London and the Girl in the Plaid Miniskirt

I wasn’t the first to see England since John Cherry left it in 1635 as an indentured servant destined for Norfolk, Virginia.  Dad crossed the Atlantic during WWII with the 1st Infantry Division and saw it from the Queen Mary.  I saw England in the 747’s descent to Germany in the wee hours of the morning that clearly revealed the dark island, that pearl set in a silvery sea.

The trip to England from Belgium was fatiguing and there was a cold wind whipping those on the decks.  Some kids dared the sea with stunts like leaning over the railing or shoving one another - “Chicken of the Sea.”  They were cussing in German; the words are about the same in English.  Gradually the fog lifted revealing England's coast glaring white in the partial cloud cover.  The White Cliffs of Dover were magnificent standing high above the sea with flocks of gulls gliding in the wind.  Our ship neared the west docks and the passengers began preparing for disembarkation and declaration.  A hydraulic pile driver caught my attention while I had my $45 BritRail pass stamped and boarded the London bound train.

My first encounter with one of the largest cities in the world was not a pleasant one, especially during rush hour at Victoria Station.  I escaped the mob and managed to reserve a bed for the night from a tourist office hosted by a multilingual red haired girl with an extremely short miniskirt from the St. Christopher's Student Services on 27-30 Clerkenwell Close well north of the Thames.  She directed me to St. James Center two miles west of Whitechapel where Jack the Ripper once prowled and where the plague ravaged in 1655.  I read somewhere that Lenin stayed in Clerkenwell for a time; it was a traditional den of iniquity for hardened criminals, prostitutes, and radicals.  Iron poles still braced many buildings that were damaged by the Blitz. 

My first impressions of a subway, affectionately known as the “Tube”, included flashing arrays of posters, huge colored maps, and a sea of impersonal humanity.  I emerged near St. James Center, a warehouse converted to a youth hostel.  Of course there were dregs there as well as straight Americans, Japanese and Scots.  Some of the Hippies sat reverently for hours picking off parasites under the dim glow of a hanging light bulb while the sun was setting and the church bells began ringing.  Two twin heroin dealers came in and the Hippie in the cot next to me began shooting up.  Girls were theoretically restricted to the second floor although many frequented the first floor during the day.   

I managed to see the usual London attractions like the British Museum where the Tutankamem Exhibit was showing, the Tower of London and the Crown Jewels, Parliament, Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square, and the Commons.  There’s nothing homogeneous about London: the Indian ticket taker, the visiting French children, the pretentious aristocrats with derby hats and pin-striped suits, the common people, the plump rosy faces of the children, the unshaven demeanor of a factory worker, and the scurrying housewife with bobby socks and pram.  I had breakfast at Victoria Station and a real Indian ate my leftovers.  The frenzy, pollution, and overcrowded conditions make London almost unbearable at times.  Curses, screeches, honks, revving engines, and sirens also produce bad memories.  Large cities are all the same.  I got out my National Geographic map and began planning to head to Scotland without meeting the queen.

The World of Bus Stop Willie

I had quit my supervisor’s job at the warehouse because it had become a dead end, but there was more to it than that.  I was pushing 40 years old when I created Strategic Business Intelligence Service and the lure of actually doing something intellectually challenging modeled on the Kiplinger Letter was just too much for me.  It was a high risk Liberal Arts failure; so in order not to starve, I ended up working for the Area Transportation Authority (ATA) as a bus washer for a short time.  It was a job that was so tough that you had to take a physical for it and besides, it could have led to a union job.  All you had to do was wash one bus in the morning and one in the afternoon.  Bear in mind the fact that each bus had 34 windows.  I was always tired because I worked hard.  Others goofed off and listened to their boom boxes before lunch.

The first step was learning how to drive one of those monsters.  Since I had driven an 18 ft. truck with a stick, it was a piece of cake.  After fetching the bus from the ATA barn you parked it in a line that forms in front of the washing bays.  That is where you do the prep like clean the windows.  (Jerry Curl was especially hard to get off the windows.)  Before that, I opened the back windows so that the giant vacuums sucked all the trash out the front door.  After going through the bays, I'd fill the bus, parked on the level, with two inches of soapy water for the mop-down and finished the job only when the bus came to a jerking halt that sent the dirty tsunami cascading out the front door. That is where Bus Stop Willie comes in because he was the reason I had the job.

I never met Willie, but he’s one of those illusive characters you never think twice about because he’s everywhere, leaving traces of his movements much like a lion that marks its territory.  I cleaned up after him so many times that I felt I knew him and his world as he made his rounds to downtown Kansas City on the Troost bus.  Piecing his story together was not too difficult even though he was just a phantom.

First on his busy schedule was Go-Chicken-Go.  Everyone on the East Side knows they sell good chicken, especially the fried livers and gizzards.  Willie would wash the chicken down with Wild Irish Rose or Night Train and throw the bones on the floor and stuff the empty bottles into the seats.  By this time he would have passed those major Kansas City attractions that never seem to make the guide books: the night club with the bullet holes in it, the tattoo parlor, the innocuous abortion clinic, the myriad of Troost pawn shops, and the hamburger joints with the two inch bullet proof glass by the cash register.  On his way to visit his sister in the county jail or his case worker at the state office building, Willie had time for a good nap only awakening long enough to relieve himself into the drain he had cleverly punched in the floor at the back of the bus.

