The Dragon and Joseph Smith

(Or how I ended up sleeping in Barbara Smith's bed)

I was pretty sad the day the Mormons left town.  Roddy Zurenborg was my best friend, big brother and protector.  When his family moved away I lost my body guard, and the neighborhood became a dangerous place for 10-year-olds.

That was it for the Mormons until many years later when I moved to a western Missouri town just outside Kansas City.  Who'd have thought that the town of Independence was the spot where the Mormons believed Jesus Christ would land when he returned to Earth.  Who knew that there was more than one flavor of the Mormons -- The Reorganized LDS, Temple Lot, Cutlerites and Restoration Branches headquartered at Independence.   The Utah Mormons even had a visitors center there to be close to the action when Christ returned, and were apparently very bent out of shape that the RLDS (now known as the Church of Christ) owned the deed to Christ's landing pad.

In addition to Jesus Christ, Harry Truman was Independence's other famous returnee.  He retired there after being president.  I wish I could have asked Harry Truman what he though of the religious politics of his old hometown, but he died a few years before I arrived.  There was a very nice larger- than-life bronze statue of Harry on the town square.

I got myself a small apartment on the outskirts of town near a new middle school and a cornfield.  The apartments were new. too.  A year before they and the school had been part of the cornfield.   A few years later the city acquired what was left of the cornfield, dug a hole for a pond and turned the land into a nature preserve.  You'd be surprised how fast the trees grow back.

The apartments were like a college dormitory, young and very social.  That's how I met Big Bob, Barbara and her husband one day after work.  Bob was out from New Jersey, doing some specialized construction work on a hospital in Kansas City.   I never caught what Barbara's husband did.  Barbara was a gorgeous, vivacious redhead with short hair and freckles.  One part of an obviously loving couple.  Barbara we learned was the great-great-great-great granddaughter of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith.

Big Bob provided most of the entertainment: good drinking buddy, nonstop talk.  If someone was giving you the evil eye in a bar, Bob would tap them on the should and they'd think better of it and walk away.   Bob was really big.  Bob was also a babe magnet.  This I never understood.  Maybe it had something to do with animal magnetism and smooth talk.

Paradise lasted awhile until one night over a beer Bob announced that Barbara had run off never to return.  Her husband moved out of their apartment and was soon gone too.  Someone told Bob he could have their furniture and  since Bob didn't need it he gave it to me.  I returned all my rented stuff and took over Barbara's.  That's how I ended up sleeping in Barbara's bed... sans Barbara.

Louie, The Greek

The doorbell rang, my mother opened the door, and a man dove into the room.  He did a paratrooper's somersault, sprang to his feet and shouted:   "Hi, I'm Louie!  Where's Jimmy!"

That was my mother's introduction to my father's lifelong friend Louie, the Greek.  My father (aka The Dragon) met Louie one summer long ago at Long Beach, New York, just outside New York City.  Louie's uncle had a food stand on the boardwalk by the beach and little Louie got to spend summers with his uncle.

"We were best buddies.  Two scrappers.  We fought like cats and dogs.  Father Joe over at St. Mary's taught your father how to box.  Marques of Queensbury Rules.  I didn't know any rules."  Louie said with a wink.

It was the Roaring Twenties and Prohibition.  Long Beach was a destination for the affluent and smart set.  It's political leader was Lorenzo Carlino, Lucky Luciano's lawyer.  One night my grandfather was taking a walk on the beach and a cop stops him.  "Mr. Mac, you need to go home now."  The cop winked and grandpa got the message.  Bootleggers were landing a boatload of booze that night.

In the movies Long Beach was home to the Godfather and, in fact, there was some of Lorenzo Carlino and the local gangsters in the Godfather's Don Corleone.   In real life, though, Long Beach was a demilitarized zone.   Sonny never got gunned down at the toll booth on the Long Beach causeway from New York City.   It was a summer playground for Louie, dad and their friend Eddie Handy, another wild kid.   Eddie didn't survive the war.

After the war, Louie became a Nassau County cop.  My father became a lawyer.  He might have become a cop like Louie or a mechanic -- he liked fixing cars -- but his mother wanted him to be a lawyer. 
"You're going to law school, Jim." 
"I didn't apply, Mother."
"Jim, I talked to Agnes Muldoon and she talked to Felix (Agnes's henpecked husband) and Felix talked to the dean at Fordham.  You've been admitted to start in the fall." 

