Beginning at the age of thirteen, I started working as a stock boy at the neighborhood grocery store.
There I learned the art of work. I learned no matter how insignificant a job may seem; all work takes a certain amount of strategy. Before the job at the grocery store, the only work experience I had was selling peaches door-to-door during the summer for a fruit peddler, that came to our neighborhood to hire the neighborhood boys to sell his fruit. At the end of each workday, the one who sold the most fruit received a cash bonus. Being the best sales boy was as important to me as the cash bonus; during that time I begin to realize my competitive spirit. The job at the grocery store paid very little, but considering the work experience and the lessons I learned about responsibilities at the age of thirteen the pay wasn’t so bad. During that time I also realized I liked to dress. I wanted the nice clothes that I saw the older boys wearing. It wasn’t long before my friends began to comment on my style of dressing. I didn’t realize that I was dressing well enough to be noticed. My grandmother was very supportive of me, encouraging me to stay on the job when I started complaining about the difficulties at work; she made sure that my converse tennis shoes were cleaned (snow white) every morning for school. My shirts were so welled laundered that everyone thought I was having my shirts professionally done. My grandmother meant a lot to me and I did not want to disappoint her in any way.
Being employed at an early age gave me more freedom to come and go with less restriction. I liked going to the movies with my friends. With this new freedom, I started hanging out on the street corners with my friends when I wasn’t working. Hanging out on the street corner allowed me to meet new friends. One day while hanging out, a new friend mention a job that he was thinking about quitting, the job was downtown at a popular steak house restaurant. I asked him to let me have the job at the steak house as a dishwasher; he replied that he would speak to the owner. I got the job. The work was very challenging because the restaurant had very good business and I was the only dishwasher. The work hours added to the difficulties, I started work after school and I left work at 12 midnight; and up for school the next morning at 6:00 a.m. My father was a taxicab driver at night, so transportation to or from work was never a problem. I lived with my aunt and grandmother. My aunt was an elementary school teacher, my grandmother was retired, and they allowed me to spend my money as I pleased. I spent most of my salary on school clothes. I love my aunt and grandmother very much but my mother was my heart. She, my father, brother, and three sisters lived on the other side of town. They seemed to be having it hard when I visited them and often times I would leave feeling very sad. Sometimes I found myself PRAYING that the creator would help me to help them. I learned the value of prayer at an early age because my aunt was very religious. She would have prayer meetings two or three times a week in our home, she also led a Gospel singing group; in that environment, prayer was familiar to me.
I worked at the restaurant for about two years. One day during my senior year I was in the school library and overheard the librarian speaking to someone about a job at a nursing home for the elderly. After she finishes speaking with the person I asked her how much the job pays. The pay was more than what I was making at the restaurant, so I asked her to help me get the job and she replied ok. I applied for and got the job. The work hours were the same as the work hours at the steak house restaurant. The job at the nursing home was a very sobering experience; I got along with the patients and co-workers very well, but what I didn’t realize when I began working there was how familiar I would become with death. Sometimes I would become attached to some of the patients and not long after they would pass. One night while working alone one of the men's patients call me to his bedside and quietly asked me to take his life, I just walked away, I never forgot the expression on his face. He was very unhappy about his condition.
When I finished high school I started working part-time at the Jacksonville Shipyard. A friend told me about a ship that was being built at that yard and how many jobs would be available when the ship was completed. He also told me how to get in touch with the shipping clerk and apply for a job as a seaman after the completion of the ship. The construction of the ship would last for 6 more months. I was very persistent during those 6 months to be hired; one day the shipping clerk told me that when the construction of the ship is complete I would be the first one that he hires. He kept his word. When I begin working as a seaman for the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, I did not realize how special the ship the Discoverer was or how special her role was. The ship Discoverer and her sister ship the Oceanographer was vessels used by a V.I.P. scientist in the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean in the study of Oceanography. I was hired to work in the galley. The pay was good; the chief steward seemed to like my work.