I’ve had to eat a lot of humble pie in my life to survive; the job market cares little for those with a history degree. Business wants specialists.  Their world is one of things and stuff somewhere between Willie’s primitive needs and mine of idealism that always played second fiddle to hard dirty work.  His world was his briar patch.  Even with its occasional thorns it appeared to be comfortable and predictable, but it is not one I would want to enter because I’m just a different breed of cat.

The Crash of the Sea Stallion

Stepping off the bus into Camp Wilson for CAX78 was like sticking your head inside an oven.  Reservists had flown in from all over the country into 29 Palms for a live-fire desert exercise coached by the Israelis who were experts in that type of warfare.  We all thought it was a cruel joke that the big shots pulled in sending us to the most godforsaken backwater in America at the hottest time of year.  I still cannot believe that there are those on the active duty side that call it home.  Afternoons produce a surface temperature of 144 degrees.  It was so hot that road runners could be seen lining up in the shadows of telephone poles.  It’s only slightly cooler on the foot hills that are pot marked with craters and live shells.  A person could get killed around there.

Headquarters Company 24th Marines in Kansas City was sent there to coordinate the movements of three battalions of Marine reservists who were supported by an air wing that included A4’s based at El Toro.  I was an intelligence analyst in S-2.  Operations was chocked full of Vietnam veterans serving out the remainder of their contracts.  Women were entering the combat units at that time including a set of homely twins who somehow became ravishing beauties by the end of two weeks.  Our First Sergeant had to post a guard on their shower tent.  Nearly everyone volunteered for guard duty.  Feminization of the military was not without its more carnal fan base.

We were ferried up to Outpost Crampton by three Sea Stallion helicopters with single propellers unlike the more numerous and popular Chinooks that have two.  Our intelligence section was assigned to #401 - the one in the photo with me in front.  We all looked forward to getting on top of the mountains because it was only about 120 degrees up there.  Corpsmen measured the most extreme temperature anyone ever seen at 155 degrees inside an APC on the valley floor.  I was hot and tired after the steep hike from the landing zone; privates and lance corporals get stuck with a lot of humping.  Two years earlier at Camp Pendleton I had to carry a safe.  When I slumped into the corner of the shack someone almost immediately said, “Cherry, look out here.  There’s a chopper going down!”  Of course I did not believe him.  Our more energetic and imaginative Marines were always pulling practical jokes.

I reluctantly got to my feet to look out the window.  All I could see was a small smoke ring over the barren draws west of the shack.  By this time people were running down the mountain and shouting.  One of the three Sea Stallions that were still ferrying us up had crashed.  We found out later that three were killed and another three were severely injured.  When we flew over it the next day, I remember it looking like a burnt scorpion with just its tail sticking up missing the rotor that caused the crash.

 

Things like that happen all the time in the military.  Reservists get killed too.  Over the years I’ve researched the event with no avail.  My interest was rekindled when I took a closer look at the photo and discovered the helicopter's markings.  Perhaps there is a record at 29 Palms or in the local paper identifying it, but I could not help wondering how close I came and if the crashed Sea Stallion was #401.

I Discover the North Sea

My travel plan was to make it circular trip beginning in Germany and ending there, but I wanted to get to England first to adapt to backpacking.  The English could speak English - or at least try their version of it.  I couldn't understand German.  Their trains were powered by electricity and the rails always make a swooshing sound.  I’d never seen anything like them in America.  Who lost the war anyway? My ticket read: Frankfurt (Main) to Oostende via Kőln-Aachen-Brussels 2nd class, $1.75.  I wonder what it is today.  In fact the whole trip only cost $750 with about $575 for round trip air fare and that was for five weeks.  I’ll never do that again for two reasons:  it was cheaper to travel in those days and I’ve lost all illusions about riding in coach and backpacking.  For once I’d like to see what’s it’s like to be cramp-free.  I also have grown fond of knowing where my next meal is coming from and knowing where I’m going to sleep.  Thank you, McDonald’s.

Thousands of Baby Boomers were on the road in 1972.  I was just one of them, but I enjoyed talking to others who could speak English and tell me about their lives and trips.  An old man from Detroit and German by birth and his wife were in the same compartment with me.  Seems like all he could say was, “Yes sir,  this is my old stomping grounds.”  I liked him immediately because he had the guts to travel in his old age.  I also met a pony-tailed Hippie from Syracuse University who was less interesting, but had travel smarts that potentially could come in handy when we finished our trip down the Rhine to Oostende, Belgium arriving at 9:30 P.M. 

Walking the cobble stones of a strange deserted town after dark looking for a place to stay is not my idea of having fun.  To the Hippie, it was no big deal and I appreciated his confidence.  He casually suggested that we sleep in the cemetery.  That was the last place I wanted to be.  Or maybe I should say, will be.  Besides, I didn’t trust him. After he left, a Belgian whistled me off the streets.  He was the owner of ‘T Haantje (little cock) nieuwpoortsteenweg 5.  It was a café and art gallery that also rented rooms.  It was the first time among too many times that someone saved me from the cemetery.

Europe is a wonderful place to visit and even mysterious in its darkest hours before the dawn.  I got up at o-dark-thirty to make the Dover ferry that was anchored near the yacht of the king and queen of Belgium.  There should have been nothing to it; cross over to Dover and catch a train to London.  In a very short time after we had pulled out, I began to notice that we were not alone as the ship followed the buoys that marked the sea lane.  There were hundreds of what looked like row boats with telephone booths on them bobbing up and down on the greenest and coldest water I’ve ever seen.  It looked like wall-to-wall Christmas tree lots lit up by hundreds of lanterns with their strands of light bulbs and filled with fishermen pulling their nets to haul in North Sea cod and herring.  Those fishermen closest to our hull paid no attention to our churning wake, clanging bells, and fog horn. I could never have foreseen such an unanticipated and unforgettable sight at so early an hour.