Imagine Felix Muldoon one of the most connected politicians in New York State, a guy who, in Chicago's smoke-filled room, told Flynn to back Roosevelt, having to go hat in hand to the president of Fordham Law to ask a favor. 
"Father Gannon, it's Felix Muldoon.  Do me a favor.  Agnes is on the war path.  She wants her friend's son Jimmy Mac to go to law school.  He's a good kid.  Regis, Holy Cross.  That's right his father's gone, the one who lectured at the school of Social Work and sent the city's public school lunch trucks to the Catholic schools as well.  Yes, Wagner's friend.  Great.  Call me when you need a favor.  We should do lunch next time you're downtown."

One good thing came out of Jimmy's law degree.  When the City of Long Beach health department tried to shut down Louie's uncle's boardwalk business -- no bathroom -- Jimmy worked a deal with the city to grandfather in the food stand sans bathroom.

Jimmy didn't like being a lawyer.  When he moved the family to Levittown, he started all sorts of little businesses that he and mom ran: an insurance agency, real estate, selling toys at the farmer's market, a travel agency.  He should have been wildly successful on a booming Long Island, but competition was fierce.  The insurance agents teamed up to provide insurance to the local school kids.  Then one year somebody in the consortium secretly submitted a separate, lower bid and got all the business.   Later the car dealer called up and said he loved doing business with my mom, but his bank told him no more loans unless he bought his insurance from the bank's agent.   The travel agency became an obsession.  It wouldn't work unless the agency had airline tickets it could sell and Jimmy literally had to take the case to the Supreme Court to get the tickets.   Then one day the office building where the travel agency was located burned down.  When the smoke cleared, the safe with the tickets was gone.   Jimmy was beside himself.   The tickets and the ticket validator were worth millions of dollars.  If they were lost, he'd be ruined financially.

Desperate, Jimmy called the Nassau County police chief, another old Long Beach friend.  The chief said:  "Sorry, Jimmy.  We've done everything we can.  That safe of yours is at the bottom of the Great South Bay by now."

Jimmy called Louie.  By then Louie was a detective in the county police department.  Louie said he'd help.  The two of them drove over to the ghetto in Hempstead and found the bar where the office building's janitor hung out.   Louis said: "Wait outside, Jimmy."  Louie came back after a few minutes.  "Here's the deal.  No questions asked.  We can pick up the safe in a half an hour around the corner."  A half an hour later, they had the safe... no questions asked.

Louie was a solid guy.  He gave anyone a chance to be reasonable... no questions asked.  One time he got sent on a hunt to bring in a murderer.  He tracked the guy to an apartment in Harlem.   Louie burst through the door, into the apartment.   On the other side of the room stood an angry black man, 6 ft 4, 250 pounds.  He was holding a big axe.  "I'm taking you in,"  says Louie as he pointed his Official Police Colt revolver with it's powerful .38-44 high velocity bullets at the man.  "Put down the axe and lie on the floor, or I'll blow your fucking brains out."  The man glared at Louie, but after a few tense minutes decided to be reasonable and put the axe down... no questions asked.

One day Louie and the other detectives get called into the DA office.  It's a new DA.  "We're taking in all the Mafia over in Long Beach and Point Lookout."  Silence.  Then Louie pipes up.  "Why!?  That's where they live.  All their business is in New York.  There isn't a crime out here in Nassau County we can charge them with."  The DA glares at Louie.  "Just do it."

So Louie and his partner get told to bring in Joey D for questioning.  "Christ!"  says Louie.  "That guy lives down the street from me on Point Lookout.  I've got to arrest my neighbor for nothing."

Louie and his partner drive over to Point Lookout, past the toll booth where the mythical Sonny got assassinated,  over to Joey D's house, and they knocked on the door.   By then the cat is long out of the bag.  Joey D's lawyer answers the door.  Louie tells the lawyer it's the police and the lawyer goes berserk.  F and A and SOB bombs are dropping so hard Louie's starting to have D-Day flashbacks.  Joey D runs to the door and screams: 
"Stop! Leonard! For heaven's sake this is my neighbor.  I'm so sorry.  Louie?  Is that right?  You're Louie from down the street." 

