I confess that prayer hasn't been a big part of my life. My son rats me out to his confessor that we miss Mass on Sunday. It's not that I've lost faith in the One True Religion. I'm a just a pretty serious procrastinator unless I'm in the zone building a system. My grandmother would say that every act is a prayer; most of my work was a prayer. There were go-live days when I prayed a lot.
I got sucked into Little League one day when a woman called up and asked if I'd coach my son's team. I'd coached little league hockey while I was in graduate school and swore I'd never do it again. The kids were great. The parents made you miserable. But what could I say to the lady who was suggesting no coach, no baseball for your kid.
It's a frightening and helpless feeling when you get caught in a rip tide. You keep swimming and swimming but keep getting sucked in the wrong direction. Everyone who's had a bad dream like that may understand, too. This was Little League. Before long you're sucked helplessly in a direction you don't want to go... because you're doing it for the kids. That's when I met Lyndon.
Before you can play ball you have to fix up the fields. Ours were in really, seriously bad shape, especially by modern Phoenix area Little League standards where some of the leagues pay professional crews to manicure the fields. We didn't have enough money to hire a crew. When I heard how much the crew cost, I volunteered for the do-it-yourself alternative and showed up at the playground at my son's school (In the end it would have been less expensive and less painful to have personally forked over $10,000 for the crew in the beginning, but that's another story).
Even with the do-it-yourself option, some of the dad's got carried away. I looked up from raking dirt and there are some guys with a backhoe digging a trench to put in a sprinkler system. Later in the afternoon they're still working on the sprinklers. Old fishing boat deckhands live by the dictum "don't watch while someone else works" so I sauntered over and offered to help. We finished filling in the trench when the sun was low in the sky.
While we waited for the water to be turned on, I chatted with Lyndon who was leading the effort. He looked like a real worker, heavyset and muscular, sweating with his tool belt strapped to his waist. Call me Mako. I'm from Hawaii. We're serious about Little League there. What's the matter with you people (you aren't Japanese and don't know how to work). We had nothing. Compared to us you guys are rich, but you can't build a Little League field. Mako played baseball at Baylor and although he was now a deacon at the Baptist church down the street, he still hated Roger Clemens who played for Texas and taunted the Baylor players after he struck them out.
I didn't get to tell Mako about Uncle George playing poker with Babe Ruth. The moment of truth came and we turned on the water. Fabulous, wonderful we can now water the fields before games. Instead of weathering an Arizona dust storm, the kids could play baseball. Then the bad news. A puddle appears at third base. It got bigger... and bigger. Someone had driven a pickup near third and the weight of the truck had cracked the water pipe.
We dug out the pipe, fixed the break and tried again. More water. We needed a new part. Someone was dispatched to Home Depot to get it. We waited and waited. Night came and the lights went on. More bad news. The lights would only stay on until 9 pm. It was Sunday night and the only way we can stop the water is by turning off all the water to school. The principal is not going to be happy. If we don't fix this, the playground will be a lake tomorrow or the school will not have water, and it's way too late to call a plumber. The part comes and we try again. This is time consuming because someone has to run to the school and turn on the water. It doesn't work. About this time the lights go out. Mako has a vision. Oops, he didn't glue it right. Turn off the water. Glue it right. We hope. We are working under the headlights of Mako's pickup truck now, in a trench that smells like Boston harbor at low tide. His kid goes to a Christian school miles away. I'm terrified because my kid goes to school here and I'll have to face the principal in the morning. The principal was one of those wiry women who could humble you with a wag of a finger and wasn't shy about doing it. She'd have made a good nun.
This is our last chance. We wait a good while for the glue to seal the pipe. We're ready to try again. Mako stops everyone (which by now is just me and him). Let us pray. Standing over the trench, Mako bows his head and lifts his hands up in the darkness illuminated only by the lights from his pickup. "Dear Lord, I pray for your strength and courage upon us. Bless our work and give us a successful end. In Jesus name, I pray." I raised my hands, too, and prayed real hard along with Mako, even though he was Baptist. And then whispered "Dear God, save me from principal Murphy."
Mako headed for the school. He called me on his cellphone and told me to be ready. Here comes the water. I waited. It sounded like there was water in the pipe...... it was holding. We waited a decent interval, filled in the trench and went home.
Praise be to Jesus.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Saturday, August 9, 2014
Revelation 1:12-18
A major downside to Holy Cross College prior to 1972 when the men's college became coeducational were weekends that became very quiet, especially after the football season ended. Fraternizing with the gentler gender required trips to Boston: Emmanuel, Newton and Regis colleges for Catholic women. My wife went to Simmons College across the street from Emmanuel, but I didn't meet her until much later in life. She and her friends dated young men at Harvard and MIT. This may have had something to do with snobbery on their part and lack of imagination on the part of Holy Cross boys. Possibly a healthy dose of both. I think it came as a major relief to my wife's parents when she finally settled down and married a good Catholic boy, a normal person with an honest appreciation for Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio ... and a war veteran to boot.
The Massachusetts Turnpike might have been the fastest route from Holy Cross to Boston, but we usually drove Route 9, no tolls. In those days, that road had some very dark stretches and turns that could jar the passengers when the driver got a little sleepy. One dark night on the road back from Emmanuel the passengers were sound asleep. I was starting to nod off myself when we hit one of the those curves and I jerked the steering wheel to stay on the road. Jerked from dreams about a beautiful Emmanuel girl with long black hair, my friend John who was sitting beside me screamed:
OH DEAR JESUS, I'M DEAD!
Above the curve, on a hill, illuminated in the darkness like a baroque Caravaggisti painting, was a huge statue of Jesus Christ, which of course was the first thing sleepy John saw when he opened his eyes.
The Massachusetts Turnpike might have been the fastest route from Holy Cross to Boston, but we usually drove Route 9, no tolls. In those days, that road had some very dark stretches and turns that could jar the passengers when the driver got a little sleepy. One dark night on the road back from Emmanuel the passengers were sound asleep. I was starting to nod off myself when we hit one of the those curves and I jerked the steering wheel to stay on the road. Jerked from dreams about a beautiful Emmanuel girl with long black hair, my friend John who was sitting beside me screamed:
OH DEAR JESUS, I'M DEAD!
Above the curve, on a hill, illuminated in the darkness like a baroque Caravaggisti painting, was a huge statue of Jesus Christ, which of course was the first thing sleepy John saw when he opened his eyes.
Revelation 1:12-18
"A revalation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him so that he could tell his servants what is now to take place very soon; he sent his angel to make it known to his servant John..."
"And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. But he laid his right hand on me, 'Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am he who lives and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen.'"
"A revalation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him so that he could tell his servants what is now to take place very soon; he sent his angel to make it known to his servant John..."
"And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. But he laid his right hand on me, 'Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am he who lives and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen.'"
Monday, August 4, 2014
Beetlejuice and the Big Bang
The major exception would be all the Navy ROTC students who were required to study celestial navigation and knew how to locate the super red giant star that sits on the shoulder of the constellation that some of us playfully called O'Ryan, the Hunter. Profoundly ironic that the NROTC students, who some vituperatively said didn't belong there, were among the few at Holy Cross with any academic connection to the great tradition of Jesuit astronomy: Clavius, Secchi and Lemaitre, father of the Big Bang, and I'm not talking a TV show. 
Ok, it's an anachronism to conflate 1960s Holy Cross with Tim Burton, but what's the difference between a blank stare and a crossword puzzle education, although there may be some karma involved here since Winona Ryder is the goddaughter of Holy Cross alumnus and notorious LSD guru Timothy Leary.
Saturday, July 26, 2014
The Rape of the Celtic Women
"My mother tells me that on the eve of her marriage to my [Italian] father, one of her [Irish] relatives pulled her aside and said, They’re not like us, you know.'” -- Joe Nocera
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/05/opinion/joe-nocera-my-american-family.html
Joe wasn't entirely forthcoming here. I can testify that the Irish and Italians are, in fact, different. My Italian mother-in-law treats me like a king. I love having her around. She always takes my side in family disputes. I am waited on hand and foot. My wife loves to cook for her husband although she seems to have been somewhat contaminated by American feminism, occasionally remonstrating that I should help with the housework. My retort: "Your mother never said that to your father." She remains mildly bitter about having to defer to her brothers and fetch water when they were too enthralled with watching the Three Stooges to get it themselves. She's also bitter about knowing the Mass backwards and forwards in Latin and not being able to be an alter girl; and getting asked to write her brother's Columbus Day essay for the Boston diocese contest and not getting any credit for the winning essay. She goes into a tizzy cleaning the house before her mother arrives. What's the point, says I, as soon as she gets here she'll scrub and polish the place from bottom to top anyway, and when she's done she'll start all over again the next day.
It's a different story for a daughter-in-law. Joining an Italian family meant being an Italian wife, learning to cook Italian, bearing children and waiting on the men. My wife said she was a grown woman before she discovered her grandmothers weren't Italian (Spanish and Portuguese, in fact). Her Irish sister-in-laws weren't about to buy into that, leading to years of empty seats at the Christmas dinner table (more spaghetti with lobster sauce and cannoli for the rest of us).
While my wife was still in high school, her mother told her to learn to type. She'd always be able to get a good job as a secretary. Rebellion. My wife refused to learn to type. After Berkley and Yale, when she rose to a high level executive job, someone else did her typing. Today she's a consultant with a disability since she now has trouble typing her own e-mails. My mother-in-law's perspective wasn't a bad one, though. She was a well paid legal secretary for Boston's wealthiest law firm. It was a dream job... until one of the lawyers decided to be a woman and they told my mother-in-law, an old Italian lady, she'd have to share the restroom with a person who was still anatomically a man. She just about had a heart attack. The law firm offered her counselling to help her deal with the anxiety brought on by her prejudice.
There were other differences. My wife's family consists of rock-ribbed Republicans while mine was and still is stalwart Wagner Democrats with brother Tim's Topeka Taxi Service driving Celtic Woman, Kathleen Gilligan Sebelius, all over Kansas during her campaign for governor. Whenever my brother-in-law starts jawing about Roosevelt's Raw Deal, I love to point out that it was Wagner's New Deal as much as Roosevelt's and that my family (along with Farley and Flynn) gave America Wagner and Roosevelt. Then I tell brother Paul that Wagner is the buddy my grandfather talked into running for the U.S. Senate. You run and let Farley and the rest of us worry about getting you elected (as in you don't have a need to know, but we'll run a dry Republican against the wet incumbent in Republican primary and make sure the wet incumbent finds a job when he gets beat).
http://holycross-and-clarencethomas.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-smoke-filled-room.html
http://holycross-and-clarencethomas.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-aviator.html
As vexing as it was to set up an internet connection to air Kennedy-baiting Howie Carr for my mother-in-law during her Arizona visits, I saw it as a small price to pay for spaghetti with lobster sauce, grandma's handmade raviolis and Uncle Joe's cannoli. Forget the Mona Lisa. The cannoli is my favorite Italian work of art.
