Part 3: When Do We Find Out If We Passed?

The final station, the last stop in the daylong draft physical, was the medical captain’s office. I want to say I was still in my underwear, but I can’t be sure. The memory is blurry. Surely, I think now, 41 years later, they would have allowed a potential recruit the dignity of his shirt and pants.

Part Two: A Rude Shock in Boise

The bus taking me to my draft physical in Boise rewound the last 150 miles of the route I had just driven from Berkeley. From Hailey, Idaho, where my P.O. box was, the old Greyhound rolled down the Big Wood River out of the mountains, through Shoshone and west along the Snake River to Boise. It was one more weird aspect, but not nearly the last, of my temporary “residence” in Idaho.