He calls them “Japs”
18 Friday Jul 2014
Posted in American History, California history, World War II
Author Archives: ag1970
A Reporter’s Notebook
16 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in Writing
I’m sorry I’m posting so much, but I am laid up and besides that, but this is how my mind has worked all my life. It always has lots to think about.
This morning it was about two wonderful interviews I got to do when I was a reporter.
One was with Tom Carolan of the Carolan House in Grover. He was 100 when a gifted photographer, Thom Howells, and I met him. Carolan’s home was, to borrow Steinbeck, like a museum of uncatalogued exhibits, like an incredible antiques shop. I was particularly taken, and so was Thom, by a pair of beautifully-crafted binoculars from 1906. Carolan was Irish-born–not fond of Oueen Victoria–funny, eccentric, and delightful. He still missed the love of his life. He outlived Mrs. Carolan by twenty years. She was a New York girl, I think, with whom he, a young immigrant had fallen in love, during the McKinleyvAdministration. . I loved the interview and I loved his little house, one of the first in Grover City.
I get a little emotional in old homes because some part of me intuits the lives that have left their traces in them, and the Anne Frank home in Amsterdam very nearly overwhelmed home me. Even as a supposedly objective historian, I have a consistent habit of making friends I have never met. The young men of World War II I am now researching are from my father’s generation, but their lives ended so young that they become, in a way, like adopted sons. They are my boys, and I miss them.
The second wonderful interview was with Gene Saruwatari over coffee at what is Pancho’s today. It was still Sambo’s, and a place where in high school I had spent hours talking about books and music and poetry and ideas over botomless cups coffee–ten cents, no limit on refills–with my friend Paul. A peroxide blonde with a beehive who snapped her gum and looked tough–she more than held her own with truckers, farmhands, and drunks– served us. But she liked Paul and me, called us “Hon,” and so I liked it when Gene suggested that place for the interview.
(By the way, we all had crushes on Gene’s lovely sister, Gayle, back in high school and also with the car Gayle drove–their Dad’s 1969 400-horsepower Pontiac GTO, black top over midnight blue.)
It had suddenly suddenly occurred to me that all the walnut trees of my youth, including the groves that had once surrounded the high school, were gone. I remember that Joe Loomis, in his woodcutting days, had cut enough firewood from them to keep all the fireplaces at Hearst Castle roaring for fifty years.
Gene told me a pest–the husk fly larvae–had infested the trees and so killed walnut cultivation in the Valley. But Gene made it interesting, and then even more interesting when he talked about how his grandfather, who harvested walnuts as well as vegetables (My Kelly grandparents had 40 acres of almond trees in Williams, California) had come from Japan and settled here.
I remember Tom and Gene because in both interviews, I had to struggle to take notes. Sometimes you just want to put down your pen and Reporter’s Notebook and listen to good people tell good stories. It is a great honor.
The Return of the “St. Louis”
16 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in American History, News
St. Louis passengers waiting to disembark in Havana. They would be turned away.
In May, 1939, the German liner St. Louis left Hamburg, bound for Havana, with over 900 passengers—most of them European Jews.
They hoped their stay in Cuba would be a short one; they’d applied there for U.S. visas. But when the St. Louis reached Havana, only 28 of the passengers were admitted. The rest were turned away at the demand of Cuban President Frederico Laredo Bru. Cuba was still feeling the effects of the Depression, the immigrants were seen as a threat, and Cuba’s right-wing press was powerful.
St. Louis had not stayed in Havana long enough for the Europeans, now stateless refugees, to have their U.S. visas processed. But her German captain–a determined man, and one deeply sympathetic to the passengers in his care–set course for the American mainland.
Despite intense press coverage of the passengers’ plight—Kristallnacht and the “racial laws” had bluntly served notice of what Nazi Germany had in store for them—this, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, is what happened.
Sailing so close to Florida that they could see the lights of Miami, some passengers on the St. Louis cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge. Roosevelt never responded.
U.S. Coast Guard cutters shadowed St. Louis to make sure she did not try to enter an American port. Despite pleas on the passengers’ behalf, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King also denied them entry. Eventually the ship returned to Europe. The UK admitted 288 passengers; the remainder were dispersed throughout France, Belgium, and Holland, all overrun by the Wehrmacht in 1940.
At least 227 vanished in the Holocaust.
Today the United States deported a group of Hondurans: 17 women and 21 children, boys and girls between 15 and 18 months. Their charter flight landed in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the city, according to U.N. data, with the highest murder rate in the world.
This is where the photograph of these deportees, a mother and daughter, was taken.
We cannot condemn…
15 Tuesday Jul 2014
Posted in American History, California history, World War II
Japanese-Americans await transport at the Santa Anita Racetrack. They slept in the stables.
From a letter to a University of Oregon alumni magazine that ran an article on the internment of World War II:
“In 1942, U.S. Marines were battling the Japanese in the Guadalcanal jungles. American aircraft carriers were sunk by Japanese warplanes. So many ships were sunk in the Solomon Islands ‘slot’ that it was nicknamed Iron Bottom Sound. The fighting was a match of equals that could have gone either way. The American public was frightened of a West Coast invasion. We cannot condemn 1942 policy using our 2013 mores and sensibilities. The prospect of a ready made collaborationist population, following a Japanese invasion, impelled the internments of Japanese Americans.”
This, of course, excuses the irrational. Consider the other coast of the United States:
–In 1941, German U-boats were already attacking American warships: the destroyers Greer and Kearny came under fire before a torpedo took the Reuben James and 115 of her 159-man crew in October, five weeks before Pearl Harbor. Even before then, with the fall of France in June 1940, war hysteria in America had been intense. With FDR’s blessing, J. Edgar Hoover would compile voluminous lists, aided by wiretaps, of suspected German Fifth Columnists living in the United States; the agency included more lists of any American who subscribed to periodicals written in German or Italian, and until FDR ordered the registration and monitoring of all aliens, there were isolated but frightening cases of Germans or German-Americans who were attacked–one was murdered–by wrongheaded “Patriots,” deprived of our 2013 mores and sensibilities.
–By 1942, American troops were fighting Rommel’s Afrika Korps—and getting routed, at Kasserine Pass. In general, the war was going against the Allies on both the Western Front—the disastrous Dieppe Raid is a notable example–and Eastern Front, with Gen. von Paulus’s Sixth Army, which would eventually surrender at Stalingrad, defeating Soviet forces in combat around Kharkov.
In the Pacific war, we had lost the Philippines, just as the War Department knew we would, and our Pacific possessions, but we’d taken the war to Japan with the Doolittle Raid in April and achieved a much more substantive victory–the first American turning point–at Midway in June with destruction of four of the six carriers that had begun the war against us at Pearl Harbor, along with the cadre of the Japanese naval air forces.