* * * * * *
The alliance that gave us the culture we call Hispanic today began with Scipio before he was Africanus. Hannibal, the Carthaginian, had the Romans on the ropes. At Cannae (216 BC) he had destroyed their greatest army and along with it the best and brightest of Rome's best families. Just as the Roman Senate was about to surrender, young Scipio and his friends stormed into the Senate and forced them to continue the war. After his father and brother were killed in Spain, young Scipio was the only Roman left who would volunteer to lead the fight. Arriving in Spain, his troops captured a beautiful young woman.
Instead of accepting her as a prize of war, Scipio returned her unharmed to her fiancé, the Celtic chieftain Allucius. This won Scipio the allegiance of Spain's Celts and meant defeat for Carthage as Scipio and the Celts defeated first Hannibal's brother in Spain and then Hannibal himself on the battlefield of Zama (202 BC) outside the walls of Carthage.
It wasn't long before the marriage between Italy and the Spanish Celts went up in smoke. A long guerilla war humbled the Romans. Another Scipio was sent to set things right. He laid siege to Numantia (133 BC) and after a stubborn fight the Celts and their women committed suicide rather than submit to the Italians and slavery.
The Last Days of Numantia - Alejo Vera
Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni.
"Boadicea's husband Prasutagus was ruler of the Celtic Iceni tribe. He ruled as a nominally independent ally of Rome and left his kingdom jointly to his daughters and the Roman emperor in his will. However, when he died, his will was ignored and the kingdom was annexed as if conquered. Boadicea was flogged and her daughters raped by the Italians and Roman financiers called in their loans."
Boadicea led a great uprising against the Romans and almost drove them out of the British Isles, but was defeated at the Battle of Watling Street (61 AD) after the Romans rallied and sent in their legions of Anglo-German mercenaries. Rather than accepting capture and submission to Rome Boadicea committed suicide.
My great Aunt Margaret, part of a clan of independent Celtic women, was more successful in her battles with the Romans.
http://holycross-and-clarencethomas.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-god-father-and-tom-dewey.html
Friday, July 25, 2014
The Death Penalty and Ethel Rosenberg
One day the subject of the death penalty came up at the breakfast table. My father blurted out: "I'm against it. There's no such thing as equal justice!"
The sphinx talks! And the floodgates opened. In his days as a lawyer he'd seen too many prosecutors railroad people. Ethel Rosenberg! I nearly fainted. My father, the devout Catholic, who told me bedtime stories about his friend Jack Roth hunting down Rusky spies, is going to defend Ethel Rosenberg? "Your Great-Aunt Jo was friends with Ethel Rosenberg." Disbelief. We're talking about the sweet old aunt who gave us boxes of chocolate chip cookies when we came to visit. The woman ever present with Rosary beads in her hands. The woman who religiously sent money to Catholic missionaries in the Philippines. The Aunt Jo whose sister was a leader of the Silk Stocking district Republicans. The Aunt Jo who left you the Standard Oil stock from her inheritance? That Aunt Jo was best friends with the infamous Rusky spy, Ethel Rosenberg?
Your Aunt Jo didn't need to, but she worked in the New York public schools. She had an office job at the one where Ethel sent her kids. Ethel, he went on, was a devoted mother. She'd arrive early at the end of the school day to spend time chatting with Aunt Jo before taking her boys for religious instruction. That SOB Roy Cohn railroaded Ethel to promote his own career. The United States of America executed some little kids' mother because an ambitious creep who got his buddy appointed as trial judge wanted to become a big shot lawyer and power broker.
Then the sphinx looked as though he was going to fly into a rage and start pounding the table. They tried to railroad my Uncle George [the debonair bookmaker] for the murder of Arnold Rothstein! They tried to force him to give up the real killer, but he didn't know or wouldn't tell. Your grandfather was beside himself worrying that his brother would get sent to the electric chair. George didn't flinch and called the prosecution's bluff. People blamed my father and his friend Jimmy Walker for fixing the trial, but they didn't have anything to do with that. My Aunt Marion and her friends passed judgment on George and set him free. Marion belonged to a bridge club and the presiding judge was the husband of Marion's bridge club friend. The presiding judge appointed a "sympathetic" judge who directed the not-guilty verdict that saved George.
Poor Ethel. Roy Cohn was holding her hostage, trying to break up a big spy ring by wringing a confession out of her husband. Her husband called Cohn's bluff. Cohn didn't flinch. My grandfather was gone, Jimmy Walker was gone, Aunt Marion was gone. New York's Irish women didn't pull the strings anymore. The Roy Cohn had usurped their power to appoint prosecutors and judges. Aunt Jo couldn't save Ethel.
The sphinx talks! And the floodgates opened. In his days as a lawyer he'd seen too many prosecutors railroad people. Ethel Rosenberg! I nearly fainted. My father, the devout Catholic, who told me bedtime stories about his friend Jack Roth hunting down Rusky spies, is going to defend Ethel Rosenberg? "Your Great-Aunt Jo was friends with Ethel Rosenberg." Disbelief. We're talking about the sweet old aunt who gave us boxes of chocolate chip cookies when we came to visit. The woman ever present with Rosary beads in her hands. The woman who religiously sent money to Catholic missionaries in the Philippines. The Aunt Jo whose sister was a leader of the Silk Stocking district Republicans. The Aunt Jo who left you the Standard Oil stock from her inheritance? That Aunt Jo was best friends with the infamous Rusky spy, Ethel Rosenberg?
Your Aunt Jo didn't need to, but she worked in the New York public schools. She had an office job at the one where Ethel sent her kids. Ethel, he went on, was a devoted mother. She'd arrive early at the end of the school day to spend time chatting with Aunt Jo before taking her boys for religious instruction. That SOB Roy Cohn railroaded Ethel to promote his own career. The United States of America executed some little kids' mother because an ambitious creep who got his buddy appointed as trial judge wanted to become a big shot lawyer and power broker.
Then the sphinx looked as though he was going to fly into a rage and start pounding the table. They tried to railroad my Uncle George [the debonair bookmaker] for the murder of Arnold Rothstein! They tried to force him to give up the real killer, but he didn't know or wouldn't tell. Your grandfather was beside himself worrying that his brother would get sent to the electric chair. George didn't flinch and called the prosecution's bluff. People blamed my father and his friend Jimmy Walker for fixing the trial, but they didn't have anything to do with that. My Aunt Marion and her friends passed judgment on George and set him free. Marion belonged to a bridge club and the presiding judge was the husband of Marion's bridge club friend. The presiding judge appointed a "sympathetic" judge who directed the not-guilty verdict that saved George.
Poor Ethel. Roy Cohn was holding her hostage, trying to break up a big spy ring by wringing a confession out of her husband. Her husband called Cohn's bluff. Cohn didn't flinch. My grandfather was gone, Jimmy Walker was gone, Aunt Marion was gone. New York's Irish women didn't pull the strings anymore. The Roy Cohn had usurped their power to appoint prosecutors and judges. Aunt Jo couldn't save Ethel.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
How I know there's a God in heaven.
Some years ago my company, Deloitte, came to me and said, " We need you to work on a project. The staff is young and needs a little help." The young staff it turns out was building a new computer system for Arizona Medicaid. When I got there I asked to look at the work plan. After perusing it, I looked at the project manager. "You have 50 people working on this now. The plan says that in a month you're supposed to have 100 programmers. Where are they coming from and, by the way, you only have 50 desks and no office space for more desks."
"By the way (Darlin'), the client has chosen to implement the system in the IDEAL/Datacom database programming language (not widely used). Few of your young staff are programmers and only one of them has ever heard of this language. Fair enough you're just finishing the requirements/design phase of the project (barely on schedule and only because you've done a slapdash job), but where are the programmers coming from (since Deloitte doesn't have a cadre of programmers on the bench, especially the IDEAL kind)."
It was downhill from there. A few more months down the road an acquaintance of mine called up and said he wanted me to help him run the finance systems for a really big company in Houston: "The Smartest People in the Room." I thought long and hard about the offer, but I didn't want to leave before the job was done in Arizona, especially when the project was in big trouble. Besides I really, really didn't like the guy offering me the job. He definitely wasn't the smartest person in the room, nor the sweetest. So I toughed it out in Arizona and finished the project. Deloitte lost millions, but the system got built, very much to the firm's credit, because they continued to throw resources at the project until the job got done.
And it came to pass that the company in Houston, ENRON, failed big time. My acquaintance had managed to move from ENRON to Arthur Andersen as a partner and negotiated a deal where he and Arthur Anderson ran ENRON's internal audit department. Somehow he escaped going to jail. Everyone who worked for ENRON was ruined. But not me. I stayed in Arizona and met my beautiful and smart wife. That is how I know there is a God in heaven.
"By the way (Darlin'), the client has chosen to implement the system in the IDEAL/Datacom database programming language (not widely used). Few of your young staff are programmers and only one of them has ever heard of this language. Fair enough you're just finishing the requirements/design phase of the project (barely on schedule and only because you've done a slapdash job), but where are the programmers coming from (since Deloitte doesn't have a cadre of programmers on the bench, especially the IDEAL kind)."
It was downhill from there. A few more months down the road an acquaintance of mine called up and said he wanted me to help him run the finance systems for a really big company in Houston: "The Smartest People in the Room." I thought long and hard about the offer, but I didn't want to leave before the job was done in Arizona, especially when the project was in big trouble. Besides I really, really didn't like the guy offering me the job. He definitely wasn't the smartest person in the room, nor the sweetest. So I toughed it out in Arizona and finished the project. Deloitte lost millions, but the system got built, very much to the firm's credit, because they continued to throw resources at the project until the job got done.
And it came to pass that the company in Houston, ENRON, failed big time. My acquaintance had managed to move from ENRON to Arthur Andersen as a partner and negotiated a deal where he and Arthur Anderson ran ENRON's internal audit department. Somehow he escaped going to jail. Everyone who worked for ENRON was ruined. But not me. I stayed in Arizona and met my beautiful and smart wife. That is how I know there is a God in heaven.
Monday, June 23, 2014
The Last Beer in the Kingdom
"Have a beer! It's the last one in the Kingdom."
I was humbled and honored, ARAMCO's bootlegger-in-chief was giving me his last beer.
"The religious police finally figured out why the supermarket was selling so much hops and they've taken it off the shelves. No more beer in the entire Kingdom [Saudi Arabia]. I should still do well selling gin [two varieties: white and brown]."
The Kingdom was an Islamic state: alcohol was prohibited and a lot of other stuff people consider fun. They actually had bureaucrats dedicated to censoring the paperback romance novels sold in the local hotel where we were staying just outside the ARAMCO gate. Racy bursting bodice on the front cover? Magic marker blacks out the problem. Something too hot inside. Magic marker again, or just remove the offending pages. Tough job, but someone needs to stand up for decency.
The Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) can be summed in a few words: we provide energy to the world. In a world where Americans were not always popular, they were admired, if not loved, in Saudi Arabia. Americans might be Christian Infidels trespassing in the birthplace of Muhammad, The Prophet, but they had discovered oil in the Kingdom and made the Arabs rich. Very, very rich. Unlike the British, the Americans weren't condescending or slow to pick up a tab... Lawrence of Arabia notwithstanding. Americans got things done and the Kingdom bent the rules for them. ARAMCO headquarters was its own little American town. It had its own Little League. Women could drive and have jobs (sort of). There was even a golf course for those who could deal with playing on sand with "oiled" greens instead of grass ones. All the compound homes came with a small concrete block bunker-room in the garage. This was a practical concession to American employees who brewed their own liquor. In the early days some of the stills exploded leveling the entire home. To minimize the damage, new homes were built with bunkers for the stills to limit the damage. Some employees, like the bootlegger-in-chief, had taken brewing to the next level and were making more money from the liquor business than they made as employees (and ARAMCO employees got paid a lot).
Eventually the authorities caught up to the bootlegger-in-chief. The dilemma the authorities had was what to do with him. They couldn't just throw an American in jail. They had to give him a public trial. In the trial the details and extent of the bootlegging business would come out and embarrass the Kingdom and ARAMCO. In the end, as they often did, the Saudis pretended nothing had happened and just let the bootlegger go and told him never to return to the Kingdom. He got to keep his profits.
I was humbled and honored, ARAMCO's bootlegger-in-chief was giving me his last beer.
"The religious police finally figured out why the supermarket was selling so much hops and they've taken it off the shelves. No more beer in the entire Kingdom [Saudi Arabia]. I should still do well selling gin [two varieties: white and brown]."
The Kingdom was an Islamic state: alcohol was prohibited and a lot of other stuff people consider fun. They actually had bureaucrats dedicated to censoring the paperback romance novels sold in the local hotel where we were staying just outside the ARAMCO gate. Racy bursting bodice on the front cover? Magic marker blacks out the problem. Something too hot inside. Magic marker again, or just remove the offending pages. Tough job, but someone needs to stand up for decency.
The Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) can be summed in a few words: we provide energy to the world. In a world where Americans were not always popular, they were admired, if not loved, in Saudi Arabia. Americans might be Christian Infidels trespassing in the birthplace of Muhammad, The Prophet, but they had discovered oil in the Kingdom and made the Arabs rich. Very, very rich. Unlike the British, the Americans weren't condescending or slow to pick up a tab... Lawrence of Arabia notwithstanding. Americans got things done and the Kingdom bent the rules for them. ARAMCO headquarters was its own little American town. It had its own Little League. Women could drive and have jobs (sort of). There was even a golf course for those who could deal with playing on sand with "oiled" greens instead of grass ones. All the compound homes came with a small concrete block bunker-room in the garage. This was a practical concession to American employees who brewed their own liquor. In the early days some of the stills exploded leveling the entire home. To minimize the damage, new homes were built with bunkers for the stills to limit the damage. Some employees, like the bootlegger-in-chief, had taken brewing to the next level and were making more money from the liquor business than they made as employees (and ARAMCO employees got paid a lot).
Eventually the authorities caught up to the bootlegger-in-chief. The dilemma the authorities had was what to do with him. They couldn't just throw an American in jail. They had to give him a public trial. In the trial the details and extent of the bootlegging business would come out and embarrass the Kingdom and ARAMCO. In the end, as they often did, the Saudis pretended nothing had happened and just let the bootlegger go and told him never to return to the Kingdom. He got to keep his profits.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
The Godfather and Tom Dewey
In The Godfather's most violent scene, Sonny Corleone is ambushed at a toll booth on the causeway that connects Long Beach with Long Island and New York City. The story was fiction. The place is real. We passed this toll booth every Sunday when we drove to visit my grandmother at her summer home in Long Beach, a very real place with very real Mafia connections. The ambush was, of course, completely fictional. As my "uncle" Louie "The Greek" recalled, Long Beach, along with neighboring Point Lookout, was a demilitarized zone. It was where the Dons lived and they kept their business separate from their families. Long Beach was in Nassau County outside the jurisdiction of New York City where the Dons had their "businesses."
My grandmother was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who started a carting business and parlayed it into trading iron and steel. As his wealth grew, he moved from the waterfront and the Five Points area in lower Manhattan to Carnegie Hill. He outlived three wives and had children by all of them. When he was gone, my grandmother inherited the Carnegie Hill brownstone and for some reason decided to build a large, three-story summer home at Long Beach, much to the dismay of her older sisters, an unlikely extravagance since all the sisters were devoted to financially supporting nuns and priests doing missionary work in faraway lands. Unfortunately, the builder built other homes with most of the money she gave him and went bankrupt before he finished my grandmother's. She was completely undaunted. To entertain herself and to further her teaching career, she'd allegedly taken courses in shop (carpentry, etc.) at Columbia Teachers College. She rounded up Long Beach's unemployed men, taught them what to do and finished the house. It was such a good job that you wonder where my grandmother's talent for organizing things left off and my father's talent for storytelling took over: 276 E. Beech Street, judge for yourself.
My grandmother's older sister Margaret was a leader of the Silk Stocking District Republicans. This was very puzzling to me since as long as I could remember my grandfather was a proud supporter of Bob Wagner and Tammany Hall. My father explained his Aunt Margaret by saying Republicans aren't all bad and were very good for commerce, which of course was important to everyone especially Aunt Margaret's side of the family. Her brand of Republican was different from the anti-immigrant crowd then and now. Her partner in "crime" was Ken Simpson a rising Progressive star, unknown today because his flame burned out too soon when he suffered a fatal heart attack during his first week in the U.S. Congress. Aunt Margaret's protégé was a young man named Tom Dewey. Aunt Margaret and my grandfather were the model of political cooperation. They traded favors primarily jobs, which were hard to come by during the Depression. One was Mr. Katz. Grandpa laid out a compelling case for Aunt Margaret to find Mr. Katz a position. He was a family man with a lot of mouths to feed. After he'd been placed and it was discovered Mr. Katz had no family. Aunt Margaret confronted Grandpa: "James, Mr. Katz has no kittens." Not to worry, James's good friend Wagner was available to help Aunt Margaret's boy Tom find a job as a federal prosecutor.
If you like conspiracy theories you can read into this that the choice of Dewey was no accident and that Grandpa had a score to settle with people who needed to learn a thing or two about conducting themselves, and that Irish Democrats were strongly invested in having someone not a party to the feud deliver the message. And it came to pass that Lucky Luciano, protégé of Arnold Rothstein, and head of the Mafia in the USA soon enough found himself in court facing Aunt Margaret's protégé, Tom Dewey. Mr. Luciano was defended by a bright young lawyer named Lorenzo Carlino, Republican political leader of Long Beach, New York. Now you know where Mario Puzo's Godfather, Don Corleone, actually came from.
My grandmother was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who started a carting business and parlayed it into trading iron and steel. As his wealth grew, he moved from the waterfront and the Five Points area in lower Manhattan to Carnegie Hill. He outlived three wives and had children by all of them. When he was gone, my grandmother inherited the Carnegie Hill brownstone and for some reason decided to build a large, three-story summer home at Long Beach, much to the dismay of her older sisters, an unlikely extravagance since all the sisters were devoted to financially supporting nuns and priests doing missionary work in faraway lands. Unfortunately, the builder built other homes with most of the money she gave him and went bankrupt before he finished my grandmother's. She was completely undaunted. To entertain herself and to further her teaching career, she'd allegedly taken courses in shop (carpentry, etc.) at Columbia Teachers College. She rounded up Long Beach's unemployed men, taught them what to do and finished the house. It was such a good job that you wonder where my grandmother's talent for organizing things left off and my father's talent for storytelling took over: 276 E. Beech Street, judge for yourself.
My grandmother's older sister Margaret was a leader of the Silk Stocking District Republicans. This was very puzzling to me since as long as I could remember my grandfather was a proud supporter of Bob Wagner and Tammany Hall. My father explained his Aunt Margaret by saying Republicans aren't all bad and were very good for commerce, which of course was important to everyone especially Aunt Margaret's side of the family. Her brand of Republican was different from the anti-immigrant crowd then and now. Her partner in "crime" was Ken Simpson a rising Progressive star, unknown today because his flame burned out too soon when he suffered a fatal heart attack during his first week in the U.S. Congress. Aunt Margaret's protégé was a young man named Tom Dewey. Aunt Margaret and my grandfather were the model of political cooperation. They traded favors primarily jobs, which were hard to come by during the Depression. One was Mr. Katz. Grandpa laid out a compelling case for Aunt Margaret to find Mr. Katz a position. He was a family man with a lot of mouths to feed. After he'd been placed and it was discovered Mr. Katz had no family. Aunt Margaret confronted Grandpa: "James, Mr. Katz has no kittens." Not to worry, James's good friend Wagner was available to help Aunt Margaret's boy Tom find a job as a federal prosecutor.
If you like conspiracy theories you can read into this that the choice of Dewey was no accident and that Grandpa had a score to settle with people who needed to learn a thing or two about conducting themselves, and that Irish Democrats were strongly invested in having someone not a party to the feud deliver the message. And it came to pass that Lucky Luciano, protégé of Arnold Rothstein, and head of the Mafia in the USA soon enough found himself in court facing Aunt Margaret's protégé, Tom Dewey. Mr. Luciano was defended by a bright young lawyer named Lorenzo Carlino, Republican political leader of Long Beach, New York. Now you know where Mario Puzo's Godfather, Don Corleone, actually came from.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Barak and a Boy Named Declan
My son met Declan at the Rose Lane School years ago. Declan's a fiesty little guy with leg braces, probably the same disorder as Ronan Tynan, the Irish Tenor. Anyway, his dad stops by to pick up Declan one evening, and we're chatting in the kitchen. It turns out he's a Democrat from New York (everyone in my neighborhood seems to be from New York) and a professional organizer. Imagine a professional Democrat trying to make a living in Arizona. Not as crazy as it sounds, because he's just helped Janet Napolitano get a elected and is about to be named leader of the Arizona Democrats. The conversation turns to politics and he says I really need to come to a fundraiser the next night. They have a guy from Illinois named Barak speaking. I can feel my pocket being picked. "You have to meet him," he says. "He's a real rock star." Last time I went to one of these events it cost me $1000 to shake hands with Dick Gephart, and the candidate Gephart was promoting lost to J.D. Hayworth, a sports talk show guy. I said I had to coach soccer practice that night. It was the truth. That's how I didn't get to meet Barak Obama, and too bad because it would have been money well spent. Declan's dad ended up getting rid of Hayworth, the jerk, and my brother's neighbor, Kathleen Gilligan-Sebelius, got a new job along with Janet Napolitano, the opera buddy and proteje of our favorite priest from Chicago, Ed Ryle, who baptized my son.