"That's right, sir, I'm Louie Sarantopolis from down the street.  I'm also a Nassau County police detective."
"I know."  Said Joey.
"I'm sorry, Mr. D., we have to bring you in for questioning.  It's not our idea.  There's a new DA."
"I know.  Don't feel bad about it," said Joey.  "I'm sorry for your trouble.  Would you like some coffee.  Can I show you the house?"  

"Sure," says Louie.  His partner is starting to think they've fallen through the rabbit hole and they're in Wonderland... so's Joey D's lawyer, Leonard.   They all have coffee and take a tour of the house.
"You have a very nice house here Mr. D., but we have to go now."
"I understand," said Joey.  Then genuinely contrite, Joey hands Louie and his partner each a $100 dollar bill:  "I am so very sorry for this trouble, Louie."

Louie's partner looks at the $100 bill in shock and says, "Christ! We can't take this, Louie."

Louie looks at his partner and says, "Relax.  It's my neighbor.  He's just trying to be polite." Then Louie whispered, "He wouldn't expect anyone to sell their soul for 100 bucks, especially in Nassau County where he doesn't want any trouble."

After he retired,  Louie got a job as body guard/driver for Senator Alfonse D'Amato, who was raised in Island Park, just across the channel from Long Beach.  It was a decent gig.  D'Amato and Louie seemed to be warming to each other.  One day, D'Amato invites Louie over to a party at D'Amato's house.

"Hey! Stella!  Put on your best dress.  We're going to a party at D'Amato's house."

Louie and Stella show up at D'Amato's, D'Amato greets them at the door, says "Hi, Louie" and then hands him a bartender's jacket.  "I need you to handle the drinks tonight."

The next morning Louie called D'Amato's office and told them to find another driver.

Dinner with the Dragons

Mama Dragon works hard at preparing family dinners.  She's a great cook.  The little Dragons don't appreciate it.  Sister Dragon only eats vegetables now.   Brother Dragon only eats steak.  Papa Dragon likes sauces, Mexican food, and steaks, but won't touch the vegetables sister Dragon likes.  Mama Dragon is a saint.

Lately Brother, who's about to go to college, has been staying at table long enough to ask questions:  can you be married by the church, but not by the government?

Papa said, yes, this is possible, but almost all people married by a church would record their marriage with the government.  There are some polygamous cults who might not do this to avoid being arrested for bigamy.

What's bigamy mean, asked Sister.

Bigamy's where a man marries more than one wife at the same time, said Papa.

I don't see why the government should have a law against that as long as the wives don't mind, said Sister.

We wouldn't want the young women to be exploited by older men.  Some of the cults do that, said Mama.

There are already laws against exploiting girls.  Why should the government stop people from marrying who they want, said Sister.

It would make God unhappy.  Doesn't that bother you, said Papa.

I don't want to make God unhappy.  I'm just playing Devil's Advocate, said the 13-year-old.

Papa Dragon tried to change the subject:  who knows what surrogate means (stepping into his own trap).

Brother jumped at the opportunity to get into the conversation:  That's like the Family Guy episode where Lois has a baby for the two gay guys who live next door.

Er ... that isn't exactly what I had in mind, but, yes, it is like Family Guy, said Papa.

KIA Klucker

Some drunk called him a wop so grandpa threw the drunk through the window at Wikey's bar.  Uncle Joe had to go down to the police station and bail out grandpa.  Moral of the story: don't say the W word to Italian guys whose arms look like Rocky Marciano's on steroids... even an old Italian guy.  "The only thing I'm sorry about is I broke Wikey's window and we were on the first floor."  Fortunately for grandpa the judge was an Italian gentleman who let him off with a warning.

Wikey's was an old storefront neighborhood bar in East Boston near the Blue Line Orient Heights station.  Grandpa stopped there at the end of the day on the way home from the North End where he ran two vegetable bays for a wholesaler.   When the old guy died who owned the vegetable bays, grandpa inherited them.  He was the son the old guy never had.   When grandpa died his oldest son, Uncle Emil, sold the bays, too bad.  If he'd held onto them they'd been real valuable after they built Quincy Market, but Emil was in medical school and Uncle Joe had a union job with the power company.   They didn't have time for the vegetable business.