–German U-boats sank 82 American ships in all waters in December 1941 alone; In 1942, they sank 121 American ships off the East Coast and 42 along the Gulf Coast out of a total of 500 American merchant marine ships sunk by German submarines that year. Americans on holiday, from Coney Island to Miami, could see our ships glowing at night as they burned,, with their crews. A U-boat also delivered a team of Abwehr saboteurs onshore near Jacksonville, Florida. We were bleeding ships and English children were beginning to go hungry: they were allowed one small egg every four weeks.
During the same period, Japanese submarines sank a total of four ships off the West Coast.
–120,000 Japanese-Americans were interned under Executive Order 9066. Fewer than 3,000 Italian-Americans or Italian aliens and 11,000 German-Americans or German aliens were interned.
Stabbed in the Arras, Bigod!
15 Tuesday Jul 2014
Posted in Film and Popular Culture
Give me a flit-flit here…
…and a flit-flit there…
John Gielgud as Hamlet. This look’s for you, Mother…
I’m sorry. I cannot sit through Olivier’s Hamlet. There’s entirely too much flitting, and Ophelia, he’s just not that into you. We saw the play, perhaps Shakespeare’s longest, and I was ready to shake off his mortal coil about halfway into Act III. Tedious. Now Olivier’s Richard III—that’s delicious malevolence. I love that film.
Elizabeth and I saw Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in London; I rented a little pair of opera glasses but we couldn’t focus them because we were laughing so hard. That’s good Shakespeare, that.
One of the best Hamlets ever was said to be John Gielgud, and Gielgud directed one of my favorite actors, Richard Burton, in the role in a 1964 film.
Both Gielgud and Burton were big drinkers and did not mind imbibing before or during a performance, like the way Babe Ruth ate hot dogs. Burton once drank a fifth of vodka, gave a flawless performance in Camelot, then threw up.
Gielgud was in his cups a wee bit in a London play where his character was to commit suicide in the final act, which, now that I think about it, makes Hamlet’s failure to act after the mid-play “To be or not to be…” soliloquy even more painful. In Gielgud’s play, his final line was delivered to a butler: “A pint of port and a pistol, if you please.”
Burton suspects Guinevere’s mind is not on a Doe, a Deer, a Female Deer. Instead, she’s thinking about…
…Robert Goulet’s Lancelot!
Well, of course, it didn’t come out that way. Gielgud asked instead for “a pint of piss and a portal.”
The rest was Silence.
A few of the 9,478 reasons why I love “Casablanca”
14 Monday Jul 2014
Posted in American History, Film and Popular Culture
Since it’s Bastille Day, and we’ll always have Paris. I’m thinking about Casablanca.
It is fascinating to read about this film because so much of the cast was caught up in the events of the day: A native Berliner, Conrad Veidt, had played one of the principal roles in the 1920 Expressionist masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Veidt, who despised the Nazis, played the remorseless and humorless Major Strasser and thus set the standard for a generation of faux-Nazi film officers. He was not remotely like Strasser in real life: he loved golf as much as he hated Hitler, but died, tragically, of a heart attack only a year after Casablanca’s release, while playing at the Riviera Country Club.
Strasser’s nemesis, the freedom fighter Victor Laszlo, was played by an Austrian who was living in England when war broke out in 1939, Paul Heinreid. The English were about to deport him as an enemy alien when Veidt spoke up for his friend and made his Hollywood career possible.
Peter Lorre was another Austrian—his character, who has the stolen Letters of Transit, is shot ten minutes into the film—and Lorre was, like Veidt, a star in German Expressionist film: he was the child-killer in the sensational and controversial 1931 film, M. Lorre, a Jew, recognized quickly the nature of Hitler’s rule and fled Germany. Several of the lesser players are, like Lorre, refugees from the Third Reich: Hitler was indirectly responsible for a real Golden Age in American film.
Neither the studio nor Bogart thought much of Casablanca at the time–it was just another job for him, for Warner Brothers, just another assembly-line feature; it was shot in a little over nine weeks. Off the set, Bogart’s major concern was surviving the violent temper tantrums of his alcoholic wife—his third—Mayo, whom he sardonically nicknamed “Sluggy.” On the set, Bogart was extremely uncomfortable with the love scenes: he didn’t consider himself a romantic lead, and his favorite part of the film must have been when he finally got a revolver in his hand. That was his moment—not, as is the case for the rest of us, the closing dialogue with Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa.
Bergman wasn’t even thinking about Casablanca. She was preoccupied with snagging the role of Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls. The bromide that “the camera loved her” was certainly true in Casablanca; director Michael Curtiz’s cinematographer, Arthur Edeson, used soft focus skillfully in her closeups–not to hide Bergman’s age, because there wasn’t a need to, but to idealize her beauty, which, for Rick, would always be a dream. She was delighted, near the end of the filming of Casablanca, to hear that she had been cast as Maria, never realizing, of course, that her Ilsa would be the role that would endure.
Other than Ilsa, my favorite part of the film–my favorite film–is the banter between Bogart’s Rick and Claude Rains’s corrupt Captain Renault. I am always thinking of Renault when I tell my students that wonderful things MIGHT happen to their essay grade if a latte magically appears at my table at Cafe Andreini while I’m grading them.
If you read the script alone, this is a melodrama that is graced by some of the funniest dialogue in American film. The policeman, Captain Renault, gets my favorite line:
“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” [Pocketing his winnings from the roulette wheel in Rick’s Place.]
One of Bogart’s lines is a very close runner-up.. Major Strasser asks Rick his nationality.
“I’m a drunkard,” Bogart deadpans.
Our soldier, my hero: Pfc. Sadami Fujita, Arroyo Grande, California
14 Monday Jul 2014
Posted in American History, California history, World War II
I recently found a local man who fought, like this soldier, with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Pfc Sadami Fujita was killed in action and awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart during the relief of the “Lost Battalion” in the Vosges Mountains in October 1944.
Sadami was born and raised in Hawaii. Here he is, as an eight-year-old, in the 1920 census. You can click on the images to make them larger.
But in 1939, he left Hawaii for California on the President Pierce, evidently with a younger brother, Jimmy. Here’s the “alien” passenger list and; below, Pierce passes one of the Bay Bridge’s towers, probably in 1935, the year before the bridge opened.
This ship was intimately tied to the career of Amelia Earhart. She was one of the dozens of ships, both military and civil, which searched fruitlessly for the lost flier in 1937. But in 1934, Pierce had saved Earhart’s life on her Hawaii-to-California flight, in her beloved Lockheed Vega. From a website on that flight:
In the final hours of the journey Earhart found herself surrounded by a thick blanket of fog. Glancing down through a hole in the fog, she suddenly caught sight of a ship. She dove down through the hole, she wrote later, “faster than I ever flew before from 8,000 feet to 200!” The ship was the President Pierce, outward bound from San Francisco. Earhart lined her plane up with the wake of the ship and headed for California—now only 300 miles away!