The only travel experience I had at that point was to Georgia with my uncle. When the Discoverer started on her maiden voyage I was very excited because my dream of being a seaman was coming true. But what I did not realize was how rough seasickness could be. When the ship started up the St. Johns River and entered the breakwaters of the Atlantic Ocean, my excitement started to fade and the misery of seasickness started to take hold. The maiden voyage was to Baltimore Maryland two days away. The Discoverer was new and not yet balanced properly, and neither was I. The two days to Maryland were two of the most miserable days of my life to that point. When the Discoverer docked in Maryland the excitement of being a seaman returned. During the ship stay, there were long lines of people almost every day touring the ship. The Discoverer was the state of the arc for its time. After about 3 weeks the ship returned to Jacksonville and the next voyage was to Montreal Canada, where the ship was to be on exhibition for seven days at the world fair expo 67. All of this was very exciting to me; I was able to save most of the money I made. When I returned home I was able to make a down payment on a new home for my parents, but in order for me to get the financing, my name had to be on the deeds because approval of the loan was based on my job. The builder informed me and my parents that I had to have my disabilities removed in order for my name to be included in the deeds. To have my disabilities removed we had to go before a judge; the order read “Oscar Powell Jr. is now hereby able to sue or be sued, contract or be contracted with as if he was 21 years of age.” And in a matter of 10 minutes, I went from a 19-year-old boy to a 21-year-old man; and I started to wonder was this a good thing or not.
After one year of work on the U.S. Discoverer, I had enough sea time to apply to the U.S. Coast Guard for a merchant seaman document. Approval for the application took about 30 days. I began working on merchant ships out of the Jacksonville, Florida port. Shipping out of the port of Jacksonville was good, but the New Orleans port was better because work was more plentiful, so I started commuting from Jacksonville to New Orleans for work. In the 1960’s most young men were concern about the war in Vietnam and I was no different. The Jacksonville draft board tried to contact me to take a physical exam on two earlier dates but each time I was out of the country working as a seaman. The draft board began sending threatening letters to my home.
My mother and grandmother urged me to return home to take the physical exam to determine my draft status. I passed the exam and soon after I was drafted into the U.S. Army. I was sent to Fort Benny Georgia for basic training. After eight weeks of basic training, I had to report to Fort Polk in Louisiana (Tiger Land), where I receive infantry training; Tiger Land was very rough but that was nothing compared to what was coming next. After graduation from Fort Polk, (I graduated in the top 3 in my company, and was classified as the expert shooter.) our company captain informed us that the entire company was going to Vietnam after one month furlough. The month home with my family before being deployed to Vietnam was very hard. There was a silent fear within the family. We all tried to be optimistic about my deployment, but being optimistic was almost impossible because there was so much sad news in the country about Vietnam. The thirty days quickly passed and it was time for me to get started on my long journey to Vietnam. I said goodbye to my family, my brother drove me to the airport; I boarded a plane to Oakland California to be processed for Nam. During the processing time which took 3 days, I felt alone and fearful of what was to come. The flight over the Pacific Ocean to Vietnam took about 18 hours; 18 hours never pass so fast. The commercial plane that carried us to Vietnam was the last feeling of safety for the next 12 months. After the arrival to Vietnam, it took one week to process. After receiving our individual orders we started to our destinations. None of my friends were going my way. My destination was L, Z, Sally, 101st Airborne Division; where the adversary was not the Vietcong but the North Vietnamese Army; not Charlie but Mr. Charles. It was 1969 and Vietnam was a hotbed. Charles was small in stature and was not to be taken lightly. It was the beginning of the hardness year of my life, danger was all around. One of the keys to survival was to be very alert at all times. Living conditions in the jungle of Vietnam were very hard to bear especially during the monsoon season where it rains continuously. Proper care of your feet was a job because trench feet and leaches were a common problem.
After 8 months of hell, it was my turn to go on R&R (rest and recuperation). I chose to go to Bangkok Thailand for a week. That one week was a big relief. That week passed too fast and it was time to go back to the bush of Vietnam. I had four more months to try to stay alive. When I made it back to the bush all hell broke loose; we were in flights almost every day. Those last four months were nerve-racking; the closer one came to going home, It was common to become jumpy because the thought in the back of your mind was, I’ve come this far and I don’t want to make a mistake now. The day finally came for me to leave the bush. The terrain we were in at the time was too rough for the chopper that was transporting me out to land. The chopper hovered about 7 feet up; I had to jump to grab a ski on the chopper to pull myself into the chopper. I was finally headed home with only a piece of shrapnel from a grenade lodged in my stomach from a firefight 6 months earlier. Processing out of Vietnam took about one week; the day came for me to board the commercial airline to start home. When I boarded the plane I realized that I knew almost everyone on the plane. I didn’t know that you leave Nam with the same soldiers that you entered with; it was like a reunion of old friends. We served in different parts of the country and we are going home together. When the plane lifted we all were very happy, but soon after we realized that there were a lot of soldiers missing, they had gone on earlier one way or the other. Some of us knew what happened to the different ones that were missing. Our conversation the rest of the way home was both happy and sad. The plane landed in California I was home at last.
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