one night,
after a month of floating around, and Hans getting madder and madder, Jerry met
a member of the, in his words: “Foreign Study Program, ya know? Which is CIP
now,” and was promised a secretarial position at Kalamazoo College. Jerry
came to K College and settled, but not with either the Foreign Study Program or
with the CIP. Instead, Jerry found a niche with Facilities Management as
a dorm painter. Jerry’s father was a professional painter, and Jerry
spent his childhood working on and off, with him. At FacMan, in the
summer of 1990, Jerry developed the student worker program and took twelve
student employs with him to renovate Harmon Hall.
Jerry
still employs students and keeps that tiny campus in Kalamazoo looking fresh,
and Hans now owns his salon just up the street. They smoke a lot of
cigarettes and live happily together.
Jerry left the place he grew up around the
same time that most young people do, and had his share of adventures. He served in the Vietnam War, found love in
himself and with a German named Hans. He traversed his country north, south,
east, and west and could have settled anywhere, but he didn’t. He settled
here, in Southwest Michigan. It’s
rare to find someone, like Jerry, who is born where they belong, someone whose
narrative is dotted with places and things but is consistently marked by the
place they call home. You can deem this
uninteresting or boring, but it’s a beautiful thing in life; when you find
someone who truly belongs.
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