Building Your Personal Book Library

My history professor once told us to start our libraries immediately.  By the time I had chosen my major I was interested enough to take him up on his advice and begin my collection in 1970 mostly with Modern Library reprints.  Only now in my retirement have I decided to start giving them away after finishing Journal of the Silent Majority.  I’ve read most of them at least three times including Edward Gibbon and I tend to butcher them with notes, multicolored highlighting, and Elmer’s glue repairs.  I’m keeping the most important ones like Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Carlyle’s The French Revolution, Fire in the Streets by Milton Viorst, The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, and Nihilists by Ronald Hingley because it discloses the ancestors of our glorified 1960s radicals.  These are just a few cited among my 751 footnotes.  It’s also good insurance to have all of the books on hand during the editing process.

History never made much sense until I began collecting a variety of books and began eliminating the bad ones, especially text books that had no passion or logic to them – mostly bullets and beans.  They never told the story of what the ordinary man saw on the streets.  Butchering history was not limited to textbooks.  I began to notice how some stories like Malcolm X changed.  As time passed and radical become normal, Malcolm’s crazy assertions were doctored by politically correct new authors.  Much of that occurred after 1960 when a new breed of cat apparently controlled the destiny of the American literary world.  I believe that seismic shift came when John Kennedy came to power and enabled the Left, especially the Media, to monopolize perception.  A watershed used book that I purchased for 50 cents was Tragic Era by Claude Bowers.  It made sense of America’s Reconstruction, the post-Civil War occupation of the South by the North. Most history books avoid that era because it holds too many uncomfortable truths about us as a nation.  It wasn’t just the different point of view, but the various contemporary sources cited and what they revealed that ignited my interest and further exposed the bias of modern American history books.  I personally witnessed a second occupation of the South and Bowers described in detail what I was seeing 100 years after the fact!

I was fortunate enough to obtain many books from the discarded piles that Mid-Continent North Library in Independence sells for a pittance.   It was Harry Truman’s library although it probably went by a different name when he used it as a young man.  I also spent many hours downstairs researching the old periodicals like Look and Life Magazine that are off limits today because people started stealing them.  After the ban, I started going to the dark aisles and recesses of UMKC.  If I won the lottery I probably would give the university library enough money for higher wattage bulbs.  History is foreboding enough without having an ambience of the crypt.

Brandeis University alumnae in Kansas City used to have tent sales of used books, records, magazines, and maps at the old Bannister Mall.  Those tents were huge and it was a success for many years, but finally disappeared.  I really missed it because it was exciting.  The Blue Ridge Mall did the same thing only in miniature with lesser variety.  Used book tent sales have become obsolete.  Maybe it’s because the newer generations don’t read books– just chirp, gurgle, and twitter.  Used book stores for the most part followed the same fate.  Independence Square used to have a couple of mom-and-pop stores.  One was owned by a lady whose plump and affectionate cat, Pricilla, inspected every customer.  On the same block there was another store badly lit and disorganized but owned by a lady who was a used book pack rat.  Brookside, south of the Country Club Plaza, had one of the first used book stores with exotic coffee and treats.  It too disappeared.  Low profit margins and electronic competition killed them.

Auctions are questionable places to find books.  Unfortunately, auctions reflect the interests of the owner whose estate is being sold.  History and biography books are few and far between because most people do not read serious books.  What you sometimes see are boxes of awful pulp fiction with Western or Romance themes.  For me science fiction is also a tragic waste of time.  Anybody can make that stuff up.  Truth is stranger than fiction.  The point is to keep looking.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the success of Amazon and how it has helped collectors of books.  Low prices and consistently good delivery are what keeps me going back.  The only drawback is not being able to physically browse to find that special one.  Others besides Amazon sell eBooks that have become fashionable.  They are OK so long as their electronic content is never modified - a tempting prospect for some who want to tweak history.  Although physical books aren’t the only sources authors should cite, I find them to be like an old shoe or a pair of old jeans – dependable and comfortable.

The Media’s Fascination with Criminals

Am I the only one who has noticed lately the rash of TV shows that chronicle criminal activity to the extreme?  I wrote a few of them down: Gang Wars: Oakland I, Prison Wives, Behind Bars, Lockup Boston, and San Quentin: Inside the Big House.  If you don’t notice them now, don’t be fooled.  They’ve backed off a bit since Christmas is just around the corner.

People love do-it-yourself shows so they must like Moonshiners.  It’s always interesting to see how the old timers made their liquor - even more so if the show is highlighted by someone with no teeth spitting his brew into a roaring fire. I believe television executives also see a two-for-one bargain in this particular story; generate sympathy for the lawbreaker and create disdain for his law abiding kin.  Moonshiners and a host of programs over the years reinforce the unfortunate stereotype of hill people as being lazy and backward.  Hollywood loves to do that if they can find a minority that won’t or can’t fight back.  One step beyond Hee Haw and the Beverly Hillbillies appears to be an acceptance and even an admiration of vice.