The vegetable business needed watching.   My mother-in-law, Phyllis, remembers getting drafted to go through records and sort out how much one of the employees had stolen.  That's when she found out where the oranges grandpa brought home to kids came from.  As she watched through the office window, she saw her dad get pissed off at something and throw a crate of oranges against the wall.  What was left that wasn't spoiled went home to the kids.

Grandpa hung out with Klucker and the guys at Wikey's.   Klucker lived in a car parked in a vacant lot a few blocks down the street.  It was the Depression.  It wasn't unusual for people to live in vacant lots.  On holidays and some weekends, grandpa brought Klucker and other vacant lot dwellers home for dinner. 

When the war came, the draft board managed to find Klucker even though his only address was Wikey's.   He got KIA somewhere.  Maybe Europe.  Maybe the Pacific.   The Army sent the telegram that Klucker was gone to Wikey's.   The bar's a tattoo parlor now.

Spanish Mass: Corpus Christi, Cuerpo de Cristo

My Gaeilge speaking grandmother's family was permanently at war with the village priest.  Who knows when and how it started.   My Aunt Kathleen was the smartest girl in the village.  By the time she was old enough, the feud became so spiteful the priest denied her a scholarship to go to college.   When Uncle Ned joined the Irish Republican Army and the Easter Rebellion,  the priest denied my great-grandfather Michael absolution for refusing to turn Ned in to the British.   Michael didn't know where Ned was, but he'd be damned before he'd tell the priest that.
"You're damned, Michael Lafferty!"
"See you in Hell, Priest!"

First Communion: ad maiorem Dei gloriam

Still, the family said the rosary every day.   For the rest of her life my grandmother kept the tradition.   When we asked her why she prayed so much, she said:  "Every act of your life is a prayer."   We never figured out what that had to do with lying in bed in the late afternoon working through the beads, repeating the prayers of the Rosary over and over again:

The Sign of the Cross
The Apostle's Creed
Three Hail Marys
Glory be to the Father
The First through Fifth Mysteries, each:  1 Our Father, 10 Hail Marys  and 1 Glory be to the Father.

My son's the one who drags us to mass every Sunday.  He never met his Gaeilge speaking ancestors, the remnants of an ancient culture that once encompassed western Europe from Spain to the British Isles and reached as far as Italy and Turkey.  The Emperor Marcus Aurelius died on March 17 at a Celtic village on the Danube that became Vienna.   Maybe many my son takes after his Hispanic-Italian grandmother who goes to mass everyday when she can.

Sometimes we ended up going to the late Spanish mass to meet his devotional demands.  My mother would have invoked Regan's Roman Catholic rules, the Travelers' Dispensation and skipped mass on a Sunday when the boy's baseball tournament ran late.  My son wouldn't hear of it.  Faced with his baseball game on Saturday afternoon and an airplane flight on Sunday morning, we had to find a Saturday Vigil Mass to satisfy his requirements.  The last Vigil Mass in Phoenix was a Spanish mass at Most Holy Trinity Church at 7 pm.  

I was mildly taken aback when the deacon said the "Body of Christ"  to me when I received Holy Communion.  It was a Spanish mass why would I want or need him to speak English.  I grew up with the Latin mass.  A Spanish mass is more comfortable for me than an English one.  I can't stand the insipid folk-rock songs they sing at the English mass.   Regardless of whether someone says "Corpus Christi" or "Cuerpo de Cristo",  I know what it means... but there are few alive today who know that "Comhlacht ar Críost" is a better way to say it.

*  *  *  *  *
Saint Francis Xavier has a 1 pm Spanish mass that is also convenient.  Like when my son's baseball schedule takes up the rest of the weekend.  Its 1 pm mass is the only one I've seen where people move into the central aisle during the "Our Father" so that they can hold hands with people in the adjacent row of pews.

Crash: Welcome to America

Black eye and bloody nose.  That was the welcome for a family from India that moved in down the street from us.   Their boy adapted to playing touch football, but not Little League.  Sometime during 8th grade he made the mistake of sitting at a desk that a Mexican kid had staked out as his territory.  How was an Indian kid supposed to know there were property rights in public schools in America... and consequences if you violated them.  The Mexican kid shows up for class, walks over to the desk, puts his hand on the back of the Indian kid's head, and slams the kid's face into the desk top.   Black eye and bloody nose.