Athbhliain faoi mhaise dhuit!
Athbhliain faoi mhaise dhuit!
Monday, March 31, 2014
The Dragon and the Puerto Ricans
One college summer long ago my "little" brother worked for a landscaping company. My Uncle Louie "The Greek" got him the job. The business was owned by an old Italian family who immigrated to Long Island, and started farming. When the farms turned into suburbs, the farmers cashed in and retired or kept some of the land and became landscapers. Hans the foreman ran the operation. He didn't pretend to be a "landscaper." "I grow. My father grow. My grandfather grow." All the workers were Puerto Rican except for Hans, my brother, the mechanic and the mechanic's assistant. Before the "Progressives" invented diversity, this was Long Island's version: an Italian farmer, Puerto Rican workers, my brother, the Irish kid whose uncle Louie "The Greek" got him the job, a German foreman, and who knows what the two mechanics were.
The Puerto Ricans -- there were a dozen of them -- worked like crazy and sent all their money home to their families in Puerto Rico. My brother couldn't keep up at first. Hans told him he had to work faster. "I'm afraid of making a mistake," was his excuse. Hans said don't worry, "If you don't make mistakes, you're not working hard enough." Hans liked my brother. Eventually he started taking him fishing.
It wasn't all grinding work. They got the contract to put in trees along some of Ocean Parkway near Jones Beach. When it didn't rain for a while, they got a big tanker truck with a water cannon and drove down the parkway firing water at the trees. They got done in time to have lunch and take a swim.
One day while manning the water cannon during a beach run, my brother sees a friend driving up the highway. He waves at him. The friend who is in a VW bug with the top down and a pretty girl beside him slows down, waves back and starts laughing. "Hi, sucker! We're on the way to the beach! And you're not!" Never mess with a man with a water cannon. Rapidly a barrage fills the VW with water.
The assistant mechanic had the job of going to the deli and buying lunch for the Puerto Ricans. This was not a hard job. The Puerto Ricans always ordered the same thing. One day the assistant mechanic missed work. My brother got sent out for the lunches in his place. When he came back with the lunches and the change, the Puerto Ricans became very animated and went into a huddle. Their representative approached my brother. "Why have you given us so much change." My brother says, "That's what the change is. You gave me X dollars. The lunches cost Y and the change is Z. So you get Z back. What's the problem?" The problem was that the assistant mechanic had been keeping most of the change without telling the Puerto Ricans and it really added up over time. The Puerto Ricans were furious. When Hans and the owner found out, they were furious, too. The only reason the assistant mechanic kept his job was he was dating the owner's daughter, but he had to pay every penny back to the Puerto Ricans.
The assistant mechanic was mad at my brother. When he finally caught my brother alone, he lit into him about turning him in. My brother replied: "Fuck you! I didn't know you were cheating the Puerto Ricans. Blame yourself, Asshole. If I knew you were cheating the Puerto Ricans, I'd have told Hans right away. If you want to go [fight], let's go right now!" The mechanic thought better of that and demurred. Don't mess with The Dragon!
The Puerto Ricans -- there were a dozen of them -- worked like crazy and sent all their money home to their families in Puerto Rico. My brother couldn't keep up at first. Hans told him he had to work faster. "I'm afraid of making a mistake," was his excuse. Hans said don't worry, "If you don't make mistakes, you're not working hard enough." Hans liked my brother. Eventually he started taking him fishing.
It wasn't all grinding work. They got the contract to put in trees along some of Ocean Parkway near Jones Beach. When it didn't rain for a while, they got a big tanker truck with a water cannon and drove down the parkway firing water at the trees. They got done in time to have lunch and take a swim.
One day while manning the water cannon during a beach run, my brother sees a friend driving up the highway. He waves at him. The friend who is in a VW bug with the top down and a pretty girl beside him slows down, waves back and starts laughing. "Hi, sucker! We're on the way to the beach! And you're not!" Never mess with a man with a water cannon. Rapidly a barrage fills the VW with water.
The assistant mechanic had the job of going to the deli and buying lunch for the Puerto Ricans. This was not a hard job. The Puerto Ricans always ordered the same thing. One day the assistant mechanic missed work. My brother got sent out for the lunches in his place. When he came back with the lunches and the change, the Puerto Ricans became very animated and went into a huddle. Their representative approached my brother. "Why have you given us so much change." My brother says, "That's what the change is. You gave me X dollars. The lunches cost Y and the change is Z. So you get Z back. What's the problem?" The problem was that the assistant mechanic had been keeping most of the change without telling the Puerto Ricans and it really added up over time. The Puerto Ricans were furious. When Hans and the owner found out, they were furious, too. The only reason the assistant mechanic kept his job was he was dating the owner's daughter, but he had to pay every penny back to the Puerto Ricans.
The assistant mechanic was mad at my brother. When he finally caught my brother alone, he lit into him about turning him in. My brother replied: "Fuck you! I didn't know you were cheating the Puerto Ricans. Blame yourself, Asshole. If I knew you were cheating the Puerto Ricans, I'd have told Hans right away. If you want to go [fight], let's go right now!" The mechanic thought better of that and demurred. Don't mess with The Dragon!
Friday, March 21, 2014
Fred is Dead
My favorite Fred story: some years ago controversial preacher Fred Phelps showed up at the Topeka St. Patrick's Day parade and lined up his troops to participate, complete with their entire catalog of "God Hates Fags" signs. The Dragon, representing the St. Patrick's Day Committee, approached Fred and said, "You're welcome to march. Everyone's welcome. But you and your people can't carry those signs, or shout anything inflammatory." Fred shot back, "Who are you." The Dragon: "I'm the guy who holds the parade permit. It costs $25. You want to carry those signs; go buy your own permit and hold your own parade." ("It was like looking into the eyes [Fred's] of pure Evil.")
Incensed, Fred moved to a street corner and picketed the parade, signs and all. He and his troops were patrolling the corner when a large semi-truck pulling a flatbed passed carrying a large Irish family and their friends. Fred found himself facing more than a dozen bare bottoms giving him the Celtic salute a la "Brave Heart." Barely able to contain his fury, Fred turned to a nearby policeman and shouted: "Did you see that! Did you see that!" The policeman replied: "All I see is some people exercising their right to freedom of speech."
Incensed, Fred moved to a street corner and picketed the parade, signs and all. He and his troops were patrolling the corner when a large semi-truck pulling a flatbed passed carrying a large Irish family and their friends. Fred found himself facing more than a dozen bare bottoms giving him the Celtic salute a la "Brave Heart." Barely able to contain his fury, Fred turned to a nearby policeman and shouted: "Did you see that! Did you see that!" The policeman replied: "All I see is some people exercising their right to freedom of speech."
Regan's Roman Catholic Rules
In the old days Catholics were forbidden to eat meat on Fridays. This was serious business for my father's mother who'd been indoctrinated at Manhattan's elegant Convent of the Sacred Heart. When cousin Furlong was served meat on Friday at a Princeton faculty member's house, it was taken as grave insult. My father was told he could not go to Princeton and was bundled off to Holy Cross College in Worcester instead.
My mother's family had a different point of view. The clam chowder on Friday could be served with bacon bits, because the bacon was "only there for the taste."
My mother's grandfather Michael Lafferty was a farmer. His family lived close to the land near the tiny, isolated hamlet of Kilmoon East near the tiny town of Lisdoonvarna, population 822 in 2002. My grandmother claimed she had to walk five miles to school each day. This might be an exaggeration, but maybe she was thinking round trip. These days you can check up on grandma by Googling Lisdoonvarna and you can see that Kilmoon East is not quite a three mile walk to Lisdoonvarna.
Another amazing Internet thing is that you can Google Michael Lafferty's census records. These prove that half the Irish of that era were illiterate. Of course you have to allow that the 1901 Irish census was administered by the British and recorded three children under five and a newborn as "Cannot Read." All of the older family members' "Literacy" is listed as "Read and Write" and as "Irish and English" speakers.
The census lists the Laffertys as "Roman Catholic". This is true. My grandmother remembered her father leading the family in saying the Rosary every night. It was simpler to be pious close to the land, no TV, no radio, and no electricity.
Michael Lafferty's relationship with the village priest was not simple. There was an ongoing feud. The rural Irish had kept their faith for hundreds of years with little help from priests other than an itinerant father passing through to celebrate mass, at times in the open air of a farmer's field, out of sight of the British who were hunting down and eliminating the priests. By 1900 the Catholic Church had agree to a truce with the British in Ireland and had legal if not official status. The Laffertys did not recognize the truce.
The feud between Michael and the priest came to a head during the Easter rebellion. Son Ned had joined the Irish Republic Army and was on the run after disabling (blowing up) some British army trucks. The priest wanted Michael to cooperate with the British and turn in Ned. Michael refused. The priest denied him absolution. Michael growled, "I'll burn in hell before I give my son up to the British", though he knew he wouldn't since, as a devout Catholic, he knew this was a matter of conscience, which the priest in fact had no authority to condemn.
My mother's family had a different point of view. The clam chowder on Friday could be served with bacon bits, because the bacon was "only there for the taste."
My mother's grandfather Michael Lafferty was a farmer. His family lived close to the land near the tiny, isolated hamlet of Kilmoon East near the tiny town of Lisdoonvarna, population 822 in 2002. My grandmother claimed she had to walk five miles to school each day. This might be an exaggeration, but maybe she was thinking round trip. These days you can check up on grandma by Googling Lisdoonvarna and you can see that Kilmoon East is not quite a three mile walk to Lisdoonvarna.
Another amazing Internet thing is that you can Google Michael Lafferty's census records. These prove that half the Irish of that era were illiterate. Of course you have to allow that the 1901 Irish census was administered by the British and recorded three children under five and a newborn as "Cannot Read." All of the older family members' "Literacy" is listed as "Read and Write" and as "Irish and English" speakers.
The census lists the Laffertys as "Roman Catholic". This is true. My grandmother remembered her father leading the family in saying the Rosary every night. It was simpler to be pious close to the land, no TV, no radio, and no electricity.
Michael Lafferty's relationship with the village priest was not simple. There was an ongoing feud. The rural Irish had kept their faith for hundreds of years with little help from priests other than an itinerant father passing through to celebrate mass, at times in the open air of a farmer's field, out of sight of the British who were hunting down and eliminating the priests. By 1900 the Catholic Church had agree to a truce with the British in Ireland and had legal if not official status. The Laffertys did not recognize the truce.
The feud between Michael and the priest came to a head during the Easter rebellion. Son Ned had joined the Irish Republic Army and was on the run after disabling (blowing up) some British army trucks. The priest wanted Michael to cooperate with the British and turn in Ned. Michael refused. The priest denied him absolution. Michael growled, "I'll burn in hell before I give my son up to the British", though he knew he wouldn't since, as a devout Catholic, he knew this was a matter of conscience, which the priest in fact had no authority to condemn.