In the 1940 Census, Sadami, too, has found a home in California: he is living with two brothers, Jimmy, who will go to the Poston internment camp, and Dick, in Arroyo Grande. The page from that year’s census is like a Who’s Who–it includes the Ikedas, the Hayashis, the Fukuharas, and Javier Pantaleon, the foreman at the Waller Seed Co. to whom doomed sailor Felix Estibal wrote one of his last letters before being killed in action off Guadalcanal in November 1942. 
Five months after FDR re-instated the draft, the United States Army tapped Sadami on the shoulder–and, not unusual in the Army–they spelled his name wrong, though not as egregiously as the case of Marine Private Louis Brown, from Corbett Canyon. Killed on Iwo Jima, the twenty-year-old’s name was spelled “Louise” in the Navy casualty records.
He would be assigned to the 100th Infantry Battalion, a tough outfit made up of Hawaiian Japanese-Americans. The 100th would later be merged with the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team as that unit’s First Battalion. The 442nd included Nisei soldiers from all 48 states. The unit would do most of its fighting in Italy, but was transferred to France in the fall of 1944.
Sadami, a PFC in “B” Company of the 100th Battalion, was killed on October 28 in the relief of the “Lost Battalion,” a unit made up largely of Texans that had been surrounded by German troops in the Vosges Mountains.
This is what it was like that day, from a website on the 442nd: (http://www.the442.org/battlehistory/vosges.html)
The following day [October 28th], both battalions continued the drive forward in the teeth of stubborn resistance and heavy artillery and mortar fire. Casualties went up and up, caused largely by tree bursts, from which there was no escape. Our own artillery was active, and the Cannon Company and 4.2 mortars performed yeoman service, but the Germans were below ground, while our troops were up and moving forwards. At the end of the day, the regiment was 1,500 yards nearer to the “lost battalion,” but only at [a] terrible cost in men and material. During the night, biting cold and rain kept the men from resting.
So it’s probable that it was artillery fire that killed Fujita–the Germans fired .88 shells into the treetops and, as was the case in the Hurtgen Forest, a ferocious battle being fought at the same time in in Germany, just over the Belgian border, many GI’s were killed by flying shrapnel and splinters. This is what the combat zone looked like then, and today: 
The 442nd broke through two days later. 800 Nisei soldiers were killed or wounded to rescue the 230 Texans.
Several Nisei soldiers, like Masami Hamakado, in Fujita’s “B” Company, kept extensive photographic records of their service years and of their comrades. Two of Hamakado’s photographs show paired soldiers, but each is labeled only with last names. In both photos one of the names is “Fujita.”
This is what drives historians nuts. No first names. Here’s the first photograph, labeled “Ono and Fujita at Parade Rest.” 
Here’s the second, “Fujita and Umihara.” 
One of these men has to be the Arroyo Grande Fujita. A hint: Sadami was only 5′ 1″, so he’s likely to be the shorter man in either photograph. I looked up the enlistment record of the other “B” Company Fujita., whose first name was Hasami.
He was 5′ 2″. Great.
I’m reasonably sure–but will never be certain– that the lower photo is of “our” soldier, because Sadami Fujita outweighed Hasami Fujita by 22 lbs., so the smaller soldier in the lower photograph is a more likely choice.
He’s a nice-looking young man.
My next step is to hope to get a return email from the Fujita family still living in Hawaii–maybe the will know more about Sadami and maybe they’ll have photographs.
Sadami Fujita would go home to his family. His grave is in the Punch Bowl, an incredibly beautiful place; I visited in 1996. I owe it to him to find out more. 
I owe to these young men, too. These are the 442nd Regimental Combat Team soldiers who gave their lives for the country:
MEMBERS OF THE 100th INFANTRY BATTALION AND 442nd REGIMENTAL COMBAT TEAM KILLED IN ACTION IN WORLD WAR II
Chester K. Abe / Matsuei Ajitomi / Tokio Ajitomi / Frank Chujiro Akabane / John Akimoto / Victor Akimoto / Hideo Akiyama / Zentaro G. Akiyama / Eugene T. Amabe / Nobuo Amakawa / James H. Anzai / Yoshiharu N. Aoyama / Harold J. Arakawa / James Y Arakawa / Masashi Araki / Frank N. Arikawa / Hiroaki Arita / Shiro Asahina / Ralph Y. Asai / Shotaro H. Asato / Kenneth L. Asaumi / Shigeo Ashikawa / Daniel D. Betsui / James Boodry / Howard Vernon Burt / Joseph Lawrence Byrne / Henry Chibana / Guchi Chinen / Onso Chinen / Jenhatsu Chinen / Danny K. Chorike / Cloudy Gary Connor Jr. / Walter Maurice Crone / Haruo Doi / Kenneth E. Eaton / Tetsu Ebata / George Eki / Hachi Endo / Hiroo H. Endo / Masaharu Endo / Robert T. Endo Kaname Enomoto / Kiyozo Enomoto / Ralph Burnell Ensminger / Harold C. Ethridge / Charles Oliver Farnum Jr. / Fred H. Fritzmeier / Abe M. Fuji / Paul Fuji / Masao Fuji / Richard T. Fujii / Samuel A. Fujii / Yutaka Fuji / Jitsuro Fujikawa / Masaki Fujikawa / Hideo Fujiki / Toshiaki Fujimoto / Noboru Fujinaka / Russell Takeo Fujino / Yasuo R. Fujino / Yoshimi Fujino / Teruo Fujioka / Wendell S. Fujioka / Sadami Fujita / Ross K. Fujitani / Peter Fujiwara / Takeo Fujiyama / Akira W. Fukeda / Shigeo F. Fukuba /Masami Fukugawa / Barbara Fukuhara /Herbert M. Fukuhara / Kakutaro Fukuhara / Edward Fukui / Roy S. Fukumoto / Ichiji Fukumura / Chester T. Fukunaga / Arthur M. Fukuoka / Katsumi Fukushima / Kaoru Fukuyama / Stanley K. Funai / Satoshi Furukawa /Tatsumi Furukawa / Tsuyoshi Furukawa / Kenneth K. Furukido / Henry T. Furushiro / Mitsuo Furuuchi /George M. Futamata / Shigeto Fuyumuro / Roland Joseph Gagnon / Seikichi Ganeko / Hiroshi Goda /Kazuo Goya /Yeiko Goya / George Gushiken / Frank T. Hachiya / Victor Hada / Hatsuji Hadano / Eichi F. Haita / Tom S. Haji / Tetsuo Hamada / Kenichi Hamaguchi / Katsuyoshi Hamamoto / Seuchi Hamamoto / Fred Y. Hamanaka / Clifford H. Hana / Richard S. Hanaumi / Tamotsu Hanida /Ben Hara / Charles K Harada /John Y Harano / Kiyoshi Hasegawa / Mikio Hasemoto / Denis M. Hashimoto / Hisao Hashizume /Masao Hatanaka / Kunio Hattori / Harry M. Hayakawa / Makoto Hayama / Stanley Hayami / Donald S. Hayashi / Eugene Hayashi / Joe Hayashi / Robert N. Hayashi /Tadao Hayashi / Torao Hayashi / Henry Hayashida / Henry Y. Hayashida / Hideyuki Hayashida / Robert Hempstead / Eiji Hidaka / Charles Higa / Eddie K. Higa / Katsumori Higa / Masao Higa / Takei Higa / Toshio Higa / Wilson E. Higa / Yeiko Higa / Bert K. Higashi / Harold T. Higashi / James T. Higashi / Harry N. Hikichi / Aranari Hiraga / Tomosu Hirahara / Mitsuo Hiraki / Kazuo L. Hiramatsu / Hiroyuki Hiramoto / Frederick M. Hirano / John Hirano / Robert R. Hirano / Genichi Hiraoka / Satoru Hiraoka / Gerome M. Hirata / Louis M. Hirata / Himeo Hiratani / Yasuo Hirayama / Yutaka Hirayama / Masao Hisano / Gary T. Hisaoka / Yeichi Hiyama / Richard M. Honda / Tomio Honda / Kay I. Horiba / James J. Horinouchi / Paul F. Horiuchi / Robert S. Hoshino / Earl Hosoda / Max M. Hosoda Jr. / Kihachi Hotta / Teruo Hozaki / Toshio Hozaki / Kenichi Ichimura / Edward Y. Ide / Shigeo Igarashi / Kiyoshi Iguchi / Masao Iha / Kazuo Ihara / Martin M. Iida / George Ikeda / Isamu Ikeda / Masao Ikeda / Roy Y. Ikeda / William Y Ikeda / Yoshio Ikeda / Lloyd Ikefuji / Henry S. Ikehara / Kikuichiro D. Ikehara / Haruyuki Ikemoto / James S. Ikeno / Tomio lmai / William I. Imamoto / Larry M. Imamura / Shunichi Imoto / Thomas T. Inada / Ben M. Inakazu / Masami Inatsu / Minoru Inoue / Henry Inouye / Masato Inouye / Takeshi Inouye / Masaji Irie / Tadayoshi Iriguchi /Mitsuo M. Iseri / Haruo Ishida Hidemaro Ishida / Minoru Ishida / George F Ishii / Richard H. Ishii / Stanley T. Ishiki / Walter S. Ishiki / Kiyoshi lshimizu / Kusaku Isobe / Hachiro Ito / Roy Ito / Takashi Ito / Tetsuo Ito / Robert K. Iwahiro / Hisashi lwai / Yoshio Iwamasa / Lawrence T. Iwamoto / Henry S. Izumizaki Thomas M. Jichaku / Katsui Jinnohara / John A. Johnson / Chitoshi Kadooka / Joe Y. Kadoyama / Yasuo Kagawa James J. Kagihara / Tsugito Kajikawa / Nobuo Kajiwara / Fred Y. Kameda / Bob T. Kameoka / Shinobu Kametani / Mitsuo Kami / Shizuto Kamikawa / James J. Kanada / Walter E. Kanaya / John S. Kanazawa / Frank Kanda / Takezo Kanda / Takeo Kaneichi / Katsuhiro Kanemitsu / Seichi Kaneshiro / Yasuo Kaneshiro / Isamu Kanetani / Jero Kanetomi / Akira Kanzaki / James S. Karatsu / Haruo Karimoto /Kenneth G. Kashiwaeda /Yoshitaka Kataoka /Noritada Katayama /John S. Kato /John J. Kato /Joseph Kato /Kenji Kato /Yoshio Kato /Masaichi Katsuda /John R. Kawaguchi /Richard H. Kawahara /Tetsuro Kawakami Kazuo Kawakita /Haruo Kawamoto /Sadao Kawamoto /Toshio Kawamoto /Yutaka Kawamoto /Kikumatsu F Kawanishi /Cike C. Kawano /George Kawano /Tetsuo Kawano /Yasuo Kawano /Albert G. Kawata /Satoshi Kaya /Stephen M. Kaya /Yasuo Kenmotsu /Lewis A. Key /Tadashi Kijima /Leo T. Kikuchi /John S. Kimura /Matsuichi Kimura /Paul Kimura Jr. /Tsuguo Kimura /Shomatsu E. Kina /Francis T. Kinoshita /Mamoru Kinoshita /Richard K. Kinoshita /Toshio Kirito /Robert T. Kishi /Roy J. Kitagawa /Paul T. Kitsuse /Ronald S. Kiyabu /Edward Y. Kiyota / Kiichi Koda /Sadaichi Kohara /Sadamu Koito /Hayato Koizumi /Yutaka Koizumi /Shaw Kojaku /Tadashi Kojima /Nobuo Kokame /Jimmie T. Kokubu /James K. Komatsu /Katsuto Komatsu /Fred H. Komeda /Nobuo Komoto /Harry M. Kondo /Harushi Kondo /Herbert Y. Kondo /Howard N. Kondow /Seichi Kotsubo /Shigeo Kuba /George M. Kubo /Tadashi Kubo /James Kubokawa /Mitsuharu Kuboyama /Thomas T. Kuge /Isamu Kunimatsu /Tetsuo Kunitomi /Katsuji K. Kuranishi /Jerry S. Kuraoka /Minoru Kurata /James S. Kuratsu /Ichiji H. Kuroda /Robert T. Kuroda /Satoshi Ben Kurokawa /Shigetoshi Kusuda / Shosei Kutaka /Masaji Kutara /Shozo Kuwahara /Sunao Kuwahara /John Kyono /Clarence E. Lang /Leonard H. Luna /Harry F. Madokoro /Saburo Maehara /Richard K. Magarifuji /Matsutada Makishi /Harry Makita /Seiso J. Mana /Ben Masaoka /Kay K. Masaoka /Masa Mashita /Dick Z. Masuda /Eso Masuda /Kazuo Masuda /Yoshito Masuda /George A. Matsumoto /Noriyuki Masumoto /Lawrence K. Masumura /Kiyoshi Masunaga /Peter S. Masuoka /Carl G. Matsuda /Masao Matsui /Hiroshi Matsukawa /Isamie Matsukawa / Dick Y. Matsumoto / Goro Matsumoto / Kiyuichi Matsumoto / Sadao Matsumoto / Tommy T. Matsumoto / Renkichi Matsumura / Kaname Matsunaga / Satoshi Matsuoka / Shizuo Matsushida / Kazuo Matsushima / George M. Mayeda / Jimmy Mayemura / Thomas T. Mekata / Torae Migita / Katsuaki Miho / Yoshio Minami / lsamu Minatodani / Kiyoshi Mine / Nobue Mine / Tom T Misumi / Kazuo Mitani / Kazuo Mito / Larry N. Miura / Toshio Miura / Charles M. Miyabe / Masayoshi Miyagi / Masayuki Miyaguchi / Tetsuo Miyake / James H. Miyamoto / Thomas T. Miyamoto / Yasuo Miyamoto / George S. Miyaoka / Isami Miyasato / Tamotsu Miyata / Tokio Miyazono / Tsuyoshi Miyoga / Mitsuru E. Miyoko / Noburo Miyoko / Timothy Mizokami / William S. Mizukami / Hideo Mizuki / Morio Mizumoto / Yukitaka Mizutari / Henry T. Mochizuki / Edward V. Moran / Kiyoto Mori / Shigeru Mori / Haruto Moriguchi / Rokuro Moriguchi / Arthur A. Morihara / Roy T. Morihiro / Haruto Morikawa / Hiromu Morikawa / Toshiaki Morimoto / Harold Morisaki / Joseph Morishige / Takeo Morishita / Iwao Morita / George K. Moriwaki / David Leander Moseley / Hiroshi Motoishi / Susumu Motoyama / Hachiro Mukai / Sadao S. Munemori / Isamu Murakami / Kiyoshi Murakami / Sakae Murakami / Tadataka Murakami / Tokiwo Murakami / Toshio T. Murakami / Kiyoshi K Muranaga / Richard K Murashige / Robert S. Murata / Mitsugi Muronaka / Roy L Naemura / Grover K Nagaji / Hiroshi Nagami / Hiroshi Nagano / Setsuo Nagano / Martin M. Naganuma / Goichi Nagao Hitoshi Nagaoka / Hideo Nagata / Jim Nagata / Taichi Nagata /Fumitake Nagato /Yoshiiwa Nagato /Kaoru Naito /Hitoshi Najita /Masaru Nakagaki /Hirao Nakagawa /Usho Nakagawa /Hitoshi Nakai /Masao Nakama /Shigenori Nakama /Shinyei Nakamine /Joe K Nakamoto /Seichi Nakamoto /Edward E. Nakamura /George S. Nakamura /Henry Y. Nakamura /John M. Nakamura /Kosei Nakamura /Masaki Nakamura /Ned T. Nakamura /Tadao Nakamura /Wataru Nakamura /William K Nakamura /Yoshimitsu Nakamura /Masao Nakanishi /Tsutomu Nakano /Robert K. Nakasaki /Dick S. Nakashima /Raito R. Nakashima /Wataru Nakashima /Frank K. Nakauchi /Donald T. Nakauye /Kiyoshi C. Nakaya /Minoru Nakayama /Saburo Nakazato /John T. Narimatsu /Tetsuo Nezu /Yutaka Nezu /Willie S. Nieda /Shigeto Niide /Edward Joseph Nilges /Minoru Nimura /Ban Ninomiya /Takao T. Ninomiya /Chikao Nishi /Takanori A. Nishi /Kazuo Nishihara /Takaki Nishihara /Akio Nishikawa /Tohoru Nishikawa /Joe M. Nishimoto /Tom T. Nishimoto /Shigeki Nishimura /Wilfred K. Nishimura /Charles J. Nishishita /Chieto Nishitani /Taro Nishitani /Sueo Noda /Yoshito Noritake /Al Y. Nozaki /Tadashi Nozaki /Alfred S. Nozawa /Toshio Numa /Masayoshi Oba /Sanichi Oba /Stanley T. Oba /Tadashi Obana /Larry M. Ochiai /Benjamin F. Ogata /Fred S. Ogata /Masaru Ogata /Masayoshi Ogata /Tsugio Ogata /Edward Ogawa /John N. Ogawa /Sadao Ogawa /Yoshio W. Ogomori /Abraham G. Ohama /Arnold Ohki /Muneo Ohye /Shigeo Oikawa /Teiji T. Oishi /Akira Oiji /John T Okada /Donald M. Okamoto /James S. Okamoto /James T. Okamoto /Ralph S. Okamoto /Tomiso Okamoto /Togo Okamura /Isao Okazaki /Takaaki Okazaki /Katsu Okida /Richard M. Okimoto /Seiei Okuma /Toyokazu Okumura /Susumu Okura /George Omokawa /Ken Omura /Takeyasu T. Onaga /Satoru Onodera /Lloyd M. Onoye /Choyei Oshiro /Edward Oshiro /Kenneth Oshiro /Sam Y. Oshiro /Seikichi Oshiro /Wallace H. Oshiro /Yeishin Oshiro /Daniel C. Ota /Randall M. Ota /Roy Ota /Tadashi Otaguro /Masanao Otake /Douglas K. Otani /Kazuo Otani /Bill M. Otomo /Akira Otsubo /Jiro Otsuka /Harumatsu Oyabu /Francis K. Oyakawa /Robert Y. Ozaki /George Y. Ozawa /Francis J. Rerras /Roy T. Reterson /Neill M. Ray /Masatsugu Riyu /Ben W Rogers Jr. /Herbert K. Sadayasu /Yohei Sagami /Thomas T. Sagimori /Atsuo Sahara /Masami Saiki /Hoichi Saipan /Calvin K. Saito /Chuji Saito /George S. Saito /Kinji Saito /Masuto Sakada /Masaaki Sakaguchi /Richard M. Sakai /Yoshinori Sakai /Atsushi Sakamoto /Louis K. Sakamoto /Masa Sakamoto /Noburo Sakamoto / Robert /. Sakamoto / William Samonji / Minoru Sasaki / Yoshio Sasaki / Toshio Sasano / Itsumu Sasaoka / Andrew Y. Sase / Michael Sato / Saburo Sato / Shin Sato / Shukichi Sato / Tadao Sato / Yukio Sato / George K. Sawada / Kurt E. Schemel / Toll Seike / Koichi K Sekimura / Hihumi Seshiki / Hiroshi Shibao / Kenneth K. Shibata / Mitsuru Shibata / Tetsuo Shigaya / Masao F. Shigemura / Hideo Shigeta / Masao Shigezane / Takeshi Shigihara / George M. Shikata / Ted T. Shikiya / Roy K. Shimabuku / Hideo Shimabukuro / Tomoaki Shimabukuro / George M. Shimada / Akira R. Shimatsu / Jimmy T. Shimizu / Takeo Shimizu / Robert Shinde / Takeo Shintani / Nathaniel A. Shiotani / Joe A. Shiomichi/ Roy R. Shiozawa / Shigeomi Shiraishi / Kiyoshi J. Shiramizu / Kizo Shirokane / Henry M. Shiyama / Toshiaki Shoji / David I. Suda / Sadami R. Sueoka / Theodore T. Sueoka / Shinichi Sugahara / Kenji Sugawara / Hiroshi Sugiyama / ltsuo Sugiyama /Togo S. Sugiyama / Michiru Sumida / Albert M.Sunada / Nobuyuki Suwa / George W. Suyama / Jiro Suzawa / Kenny R. Suzuki / Takashi Suzuki / YonezoSuzuki / Edward H. Sweitzer / Teruo Tabata / Shigeo Tabuchi / Sadao Tachibana /Yoshio Tagami / Hitoshi B. Taguchi / Cooper T. Tahara / Masaru Taira / Seitoku Taira / Boon E. Takagi / David Kiyoshi Takahashi / ltsuo Takahashi / lwao A. Takahashi / Mon Takahashi / Toru T. Takai / Thomas T. Takao / Ronald K. Takara / Gordon K. Takasaki / Katsumi L. Takasugi / Shigeo J. Takata / Jo Takayama / Yoshito Takayama / Masaharu Takeba / Jimmy Takeda / Shoichi J. Takehara / Yosh Takei /Haruo Takemoto /lwao Takemoto /Tami Takemoto /Tooru Takenaka /Robert M. Takeo /Jimmy Y. Taketa /Peter Taketa /Shigeto Taketa /William H. Taketa /Ichiro S. Takeuchi /Tadashi Takeuchi /Thomas Takizawa /Kenji Takubo /Douglas Tamanaha /Kuneo Tamanaha /Masao H. Tamanaha /Thomas T. Tamashiro /Masaru Tamura /Osamu Tamura /Toyoshi Tamura /Kei Tanahashi /Harley Tanaka /Jack M. Tanaka /James J. Tanaka /Jiro Tanaka /John Y. Tanaka Keichi Tanaka /Ko Tanaka /Matsusaburo Tanaka /Saburo Tanamachi /Larry T. Tanimoto /Teruto Tanimoto /Yukio