Aramco: Women Drivers

Women don't drive in Saudi Arabia.  They don't ride in cars with anyone other than a relative.  Only their eyes are exposed in public.  Shortly before the Aramco shuttle (an all first class seat Boeing 747 that travelled between Houston and Dammam) landed in Dammam, all the woman disappeared.  One minute a bunch of gals in jeans are scurrying for the bathrooms and the next the plane is filled with black robed bodies bobbing up the aisles, women peeking through the eye slits in their outfits trying to locate their seats before landing.

The exception to the rule was the Aramco compound.  By the grace of God and Bill Keller's dad,  wives of American workers were allowed to drive.  Alone, no less.  This led to awkward moments with Aramco security since the Saudi security guards could not talk to the American women drivers when they were apprehended for speeding.  They'd send the wife on her way, then the husband would have to come down to the police station and apologize to the police for the wife's bad behavior and promise it would never happen again.

The Dragon Gets a Free Drink

Airplane rage is all the rage.  It's not a new problem.

I have long legs and don't like being elbowed by the person sitting next to me, so to stretch my legs and move out of the way of flying elbows, I always reserve an aisle seat weeks in advance of my airplane rides ( and these days avoid airplanes as much as possible altogether).

One flight during my consulting days at the end of a long itinerary, I settled into my precious aisle seat, closed my eyes and started to doze, even before the plane took off.  A commotion started at the front of the plane.   A man who hadn't planned things the way he wanted was nastily abusing the flight attendants, demanding he be given a seat alongside his wife.  The flight attendants said that they'd see what they could do, but it didn't look good since the plane was very full.  Then the guy spots me and the empty seat next to me.

Will you move so my wife and I can sit there.  
Find me an aisle seat, says I.  I reserved this one weeks ago.
Then he got nasty and abusive with me.
Shut up sucker or I'll stuff you in the overhead bin, says I.
He was dumbstruck.
The guy in the aisle seat behind me gets up and moves into the seat next to me.
I don't mind, says he.
Gutless, says I.  You shouldn't reward an abusive bullying person.
He shrugged his shoulders and I went back to dozing.
After the plane took off and we were safely aloft, someone gently nudged me.
It was a flight attendant.  She whispered in my ear, can we buy you a drink.
Thanks, says I.

The Dragon Hires a Temp: No Country for Old Men

Back in the bad old days after I got a sit-on-your-butt job and before I got too old to be hirable, I ran big tech projects for a big consulting firm.  I kept my eye out for talent who could help my projects, because a few good hires could really make a software development project.  I know. You're thinking I was an old guy who just liked talking to young women, but I wasn't interested in romance.  I wanted to find people who could program and weren't on someone else's radar in the days when tech people in the US were a hot commodity.  People who weren't going to go to a strip club at lunch time and have a couple of beers  (on one project in Pittsburgh I always needed to be sure to hold all my meetings with the client programmers before lunch hour).   At vendor software training sessions I looked for unappreciated young women programmers and recruited them for my projects.  My greatest coup was discovering a temp who a client had hired to type documentation.  She was a Carnegie Mellon CS major who'd gotten into a fight with her father and didn't have enough money to finish school.  We gave her a big raise and with very little additional training she wrote all the system reports.  After the project she finished her degree work, moved to Seattle and (I hope) lived happily ever after.

*  *  *  *  *
An added advantage to hiring young women -- besides them not going to strip clubs at lunchtime for beers -- was that they weren't likely to be a difficult manic-depressive ex-marine contractor who was prone to skipping his lithium and liked shooting his pet machine gun in the desert after work.

*  *  *  *  *
Another drawback to hiring women in the days before Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill.  The women always seemed to be riled up about something.  I couldn't figure out what until our biggest project was nearly over and the senior partner had packed his bags and gone home, leaving me to straighten out the broken pieces.

"Everybody Loves" Grace checked in with me.
(Grace was so sweet that she never figured out until after he retired that, when she lived in Vientiane during her junior high years, her dad worked for the CIA and was head of Air America security)
Sorry if Jacq and I were grumpy sometimes.
No problem. You should work with fisherman who've been pulling nets for a week straight... or sailors who've just spent a month firing 10,000 5" rounds during all night raids on Haiphong Harbor and other scenic tropical places.
Oh... it was just that X [senior partner] kept bugging us.
I knew that.
No you didn't.  He used to walk up behind us and snap our bras and other dirt bag stuff like that.
You should have told me.  I'd have stopped it.
We were afraid you'd get mad and punch him out.
You're a good judge of character, my dear.
[Too bad, though, that Deloitte job was one I'd have loved to have left in a legendary blaze of glory.  I was disappointed I'd missed the excuse to do what I wanted to do anyway.]