The Indian kid's dad was out of town working on a software project.   His mother didn't speak English, didn't drive, and didn't know what to do besides be frightened and appalled.  My son demanded that I do something to protect his buddy.  Why do kid's always think dad is superman?  At the parent council meeting a day or two later, I confronted the principal.  The staff's first reaction was to say we couldn't disclose anything about a student, then the principal relented, explained that they were aware of the situation and would deal with it.  Eventually, after more transgressions the student was expelled and became someone else's problem.

After 8th grade the Indian family sent their child to a charter high school. 

Sorry, I Don't Speak Japanese

Took my family to the Grand Canyon one summer a couple of years back.  There were lots of tourists, speaking lots of different languages.   The Germans speaking German next to stopped and spotted some prey nearby to flex their language skills.   One of the Germans goes over to a Japanese-looking guy and starts speaking Japanese.   As far as I could tell the German was pretty fluent and clearly pleased with himself.   The Japanese guy looked bewildered.   There was a pause, then the Japanese guy said, "I'm sorry.  I don't understand a word you said.  I don't speak Japanese.   I'm from Hawai'i."

The Divine Comedy

“Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.” 
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

Not long after the Orpheum reopened,  my wife and I went to see a night of comedy performances.   The Orpheum wasn't trying to bring big-name entertainment to Phoenix.  It was giving local talent a chance and giving audiences something different than touring Broadway shows that headlined at the Gammage Auditorium at ASU.   You might even say the Orpheum was giving the old folks performances they could hear.   Between the spectacular sound mixing acoustics Frank Lloyd Wright designed for symphony performances (not Broadway shows) and the bad voices of touring companies,  the voices at Gammage are almost unintelligible. 

That night at the Orpheum the first comedians got a few laughs.   Then it was a local Mexican's turn.   He got about five minutes into his act, which was all "white" people jokes, and wasn't getting any laughs.  Just silence.   You could see the air go out of him as he realized that he was telling nasty "white" people jokes to a room full of "white" people.

Some of the audience may have been thinking is this what the Mexicans think of us?  Is this what the Mexicans think is funny?   I was an old management consultant.  I was thinking: hmmm, the same principles that apply to consulting apply to comedy.   Know your audience.  Never bad mouth the customers or tell a joke at the customers' expense.   They have a sixth sense that picks up on it even when you do it behind their backs.

Delivering bad news is an art.   It takes a great artist to move an audience.   Sometimes it's ritual "suicide" preparing the way for the next act the gods planned all along.   

You People Can Sit with Us Now

He was a good man ... and still is.  I don't know if he's coaching Little League anymore, but he still was at 70.   Getting enough kids to play ball is always a problem when they get older.  Too many other things to do:  TV, girls, video games... smoking funny cigarettes.   Some kids drop out because the competition gets tough and the field gets bigger.   Some can't throw the ball all the way across the big field to first base.   Fewer can throw it 60 feet for a strike.   The ones that can throw strikes throw hard and that intimidates some of the kids... who drop out. 

The local league called my son hoping he'd fill out he roster.   He was a year too old for the Juniors team, but they said he could play as long as he didn't pitch.  He was fine with that.   The Juniors played during the week and his more competitive club team played on the weekends.

Coach Ron, the old timer, was happy to have him.   Show them the how game's played, Jimmy.  There were all shapes, colors and sizes on the team.  Didn't matter to Ron.  They were all just kids to him. 

Ron pretty much said whatever came into his mind.  His team's black parents always sat far down the third baseline by themselves.   One day Ron decided to chat, walks out of the coach's box and over to where the black parents are sitting.  He points at the white parent sitting in the stands near home plate and tells the black parents:  "Hey, you know you people can sit with us now."   The black parents smiled politely.  Then grandma, who was as old as Ron, cracked up and couldn't stop laughing for quite some time.

IN-N-OUT BURGER: Mother's Day

My son is 18 and can now drive himself around.  He is taking his mom to IN-N-BURGER for Mother's Day.

Das Boot

The U-boats were so brazen they'd anchor near Connecticut and Long Island villages and send English-speaking sailors into town to pick up fresh vegetables and milk.