Tanimoto /Mitsuo Tanji / Katsushi Tanouye /Ted T. Tanouye /Yukio Tanouye /Masaru Tashima /Michio Tachima /Haruyoshi H.Tateyama /George Tatsumi /Masaru Tengan /Yoshio Tengwan /Henry M.Terada /Ted A. Teramae /Lloyd M. Teramoto /Shizuo Teramoto /Henry Terazawa /Herman T. Teruya /Kenkichi K. Teruya /Michio Teshima /Theodore T. Tezuka /Shiro Togo /Clifford T. Tokunaga /Hidetoshi Tokusato /Harry H. Tokushima /Patrick M. Tokushima /Minoru Tokuyama /Takaya Uragami /Moriichi Uyeda /Theodore T. Uyeno /Daniel M. Wada /Kenneth Y. Wasada /Shigeo Wasano /Hiroshi Watanabe /Kiyotoshi Watanabe /Kozo Watanabe /Theodore H. Watanabe /James D. Wheatley Jr. /Earl White Jr. /Steve S. Yagi /Hideo Yamada /Raymond T. Yamada /George T Yamaguchi /Fred M. Yamamoto /George I. Yamamoto /John T. Yamamoto /Masaru Yamamoto /Takeo Yamamoto /Tsuyoshi Yamamoto /Thomas I. Yamanaga /Tsutomu Yamaoka /Harry S. Yamasaki /Gordon K. Yamashiro / Lei S.Yamashiro /Joichi Yamashita /Kazuo Yamashita /Setsuro Yamashita /Chioyoaki J. Yamauchi /GoroYamaura /Thomas T. Yamazaki /Fred S. Yasuda /Joe R. Yasuda /Arata Yasuhira /Hideo Yasui /Yoji Yasui /Mitsuru Yeto /Masuichi Yogi /Hideo Yonamine /Satoshi Yonekura /Hitoshi Yonemura / Kenjiro Yoshida /Yoshiharu E. Yoshida /Mitsuichi Yoshigai /Makoto Yoshihara /Toraichi Yoshihara /Minoru Yoshimura /Saburo Yoshimura /Akira Yoshinaga /Hajime Yoshino /Isami Yoshioka /S. Yoshioka / Tatsuo Yoshizaki /Don Yumori /Shiyoji Yunoku .
Grandma Gregory and the Pendergast Machine
13 Sunday Jul 2014
Posted in American History, Family history, Personal memoirs
Somewhere we have a penciled thank-you note from John W. Davis, who is about as famous as whichever team finished third in the NL pennant race in 1939. (It was the Dodgers, 12 1/2 games out.) Davis was the Democratic nominee for President in 1924, and he did far worse than the 1939 Dodgers.
He was trounced by the less-than-effervescent Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge’s workdays at the White House were at most seven hours, punctuated by summer naps on the portico. Sadly, these had to be suspended when Coolidge began collecting dense crowds, silent tourists, watching gravely and debating among themselves in urgent whispers over whether the president had passed. After all, Harding had pulled that trick.
To be fair, the White House staff frequently had the same problem when the president was conscious.
Meanwhile, John W. Davis would go on to a distinguished career, arguing 150 cases before the Supreme Court. Today, Davis is noted mostly for being on the wrong side of every one of them. If it was racist, reactionary, or repressive, he defended it passionately, with the conviction and confidence of one who knows that God Almighty is his co-counsel. The crowning of his legal career—thank the aforementioned Lord–came when he lost Brown v. Board before the Warren Court. (Earl Warren, who turned out to be the biggest booby prize Ike had gotten since Field Marshal Montgomery, was the former Republican Governor of California, which goes to show how much times have changed–and Davis demonstrates the same for Democrats.)
But the Democrats could’ve run Sacco and Vanzetti (has a nice ring, doesn’t it, for a law partnership?) in 1924, and I think Grandma Gregory–the woman, hard to knock down in a windstorm, next my Grandpa John in the photo below–would’ve worked her heart out for them as long as they were Democrats. She got to the convention as a delegate that year–103 ballots in a sweltering New York City summer, the delegates trapped in a battle to the death inside Madison Square Garden–and this was only four years after women had gotten the vote. She would later become the Texas County, Missouri, Party Chairwoman and a powerful figure in downstate Missouri politics.
She is undoubtedly why, when I actually watched a national political convention for the first time, when I was 12–-and when they actually meant something– I was entranced. Barry Goldwater would eventually beat my guy, William Scranton, for the 1964 Republican nomination. Probably our favorite film, in my high school years, was The Graduate. I enjoyed the following year’s Democratic convention just as much, for the Democrats in 1968 had the same intense focus and sense of direction that Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin had shown in the movie. None.
In Depression-era Missouri, before every election, my Dad remembered, a new car would pull up outside my Grandfather’s farmhouse and two men in three-piece suits (usually reserved for funerals, and even then for the Deceased) would deposit a bank-bag full of cash on Dora Gregory’s kitchen table. For them, it was but one more stop on a kind of purgatory circuit. That part of the state was thinly populated, so you had have a real passion for soybeans to make the drive enjoyable.
They were bagmen for the Kansas City Pendergast Machine, one of those old-timey operations that brought dead voters back to life, among other shenanigans.
Pendergast’s Kansas City was a kind of cultural hub for the Depression-era Midwest. Louis Armstrong played here, for example, and a new variant of Barbecue found a home here, too.
Meanwhile, in Texas County in the 1930s, the Civil War had not quite ended. When my father was 12 or 13, there was a Confederate veteran still alive in in Houston, the county seat. There also was one Union veteran in the same town. The two had not spoken since 1865.