Monday, February 3, 2014
The Empire Strikes Back
Tammany Hall is remembered these days as the Evil Empire. Forgotten now that they watched out for widows and little children, found jobs for working stiffs who wanted them, and were really good at counting votes. My grandfather would be proud that I can still count votes and sent this sly epistle to the local newspaper concerning a guy who was trying to make life difficult for poor Mexicans who snuck across the border trying to put food on the table for their families. The so-called King of Arizona put on such a great show he scared everyone and seemed invincible.
* * * * * *
Arizona Republic - November 5, 2010
The votes are in and as of Thursday, the tallies are:
• Sen. John McCain (my favorite war hero) - 794,939.
• Attorney General-to-be Tom Horne (lots of degrees from Harvard) - 695,957.
• Treasurer-to-be Doug Ducey (voters give ice-cream guy keys to Arizona candy store) - 685,872.
And the winner in the race for most powerful Arizona politician is:
State Sen. Russell Pearce, with 12,676 votes (about half of what he got two years ago).
You figure.
* * * * * *
Somebody got the message and Russell Pearce lost a recall election 11/8/2011. He got beat again in the regular election in 2012.
* * * * * *
My neighbor, a Holy Cross grad of the female persuasion, asked me if I wasn't afraid of Pearce and his thugs. Pearce's thug leader would dress up in a Nazi helmet and flack jacket when he'd lead his tiny band out to patrol the Mexico border. The helmet was too small for the head on his very rotund body and the guy ended up looking like the cartoon character Hagar the Horrible. I told my neighbor "no." He should be afraid of me... and if not me then my "uncle" Louie "The Greek" back in Long Beach. The scene is completely fictional in the Godfather where Sonny gets gunned down at a toll booth on the causeway to Long Beach where my grandmother had her summer home. Long Beach was where the Dons' families lived. It was a demilitarized zone, and fashionable summer retreat in its day.
* * * * * *
Arizona Republic - November 5, 2010
The votes are in and as of Thursday, the tallies are:
• Sen. John McCain (my favorite war hero) - 794,939.
• Gov. Jan Brewer (courageous stand on sales-tax increase for schools) - 750,644.
• Secretary of State Ken Bennett (nice guy) - 768,108.• Attorney General-to-be Tom Horne (lots of degrees from Harvard) - 695,957.
• Treasurer-to-be Doug Ducey (voters give ice-cream guy keys to Arizona candy store) - 685,872.
And the winner in the race for most powerful Arizona politician is:
State Sen. Russell Pearce, with 12,676 votes (about half of what he got two years ago).
You figure.
* * * * * *
Somebody got the message and Russell Pearce lost a recall election 11/8/2011. He got beat again in the regular election in 2012.
* * * * * *
My neighbor, a Holy Cross grad of the female persuasion, asked me if I wasn't afraid of Pearce and his thugs. Pearce's thug leader would dress up in a Nazi helmet and flack jacket when he'd lead his tiny band out to patrol the Mexico border. The helmet was too small for the head on his very rotund body and the guy ended up looking like the cartoon character Hagar the Horrible. I told my neighbor "no." He should be afraid of me... and if not me then my "uncle" Louie "The Greek" back in Long Beach. The scene is completely fictional in the Godfather where Sonny gets gunned down at a toll booth on the causeway to Long Beach where my grandmother had her summer home. Long Beach was where the Dons' families lived. It was a demilitarized zone, and fashionable summer retreat in its day.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Bill O'Reilly: Goalie
My senior year of high school ice hockey was played in a rage, scoring goals, knocking people down, knocking people out, fights. One day my brother told me, "They're all afraid of you." This came as a complete shock because for the prior three years I'd been the skinny kid who was afraid of just about everyone. I'd always played as hard as I could. Now the results were different.
The fights became legendary. Decades later people were still asking our cousins if they were related to us and then telling the story about the night my little brother took on the entire Long Beach High team and I had to rescue him.
Bill O'Reilly of Fox TV fame was our goalie. He got there by chance. Our starting and only goalie came down with hepatitis and was out for the season. Our league was only a few years removed from sending Joe Mullen to Boston College and the NHL. Who wanted to be goalie? Do slap shots cause hepatitis? O'Reilly volunteered. It was a good move for him since he did not skate well (that's a generous way of putting it). He traded getting hit by blistering slap shots for playing time.
O'Reilly was non-stop talk (maybe it helped him not think about getting hit with slap shots). Most of it was annoying. Finally I'd had enough. I turned around, skated over to him and hit him as hard as I could in the pads with my stick. "Next time I'm aiming higher." He was a lot quieter after that.
I spend most of my time now playing tennis with my daughter and working with my son on his two-seam fastball, change-up and quadratic equations. He was wants to be a major league baseball player. I ask him what his backup plan is, hoping he'll say engineer of some kind. But nooo... the backup plan is ESPN. That might be a realistic possibility. He talks non-stop and is often annoying.
The fights became legendary. Decades later people were still asking our cousins if they were related to us and then telling the story about the night my little brother took on the entire Long Beach High team and I had to rescue him.
Bill O'Reilly of Fox TV fame was our goalie. He got there by chance. Our starting and only goalie came down with hepatitis and was out for the season. Our league was only a few years removed from sending Joe Mullen to Boston College and the NHL. Who wanted to be goalie? Do slap shots cause hepatitis? O'Reilly volunteered. It was a good move for him since he did not skate well (that's a generous way of putting it). He traded getting hit by blistering slap shots for playing time.
O'Reilly was non-stop talk (maybe it helped him not think about getting hit with slap shots). Most of it was annoying. Finally I'd had enough. I turned around, skated over to him and hit him as hard as I could in the pads with my stick. "Next time I'm aiming higher." He was a lot quieter after that.
I spend most of my time now playing tennis with my daughter and working with my son on his two-seam fastball, change-up and quadratic equations. He was wants to be a major league baseball player. I ask him what his backup plan is, hoping he'll say engineer of some kind. But nooo... the backup plan is ESPN. That might be a realistic possibility. He talks non-stop and is often annoying.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Uncle Albert
At the end of the day, the night before my brother got married, the men sat down for drinks. I was there, my uncle the pediatric cardiologist, my father the lawyer who emancipated the travel agents, and my other uncle the fortune 500 CFO. I was... feeling inferior. Representing my brother's wife- to-be, the gorgeous Hildegard, were Uncle Albert the farmer and her father the baker. The baker was an Albert, too. What is with the Germans? Why do all of them need to be Albert?
God bless the Germans, though. When her friends told Hildegard she shouldn't go out with an Irish kid from New York, she was mystified. We're both Catholics aren't we?
Albert the farmer didn't have an inferiority complex. Neither did Albert the father, he'd been Eisenhower's cook (the Kansas Germans all stuck together I guess), but Albert the father was a kind little man who didn't say much. When you get up at 4:30 in the morning everyday to bake bread, donuts and Stollen for the Osage City farmers, by night you're ready for bed, not talking. Albert the farmer didn't have that problem. He talked and talked. It made you wonder what he was growing. It was alleged, however, that he was the soybean king of Paola, Kansas.
Albert the farmer and Uncle CFO had a lot in common. They both survived full tours of combat missions in World War II as B-25 and B-24 pilots. You never heard them talk about it until that night. Albert the farmer had been very careful not to bomb POW camps.
Camaraderie didn't slow old Uncle Albert one bit, though, when he really got goin. Late into the night, he surveyed the table. A doctor! A lawyer! An accountant! Albert! It looks like you and me here are the only people who work for a livin.
God bless the Germans, though. When her friends told Hildegard she shouldn't go out with an Irish kid from New York, she was mystified. We're both Catholics aren't we?
Albert the farmer didn't have an inferiority complex. Neither did Albert the father, he'd been Eisenhower's cook (the Kansas Germans all stuck together I guess), but Albert the father was a kind little man who didn't say much. When you get up at 4:30 in the morning everyday to bake bread, donuts and Stollen for the Osage City farmers, by night you're ready for bed, not talking. Albert the farmer didn't have that problem. He talked and talked. It made you wonder what he was growing. It was alleged, however, that he was the soybean king of Paola, Kansas.
Albert the farmer and Uncle CFO had a lot in common. They both survived full tours of combat missions in World War II as B-25 and B-24 pilots. You never heard them talk about it until that night. Albert the farmer had been very careful not to bomb POW camps.
Camaraderie didn't slow old Uncle Albert one bit, though, when he really got goin. Late into the night, he surveyed the table. A doctor! A lawyer! An accountant! Albert! It looks like you and me here are the only people who work for a livin.
The Return of the Dragon
Downtown Phoenix is busier now. Years ago it was empty and dark after five o'clock. The Catholic Diocese of Phoenix had yet to build its sparkling new headquarters and my wife and I used its old lot to park when we went to shows at the Herberger Theater a few blocks away. It was a lonely walk, but I'd been in worse places.
One night as we crossed Van Buren, a street with a bad reputation for loose women, a commotion started to our right. I stepped between my wife and the commotion. A very large black man was following a small man who was walking fast looking back over his shoulder. I could tell that the big guy man was one of downtown's resident homeless. He was shouting: "Get outta here! Go back to India!" I shouted back at him to stop. The little guy kept walking, looked at me, tried to say thanks, and kept on going. I stepped into the path of the homeless guy. My wife was horrified.
I stuck my finger into the big guy's chest and growled, "If you don't stop, I'm going to have you thrown in jail." With the big guy distracted, the little Asian guy escaped into the darkness. The big guy stared at me mumbling. With his prey gone and a large angry guy in his face, the homeless guy lost track of what was going on, stopped and then drifted off into the night, too.
My wife was not happy. Jim, you could have been killed! Yes, you're right dear, I said, distracted and numbed by the adrenaline pumping through my body. What I was really thinking at the time was that I might ruin my sports coat if I had to actually fight the big guy. I told her there wasn't much chance of thatt. The guy was probably someone I'd worked with at the homeless shelter downtown, Andre House. Most of them are mentally ill people who have been abandoned to the streets. Some are loud and vent a lot, but completely harmless and easily distracted.
Nowadays the Dragon is retired, takes out a cellphone and dials 911 when there's trouble.
One night as we crossed Van Buren, a street with a bad reputation for loose women, a commotion started to our right. I stepped between my wife and the commotion. A very large black man was following a small man who was walking fast looking back over his shoulder. I could tell that the big guy man was one of downtown's resident homeless. He was shouting: "Get outta here! Go back to India!" I shouted back at him to stop. The little guy kept walking, looked at me, tried to say thanks, and kept on going. I stepped into the path of the homeless guy. My wife was horrified.
I stuck my finger into the big guy's chest and growled, "If you don't stop, I'm going to have you thrown in jail." With the big guy distracted, the little Asian guy escaped into the darkness. The big guy stared at me mumbling. With his prey gone and a large angry guy in his face, the homeless guy lost track of what was going on, stopped and then drifted off into the night, too.