*  *  *  *  *
The women weren't without sin.   Sweet Grace and her pals had their "mean girls" counterparts.  They liked to gossip about everyone's sex lives and Partner X loved to personally indulge them (no wonder we were behind schedule and losing money).  In particular the ladies, even the sweet ones, liked to speculate and confirm which men were gay.  STOP.  I don't care that you saw Bob kissing his boy friend goodbye this morning.  I need Bob to lead you people, develop the specifications for the claims system and make sure you people program it according to spec.   Short of personally sleeping with the guy myself, I will do anything to keep him happy. 

RIP Captain Robert Regan -- the Right Stuff

Third Eli Baseball Game Cancelled

"Because several players will have to leave for compulsory Naval Science cruises on June 18, the third Harvard-Yale baseball game, originally schedule for June 20 (1941), has been called off. The Crimson players involved include: third baseman Gilbert F. Whittemore '42, catcher Robert F. Regan '41, and Sophomore outfielders Fred S. Troy, Jr. and Robert S. Potter."

My uncle Rob was the starting catcher for the Harvard baseball team in 1941.  Not bad for the son of a Gaelic speaking farm girl from Lisdoonvarna (Honoragh Lafferty) and a trolley car conductor from Cork (Tim Regan).  Jack and Joe Kennedy sat behind my grandmother at baseball games and shouted encouragement for "Shanty" Regan.   No one seemed to mind nicknames back then.   Joe Kennedy was Uncle Rob's inspiration for going Naval Aviation:  "If that bum Joe Kennedy can be a pilot, so can I."

Uncle Rob was assigned to VC-38 a squadron of TBF torpedo planes that fought in the Solomons Campaign.   My mother called the torpedo planes "Ensign Eliminators", a well-earned nickname due to their heavy losses during the Pacific war.  At Midway in June of 1942, VT-8's entire complement of TBDs and TBFs was wiped out during their repeated desperate attacks on the Japanese fleet.

For valor during many World War II battles, including the raids on the heavily defended Japanese naval bases at Rabaul and Kure, the son of Irish Catholic immigrants was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross (three times).

After the war, Rob became one of the Navy's first jet test pilots and finished his career as the commander of Naval Air Station Corpus Christi.

*   *   *   *   *

REGAN, ROBERT F.

INJ Tone under attack at Kure

The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross [America's second highest award for combat valor ] to Lieutenant Robert F. Regan (NSN: 0-106999), United States Naval Reserve, for extraordinary heroism in operations against the enemy while serving as Pilot of a carrier-based Torpedo Plane in Carrier Air Group THIRTY (CAG-30), while leading a flight of torpedo bombers in a bombing attack on major combatant units of the Japanese Fleet in Kure Harbor, on 19 March 1945. Lieutenant Regan skillfully and courageously selected the best point of attack and pressed home his own bombing run to a very low altitude despite intense anti-aircraft fire scoring two direct hits on a heavy cruiser [sinking IJN Tone, whose aircraft had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor]. His courageous and skilled tactics set the pace for the remaining attacking planes resulting in heavy losses to the enemy vessels. His outstanding courage and determined skill were at all times inspiring and in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
[It was during the Kure raid that Holy Cross College professor Joseph O'Callaghan, SJ., displayed valor meriting the Congressional Medal of Honor when USS Franklin was struck by a devastating attack from Japanese bombers and nearly sunk]

The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to Lieutenant Robert F. Regan (NSN: 0-106999), United States Naval Reserve, for gallantry and intrepidity in operations against the enemy while serving as Pilot of a carrier-based Torpedo Plane in Carrier Air Group THIRTY (CAG-30), while participating in an aerial flight as leader of a squadron of torpedo bombers in an attack upon an enemy convoy in the East China Sea, on 24 March 1945. As a result of careful planning of the attack of his squadron, the planes in his flight scored several torpedo and bomb hits on enemy ships. He personally scored a direct hit with his torpedo on a large enemy cargo vessel which exploded and sank. As a result of his and other attacks the entire convoy was destroyed. His courage, determination and devotion to duty in the execution of this mission were at all times in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

Throwing Acetone on Holy Cross ROTC students

As if it weren't bad enough to suffer the distain of my fellow students and harassment by some like the Holy Cross black student provocateur, it is amazing to discover that a Holy Cross professor claims it's all a myth.  It is certainly no myth that Holy Cross students threw acetone on my fellow Holy Cross NROTC students in 1969.