FDR’s first term was past its midpoint when, on July 4, 1935, the county band was playing the National Anthem. A frayed cartridge belt in the old Confederate’s mind finally snapped: he leaped on the old Yankee, and the two rolled around on the courthouse lawn, knocking over potato salads and tubs of sweet tea in their personal Antietam. When six young man finally pried the two apart, the old Confederate triumphantly held up the Yankee’s ear, which he’d removed with a Barlow knife.
Most of the people of Texas County were considerably calmer and much kinder, especially if you happened to be a horse, about which, like my Mom’s ancestors from County Wicklow, they were passionate.
Tom Pendergast had Texas County in the bag, because, come Election Day, my pre-teen Dad handed out fives to waiting voters, murmuring, “The Democratic Party thanks you,” over and over, like a priest at Eucharist, so the Democrats never lost Texas County. The bank bag on Grandma’s kitchen table assured that.
To be fair to the Machine, it distributed food, not just bribes, and people in the hills were hungry in the depths of the Depression. A young Dad also helped distribute food to the needy. Grapefruit stymied them. “We boiled it, Bob,” they told him apologetically, “an’ then we fried it, but it still tasted putrid.” (Dad, a supply officer in 1944 London, also gifted an English family he knew with a bag of oranges. They virtually adopted him: the British had not seen oranges since the fall of France in 1940. Citrus fruit seems to follow the course of my father’s life.)
Boss Pendergast also made the career of Harry Truman possible, which, in turn made me possible: Truman favored my grandfather’s blackberry wine on campaign swings downstate–he’d stop for a sip or seven– and that little talent of Grandpa Gregory’s paid off in World War II: Truman got Dad appointed to Officers’ Candidate School as a Quartermaster, and so he served much of the war defending London’s pubs from the Nazi Hordes, which saved me the inconvenience of having him get killed before I had the chance to be born.
After, the war, my Mom was an Eisenhower Republican, so my parents had lively political discussions. One of them doomed dessert, because the colander of fresh strawberries, washed for strawberry shortcake, wound up on my father’s head, upside-down. JFK’s nomination brought political harmony to the marriage: Dad voted for him because he was a Democrat; Mom because he was Irish Catholic.
I wish I could say I loved my Grandmother Gregory, but she was a steel-spined schoolmarm who didn’t tolerate foolishness, by which she meant Consciousness, and she used to whack us absently with her cane. We stole her eyeglasses in revenge. And, sadly, by the time I knew her, she was edging into dementia, and though she couldn’t locate her dentures, or her eyeglasses, she could remember, in vivid detail–you could almost smell charred flesh and sick-room alcohol–how every person in southern Missouri had died between the War Between the States and the 1939 Dodgers.
It didn’t take a lot to prompt a Grandma Gregory Death Story, and, looking back from the fullness of years, I now realize that some of them were humdingers.
My favorite was the neighbor who suddenly disappeared. The family and the authorities and happy coonhounds–they like to be kept busy, or they get saucy– looked for several days, to no avail. When one of the kids finally did find him, he was at the bottom of the family’s well, where he’d plummeted after a massive coronary, which makes you wonder if they ever thought of lemonade the same way again.
Grandma liked that one, too.
Oddly, these stories were poignant because they showed she was already living in the past; her connections to modernity would grow more and more fragile. But, as a younger woman, she was shrewd, forceful, and I think had the same instinct, in a political sense, that leads orcas to crippled seals. I would not mess with that woman. And for that, and for her steel, I admire her and I am immensely proud to be her grandson.
Kentucky Gentle Man
13 Sunday Jul 2014
Posted in American History, Family history, Personal memoirs
My grandfather, John Smith Gregory, was born in Shelby County, Kentucky, in 1862. He was a father of eight, a farmer in south-central Missouri, a lumber estimator, outdoorsman, and a sipper of life, in that life included lovingly fermented batches of blackberry wine. Harry Truman was a fan of that wine. On campaign swings downstate, he made it a point to pay court to my grandmother, a local Democratic powerbroker with money ties to Truman’s patrons, the Kansas City Pendergast Machine, but after those formalities, the heart of the Senator’s visit would be a sip or four of John’s blackberry wine.
That wine may have made me possible. When my father–who was a kind of miraculous afterthought, the last of eight children, born in the vigor of my grandfather’s fifty-sixth year–went into the Army in World War II, he stood as good a chance as any other country boy of being vaporized by a German 88 shell somewhere in the dark canopy of the Ardennes. Instead he spent the War, as a Quartermaster officer, in a series of frontal assaults on London’s pubs, or, as he did one evening, bellowing seditious rebel songs– after splitting a bottle of Johnnie Walker Scotch with an Irish elevator operator he’d befriended–and this was thanks to Sen. Truman’s endorsement of his candidacy to Officers’ Candidate School at Camp Lee, Virginia.
(By the way, London Bobbies tried to arrest Dad and the elevator operator, who knew ALL the verses to “Wearin’ of the Green,” but he was a good elevator operator. Up to the fifth floor. Down to the third. Up to the fourth floor. Up to the sixth. Down to the second. After sprinting up the hotel staircase and clumping down it, the exhausted Bobbies gave up.)
This is the song they were singing, as performed, logically, by the Orthodox Celts. They’re from Serbia.
Since my family’s forebears were Virginians, teaching dance had been central to the way they socialized their children. My family must have raised their children that way from the days they’d emigrated, in the 1690s, from the dismal Midlands of England to the banks of the James River, so Grandfather’s most formidable talent may have been his dancing. (On the other hand, the Gregorys had no gift for real estate. They sold Mount Vernon to the Washingtons.)
So his Virginia roots meant that John Gregory had become, by reputation, a kind of Ozarkian Astaire and every girl who had the chance to be his Ginger Rogers would have a moment on the dance floor with him where she would realize, with a sudden pang of delight, that she was gliding, as if the sawdust-strewn floor had become polished glass.
My grandmother was not amused by the line of pretty teenagers who shyly sought a place on Mr. Gregory’s dance card. She suspected, too, and I’ll bet she was right, that those girls liked also his twinkly eyes and the soft smile beneath his silky white mustaches. My Grandmother was not given to smiling. She had a temper and, with it, a strong and wide body: she was a hard woman to knock down in a windstorm.
Years later, on her visits to us in Arroyo Grande–visits we regarded with as much enthusiasm as an Irish monastery might muster for a Viking raid–she’d absently whack us with her cane, and she had a forehand that would’ve shamed Rafael Nadal. She had been a schoolmarm and we think it was PTSD, and where veterans might see phantom Vietcong, Grandma saw farm boys eighteen hands high spitting streams of tobacco juice at recess. Something snapped inside her then and set her to whacking the nearest target of opportunity.