It was a horrific battle few remember today.   My mother helped run it.  She was a watch commander for the communication center responsible for the western end of the U-boat-convoy war in the North Atlantic.  She recalled the bodies of sailors washed up on the beaches after their ships had been sunk just outside Boston and New York harbors.  Sailors whose ships she'd sent messages that ordered them to their doom.  Boston was so edgy that Mother was given a choice when she carried secret messages between buildings:  learn how shoot a .45 pistol and wear it on your rounds, or be escorted by an armed sailor or marine.   She chose the man with a gun.

When the war started my mother was teaching grammar school.  Substitute teaching actually.  When she had work she'd often end the day in tears, frustrated by boys more interested day dreaming about Captain America than long division.  Some would be just old enough or lie about their ages to make it into the fight at Bastogne or Iwo Jima.  Instead of breaking a leg jumping off  a roof like Captain America, they got blown to smithereens trying to avenge Robert Taylor and George Murphy who died defending the bridge on Bataan.

When I worked in Houston over thirty years ago, I went to see Das Boot's premiere.  The movie told the story of the war from the perspective a U-boat captain and his crew.  Its opening caption said 40,000 German sailors went off to the U-boat war and never came back.  You might have thought that would have evoked an appalled sympathy from the audience, or at least silence.   All was not forgotten or forgiven.   The Texans broke out into wild applause.   There are reports that the caption got the same reaction in other American movie theatres.

Long before Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt had done everything he could to keep England from surrendering to the Nazis.  This included giving scores of Navy ships to the British to keep their lifeline to America open.  Hitler wasn't happy about this, but he tolerated it since he wanted to keep the Americans at least tacitly on the sidelines.   After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hitler decided to declare war too and go after the soft defenses of America's East Coast.  They were really soft with all the aircraft and ships turned over to the British.

And so it came to pass that my father's cousin Charlie joined the Navy, was given command of a small, lightly armed patrol boat and told to go patrol the waters of Long Island Sound.  "If you see a U-boat, radio for help and run away as fast as you can.  We'll sent out a bomber or big destroyer, if any are available (which they pretty much weren't, most being sent to save the British)."

Early one morning Charlie and his tiny crew sailed off into the fog of Long Island Sound.  They'd been out for awhile, but not long enough for the sun to warm things up and burn off the fog.  Out of the fog slips a U-boat and it sails right up to the startled Charlie and his tiny crew.  Before they can even raise their hands to surrender, the U-boat pulls alongside and its captain growls:  "Are you regular Navy or reserve."  Charlie hesitates and then says "reserve."  (God, I hope that's the right answer.)  The German captain growls back: "lucky for you."   Then the Germans all start laughing and the U-boat slipped away into the fog and was gone.

La Rue Sans Joie

“Sometimes, there occurs an almost irrelevant incident which, in the light of later developments, seems to have been a sign of the gods, a dreamlike warning which, if heeded, could have changed fate – or so it seems.

One such incident occurred to me in October 1953 in Cambodia, at Siem-Reap, not far away from the fabulous temples of Angkor-Wat. I has been in the field with the 5th Cambodian Autonomous Infantry Company and was now in need of transportation back to Phnom-Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Siem-Reap, a quiet and pleasant little place with two hotels catering to the tourist trade and a few French archaeologists working around the ruins of Angkor, might as well have been a small garrison town in southern France, such as Avignon or Nimes.

A few French officers were still around, mainly as advisers to the newly-independent Cambodian Army. Their chores were light; there were no Communists in the area and the handful of obsolescent Renault trucks and World War II-type weapons needed a minimum of maintenance and care. An assignment to Siem-Reap was as good a sinecure as could be found in Indochina in October 1953 and the officers made the most of it.

When I went to the Transportation Office that afternoon at 1530, the Cambodian orderly told me apologetically that “le Lieutenant est allé au mess jouer au tennis avec le Capitaine” and that they might well stay there for the rest of the afternoon. Since a convoy which I expected to catch was supposed to leave at dawn, I decided to stroll over to the mess in order to get my travel documents signed there.

The Siem-Reap officers’ mess was a pleasant and well-kept place; with its wide Cambodian-style verandahs, its parasol-shaded tables and the well-manicured lawns and beautifully red-sanded tennis court, it was an exact replica of all the other colonial officers’ messes from Port Said to Singapore, Saigon, or even Manila, wherever the white man had set his foot in the course of building his ephemeral empires.

