A Tale Of Two Titles

I have always been a voracious reader. My mother taught me to read when I was 4 years old and it's safe to say I've had my nose in a book or on a screen ever since. A trip to Ace News, the local newsstand, in the 1970's was an adventure. Wall to wall racks of magazines, newspapers, and my interest, comic books. I didn't always get the stories of superhero adventures but I loved the format, the colors. I still enjoy graphic novels. 

The more I read, the more I progressed. I read The Hobbit in fourth grade, having long talks with my teacher about the book. She was a Tolkien fan and was glad to take a moment here and there to talk about his work. I loved a good tale of adventure and The Hobbit is certainly that. Around this time I discovered DC Comics' "Sergeant Rock" comic books, which told the story of a World War II sergeant leading Easy Company in battle after battle during the war. A history buff, this struck a chord with me. Looking at the artwork, I could appreciate the period-correct uniforms and weapons in the illustrations. Sure, it took liberties with reality, such as when Sarge used his .45 submachine gun to shoot a low-flying enemy plane out of the sky, but that's the nature of adventure tales. Never let physics get in the way of a good story. 

My seventh grade year was a wild ride. My parents had separated (again). We'd moved to Mississippi for a year when my Dad took a job there. I spent sixth grade at a school in Alabama - we lived just across the state line and the Alabama school accepted students from nearby. Upon returning to Georgia, I was in middle school, rather shocked to learn that not only was I back in school with my friends from elementary school, but also with students from another elementary school. I reconnected with old friends and made new friends in that odd, middle school way. I tried out for the basketball team and somehow got accepted, a surprise to my rather short, unskilled self. Practice was held at the middle school or the elementary school in Tunnel Hill, depending on the schedule. One day while killing time before practice in Tunnel Hill, my teammates and I dropped in at the pharmacy owned by a friend's father. We snacked up, despite being told not to eat before practice, and I found a magazine rack. Browsing the selection, I was drawn to the outdoors section, checking out the guns, hunting, and fishing magazines. Then I saw it, a magazine unlike anything I'd seen before: Soldier Of Fortune. An unfamiliar term, I was unsure of its meaning. I picked up the magazine, founded in 1975 by former Green Beret and investigative reporter Robert K. Brown, and flipped through. It was an adventure magazine. Combat journalism, real stories of real fighting in places of the world I'd never heard of. Gear reviews, politics from the right end of the spectrum, even a classified ad section full of "independent operator" ads. I bought the magazine with my lunch money for the week. Upon arriving at home, I dug in and read it from cover to cover. A strange new world opened up with each turn of the page. 

I became a regular reader of the magazine dedicated to the "dogs of war." My 13 year old mind was taking in all SOF had to offer. I was enthralled by the journalism dispatches from around the world. Third world countries I couldn't find on the map, tales from the Rhodesian bush war, which I'd heard of on the evening news prior to being renamed Zimbabwe after the war ended. Battles fought by regular army and mercenaries, or as the magazine called them, soldiers of fortune. Private citizens going to war on behalf of others and getting paid for it. I couldn't believe this was possible. First hand accounts of battles you didn't hear about in the news, often from the men who fought in them. I devoured the gear reviews, everything from arms to knives, cameras and lenses. Survival articles, how not to get killed in the wild. Everything the curious mind of a young man from rural Georgia could take in. I spent a great deal of time in the woods around our home, daydreaming of covering conflicts half a world away, an imaginary Nikon slung around my neck. My constant companion was a Swiss Army knife my Dad had bought me a few years before. During hunting season, I might have a .22 rifle in hand for taking squirrels and other small game. My Dad, who had reunited with my mother (again) brought home hunting magazines and I learned how to identify animal tracks, dangerous plants, venomous snakes, and other dangers that exist beyond the lawn. But it was SOF that enlightened me to the perils of the larger world. 

By 8th grade, I was as knowledgeable of the struggles around the globe as my teachers. It was the journalism that kept me coming back month after month. This was early in the Reagan era, 1981-2, when things in Central America were heating up. Nicaragua, El Salvador, contras. Rhodesia stories were slowly replaced with contemporary coverage of conflict closer to home. I would take my Mom's Konica camera and hold it, look through the viewfinder, and imagine being dug in, covering battle after battle, always one step ahead of danger. Funny how one's imagination skips over the life-threatening aspects of adventure. Journalists die in war too. The horrors of what was going on was making its way into the news, both television and print. One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, and even tales of mercenaries were making it onto the nightly news. I remember a television interview with a privateer, an American fighting on behalf of Nicaragua. He wore a mask to hide his identity and spoke of the struggle, not just military, but of surviving in the jungle on little food, risking tropical disease, and the very real threat of ambush or booby traps. This was old news to me but all the adults were talking about it. 