We hid her glasses, or, if that particular whack had an extra sting, her dentures, in revenge, but gave them back because she otherwise tended to describe, in graphic clinical detail, how every person in Texas County, Missouri had died between the end of the War Between the States and the Eisenhower Administration. Her grandfather, by the way, had been a Confederate brigadier general of modest accomplishment and minimal talent–I was named for him, and for his son, a staff officer killed in action, thanks to a lucky but devastating Yankee artillery shot, in Arkansas–so that branch of the family saw themselves as gentry. They were insufferable. Despite that, John Gregory indulged my grandmother; he was a tolerant man.
He had a genius for math. My Dad inherited this gift; he became a gifted accountant and, for almost twenty years, the comptroller for Madonna Construction. I, as my geometry teacher at Arroyo Grande High School, Mrs. Otsuji, noted ruefully, had no talent in that direction, nor in any plane. But lumber companies sought out Grandfather because he could eye a stand of pine and calculate, with eerie precision, how many board-feet it would yield.
He was a competent but unorthodox farmer: in the Ozark foothills any money there was to be made–and there wasn’t much–was to be made in tobacco and corn and hogs. John accepted that reality but his real passion was an anomaly. Cultivating ginseng was to John Gregory was what stamp collecting was to Franklin Roosevelt; given my grandmother’s personality, it was his outlet—he was not a talkative man, but I can imagine him, almost poetic, winning over dubious neighbors at the local grocer’s about the miraculous attributes of ginseng. He won them, too. In a little shirtpocket notebook I still have he has meticulously recorded his sales figures: J.K. Davis, $250; John Helsey, $50; W.T. Eliot, $62.50.
But his hallmark, the essence of his character, was his kindness. My father remembered this most of all: during the Depression, there’d be an occasional knock on the farmhouse door. It’d be a jobless man on the move.
–May I sleep the night in your barn, sir?
–Young man, you may not. Grandfather would eye the stranger coldly, for dramatic effect.
–However, we DO have a spare bed. How about some bacon and eggs?
It was these visits that so impressed my own father with the cruelty of the Great Depression. These strangers, who wolfed down my grandmother’s meals (beneath her stony exterior there was a deep humanity she didn’t like to let out much), were not “bums:” they were college students, engineers, veterans of the Great War, and one, a violinist, paid for his supper and bed with a solo concert: Bach and Boccherini found a rapt audience in a little farmhouse on the Ozark Plateau, in a kitchen warmed by a wood stove and lit by kerosene lamps instead of footlights.
When they hung a ne’er-do-well –the local bully–at the Missouri State Penitentiary, the barbershop crowd bet that not even John Gregory, in town for his every-other-day shave, could find anything nice to say about him. There was a pause, but not a long one, underneath the hot towels: ”The man,” he said, “had a beautiful set of teeth.”
My grandfather was killed by a driver from Wichita Falls, Texas. He was deaf in the direction of the Texan’s Ford roadster, traveling fast; Grandma had called Dad back to the house because he was barefoot and no son of hers–what would the general think?– was going to make a social call to Mr. Dixon’s looking like a hillbilly. He never forgave her. Had my father been crossing the road with his father, he would’ve heard the Ford’s approach.
The impact broke both of John’s legs. But even at seventy, he had an athlete’s body and he fought hard to live in a Catholic hospital that must have caused my Church of Christ grandmother intense anxiety, looking out for Grandfather while listening intently for any Papist heresy, like the click of Rosary beads.
As a teenager, Grandfather had accepted a dare from two friends to swim across the Red River in flood, and John was the only survivor. Not this time: the river was too strong and there was nothing to do but to watch him, as graceful then as he’d ever been waltzing with a pretty girl, when he finally made the choice to let the current carry him away.
After they drove him back home from Springfield, there was a big funeral. I still have the yellowed obituary. Despite the fact that it was the darkest year of the Great Depression–1933–there would have been big honey-cured baked hams and fried chicken and candied yams and mashed potatoes smooth as clouds and a battery of salads, casseroles, and pies, dusted with sugar, from every farmhouse in a twenty-mile radius.
Both my father and his sister, my Aunt Bill, talked about him always in Homeric terms. He was their father, and he was their hero. They found it hard to let him go, so they never did. That turned out to be a good thing, for me. It’s good to love a man you never met.
My Boy Scout Inferiority Complex
10 Thursday Jul 2014
Posted in Personal memoirs, Uncategorized
I am having a lively online conversation with a man whom I really like and who continues to impress me, from an old-time A.G. family, Richard Waller. I also love his wife, Laurie, who gives Elizabeth and me massages so relaxing that they would melt Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s face.
Wait. Too late.
Anyway, we discovered we were in the Boy Scouts about the same time.
But Richard was in the Smart Guys’ Troop—filled to the brim with Dentons—Troop 29. They built linear accelerators and would occasionally launch hamsters into earth orbit and recover them off the Pismo pier. The Rockwell painting above shows the Boys of 29 in the moments before they found Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra. It was in Oceano, buried in the dunes. The Rockwell painting, consistent with the modesty of the times, omits their faithful guide, Acorn, a Dunite and Orthodox Nudist.
Once, at a Camporal, Troop 29 brewed a new class of antibiotics over the campfire when the rest of us were singing “The Chicken Song” (“They’re layin’ eggs now/Just like they used ta/Ever since that roos-tah/Came into our yarrrrrd….”) and telling lame ghost stories about how the White Lady of the Mesa ate, say, Kevin McNamara’s uncle.
I may be mistaken, but I think I remember their Kodiak Patrol discovering the Northwest Passage during an orienteering competition.
I was in Troop 26, the troop that had profound difficulty with bodily functions. Hiking, fire-building, and tent-pitching were not problems for us. Finding the latrine was our Stalingrad: we took casualties. On one campout, one of us did #2 in a large and unusually virulent clump of poison oak, with grievous and medically spectacular results. In a separate incident, we became known as “Troop 26, The Troop Where the Guy Gets Lost in the Dark at 2 A.M. and Pees on the Side of Your Pup Tent Troop”
They did not then give merit badges for this achievement—or for pup tent irrigation, now that I think about it—but I smoked my first Marlboro with fellow Troop 26 member Julian Brownlee in the men’s room of the St. Patrick’s Parish Hall, when it was on Branch St. Today, that building is the St. Patrick’s Parish Hall on Fair Oaks Avenue.
The infamous Parish Hall.
There should be a little bronze plaque in that men’s room: TENDERFOOT SCOUT JIM GREGORY SMOKED HIS FIRST CIGARETTE HERE AND TURNED EVERY SHADE OF GREEN EVER INVENTED BY THE FRENCH IMPRESSIONIST MOVEMENT.
I was a fine scout until we got into knots. Knots undid my Boy Scout career. I just could not figure them out, which means I would have been frequently flogged, for knot indolence, in Lord Nelson’s navy, but was merely embarrassed back then, in the pre-Haight 1960s. I was not embarrassed for long, for I discovered girls soon thereafter and my Boy Scout days were gone forever. I had sideburns to grow.
Not even close, Monet.
A Work in Progress 