Perhaps the media class regards pot as being benign as they do moonshine; after all, that’s how Joe Kennedy got his start and how marijuana became their gateway drug.  Pot heads should enjoy Marijuana Outlaws and Marijuana USA because they show how to overcome adversity (breaking the law) and profiting from the experience.  Pot becomes just another commodity. We saw recently post-election celebrations of pot heads lighting up in hallucinatory bliss.  Television is also awash with stories of cocaine, crystal meth, and heroin trafficking by Mexican cartels using all kinds of smuggling schemes including tunnels, submarines, and even catapults to fling their dope across the border. 

I haven’t made a study of these television shows and I can’t review them all, but a socially redeeming quality seems to be missing.  Where’s the FCC?  Libertarians may be shocked, but most Americans believe in rules and not in “If it feels good, do it.”  As “progressive” as Communists were, Stalin imprisoned thieves and Mao disposed of the drug trade the hard way.

Popularizing or defending the actions of the worst elements is a losing proposition. I think what we are seeing is a softening up process that goes beyond ratings. There seems to be a genuine feeling of sympathy for these people. At least Cops always ended with the assertion that crime doesn’t pay.

Suicide at the Netherlands Hotel

In the late 1950s the Westport area, where I grew up in Kansas City, had its quaint attractions.  At 39th and Main we ran as kids in and out of all of them including Eddie Jacobson’s National Shirt Shop, the Beacon Café, the Roi-Tan cigar shop on the NE corner, and a newsstand owned by an ex-GI and his blond French wife.  We could barely understand a word she said.  Across the street was old Joe the cobbler whose bald head couldn’t conceal a hole that made him somewhat of a celebrity among the local children.  Of course, everyone knew that next to him was the neighborhood model shop stocked with the most gruesome of war machines:  the Hellcat, Hustler, Tiger tank, destroyers, and carriers.  Journal of the Silent Majority has more details about what Westport looked like during that time of innocence.

Most Baby Boomers never appreciated the bubble that was their childhood – at least the early period before 1960 until some harbinger broke that bubble and flung them into a new era.  I’ll make the guess that with me that harbinger came one day when we heard about a suicide at the Netherlands Hotel a stone’s throw from 39th and Main.

 

After school, a friend and I from Rollins Elementary sneaked into the parking lot behind the hotel to examine the scene.  We had always played there anyway, but never got caught or chased away.  As I looked up to the top-most floor that was the 10th I could see a screen pried loose from the small bathroom window.  Directly below on the concrete was the remaining purple splatter marks.  Officials didn’t make much of an effort in those days to clean up the mess.  I do not recall who he was or why he did it, but I’m sure he had his reasons.

What had happened was a graphic anomaly that parents had difficulty explaining to their children ranking up there with the Birds-and-the-Bees.    At least the violence was something that he had done to himself.  That was about to change.  Murder and mayhem in Westport and indeed the nation changed us all beginning in 1960 when utopians rearranged America by casting away hundreds of years of custom, convention, and law to accelerate social change by force and the rule of the bayonet.  For every foot civil rights gained, a yard was lost to the worst elements in the black population who profited from an all too familiar provocation-crisis-reward scenario that broke down law and order and bestowed upon extremists and terrorists an electronic sainthood.  Gangs, prostitutes, pushers, murderers, con artists, rapists, child molesters, and thieves who had been contained, migrated and thrived in decent areas like Westport.  I saw it all and the politically controlled history books still dare not print the truth.

What we as children saw in that suicide at the Netherlands Hotel was merely prelude, but we could never have guessed that or in the course of events, that it was rather benign.  I remember with fondness the fairytale world we lived in even with some of its darker exceptions, but we all knew what happened once Humpty Dumpty was broken.

Germany: First Contact

Robbing destiny has always been a constant theme with me and I knew that robbing time cheated destiny in the manner of someone rebelling from his station in life in order to buy an experience that those in his class shouldn’t desire or understand.  I suppose my relatives always thought it was just a quirk in me, but discovery is a powerful motivator.  In my travels I have often marveled, as I walked down the lanes, thoroughfares, or back roads of Europe, how money was the only thing that made the journey possible.  I remember the extremes of wealth and poverty and wonder why the rich have so much money when there is so much good to spend it on. 

My journey in 1972 to Europe began May 22nd as the Lufthansa 747 touched down near the pine forests that lie on the outskirts of Frankfurt, West Germany.  They reminded me of the tall pines from my summers in Muskegon, Michigan.  There was an immediate physical exhilaration from the impact of clean fresh air and low humidity.  I had the misfortune to being sandwiched the entire trip between two fat bodies in that awful middle section of coach.  After each meal the lady to my left would steal the silverware – real silver, but I digress.  When I got to Frankfurt, I knew enough to get my traveler's checks cashed into German Marks at the train station in the center of town.  I was impressed by the scaffolds and the construction.  They were getting ready for the 1972 Olympics, but you could still see large WWII shell holes on many of the older buildings. 

A Hippie told me that it was best to stay in the Haus der Jugend (Youth Hostel) many blocks away and that I needed to get a tram to get there.  The only thing on my mind was getting a bed so that I could shake off my jet lag and get to England where I could more easily adjust to backpacking.  The tram I caught was rocking from Hippies singing the “Age of Aquarius.” 

About dusk, the kids at the hostel had hidden a Mideast illegal alien, a Syrian.  They offered him their beds, but he refused and slept on the floor under one of the bunks.  He asked me in broken English about America and what would be the best city to immigrate to.  I told him Denver was my choice because of its cleanliness and scenery.  Much later I had second thoughts about this innocuous transient because I learned that the terrorists who killed the Israeli athletes in Munich at the Olympics were Syrians. 

