The badges in his journal indicate that he was a rifleman, and apparently high school graduates would have ended up on a different track.

Yeah, this is hooey. VN era draftees went through Infantry basic before being assigned to their MOS-Miltary Occupational Specialty: cooks, motor pool, quartermaster, etc. Those assigned to infantry went on to Advanced Infantry Training and were shipped off to Nam as soon as their training was done, regardless of their education level. You earned your rifle marksmanship badges in AIT.

It was common practice to give teenaged miscreants the choice of jail or the military at the time, so theoretically, John could have been "volunteered" this way. You could also sign up voluntarily at 17 with parental permission, if you had no job prospects, no plans to finish high school, several younger siblings for your parent(s) to support, or wanted to save for college. There was some choice of specialty for volunteers, whereas draftees were simply sent where there was need, and assignments were marginally better for volunteers than for draftees. All of which are possible reasons for John to volunteer before he was 18.

And Bev comes in with hard facts. (For, you know, those of us who weren't even conceived at the time of the Vietnam war...)

John was definitely staring down the barrel of a blue-collar life, I would guess. I wonder sometimes if his father was military.

Do we have a hard birthday for John?

We have his gravestone in "What is and blah blah". It's an alternate universe, but, considering it's constructed out of Dean's own head, I don't think he'd be making up alternate birth years for his own father. (It's just the year, IIRC.)

Really, they couldn't have invested in a bottle of that gray frosting-paint they use in theatre? It washes out, so Denny Duquette would not even have had to look old. And then they could have John be a much more likely age in all his flashbacks to 1983 (to say nothing of to 1989). Because, I mean, really. If John is 29 in 1983 then I am Mickey Mouse.

Was JDM appearing on SPN and GA at the same time?

signed, has no clue about GA AT ALL

Yes. This is why John Winchester always looked so tired. (Also, the woman who plays his fiancee on the one show and the man who plays his son on the other show are the same age.)

Also, the woman who plays his fiancee on the one show and the man who plays his son on the other show are the same age.)

Oh, like that would never happen.

the man who plays his son on the other show

JA or JP?

The full beard went a long way to making him look older, shame he couldn't seem to hang on to that the whole time.

It's a sign that I'm a sucker for the false truths presented to me by TV that I'm now weirded out by the fact that I have no concept of JDM's true age, and that if I grokked how old he really is I'd be freaked out.

JA or JP?

probably JA because i think he and Katie Heigl are both right about my age.

I have no concept of JDM's true age

he's 40 and delicious.

According to IMDB, JDM is 41. Which makes him perfect dating material for moi.

According to IMDB, JDM is 41.

I was about to say this-- he's less than a year younger than I am, and I'm almost 42.