Holy Cross: Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers

Brother Rat


 
 
It is also no myth that I had to endure an abusive graduate school interview at Stony Brook University where the program director concluded that I should go elsewhere because my veteran's benefit made it possible for me to afford a more expensive graduate school.  Since then I've interviewed many and went out of my way to conduct the interview in a professional and polite manner, not as a prelude to Glengarry Glen Ross.






Disrespect for Vietnam vets is fact, not fiction 
Bob Feist,  Star Tribune

The Dragon Meets Felix Frankfurter

I met Felix Frankfurter many years ago when I was in kindergarten.  It was during the big airline fight when my father got himself admitted to the Supreme Court bar.

Anyway I got sick in the court's waiting room.  All over a beautiful rug.   The guards took over and said don't worry Mr. Mac, we'll take care of the boy.  They whisked me to the court's infirmary and started pumping me full of milk of magnesia or something else awful.   Then Justice Frankfurter walks in and asks for some aspirin cause he has a terrible headache.  The guard thinking he's doing a wonderful thing presents me to the great justice.  The great justice extends his hand and says nice to meet you young man.   I duck and cover.  No way I was shaking hands with a big scary guy in a black dress.

*    *    *    *    *

Years before, when my grandfather led the Boston Carmen's Union during the big strike, the union was on the ropes and management wasn't much better off.   The exhausted parties agreed to arbitration.  Management picked their arbitrator.   Grandpa Tim paused and slyly said... I pick Professor Frankfurter from Harvard.

The Exorcist

Fred Phelps was a local character who terrorized Topeka, Kansas, for years.  He'd been an Eagle Scout when he was a boy, and began preaching against sin in college.  Conservative Bob Jones University allegedly gave him an ultimatum to seek psychiatric care or leave.  He left and earned a two year degree from John Muir College.  He was hired to preach at Topeka's East Side Baptist, but left in a year to found his own Westboro Baptist Church.  The church was his house in Topeka's Westboro neighborhood, and his large family was the congregation.  They did baptisms in the swimming pool and claimed status as a non-profit religious organization.

Fred earned a law degree from nearby Washburn University and got off on a good foot taking up civil rights cases for African Americans.  He got disbarred when he sued a court clerk for not getting him a transcript on time, put her on the witness stand for two weeks, and allegedly during the examination accused her of perverted sexual acts.  Why the judge let this go on is a mystery to this day, but Fred had a way of intimidating people.

When the AIDS epidemic hit,  Fred and his "congregation" started picketing the funerals.  His message was loud and clear, and the chanting and shouts were accompanied by graphic placards just to be sure you got the message:  "God Hates Fags" and stick figures posed suggestively to depict homosexual sex acts.  When there wasn't a funeral to picket, Fred and company picketed churches where the funerals had been held.

Fred inevitably got around to picketing my brother's church and, never mind the children, the adjoining Catholic school my nephew attended.  This infuriated the parish priest.  But what to do.   Fred wanted confrontation.   He hoped he'd be physically attacked, then he'd sue the attacker and use the money to keep Westboro Baptist going.   The priest donned his full regalia of vestments, grabbed his aspergillum, a ewer of holy water and headed for Fred.   Fred was furious when he got hit by the holy water, but what can you do?  Sue someone for sprinkling you with holy water.  Fred complained to the bishop.  The bishop sent him more holy water as a token of peace, secretly hoping that if enough touched him, Fred might burn up in smoke and blow away.

The Best of Arizona: AZ Shockers Championship Baseball

A Wing and a Prayer


 

Poverty in America: The Dragon Meets the Hawk

Some people like NY Times columnist Nick Kristof think America can't be saved unless all the teachers have a degree from Harvard.  He's never met the Hawk.  Of course not, the elites who think  it's their privilege to tell us how to live our lives don't send their children to inner-city Title 1 public schools.  Most wouldn't know what a Title 1 school is even if they'd been near one... other than thinking as they drove by when the students were arriving that it would be best to check if the car doors are locked.

The Hawk comes to mind this morning because he was directing traffic when I dropped my daughter off for school.  His traffic theatrics make you wonder if he's related to the famous Pittsburgh cop, Vic Cianca.

The Hawk went to work as a janitor at the Rose Lane School because he needed job.  When you spend high school perfecting your skateboard maneuvers, your career options are limited.

The school principal took a shine to the Hawk and encouraged him go to college and get a job teaching.  "You do very well with the children.  They love you."