Next morning I awoke to the sounds of clanking dishes from the kitchen, gurgling water from the fountains outside, and quacking ducks.  It was standard procedure for those who paid less for their beds to do some work like sweeping the floors or doing dishes.  The hostel was like a commune with kids from all over the world. I got dressed and rolled up my K-Mart felt-lined sleeping bag that I always slept in.  Even with a backpack, I could really walk in those days.

On my way to the train station I managed to get sidelined enough to see Goethehaus which has been dismantled during the war for obvious reasons.  Being in the house of the father of Romanticism impressed me little although I believe I’m a Romantic by nature.  Goethe was relatively prosperous having servants and a quaint home for that time.  Everything harked of warmth, friendliness, and comfort.  Out back was a small well-kept courtyard with massive brick fences adorned by broken glass cemented to the tops.  A longing for the infinite and possessing a sad fatalism apparently carried with Germans a just and savage contempt for intruders.

The Cat Lady and the Lemon Tree

Several years before my Navy retirement, I was sent out to San Diego with the Seabees to work at the naval base.  With the increased numbers of reservists, the active duty side had the manpower to augment community outreach programs.  They are regarded as an important feather-in-the-cap for the Navy.  We were sent up to National City to rehab the house and demolish the dilapidated garage of an elderly Japanese widow whose husband had been in the Navy.

Our Equipment Operators and Builders bore the brunt of most of the heavy construction - something they actually enjoy.  The rest of us did the simple things like paint the house and rake the yard.  Of course, such an operation had its other characters no less important.  Our Navy public relations officer and his entourage of big shots monopolized the television cameras.  We all thought, “Where did these guys come from?” At the end of the day a Mexican driver backed his old truck up to the garage to carry the rubbish away.  There was nothing unusual about that except his final destination was not the land fill, but Tijuana to build houses.  Talk about cultural shock.

Since my rate was Storekeeper First Class, I was in the group assigned to clean and rake the yard. Before long I noticed a couple of unusual things.  First, there were all these strange flat stones scattered about the back yard. I thought it was like those Japanese gardens you hear about.   Second, I noticed there was a small tree with lemons growing on it.  I did not mention it, but there was also a strange smell where the stones were.  It turned out not to be a Japanese garden.  Under each of the stones she had laid to rest one of her many cats. The yard was almost wall-to-wall with stone markers.  I guess it was her feline version of Arlington Cemetery. 

Our assignment in National City took only a couple of days.  Its cast and crew declared victory and moved on. I guess it was routine for them.  Most of us from the Midwest thought California was a nice place to visit, but we wouldn’t want to live there.  As for me, I still remember the Cat Lady, but I’ve never seen anything like that lemon tree.

Fiscal Cliff Triggered French Revolution

All you hear on the news today is Fiscal Cliff this and Fiscal Cliff that.  If a humble warehouse worker predicted today’s events 28 years ago in a guest column, why does the Media ignore the same history that the humble worker based his column on?  Perhaps Democrats and Republicans dare not cite precedent because it might lead the public to the realization of just how serious the deficit problem has become perhaps to the point of revolution.  I wrote, “When the next group is ‘taxed,’ their perception of business and government is likely to change, and in a manner not done quietly.” The ruling class appears to be whistling past the graveyard. 

I submitted the article when corporate America had been terminating its workforce by the millions including me. “Higher levels of middle class next to feel deficit’s bite” Kansas City Star, 25 November 1984 7J.   It’s funny how unemployment focuses the mind.  I explained what happened in France by 1789.  Generally, France ran out of money after her involvement in a foreign war, the American Revolution.  In order to “appease” the deficit the King called for a meeting of the “Estates-General” or France’s three classes who hadn’t met since 1614.  Since the King and the Nobles were broke and the Clergy was off limits, only the Bourgeoisie (business) was left to tax. Those that had the power didn’t have the money and those that had the money didn’t have any power.  The Bourgeoisie (Third Estate), mostly farmers, but spearheaded by the French Media, overthrew the king, aristocracy, and Church with the help of Parisian workers.

By the early 1980s in the United States corporations had been paying billions in taxes for the utopian socialist experiments of the Great Society.  Spending by the government eclipsed revenue and inflation became a crisis.  Unchecked spending also became a major pretext to remove the Democrats from office, shut down the economy to break the back of inflation, and to throw millions out of work.  Fighting inflation became the mantra for business to recoup revenue by theoretically making operations efficient.  What actually took place during Republican rule was America’s bourgeoisie shifted the burden of taxation from themselves to individuals.  I wrote, “Since 1981, under a politically receptive climate, the main responsibility of paying taxes has shifted from corporations to individuals.”

Additionally, corporations shipped jobs overseas by the millions where taxation was minimal or non-existent and even started looting the wages and benefits of the employees that were left.  I wrote, “The idea of taxes being paid only by money is a provincial one.  The first deficit installment paid by the 1981-82 private sector workers was one made in jobs and tears.  It assumed the form of a ‘fire bell in the night’ to the middle class, and those above now stand to feel the next ripple effect.”  I even predicted the next workers to be taxed.  “The last and least vulnerable strata of workers to be “taxed” probably will be union and government workers whose financial protection was determined by political strength.”  Then I predicted the taxation of the next class.  “Professionals, stung by the creeping erosion of their economic base, will again reel from new taxation schemes when they are solicited by government as the next group able to pay deficit taxes.”  That is where we are today – on the precipice or Fiscal Cliff of who will pay?  If you do not believe me, check out Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution.