My wife was not happy. Jim, you could have been killed! Yes, you're right dear, I said, distracted and numbed by the adrenaline pumping through my body. What I was really thinking at the time was that I might ruin my sports coat if I had to actually fight the big guy. I told her there wasn't much chance of thatt. The guy was probably someone I'd worked with at the homeless shelter downtown, Andre House. Most of them are mentally ill people who have been abandoned to the streets. Some are loud and vent a lot, but completely harmless and easily distracted.
Nowadays the Dragon is retired, takes out a cellphone and dials 911 when there's trouble.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor
My commanding officer was a full Navy captain. By Navy protocol since he was in charge of a strike squadron, he was addressed not by his rank, but by his title, Commodore. He liked that. He was a real WASPy type. He was fond of reminding us that his previous tour of duty was at the White House where he worked directly for G. Warren Nutter, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Nixon administration. He was even more fond of writing letters to G. Warren Nutter (how's the weather today, Warren, by the way, can I come back to the White House anytime soon). I was responsible for proofreading the epistles to Warren. Fortunately for the Commodore and me in the days before laptops and spellcheck, we had an enlisted yeoman to do our typing who was very handy with spelling and English grammar.
Besides proofreading letters to G. Warren Nutter, my principal duty when we were not at sea was to keep the Commodore company when he went drinking. This sometimes was not pleasant as in when he decided to hold forth on the faults of other officers he knew including one who talked like an "Irishman from the ghetto." I sat there wondering if he thought I talked like an "Irishman from the ghetto", too. Perhaps he'd have been more impressed with me if I'd mentioned my grandmother's house on Carnegie Hill, but that thought never crossed my mind, and he probably had never heard of Carnegie Hill, anyway. Another story he liked was about his predecessor a very decent man and a good Irish Catholic from St. Peter's College, who had too much to drink and fell asleep on his shoulder on the ride home one night. I just listened and tried not to look annoyed.
Guam is the 7-Eleven of the Pacific Ocean. Coming back from Vietnam you could stop there, refuel your ship, and pick up all the duty free booze you could carry. The ships' supply officers started taking orders for booze as soon as you left the Philippines. Huge cargo pallets of booze would be waiting on the docks when the ships arrived. The booze was loaded, locked up and distributed to the sailors when we got back to the US. Absolutely, positively no drinking on a Navy ship.
Guam was also the base for the heavy B-52s doing daily strikes on targets in North and South Vietnam. I remember my first night at sea on station north of the DMZ. The sky was blazing far to the south along much of the horizon. I poked the officer standing next to me who'd been there before, "Look at that lightning storm." He turned, paused and said. "Mac, that's not lightning. It's a B-52 strike." We'd been pulled out of action, but the B-52s were still going full tilt.
Russian spy ships monitored the B-52s taking off from Guam, giving the North Vietnamese advanced warning about incoming strikes. If we spotted a Russian ship near Guam, we had to send a top priority message to fleet and air command giving the time and position of the Russians. We ran into the Russians on our way out of Guam. Since I couldn't sign a high priority message, I had to call our Commodore to the ship's bridge and get his authorization to send it. The man had spent the entire time in Guam drinking at the officers' club while we refueled. I'd passed on that opportunity to spend quality time with my boss. I was completely sober. My boss was barely coherent and could barely stand when he appeared on the ship's bridge. "What going on..." He babbled and slurred. This was a major, major problem. Drinking on a Navy ship is verboten. Being drunk on duty on a Navy ship is very, very verboten. My boss was very, very drunk in front of a dozen officers and enlisted men. What to do with a drunken sailor? I put my arm around him, told him everything was just fine, escorted him to his cabin and put him to bed. Then I signed the message myself and sent it to Henry Kissinger, W. Warren Nutter, the admirals and everyone else. No one ever mentioned the episode again. There'd been a lot of pressure and very little sleep, blissful sleep. Firefights with the PAVN every night for weeks on end. Rearm and refuel during the day. Tank battles, the wrong side of air raids, The Battle of Dong Hoi Gulf, the mining of Haiphong. Sometimes you've just got to cut a guy a little slack. Even the WASPs.
Besides proofreading letters to G. Warren Nutter, my principal duty when we were not at sea was to keep the Commodore company when he went drinking. This sometimes was not pleasant as in when he decided to hold forth on the faults of other officers he knew including one who talked like an "Irishman from the ghetto." I sat there wondering if he thought I talked like an "Irishman from the ghetto", too. Perhaps he'd have been more impressed with me if I'd mentioned my grandmother's house on Carnegie Hill, but that thought never crossed my mind, and he probably had never heard of Carnegie Hill, anyway. Another story he liked was about his predecessor a very decent man and a good Irish Catholic from St. Peter's College, who had too much to drink and fell asleep on his shoulder on the ride home one night. I just listened and tried not to look annoyed.
Guam is the 7-Eleven of the Pacific Ocean. Coming back from Vietnam you could stop there, refuel your ship, and pick up all the duty free booze you could carry. The ships' supply officers started taking orders for booze as soon as you left the Philippines. Huge cargo pallets of booze would be waiting on the docks when the ships arrived. The booze was loaded, locked up and distributed to the sailors when we got back to the US. Absolutely, positively no drinking on a Navy ship.
Guam was also the base for the heavy B-52s doing daily strikes on targets in North and South Vietnam. I remember my first night at sea on station north of the DMZ. The sky was blazing far to the south along much of the horizon. I poked the officer standing next to me who'd been there before, "Look at that lightning storm." He turned, paused and said. "Mac, that's not lightning. It's a B-52 strike." We'd been pulled out of action, but the B-52s were still going full tilt.
Russian spy ships monitored the B-52s taking off from Guam, giving the North Vietnamese advanced warning about incoming strikes. If we spotted a Russian ship near Guam, we had to send a top priority message to fleet and air command giving the time and position of the Russians. We ran into the Russians on our way out of Guam. Since I couldn't sign a high priority message, I had to call our Commodore to the ship's bridge and get his authorization to send it. The man had spent the entire time in Guam drinking at the officers' club while we refueled. I'd passed on that opportunity to spend quality time with my boss. I was completely sober. My boss was barely coherent and could barely stand when he appeared on the ship's bridge. "What going on..." He babbled and slurred. This was a major, major problem. Drinking on a Navy ship is verboten. Being drunk on duty on a Navy ship is very, very verboten. My boss was very, very drunk in front of a dozen officers and enlisted men. What to do with a drunken sailor? I put my arm around him, told him everything was just fine, escorted him to his cabin and put him to bed. Then I signed the message myself and sent it to Henry Kissinger, W. Warren Nutter, the admirals and everyone else. No one ever mentioned the episode again. There'd been a lot of pressure and very little sleep, blissful sleep. Firefights with the PAVN every night for weeks on end. Rearm and refuel during the day. Tank battles, the wrong side of air raids, The Battle of Dong Hoi Gulf, the mining of Haiphong. Sometimes you've just got to cut a guy a little slack. Even the WASPs.
A Sit-On-Your-Butt Job
Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
Somewhere on the run back to Homer and Kachemack Bay from the Prince William Sound fishing grounds, I had an epiphany. I was going to find a nice safe sit-on-your-but job.
The US Navy is a fine organization, but driving a ship from one end of the Pacific to another involves endless hours of standing watch. Steer west compass heading 240 to Hawai'i for a week. Steer 260 to the Philippines for two weeks. If you're "lucky", the hours of watching the empty ocean may get interrupted by sailing right through the middle a big North Pacific storm, because somebody forgot to check the barometer, which had fallen almost to dead bottom, and weather satellites hadn't been invented, yet.
The Navy did provide planned excitement on occasion, though. For example, there was the morning we mined Haiphong Harbor. I will never forget Captain "Mad Dog" Walter Deal almost hopping up and down with glee as his ship attacked the Haiphong anti-aircraft batteries, taunting the North Vietnamese gunners who where shooting back at us: "You guys couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!" I was excited, too, but way less optimistic about our prospects.
A 20-year-old working as a deckhand on an Alaska fishing boat could make more money in a good year than anyplace else except Wall Street. It had its down sides, though. You're never bored, but no one could guarantee you'd always survive getting whipped across the deck the next time you grabbed a line you forgot to secure. Where would you spend all that money you were making and with who. You put into port for a weekend and the only people anywhere in sight were other fishermen (emphasis men). Is folamh fuar e teach gan bean.
The ride back to Homer made up my mind. I had the night watch, driving the boat alone while everyone else slept. Only the boat we were travelling with had radar, so I was just supposed to follow her stern light in the darkness. Every so often I'd lose track of the light. Which scared the crap out of me, because if we got lost in the dark out there transiting the sound we were really screwed. Please God, don't let me drive into a rock. Thank you God, there's the light again! I felt so good when the sun came up that I let the rest of the crew sleep and kept on driving for hours more.
My turn to sleep got rudely interrupted. Why the F... are you bothering me! I let you guys sleep. Go away! Calhoun wants you up on deck right now. F... off! Get up! So up I go and confront our fearless leader. What the F..., Calhoun! I let you guys sleep! Mac, didn't you feel us rolling around. NO, it's nice and warm down below. Mac, we nearly rolled over. I don't want you trapped below if we sink.
Yup, a nice sit-on-your-butt job's the life for me.
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
Somewhere on the run back to Homer and Kachemack Bay from the Prince William Sound fishing grounds, I had an epiphany. I was going to find a nice safe sit-on-your-but job.
The US Navy is a fine organization, but driving a ship from one end of the Pacific to another involves endless hours of standing watch. Steer west compass heading 240 to Hawai'i for a week. Steer 260 to the Philippines for two weeks. If you're "lucky", the hours of watching the empty ocean may get interrupted by sailing right through the middle a big North Pacific storm, because somebody forgot to check the barometer, which had fallen almost to dead bottom, and weather satellites hadn't been invented, yet.
The Navy did provide planned excitement on occasion, though. For example, there was the morning we mined Haiphong Harbor. I will never forget Captain "Mad Dog" Walter Deal almost hopping up and down with glee as his ship attacked the Haiphong anti-aircraft batteries, taunting the North Vietnamese gunners who where shooting back at us: "You guys couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!" I was excited, too, but way less optimistic about our prospects.
A 20-year-old working as a deckhand on an Alaska fishing boat could make more money in a good year than anyplace else except Wall Street. It had its down sides, though. You're never bored, but no one could guarantee you'd always survive getting whipped across the deck the next time you grabbed a line you forgot to secure. Where would you spend all that money you were making and with who. You put into port for a weekend and the only people anywhere in sight were other fishermen (emphasis men). Is folamh fuar e teach gan bean.