And so it came to pass, that my little Jimmy, the bane of elementary school teachers, walked into the Hawk's fourth grade class and went from being an average student to having one of the very highest math test scores in the school district.  Maybe the key to success was that little Jimmy loves fishing and the kid who did the best that day got to feed live minnows to the bass the Hawk kept in a big tank in the room. 

Sit in on his class and you'd discover that the Hawk was the frickin' original Pied Piper.  He'd say the magic word and 30 kids would clap three times in unison and then there'd be complete silence and rapt attention.

*    *    *    *    *

 

The basic principles of Title 1 [federal assistance] state that schools with large concentrations of low-income students will receive supplemental funds to assist in meeting students' educational goals. Low-income students are determined by the number of students enrolled in the free and reduced lunch program. For an entire school to qualify for Title 1 funds, at least 40% of students must enroll in the free and reduced lunch program.

 

The Dragon meets Dirty Marie

I'd been the light-heavy weight fisticuffs champ of New York's Metropolitan Junior Hockey League, which sent Joe Mullen to Boston College and the NHL, but hitting a woman never occurred to me.  On the other hand,  I was on the receiving end once.

I'd been dating a young woman while doing graduate school at NYU.   Things seemed to be going very well.  Before Christmas break we travelled to Washington, DC, and spent a weekend with her sister's family.  Afterwards, I went home to New York and spent Christmas with my family.

When she returned from break, I went to see her at her apartment.   Shortly after I entered she said she had some bad news (for me).   She was moving to California to get married.   After I'd left her sister's house, she'd hopped on a jet plane and spent Christmas with another boy friend.  Little did I know.  I spent a whole weekend with at least two, probably three people, who treated me like the latest family addition without coming close to letting on that I was the latest family sucker.  Which hurt more the loss of the woman or the humiliation discovering I'd spent a weekend as the family fool.

Since staying any longer seemed to be pointless, I politely excused myself without saying much at all and headed home.  The apartments at NYU had no elevators.   I wasn't far down the first flight of stairs when someone runs up behind me and kicks me real hard in the butt.   I turned to defend myself, which I'd done ferociously on more than one occasion, and there was my "friend" Dirty Marie.  "IF YOU LEAVE NOW, I WILL NEVER SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN"  she screamed.  I turned around and just kept going.

*  *  *  *  *
I should have immediately bailed out on this when she waited until breakfast to announce that...  technically ... she was still married.

The New Holy Cross

The epistles I receive from my alma mater are intriguing to say the least. 

First and foremost they celebrate the new, diverse and co-ed Holy Cross where students are decidedly brighter than those who attended in the past.

Then there are the inveterate pleas for donations to support the alma mater.  These are not simply intriguing.  They are downright puzzling.  If the graduates of the New Holy Cross are so darn smart why do they need my money.  After all, if all the graduates of the New Holy are smarter than me, then they're all multi-millionaires many times over and a school that's left its past behind can certainly do without the past's money.

I'm not exactly sure what smart means -- sometimes it's better to be lucky than smart.  But I definitely know what dumb is.

The Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club

 

Top Gun North SAR

Butch Meets the Dragon

I grew up in a union family so it was very interesting, to say the least, when I got assigned to a team negotiating a labor contract with the City of Independence, Missouri, firemen.   I was about the same age as the firemen on the union team so we had a lot in common.  As the negotiations dragged on and on (the firemen were waiting to see if their candidates won the city council election), the union team started laying it on pretty thick with outrageous demands.  One day the union president, Butch, demanded that the city put into the firemen's contract  a guarantee that the city would only buy products made in the United States.   I immediately shot back, sure Butch, we'll put that in the contract... when you sell your Volkswagen. 

Rashomon

Commoner: Well, men are only men. That's why they lie. They can't tell the truth, even to themselves.

Priest: That may be true. Because men are weak, they lie to deceive themselves.

Commoner: Not another sermon! I don't mind a lie if it's interesting.

 



The Dragon Calls the Principal

The word Maryvale scares most of my Phoenix neighbors.  Hell.  A lot of them won't even send their children to the neighborhood public schools where my kids go.  Maybe being in the Navy me made less touchy about that.  When black and Mexican guys are part of the crew watching your butt when the bullets are flying around, you're a little less touchy about whose kid sits next to your little Mary in class. 

The world is full of a lot of basically good kids.  A few are self-starters, like my Mary.  Most, like my Jimmy (little guy in the middle), need some direction.  Some of the kids need a lot of direction. 