The Silent and Real Vanguard of American Society

If someone comes out against homosexuality, he is demonized as a “Homophobe” or worse, even though the Bible in Leviticus 20:13 calls it an abomination.  Intolerance by the Left does not allow those opposing “fashionable correctness” to escape the drag net.  They mockingly label Christians as being out of touch and old fashioned. 

I believe those who have faith and values are the real vanguard of society like they always have been. Besides being the most educated generation, Baby Boomers and the Silent Majority also have long memories. We recall evil: the Social Revolutionaries of the SDS personified by Tom Hayden; the Anarchist YIPPIES at their best at the Chicago 8 Trial where Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman made a fool of Judge Hoffman; and finally the bomb throwing Weathermen ideologically guided by Jim Mellon. We remember the reign of the black radicals: H. Rap Brown, Soul on Ice Eldridge Cleaver, and Black Panther Huey Newton and their clarion call for violence and a utopian dream world like Soul City. That era was billed as an Age of Aquarius – love and harmony abounding.  Then there were the celebrity status killers of the era like Charles Manson that altered the justice system for the worse escaping the death penalty that society uses to defend itself.  Our sentiments are based on revolutionary events that we cannot forget.  Our detractors seem to remember the era as a psychedelic blur.

Youngsters today who are influenced by Pavlov’s dream machine do not realize that witches, warlocks, and militant atheists manifested themselves in the likes of Albert Pike, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and John Dewey.  They all strutted and fretted their hour upon the stage and were heard no more as did Karl Marx, Frederich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao who murdered tens of millions in artificial famines in the Volga and Dnieper river basins, and in China.  Even the august testimony of Alexander Solzhenitsyn concerning atheist atrocities against Russia's stubborn spiritual forces failed to reach Americans who are electronically enslaved by the Left. 

Those who attack religious belief will always be with us; so it’s alright if the hipsters make fun of us.  That’s what they do, but we’re more hip than they think.  It is they who are out of touch, hopelessly parochial, and who lack critical thought because history proves their gains have always been temporary.  The biggest irony of them all is that they are a kept lot.  The Silent Majority endures the blows of the worst elements and preserves their rights – at least temporarily.

Why did you use the word “Negro”?

I admit to being pulled over by the thought police.  It happened earlier this year when I was fortunate enough to have a 4 minute interview with a literary agent who was kind enough to give my Journal of the Silent Majority a look-see.  I was humbled to meet a real New York literary agent because, as the TV commercial suggests, the chances of that happening are comparable to be mauled by a brown bear and polar bear on the same day.  You seldom see these people west of the Appalachians.

Her first words were, “Why did you use the word Negro in your book”?  I had been pulled over.  I instantly guessed that I had created probable cause for search and then it came, “Do you have an agenda”?  And that was that. It was my introduction to the politically correct literary world and its legions of enforcers.  I replied, “I don’t believe the word ‘Negro’ is a pejorative term.”  Yes, I did have an agenda – the truth – a new kind of American history where “Tell it like it is!” is not just window dressing, but a legitimate and respected endeavor.

I did not have time to tell her that “Negro” and even “Colored” is an accurate and necessary term in American history.  Why hasn’t the NAACP changed its name?  Should sports fans consent to the renaming of The Negro Leagues?  Should Harry Golden, not exactly a member of the great right wing conspiracy, have changed his Mr. Kennedy and the Negroes to Mr. Kennedy and the African Americans?  Most children who know black history will remember Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association.  In Martin Luther King Jr.’s I have a Dream speech “Negro” is used 14 times.  In his Where Do We Go From Here speech King used it a whopping 75 times. What’s more, millions of Americans who lived in post-World War II America don’t believe it is a bad word.  Besides, “African American” is a misleading term because it is not accurate in an historical setting.  It implies that all Africans are black, something that Arab immigrants from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt would dispute.

Wait till she sees other words like Bourgeoisie and Proletariat that I use to replace the term Middle Class that has so many meanings as to make it meaningless.  Reverse McCarthyism will issue an all-points bulletin.  In Journal of the Silent Majority I also minimized the use of other inaccurate words like “Conservative” and “Liberal.”

The interview was an interesting journey. I received a subtle warning and not a ticket this time, but she probably knew that I’d be back on the same road tomorrow.

Arts & Crafts Show Appearance, Dec. 1 - 2

I have a table at the Optimist Club’s Arts and Crafts Show Saturday and Sunday at the West Plains, Missouri Civic Center.  It offers a “Wide Range of Exhibits”.  It’s also an opportunity to publicize Journal of the Silent Majority and this blog.  It’s all part of my ongoing effort to get the book published, hopefully in 2013.

I always make it a point to give away books in my library, so I’ll have plenty on hand including – you guessed it – history and biography.  There will be back issues of Writer’s Digest and a few books on writing that aren’t too outdated.  They’re also free.  I’ll also share my discoveries on the eBook process.  If there are those who want to talk about WWII and North Africa, they are my specialties as well.

I’ll also bring a copy of Missouri’s Century Farms published this summer with discount order forms.  Acclaim Press was kind enough to publish in its entirety my Century Farms submission that led grandpa’s homestead to be included in the book.  Since there are over 3,000 Missouri Century Farms, the book has a wider appeal than just to the Cherry family.  Yours may be in it.