I found the two officers at the tennis court, in gleaming white French square-bottomed shorts (no one in Europe would be caught dead in the ungainly Bermuda pants called “shorts” in the United States), matching Lacoste tennis shirts and knee-long socks. Their skins had lost the unhealthy pallor of the jungle and had taken on the handsome bronze of the vacationer engaging in outdoor sports; their wives, seated at a neighboring table, were beautifully groomed and wore deceptively simple (but, oh, so expensive!) cotton summer dresses clearly showing the hand of a Paris designer. Both officers played in the easy style of men who knew each other’s game and were less bent on winning than on getting the fun and exercise of it. Three Cambodian servants, clad in impeccable white slacks and shirts, stood respectfully in the shadow of the verandah, awaiting the call of one of the officers or women for a new cool drink.

Since the men were in the midst of a set and I had little else to do, I sat down at a neighboring table after a courteous bow to the ladies and watched the game, gladly enjoying the atmosphere of genteel civility and forgetting for a moment the war. At the next table, the two women kept up the rapid-fire chatter which French women are prone to use when men are present. The two men also kept up a conversation of sorts, interrupted regularly by the “plop-plop” of the tennis ball.

Then emerged from the verandah a soldier in a French uniform. His small stature, brown skin and western-type features showed him to be a Cambodian. He wore the blue field cap with the golden anchor of the Troupes Coloniales – the French “Marines” – and the three golden chevrons of a master-sergeant. On his chest above the left breast pocket of his suntan regulation shirt were three rows of multi-colored ribbons:croix de guerre with four citations, campaign ribbons with the clasps of France’s every colonial campaign since the Moroccan pacification of 1926; the Italian campaign of 1943 and the drive to the Rhine of 1945. In his left hand, he carried several papers crossed diagonally with a tri-colored ribbon; travel orders, like mine, which also awaited the signature of one of the officers.

He remained in the shadow of the verandah’s awnings until the officers had interrupted their game and had joined the two women with their drinks, then strode over in a measured military step, came stiffly to attention in a military salute. and handed the orders for himself and his squad to the captain. The captain looked up in surprise, still with a half-smile on his face from the remark he had made previously. His eyes narrowed suddenly as he understood he was being interrupted. Obviously, he was annoyed but not really furious.

“Sergeant, you can see that I’m busy. Please wait until I have time to deal with your travel orders. Don’t worry. You will have them in time for the convoy”.

The sergeant stood stiffly at attention, some of his almost white hair glistening in the sun where it peeked from under the cap, his wizened face betraying no emotion whatsoever.

“A vos ordres, mon Capitaine.” A sharp salute, a snappy about face. The incident was closed, the officers had had their drink and now resumed their game.

The sergeant resumed his watch near where the Cambodian messboys were following the game, but this time he had squatted down on his haunches, a favorite Cambodian position of repose which would leave most Europeans with partial paralysis for several hours afterwards. Almost without moving his head, he attentively followed the tennis game, his travel orders still tightly clutched in his left hand.

The sun began to settle behind the trees of the garden and a slight cooling breeze rose from the nearby Lake Tonlé-Sap, Cambodia’s inland sea. It was 1700.

All of a sudden, there rose behind the trees, from the nearby French camp, the beautiful bell-clear sounds of a bugle playing “lower the flag” – the signal which, in the French Army, marks the end of the working day as the colors are struck.

Nothing changed at the tennis court; the two officers continued to play their set, the women continued their chatter, and the messboys their silent vigil.

Only the old sergeant had moved. He was now standing stiffly at attention, his right hand raised to the cap in the flat-palmed salute of the French Army, facing in the direction from which the bugle tones came; saluting, as per regulations, France’s tricolor hidden behind the trees. The rays of the setting sun shone upon the immobile brown figure, catching the gold of the anchor and of the chevrons and one of the tiny metal stars of his ribbons.

Something very warm welled up in me. I felt like running over to the little Cambodian who had fought all his life for my country, and apologizing to him for my countrymen here who didn’t care about him, and for my countrymen in France who didn’t even care about their countrymen fighting in Indochina…

And in one single blinding flash, I knew that we were going to lose the war.”
-- Bernard Fall

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

When I got sent to La Rue Sans Joie, twenty years after Fall, the French were gone and I had forgotten to bring my tennis racquet.   That was okay.  I wouldn't need it.

