Robert

Like growing up in rural Oklahoma in the 90s, I heard black kids in my school get called slurs, you know, like and number one, it was a lot more diverse, like rural Oklahoma, way more diverse than rural Washington.

But just the whole fucking like that.

I just like that from the jump.

Mark, you're lying.

Yeah.

So I don't know how racist he was, but he grew up with a lot of racism.

Mark moved around as an adolescent and attended high school, first in Gig Harbor and then Belfair.

In 1970, he graduated high school.

By this point, Mark had come to be known for something besides his racism.

He was an artsy kid, weirdly enough.

He really likes art.

He wants to be a creative.

He wants to pursue a creative vocation.

That seems to be...

his passion and he will always and also the people who are close to him will always say that like Mark at his core wanted to be an artist and I think there's a version of this story that's like also the tragic tale of like a kid who because of the time and place and his ideas about like macho

stuff couldn't do the thing that would have made him happy and so kept forcing himself to do these like aggressive masculine things that he didn't really want because he just wants to be an artist but in 1970 he graduates and enlists in the marines because that's what you do right right and yeah was he also turned down by uh an art school in austria or is this just a weird connection he doesn't even apply doesn't even apply

But he does kind of do the Hitler, right?

Like where he volunteers for the stupid war that he didn't necessarily need to volunteer for.

And so instead of continuing or doing anything to further the art thing, he winds up going to Nam.

He serves, I should say, during the Vietnam War.