70th Anniversary of the Invasion of North Africa

There were more than 12,000,000 Americans who participated in WWII of which 150,000, including my father, landed in North Africa in November, 1942 in Operation Torch. Unfortunately, Americans do not know their collective story in fighting the Vichy French, Erwin Rommel, and his Africa Corps. It is tragic and revealing that newspapers never, even the local ones that recorded their return, carried but a handful of the stories of returning GIs and the strange things and places they saw like Oran, Mers El-Kébir, Algiers, Philippeville, Bone, Kasserine, and Bizerte. Nor does the public appreciate that the overwhelming majority were not technically in combat, but were in the Services of Supply (SOS) that included the Engineers, Chemical units, the Quartermaster Corps, Ordnance, Medical units, Signal Corps, and the Transportation Corps.

Dad was in the Center Attack Group transports of the 2nd Corps in the 1st Infantry Division. The 1st Division Headquarters Co. and its 1st Quartermaster Co. landed at Oran in the second wave at “Z” landing zone from the passenger liner H.M.S. Reina Del Pacifico, the ship that carried him. Oran forms a perfect harbor. It’s an artificial indentation among the surrounding hills with a 2,000 ft. peak on its west side.  The November weather was cold and rainy the first days of the landing. Oran was also a dangerous place.  He told me of the sight of one troop ship sitting in the ocean under a perfectly clear Mediterranean sky when a German submarine blew it up.  He said that in 10 minutes there was nothing left, not one thing, but a ring of smoke where the ship once was.  He said that the Mediterranean was the “bluest of blue”. The Germans sank the freighter Arthur Middleton on January 1, 1943, bombed Oran nineteen days later, and bombed the harbor on March 19, 1943.  Dad underwent aerial bombing and saw a black soldier get decapitated from shrapnel. 

Dad spent two years in Africa running convoys and hauling supplies eastward through the coastal valleys of the Atlas Mountains to help the 1st Infantry Division take the port of Bizerte, the German’s last supply base. At Oran he became a platoon sergeant over 16 trucks with black drivers and white guards. A major Transportation Corps truck head was established at Mostaganem up the coastal road east of Oran for the drive against Bizerte.  Convoys were always getting shot up.  Dad was proud of his plan to stagger trucks of six each to get to the destination without being bombed or strafed in a large convoy. 

At the eastern most point of the Atlas Mountains there is a hook or chain of mountains that goes southward from Bizerte forming what they used to call the dorsal.  The chain formed a natural barrier to the German’s armor so the main supply base was established at Tébessa west of the Kasserine Pass.  Rommel tried to break through, but mountains, B-24s, and armor don’t get along.  After an unsuccessful early attack by the Americans in 1942, the African Campaign drew down with the final assault on Bizerte near Tunis in the spring of 1943.  There were 275,000 German POWs taken at Tunis. Dad probably took part in their evacuation to Oran and POW camps.  He also saw U.S. troops in African prison camps overlooking the Mediterranean where they had been placed because of desertion.  He said they would jump over the cliff there rather than fight.  I believe that was at the Santa Cruz stockade above Oran.  One night he fell asleep on the side of the road with his rifle at his side while all night German prisoners went by.  That might have been at Tunis, but it drives me crazy because I can’t remember what he said.

Why are you applying for this job?

The following are answers to that humiliating employment question that we’ve all wanted to put on a job application. They are quoted from my old radio show and Journal of the Silent Majority.

I am applying for this job because starvation is not an option.

I am applying for this job at Fast Times Liquors because I am an alcoholic and I desperately need your health care benefits and company discount.

I am applying for this job because my name is Hannibal and I could not get a job in my chosen field of daycare management.

I am applying for this job at World Plastics because my friend, Joe Frankelstein, who works here, said you have the most benefits, the best pay, and have to do almost nothing to get them.

I am applying for this job because I’ve always wanted the chance to be rewarded by having my own “employee of the month” parking spot just like the Geico lizard.

I am applying for this job because I want to make a lot of money so that I can have my own business and hire a loser like you to ask the dumbest questions I’ve ever heard.

I am applying for this job because my old job was outsourced by an ascetic from the Lago Tribe of the lower Amazon who was apparently more ascetic than me.

I am applying for this job because I’ve heard your retirement option at 85 is the best in the country.

I am applying for this job because I am a masochist and love the public humiliation of asking for a minimum wage job. 

I am applying for this job at Hillsdale Medical Center because I’m running out of body parts to sell.

I am applying for this job because I have been an independent wine taster at 12th and Troost for 30 years and I am ready to make a higher commitment to the wine and spirits industry.

I am applying for this job at the Tip Top Modeling Agency because my probation officer said it would be a good way to meet chicks.

I am applying for this job because I, like Clark Griswold, have always wanted to be in the food preservative business.

I am applying for this job because I’m a corporate spy trying to learn more about your company.

The Republican Party is alive and well for a reason.

Republicans don’t have to worry about reaching out and pleasing minorities.  Republicans will always have a place at the table because they are part of a family, a well-oiled ruling class machine whose brother is the Democrat Party and whose single parent of both is the Media who creates and nurtures them. Circumstances indicate the existence of Alternation of Power Protocols. Not for one moment do I believe that a billion dollar monopoly will not defend and perpetuate itself by all means necessary against encroachments made by fickle democracy.

For a 20 year period starting in 1972 America’s sharing of power between Republicans and Democrats, the foundation that keeps the illusion going, needed repair.  Richard Nixon was cut short and resigned which led to the reversal of an election. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter served one term.  Republicans held on to power too long under Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. Democrats allied with the Media saw 1992 as a way of breaking the Republican reign with the disruptive cultivation of Ross Perot – a balancing act that almost got out of hand for both parties. Since political stability and continuity are good for Wall Street, 8 year terms are apparently better for Wall Street in the long haul.