A few of them need a smack upside the head from the principal.  Towards the end of my son's middle school basketball season, we made the trip to Maryvale.  The game went well and the Maryvale players were good sports even though they lost the game.   The young ladies were another matter.  The Maryvale girls took exception to the Madison No. 1 girls cheering vigorously for the Madison boys.   The Maryvale girls, shouting profanities, followed the Madison boys and girls out to the bus.  There was no security anywhere in sight to stop this.   They kept up the profanities led by a tall black girl.  When the bus drove by them pulling out of the lot, the girls starting throwing rocks. 

I had promised my wife not to get involved with this stuff anymore, so I just stood and watched.   Finally I shouted at the girls and told them I'd be calling their principal in the morning.  At least I made it out of the parking lot without them throwing rocks at me.

In the morning I sent a strongly worded email to the principal, the president of the governing board, and their superintendent and our superintendent.   The leader of the pack was suspended from school.  The other girls were dropped from the cheer squad.   In the spring when we visited for baseball and softball, there was plenty of school security around.   The girls were still yapping at one another.  The boys played with respect.

The Dragon dials 911

Why didn't I send my kid to Camelback, the public high school down the street from us.  It would be so convenient.  Let's start with high school night at Madison No. 1 (my son's middle school),  the curriculum that CHS was offering left a lot to be desired for those who are college bound.   Then there's the wonderful neighborhood experience, eg, the gunfight out in front of the high school.   Old news?  Ok, how about the little league game last year where the game had to be stopped because two guys got into a fight over a girl.   It was a darn impressive fight.   One guy, a CHS student, he looks like superman.  The other one a wiry terrier guy who won't stop yapping at superman.   Not even when superman rips off his own shirt and starts pounding his own mighty chest with his fists.  Terrier-guy didn't stop yapping at all even while superman was shaking him like a rag doll and banging terrier guy against the walls and concrete deck.  Terrier-guy even managed to land a few punches while he was bouncing off the wall.

I'm done with breaking up fights.  I dialed 911 and yelled at superman and terrier-guy that the police were on the way.   Some other brave souls finally separated them.  Superman finally came to his senses and ran off.  He's had the crap nurtured out of him  and realized he didn't need to be there when the cops arrived.   Lucky for him it took the cops 30 minutes to show up.

I've lived in the Madison neighborhood for 20 years I love the kids -- I've been a soccer or baseball coach for a lot of them -- but a few of them scare the crap out of me.  And if they scare me, my kid isn't going to CHS.

The FBI meets the Dragon

The FBI showed up at our door one day years ago. 
Jim, Jim! wailed my poor old mother-in-law, a little old Italian lady.  The FBI are here! 
I walked over to the door. 
We'd like to speak with your wife. 
What about, says I. 
We need to speak with your wife. 
You can tell me. 
No, we can't.  We need to speak with her. 
At this point my little boy butted in: what do the ladies want, Daddy. 
I smiled and said, they're from the FBI, son, and they're here to arrest your mother. 
My mother-in-law nearly fainted. 
The FBI agents squealed NO, NO, it's nothing like that. 
Ok, what is it then.  
We can't tell you. 

I finally relented and told them my wife was at work and where that was.  It turns out she'd been taking a shortcut through the back parking lot behind the FBI building on the days she had to pick up our son at the babysitter. 

Do you have a camera, they asked?  
Were you taking pictures. 
We can't be too careful after Oklahoma City, sorry. 

Across town at about the same time a terrorist was training on an aircraft simulator for 9/11.

*   *   *   *   *

 

Since the FBI agents didn't tell me what they wanted.  I didn't bother to tell the FBI who my wife worked for.  I was sending them to Arizona's second largest Medicaid health plan run by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy and Carondelet.   My wife was the COO and a specialist in maternal child health care and had recently gone to Washington to accept an award from the Medicaid people for caring for AIDS patients.  

 

Receptionist:  Welcome to Mercy Care Plan.  How may I help you.

FBI:  we're here to see Julie...

Receptionist:  Do you have an appointment?

 

I'd guessed that the FBI wanted to ask some questions about the Native American tribes the health plan served.  That they took my wife for a potential terrorist never entered my mind.  But I've never let her forget it.

The Sprinkler Prayer

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.

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. 

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.'"

Beetlejuice and the Big Bang

Ask a Holy Cross student then or now what Betelgeuse is and 99 times out of 100 they'd tell you it's a movie directed by the renown Tim Burton, starring Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, and Winona Ryder. 


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.

The Rape of the Celtic Women

Judging by recent contributions from Frank Bruni and Joe Nocera, The New York Times has a stipulation in its employment contract that mandates stories where an Irish relative is the foil.

"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

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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!

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!

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."

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.

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.

• 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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.