Here Comes the Judge

Years and years ago my first grownup IT project was to help the City of Independence, Missouri, set up a scheduling system for its municipal court cases.  Utah was the promised land, but Independence was where the Mormons expected Christ to return to earth.  Competing Mormon factions had staked out claims on the spot where Christ was expected to land.  Who knew there were competing Mormon factions?   All the things you learn about America by travelling west of the Hudson. 

When my neighbor Paula ran away from her husband, I inherited some of her furniture and used it to replace the things I'd been renting.   Later, I'd tell people I'd slept in the bed of the great-great-great-grand daughter of  Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet.  What I left out of that story was that I never got to sleep in the bed while Paula was in it.  Too bad for me.  Paula was a really hot redhead.  Imagine, redheaded Mormons.  Another thing you don't know when you grow up east of the Hudson.

Harry Truman was the town's other claim to fame.   Outside my office window, there was a big statue of him.  Only one of two in the country.  Truman's house was just down the street.  He liked to take morning strolls around the town square.  A simple life that I'd missed by getting hired a few years too late.

The ladies who administered the small court weren't thrilled about the computer project.  "How will it change our lives?  It will just be more work for us to set up and administer.  There's barely enough time in the day to do the work we have now and you want us to help you?  All this work to put speeding tickets and Fight Day on a computer."

Wednesday was Fight Day, the day when misdemeanor cases were handled, often domestic disputes that got out of hand and required police intervention.   The nasty stuff -- murders, robberies and serious beatings -- were handled by the Jackson County Court.  Even so, Fight Day drew a large crowd.

The police were more enthusiastic about the project.   The scheduling part of the system would cut down the time officers spent in court (you might have been able to achieve the same thing with a more effective manual scheduling system) and it was a resume builder -- "While working for the Independence Police Department I implemented a computerized court scheduling system for my patrolman."  Plus we could make site visits to St. Louis and Kansas City, which was very exotic being five miles away.  Technology transfer was the buzzword of the day.   Take a system from another city and make it work for yours.

The St. Louis trip was, in fact, interesting.  The head clerk, a tall and courtly black man, ex-military, treated us to lunch and did a good job showing us around and explaining the mechanics and benefits of his system.  I got to spend some serious face time with the police chief and his second in command. For some reason they amused themselves trying to get me drunk at dinner.   You'd think they'd have done a background check and discovered that in a prior life my job,  in addition to sowing mayhem among the North Vietnamese,  had been herding drunken commodores at officers' clubs throughout the Far East.  We ended up selecting the St. Louis system for Independence.  The chief and his assistant couldn't out drink me.

The police chief had gotten his job by taking on a special assignment for the city manager.  A little before I arrived, the city desegregated the public swimming pool.  Chief went in undercover to finger any troublemakers.  (Wearing a swimming suit at pool in a small town where everyone knows everyone, isn't exactly undercover, but that's the best I can do.  If you don't like, it write your own story.)  The new police chief wasn't asked to desegregate the police department.  Affirmative Action consisted of the city manager hiring young black man from Kansas City to be his assistant.  That was the extend of it.

The city council consisted of people who represented the best of small town America:  a college professor, a newspaper reporter, the League of Women voters.  They were about to be deposed.  Maybe it was the pool?  Maybe it was because the city manager, who was an outsider from California, raised the sewer rates by a dollar a month?  Maybe it was the city manager's black assistant?  It was thirty years too early for the Tea Party, but the sentiment was close.

The third project stakeholder was the municipal court judge.  He had a fearsome reputation.  After spending some time as observers at the court, the other systems analyst and I were certain he deserved it. 

The city planned to build a new court building, but for the time being the court still used the second floor of the old jail house.  There were rumors members of the Jesse James gang had once been locked up there.  Possible.  The building looked like it hadn't been painted since the days when the Jesse James terrorized Jackson County. 

Our first Fight Day as observers, the judge walks into court and takes his seat.  He eyes the crowd.  "There's a lot of you folks here today.  Please stand.   Thank you.   Now all of you line up along the far wall in front of the windows.  Thank you.  Very good.  The reason I've asked you to line up along the wall in front of the windows is that the building is condemned.   If the floor begins to collapse, I want to be sure that I'm the closest one to the door and the first person out."