The ride back to Homer made up my mind. I had the night watch, driving the boat alone while everyone else slept. Only the boat we were travelling with had radar, so I was just supposed to follow her stern light in the darkness. Every so often I'd lose track of the light. Which scared the crap out of me, because if we got lost in the dark out there transiting the sound we were really screwed. Please God, don't let me drive into a rock. Thank you God, there's the light again! I felt so good when the sun came up that I let the rest of the crew sleep and kept on driving for hours more.
My turn to sleep got rudely interrupted. Why the F... are you bothering me! I let you guys sleep. Go away! Calhoun wants you up on deck right now. F... off! Get up! So up I go and confront our fearless leader. What the F..., Calhoun! I let you guys sleep! Mac, didn't you feel us rolling around. NO, it's nice and warm down below. Mac, we nearly rolled over. I don't want you trapped below if we sink.
Yup, a nice sit-on-your-butt job's the life for me.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Top Gun: North SAR
Flying low overhead the Navy Phantom jets looked like space planes in an old science fiction movie dispatched by Ming the Merciless to intercept Flash Gordon, their engines spewing trails of growling noise and black smoke. They were even more eerie at night as they circled low to cover us inshore, dropping flares to illuminate the darkness while we hunted the North Vietnamese. May 10, 1972 our jets swept in to bomb the Haiphong railroad yards and MIG-17s rose up to meet them. The Duke in his F-4J Phantom jumped the MIGs and shot down three. Maybe they should have called him Ming the Merciless instead of Duke. But before he could get away The Duke was hit by a surface to air anti-aircraft missile. There was no rescue for pilots shot down over Haiphong. It was suicide for our helicopters to try. Randy "The Duke" Cunningham and his radar operator had a long few moments trying to glide to the water in a burning Phantom and bail out over the Gulf of Tonkin.
We were listening to the fight and heard the pilot's distress signal as he went down. The helicopters were already airborne to support the raid. But where to send them. It's a big sea. We picked up a signal on our radar, a small green flash. It was Cunningham's wingman. Like Star Wars and its Siths, when there were Phantoms, there were always two. We were in contact with the wingman. He could see Cunningham in the water. He was over Cunningham. But he was very low on fuel and said he had to leave. I told him: "Hold your position. We are vectoring on you." Then I leaned on the radar man controlling the helicopters and pointed to a small green speck of light on the radar scope in front of him and said: "There."
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Fiddler on the Roof
By far the favorite bus song for our daily ride to Chaminade High School (Bill O'Reilly's alma mater) was Jewish. Picture a bus full of Irish, Italian, German and Greek Catholic kids thundering down Old Country Road to the tune of Hava Nagilia, led by Richie Segal, grandson of a Jewish Cantor (musician who leads the congregation in songful prayer).
And believe me, if Richie could have figured out a way to climb on the roof of the bus to lead the choir, he would have.
And believe me, if Richie could have figured out a way to climb on the roof of the bus to lead the choir, he would have.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Partly Cloudy On a Planet You Don't Live On
My 11-year-old daughter and I were trying to understand a science article for Arizona's amazing Large Binocular Telescope. The story was about Arizona scientists looking at a planet a bazillion miles away: Non-equilibrium Chemistry Patch Clouds Model. What does that mean she asks. Before I could answer (as if I could) she said: "I get it! Partly cloudy today on a planet you don't live on...with a chance of rain!"
"Directly Imaged L-T Transition Exoplanets in the Mid-Infrared"
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.2085
H8799 b, c, d, e
"Directly Imaged L-T Transition Exoplanets in the Mid-Infrared"
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.2085
H8799 b, c, d, e
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Even Marx Believed in Hell
We went to Ireland on our honeymoon. Everyone was very pleasant and helpful during the trip. Even the poor old Irish nun who sat next to us on the plane ride over and asked my wife "Why are you visiting Ireland, you don't look Irish?" said it in the most innocent well intentioned way.
My grandmother Honoragh would say "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." This expression is sometimes attributed to Marx. Although she was very fond of the TV show "You Bet Your Life", she certainly never read Das Capital where the quip appears. Maybe she picked it up from her brother Ned, the IRA captain who joined the Wobblies after the British released him from prison and he came to America. "The Road to Hell" probably originated with St. Bernard of Clairvaux who preached the Second Crusade and was gravely saddened by its failure and the great loss of life. No doubt Marx had some regrets, too. Interesting to think that even Marx believed in Hell.
* * * * * *
Grandma Honoragh's favorite TV shows:
You Bet Your Life -- Groucho Marx
Life is Worth Living -- Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
The Liberace Show -- Liberace
The Lawrence Welk Show -- Lawrence Welk
* * * * * *
Grandma Honoragh's favorite TV shows:
You Bet Your Life -- Groucho Marx
Life is Worth Living -- Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
The Liberace Show -- Liberace
The Lawrence Welk Show -- Lawrence Welk
Saturday, October 26, 2013
How I became Hispanic.
Some years ago I was working at home and a knocking came at the door. When I opened the door there was a young woman.
How can I help you, says I.
I am here to take the census.
This gave pause as it was 1995. You are very early or very late, says I.
Oh, we're taking a special census. We think we've missed some of the Hispanics in the last census and the city can get more money from the federal government if we find them.
I'd be glad to help you find the lost Hispanics. How can I help?
I just have two questions you need to answer.
Go ahead, says I.
What is your race?
Scientifically there is no such thing as race, young lady.
(since this was the government, I demurred on my "we're all one in Christ bit")
She didn't miss a beat and checked off race = smart aleck.
Do you have any Hispanic ancestry. (the infinitely powerful word any)
What do you mean by any.
Any ancestor from any country on this list.
And she handed me a very long list. I turned it over to the other side and found a match.
Yes, says I.
She smiled, elated that she had found one of the lost Hispanics, said thanks and was off without another word, not bothering to ask about my ancestor the Spanish Armada sailor shipwrecked on the Irish coast.
---------------------------
The identity we know as Hispanic today is a result of the marriage of Celtic Iberia and the Roman Republic, whose forces under Scipio Africanus allied with Spain's Celts to defeat Hannibal of Carthage during the Punic wars.
"Livy tells the story of the capture of a beautiful woman by his troops, who offered her to Scipio as a prize of war. Scipio was astonished by her beauty, but discovered that the woman was betrothed to a Celtiberian chieftain named Allucius. He returned her to her fiancé, along with the money that had been offered by her parents to ransom her. While Scipio was long known for his great chivalry, Scipio doubtless also realized that the [Roman] Senate's first priority was the war in Italy, and in the midst of the Carthaginian base in Hispania, he was to be outnumbered without much hope of reinforcement. It was paramount therefore that Scipio cooperate with local chieftains to both supply and reinforce his small army. The woman's fiance, who soon married her, naturally brought over his tribe to support the Roman armies"
-- Livy, Ab urbe condita
How can I help you, says I.
I am here to take the census.
This gave pause as it was 1995. You are very early or very late, says I.
Oh, we're taking a special census. We think we've missed some of the Hispanics in the last census and the city can get more money from the federal government if we find them.
I'd be glad to help you find the lost Hispanics. How can I help?
I just have two questions you need to answer.
Go ahead, says I.
What is your race?
Scientifically there is no such thing as race, young lady.
(since this was the government, I demurred on my "we're all one in Christ bit")
She didn't miss a beat and checked off race = smart aleck.
Do you have any Hispanic ancestry. (the infinitely powerful word any)
What do you mean by any.
Any ancestor from any country on this list.
And she handed me a very long list. I turned it over to the other side and found a match.
Yes, says I.
She smiled, elated that she had found one of the lost Hispanics, said thanks and was off without another word, not bothering to ask about my ancestor the Spanish Armada sailor shipwrecked on the Irish coast.
---------------------------
The identity we know as Hispanic today is a result of the marriage of Celtic Iberia and the Roman Republic, whose forces under Scipio Africanus allied with Spain's Celts to defeat Hannibal of Carthage during the Punic wars.
"Livy tells the story of the capture of a beautiful woman by his troops, who offered her to Scipio as a prize of war. Scipio was astonished by her beauty, but discovered that the woman was betrothed to a Celtiberian chieftain named Allucius. He returned her to her fiancé, along with the money that had been offered by her parents to ransom her. While Scipio was long known for his great chivalry, Scipio doubtless also realized that the [Roman] Senate's first priority was the war in Italy, and in the midst of the Carthaginian base in Hispania, he was to be outnumbered without much hope of reinforcement. It was paramount therefore that Scipio cooperate with local chieftains to both supply and reinforce his small army. The woman's fiance, who soon married her, naturally brought over his tribe to support the Roman armies"
-- Livy, Ab urbe condita
Monday, October 21, 2013
The Way of the Dragon
My young brother was out shopping one fine Topeka day and as he approached the Walmart entrance he came upon a young couple being accosted by several skinheads. It was a nasty pushing and shoving, profanity laced, intimidating altercation. Tim walks up and shouts at the skinheads to stop. Which they do and immediately start screaming and threatening my brother. Tim's response is to shout. I'm FBI and if you guys don't beat it, I'm taking you all in. (Tim's credibility on this was helped by the fact that he is 6' 3'' and looks like his great-grandfather, one of the NYPD's 40 Immortals). The skinheads head for the Flint Hills.
Relieved of this trouble Tim proceeds into the Walmart where he encounters the young couple. The young woman is in tears. Her husband has his arms wrapped around her and turns his head to my brother. "Thank you so much for stopping them. Are you really FBI?" "Yes that's true," says my brother with a smile. "Full Blooded Irishman." Quick on his feet, too.
Friday, October 18, 2013
The Quiet Man
When the Irish students at Holy Cross discovered that Clarence Thomas and Ted Wells had formed a Black Students Union, they felt left out. The British were long gone from County Clare, the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland was still just a twinkle in Bernadette Devlin's eye, and the Bloody Sunday Bogside Massacre was four years off. The Catholic Church had done it's darnedest to drill into us "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's." But we were all reeling from the assassinations: Kennedy, King, Kennedy. The Vietnam war was a bad dream that wouldn't go away (and still is), spoiling what was left of our little honeymoon at Holy Cross before getting on with life.
Little IRA signs started appearing around the campus. They should have read Sinn Fein, but with the Jesuits more interested in teaching Latin and Greek and, with few Gaelic speakers among the students, few would have gotten the message.
Not long after, a bunch of freshmen marched on Mulledy Hall, the junior and senior residence, rumored to be the headquarters of the Holy Cross chapter of the Irish Republican Army. IRA! IRA! IRA! They chanted. We cowered at the windows, watching them, looking at each other, wondering what would happen next. A large fellow, a tackle on the football team who didn't say much, appeared and asked what the commotion was. "They think this is IRA headquarters and won't leave." He thought about this for a moment and said, "Okay, I'll take care of it."
He went outside and invited the demonstrators in.
"Thank you for coming, Lads."
"Please take a seat on the floor and I will share with you our plans."
"Ireland is yet not free!"
"Brits out of Ireland!"
"HOOORAY!!!!!" shouted the freshmen
"We oppose tyranny and oppression wherever it may be!"