Since 1992 a pattern has emerged that won’t upset the apple cart. More is in my upcoming book, Journal of the Silent Majority. It has to do something with the watershed capability of controlling presidential elections via the modem, touch screen, and the technological advances made in the late 1990s and refined by Election 2000. The day of the local party bosses determining elections was over.  Election rigging became centralized under new management.

Gullible Americans trust the fox in the chicken house and never question who tabulates the vote.  All the fox has to do is appoint a commission and wave the magic wand and presto, untraceable electronic impulses replace paper ballot. Where are the muckrakers, investigators, dissenters, reformers, and agitators?  The answer is they have been beaten down, but their saving grace is in those extraordinary events that inevitably overtake both political parties. Truth is like the back end of a slinky; it always catches up with the lies in front.  I predict that Republicans will somehow pull it off in 2016 and 2020.

The U.S.S. Old America, Brace! Brace!

It appears that despite the efforts of the Republican and Democrat crew of the American Titanic, events beyond their control will determine her fate because its course cannot be altered. Predatory capitalists and socialists represented by the two entrenched parties feed from the same trough. Extremists from both sides rule the day because of the removal of opposition parties through fixed elections. Even with the monopoly the officers of the existing order can no longer collectively solve the nation’s problems as they sail into the ice fields. 

Silent Majority Americans in the lower decks find themselves justified in their disgust for the two-party system and in a fatalist judgment of our corroded institutions. We are bracing for impact.  We fully believe that moves against Social Security and Medicare will be an act of war against us. There is a gathering storm reminiscent of which class gets its feathers plucked in order to appease the deficit. That event led to the French Revolution.

History tells us that civilizations are like the blooming of flowers; they experience the uncertainty and elation of youth, they mature, and fade into the perils of old age and die.  America is no different.  We are just a heartbeat away from a disastrous war, an end to our civil liberties, an economic collapse, or crop failure that made irreconcilable class conflicts the stuff of the French Revolution and the Revolutions of 1848. In the meantime, our new epoch into which we are sailing promises to be a terrifying, but interesting one.  Our old constitutional republic, the U.S.S. Old America, is sailing into the night.

JFK Assassination Disinformation

The Military Channel’s JFK: Inside the Target Car reveals a curious wave of Warren Commission apologists on national television. It claims JFK was indeed shot from behind as the Warren Commission said and “history will be remade.”  However, author Jim Garrison claimed that on November 17, 1963 a telexed warning was issued to all FBI offices, but ignored: “. . . MAY ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE PRESIDENT KENNEDY ON HIS PROPOSED TRIP TO DALLAS TEXAS . . . .”  Someone had apparently let the conspiracy cat out of the bag.  Ms. Lincoln, Kennedy’s personal secretary, said on the Larry King Show in the early 1980s that her husband heard men talking in a restaurant about plans to assassinate the President. She told the President and he replied, “They’ll just have to get me in church.”   My particular interest stems from being a contemporary who recollects events.  I heard that warning on the radio about three days before the assassination when I lived in Kansas City.

The documentary cavalierly dismisses the gun shot echoes brought up by the 1978 House Assassinations Committee as too complex to determine if there was a fourth shot that indicated more than one location. The moderator then focuses on the impossibility of a front shot. A Commerce Street vista would offer no concealment and the limousine’swindshield would have blocked the shot.  The show’s resident expert sniper would have favored the north end overpass location because the storm drain conceals the sniper from the train switch tower, but the moderator cavalierly deflects consideration to the exposed grassy area in front of the north fence because present-day shrubbery is blocking the sight picture from the drain. Finally, the parking lot picket fence location near photographer Zapruder was rightly dismissed because it would have been a perpendicular shot fatal to Jackie.

The presence of a 3’X3’X5’ deep storm drain at the northwest end of the picket fence with an 18” getaway pipe was originally disclosed on film by the Colliers brothers in Votescam, the Movie in 1985.  In the book, That Day in Dallas, reporter Bob McNeil stands among a crowd over the drain where the front gunman was located.  I believe this; the bullet originated here, passed by the Stemmons Freeway sign on through the President, and terminated as a lateral nick in the curb.

The broadcast had too many loose ends even though bullet fragments were considered the “best evidence” by the Warren Commission.  Accounting for the number of bullets and where they came from is good.  DNA could also prove a conspiracy.Kennedy’s clip-on tie (FBI Exhibit 59) could reveal that there was a front shot.  If there was no matter on the ties inside, the round would have to have come from the front.  If JFK was shot from behind, there would be DNA or bone fragments carried from the bullet and imbedded into the white lining of the tie. Omissions of graphic evidence of the autopsy, while respecting “the memory of beloved President,” are outdated relics and indicate a cover-up.  The head snap movie frames, back and to the left revealing a front shot, were omitted from the documentary.  Substituted instead were shots fired at a car crash dummy billed as an exact replica of the human head complete with steel neck rings.  Finally, a recreation of splatter evidence revealed matter exploding spherically not in a forward path indicating a shot from behind – the premise for the recreation.

The documentary was cleverly done, but packed with omissions, inaccuracies, and downright distortions.  The motive for doing so broaches the question of “why?”  Perhaps the answer is related to another lesser known conspiracy theory; the Media covered up the truth for the appropriation of the national vote tabulation process.