It was my mother who busted me when she realized I knew far more about conflict than a 14 year old should. She asked where I learned all this stuff and I, being honest as I'd been taught, told her: "Soldier Of Fortune. It's my favorite magazine." She was rather appalled and forbade me from buying another issue. It was a case of too little, too late. A love of journalism, real front line journalism rather than notes from news conferences, had taken root, as had a deep interest in international affairs, on and off the record, and outdoors survival. My eyes had been opened to a world much greater than the one I knew. Cultures, viewpoints, ways of living I could have never known of were now part of my worldview. 

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Two years later I was 16, a licensed driver, and employed full time in summer and part time during the school year. I was also a budding (no pun intended) marijuana enthusiast. Weed was cheap, easy to find, and most importantly, *eased the burden of being me*, a task I often didn't want to tackle. Two caffeine tablets and a few big hits off a joint and I was good to go, the body energized, the mind expanded. One night, while visiting a liquor store whose night shift clerk didn't bother to ask for ID no matter how young one looked, I spied a magazine rack (they were everywhere back then). On it I saw an interesting looking periodical by the title of High Times. Flipping through, I found a world of information about pot and so much more. Founded in 1974 by activist, publisher, and all around wild man Tom Forcade, it was a glimpse into not only the world of marijuana but also the counterculture surrounding it. Articles ranged from growing plants from seed to legalization efforts to interviews with musicians and artists. I spent my beer money (earned at my job at a fast food restaurant, the logical employer of young people with chronic munchies) on the magazine. Founded a year before SOF, High Times couldn't have been more different. Their coverage of Latin America was focused on strains of weed, the US supplying the herbicide Paraquat to governments to be sprayed on grow fields. Does Weed Killer Make Killer Weed? asked one article supplying health information about the chemical substance. As with Soldier of Fortune, I was hooked, with High Times subject matter being a somewhat more accessible to me than the globe trotting adventures and automatic weapons battles of the former. 

Other articles approached subjects such as: how to avoid being busted, what to do if you get busted, music to listen to, movies to watch, where to protest, and more. For a teen whose parents were the closest thing our small town had to hippies, this was stuff I was naturally interested in. Like SOF, it was my window to a larger world but from a decidedly more left-oriented political spectrum. High Times was as concerned with peace and good times as SOF was with war and conflict. Both were suspicious of authority, highly opinionated, and unafraid to speak clearly. Just what a 16 year old smart ass like me needed. Most importantly, it was good journalism from people on the front line of the counterculture. It was strange, I'm sure, for friends to find a stack of each magazine in my bedroom when hanging out, listening to Black Sabbath, and waxing philosophical about anything that came to mind in a smokey room. My parents had divorced (finally) the previous year, with Mom moving to Memphis for a time while I lived with my Dad, whose absence during my childhood was only surpassed by his absence during my teen years. When the munchies struck, my friends and I would load up and go to a fast food place and break the bank on burgers, fries, all the good stuff with ingredients you can't pronounce. Invariably, a friend or classmate worked at one these haunts and we'd get extra goodies comped by the house. 

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Looking back from a vantage point four decades later, the influence of each magazine is undeniable. I write, mostly for myself, pieces that could be considered journalism. No breaking news, but pieces digging into things that interest me, from nature to folk lore and hauntings, to goings on in the world beyond my door. As a younger man, I took up photography with a passion, replacing the imaginary Nikon of my youth with an FM2N 35mm SLR, a camera used by real photojournalists (admittedly, most often as a backup camera, but still...). The Nikon remains in my possession but most photos are taken with a phone these days. Such are the perils of progress. Rather than international conflict or counterculture festivals, I found my muse to be the natural world. As for writing, the aforementioned journalism is very much a take on citizen journalism. Living in northwest Georgia, there is much to look into and write about, not the least of which is PFAS contaminated water, data centers either proposed or already operating, and young people disappearing from a Flying J truck stop south of town. I learned much from both titles and applied it to my own corner of the world. 

A small website of my own, a handheld device with built in camera, writing, and editing software, an aging laptop for long writing sessions, and a wealth of topics to explore. Has there ever been a better time for a curious mind to explore and report?