"HOOORAY!!!!!" shouted the freshman
"We are behind the blacks students 100 percent in their fight against tyranny and oppression!"
"HOOORAY!!!!!" shouted the freshmen
"When they take over the ROTC building, we'll take over the greenhouse!"
"HOOORAY!!!!!" shouted the freshmen
"We are a secret society. Here's what I need you to do."
"HOOORAY!!!!!" shouted the freshmen
"Go back to your rooms and don't say a word about our meeting to anyone. Not even your confessor."
"HOOORAY!!!!!" shouted the freshmen
"We are never to be seen talking together in public again."
"When I need you, I will call on you."
"HOOORAY!!!!!" shouted the freshmen
"Now leave by different doors, by one's and two's."
"Be careful you're not followed. There are informers among us."
The freshman drifted off into the night.
The Usual Suspects
Appearances can be deceiving,
but the Madison #1 Wildcats are doing algebra homework.
Who's afraid of Keyser Soze?
Is fearr Gaeilge briste, ná Béarla clíste.
¿Quién tiene miedo de Keyser Soze?
Quem tem medo de Keyser Soze?
Hvem er bange for Keyser Soze?
Is fearr Gaeilge briste, ná Béarla clíste.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Night at the Museum
Las chicas sólo quieren divertirse!
Garotas só querem divertir!
Le ragazze vogliono solo divertirsi!
Piger vil bare have det sjovt!
Girls just want to have fun!
Is folamh fuar e teach gan bean
Is folamh fuar e teach gan bean
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Friday, September 27, 2013
8 Mile
Not quite. The hills in the distance were gray shadows you could make out through the mist and the rain of Prince William Sound. From a fishing boat you look up from your work and all around you see where sky and water meet. Even on a clear day you can't see anything else but mountain tops farther out than 8 mile. On the run out of Homer there'd been plenty to fill your eyes. The glaciers in Kachemak Bay, fingers of ice holding onto the ridge on the south shore in July. Augustine Island: the smoking volcano, the solidary sentinel standing guard at the entrance to Cook Inlet.
The boat's not fast so there's plenty of time for dolphins to find us and keep company. Up north the dolphins are black and white, like little killer whales. They put on quite a performance doing twists and somersaults in the boat's bow wake. Then they're gone. Time for lunch? Or just fickle like young women.
Whales can be curious. They sneak up on you and announce they're here with a belch of air and water. Then they slide alongside, disappear in the water ahead and pop head high in the air to get a better look at you.
A local looked at me after I arrived. This is pretty hard work. He was trying to intimidate me. You think you can cut it? Do the fish shoot back (contemplating the 200 raids I'd survived during the war)? Nope, he said with a puzzled look. I'll be fine.
You work from dawn till dusk, in July in Prince William Sound that means 3 or 4 hours sleep. When the salmon are running, you do nothing but work. No one wants to hear that you're tired, sick or hurt. Just work.
And at the end of the day and the beginning, you'll have another job. On a small seiner, the deckhand doubles as the cook. My specialties were beer pancakes for breakfast and fresh caught salmon for dinner. The crew, the philistines, never wanted salmon: give us steak or burgers. I tried chicken and dumplings once. The dumplings ended up being just soggy dough. I blamed it on the diesel drip stove that took forever to heat up, but it was probably not having any milk on the fishing grounds, so I substituted beer for milk in the recipe. It worked for the pancakes, so why not for dumplings.
Before long a deckhand's hands become so tough you can't open them all the way. Cut yourself with a knife, you don't bleed.
Grab the end of the big seine net you forgot to secure and you'll get whipped across the deck faster than you can say Jack Robinson. Pray you let go of the net before it pulls you in the water. If you go in, the cold water blows the air right out of your lungs. Don't get your boots off before they fill with water, you sink. Get tangled in the net you're probably a goner, too.
Almost freezing in July your fishing gear keeps you warm while the net races off the stern and into the water, its floats clopping on the end of the deck as they go over the side. The freezing rain hits your face like an amphetamine, a rush carrying you through the job of hauling in the big net. When you're heaving it in, it feels like it will pull the muscles right off your bones.
Three miles off shore in the driving rain with the engine cut off because there's a net with 2,000 salmon alongside. The wind was driving us on the rocks and not another boat anywhere to be seen. We should have cut the fish loose. Even in the summer the cold waters of the Sound will kill you quick. 2,000 salmon was too big a payday, we were young, reckless, rolled the dice and bagged the fish. As I looked up after bringing the last fish abroad, a wave broke over the rocks that were almost close enough to touch. The engine started and we pulled away.
The boat's not fast so there's plenty of time for dolphins to find us and keep company. Up north the dolphins are black and white, like little killer whales. They put on quite a performance doing twists and somersaults in the boat's bow wake. Then they're gone. Time for lunch? Or just fickle like young women.
Whales can be curious. They sneak up on you and announce they're here with a belch of air and water. Then they slide alongside, disappear in the water ahead and pop head high in the air to get a better look at you.
A local looked at me after I arrived. This is pretty hard work. He was trying to intimidate me. You think you can cut it? Do the fish shoot back (contemplating the 200 raids I'd survived during the war)? Nope, he said with a puzzled look. I'll be fine.
You work from dawn till dusk, in July in Prince William Sound that means 3 or 4 hours sleep. When the salmon are running, you do nothing but work. No one wants to hear that you're tired, sick or hurt. Just work.
And at the end of the day and the beginning, you'll have another job. On a small seiner, the deckhand doubles as the cook. My specialties were beer pancakes for breakfast and fresh caught salmon for dinner. The crew, the philistines, never wanted salmon: give us steak or burgers. I tried chicken and dumplings once. The dumplings ended up being just soggy dough. I blamed it on the diesel drip stove that took forever to heat up, but it was probably not having any milk on the fishing grounds, so I substituted beer for milk in the recipe. It worked for the pancakes, so why not for dumplings.
Before long a deckhand's hands become so tough you can't open them all the way. Cut yourself with a knife, you don't bleed.
Grab the end of the big seine net you forgot to secure and you'll get whipped across the deck faster than you can say Jack Robinson. Pray you let go of the net before it pulls you in the water. If you go in, the cold water blows the air right out of your lungs. Don't get your boots off before they fill with water, you sink. Get tangled in the net you're probably a goner, too.
Almost freezing in July your fishing gear keeps you warm while the net races off the stern and into the water, its floats clopping on the end of the deck as they go over the side. The freezing rain hits your face like an amphetamine, a rush carrying you through the job of hauling in the big net. When you're heaving it in, it feels like it will pull the muscles right off your bones.
Three miles off shore in the driving rain with the engine cut off because there's a net with 2,000 salmon alongside. The wind was driving us on the rocks and not another boat anywhere to be seen. We should have cut the fish loose. Even in the summer the cold waters of the Sound will kill you quick. 2,000 salmon was too big a payday, we were young, reckless, rolled the dice and bagged the fish. As I looked up after bringing the last fish abroad, a wave broke over the rocks that were almost close enough to touch. The engine started and we pulled away.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
The Last Hurrah
St. Patrick's Day, Topeka, KS, many years ago. Al is smiling, but inside he is sad. Someone's just told him: we're glad to have you march in the parade, but no "Al for President" signs. No politics in the parade. We all looked younger then. I don't know why he was worried about the signs. There wasn't a single person in town who didn't know who he was and why he was there.
Courtesy the Topeka Taxi Service
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Young and Black in Arizona
One of the most entertaining parts of life in Arizona is driving my son and his friends around. To the movies, the pool, to spring training baseball games. They get caught up in a frenzy of animated story telling. Their middle school adventures are retold like they happened yesterday, even some that happened years ago. They repeat themselves a lot. How they tricked this or that teacher. Their schoolyard fights and football games. The time they got detention for defacing somebody's social studies poster about racism and anti-Semitism with "Hitler and the KKK are gay" graffiti. Trying to interject that they shouldn't fight or say bad things about gay people only gets the response (if any) that we're never backing down and what do the teachers expect when they let people put up posters with Hitler and the KKK in a room with black, Catholic and Jewish kids.
Even when the stories turn dark there's still great revelry in their telling. After the basketball game at Maryvale in central Phoenix when the other team's cheerleaders followed them to the bus shouting profanities and throwing rocks at our team's bus as it left the parking lot. The baseball game when our black pitcher was winding up and a Latino parent cheering for the other side shouted to the batter "wait until he throws you another watermelon!"
The most troubling story was about a cousin getting suspended for slamming a schoolmate's head into a door and opening up a cut that required stitches. I asked why in Heaven's Name would he have done that. His cousin sitting in the back seat matter-of-factly replied: "This Mexican kid was following him around all day calling him the N word. So my cousin got fed up and clobbered him. Then the kid's parents got after us and said they'd shoot us if we ever walked by their house. So after that my cousin and I always had to take the long way home from the Sunnyslope community center, cause they sounded like they really meant it."
Even when the stories turn dark there's still great revelry in their telling. After the basketball game at Maryvale in central Phoenix when the other team's cheerleaders followed them to the bus shouting profanities and throwing rocks at our team's bus as it left the parking lot. The baseball game when our black pitcher was winding up and a Latino parent cheering for the other side shouted to the batter "wait until he throws you another watermelon!"
The most troubling story was about a cousin getting suspended for slamming a schoolmate's head into a door and opening up a cut that required stitches. I asked why in Heaven's Name would he have done that. His cousin sitting in the back seat matter-of-factly replied: "This Mexican kid was following him around all day calling him the N word. So my cousin got fed up and clobbered him. Then the kid's parents got after us and said they'd shoot us if we ever walked by their house. So after that my cousin and I always had to take the long way home from the Sunnyslope community center, cause they sounded like they really meant it."
Monday, April 29, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2013
Enter the Dragon
It was late Sunday afternoon at the downtown Phoenix dining hall run by the Catholics for the homeless, a nasty neighborhood. Outside the temperature was over 110. Inside the swamp coolers and thick concrete walls of the crumbling old gray building weren't keeping it much cooler. Shouts came from the dining hall. I ran out from the kitchen to see what was going on. In the middle of the room where 200 people were eating, not one raised his eyes to see what was happening. Six black men were stomping another black man lying on the ground. The young Notre Dame graduate who ran the place was standing on the periphery not knowing what quite to do. I pushed him out of the way, elbowed past the attackers and straddled the man on the ground. The man facing me shouted "I'm going to kill you Mother F..ker!" I wanted to drive my fist through his face, and in my younger days would have let him have it in an instant, but now I was older and wiser. Instead of starting a riot with me in the middle of the fight, outnumbered, I shouted back: "this is God's house! Stop and get out or you'll never eat here again!" I watched for a knife, trying not to break eye contact. My testicles were trying to hide behind my spine. The victim scooted away and out the door while his attackers were distracted. Then they all just stopped and without a word drifted out the door, too.
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