In the fall of 1966, I was briefly an armed security guard at the U.S. Gold Vault at Fort Knox, Kentucky. As a young soldier in Armor training, I marched the perimeter of the Gold Vault. The next year, I was commissioned a Second Lieutenant of Armor and received two small gold bars for my shoulders along with the Presidential Commission of an Army officer. After serving as an operations officer at the Army War College, I was off to Vietnam where I served as a press officer at a combat press camp.

I wrote about this, and my speculation about the impact and destiny of all that gold in the vault at Fort Knox in my essay, “All That Glitters,” included in my book “Apple Pressings,” available now in soft and hardcover and Kindle versions at Amazon.com.