GI Tales - Germany, circa 1968-69

Recently I've been exchanging emails with an acquaintance about our time in German in the late '60s. I won't share his tales -- those are for him to tell -- but I thought my observations might be interesting to some of you.

My correspondent said that he and his fellow GIs where they were -- an industrial area in Hesse in Central Germany -- were given rather a cold shoulder by the locals and he felt that perhaps it was that we had bombed the area pretty much flat. Heidelberg is right next door to Mannheim, which was bombed flat during WW II and was almost a totally new city. I didn't feel the coldness some GIs felt, even there. We went up there fairly regularly, since a friend had a sports-bar on the outskirts of the city.

Some GIs only got to see their installation and the town right next to it and maybe a bus tour around the area. For them, their time in Germany could seem endless and rather boring, a poor substitute for life at home in the land of the Big PX. I was lucky that I had access to wheels. My buddy, Gary, an Airedale meteorologist, had an old Opel and a couple of the other guys had Dodge or Plymouth slant-six compacts. (They had been shipped over as POVs and when their owners bought new German cars, they got sold to other GIs. There was an informal car lot near Heidelberg with quite a few of them for sale under the watchful eye of an ex-GI who had taken his discharge there and stayed. Some of those Valiants and Darts had been passed through dozens of hands.)

One of our number, another Airedale, also with the meteorological unit at the Army air base like Gary, bought one of those rather ridiculous Renault Caravelle convertibles. He nearly put it on the (non-existent) roof one day. Toward the end, I bought a fifties Ford Anglia, which looked like a scaled-down version of my old '35 Ford 2-door sedan. I drove the Anglia for a short time and intended to ship it home. I don't remember what happened, but that didn't.

 1953 Ford Anglia 2-Door Saloon (not mine; this one has British plates)

Along the way, I got to drive my office-mate's Porsche 911 Targa while he was in North Africa on leave. I took it up the Königstuhl -- a mountain road near Heidelberg -- and actually ran it in a  timed-trial-style hill-climb. I also got to drive a Mini-Cooper when the owner had his license stripped for racing around the Kaserne grounds in it. It fit me like a tight overcoat but was a blast to drive.

Heidelberg, seen from the Königstuhl

One of my roommates in the NCO barracks was a British Army Royal Corps of Transport Lance Corporal we called Twink. Kevin was from the West of England, a working-class kid with few chances to advance at home. So, at 17, with his Mum's permission, he took the Queen's Schilling. He did well, and when I met him he was the driver and dogsbody (shades of Baldrick; it was also Douglas Bader's call-sign, which will make sense in a bit.) for the British Army of the Rhine's Second-in-Command, a rather stuffy but generally pleasant Colonel. One of Twink's jobs was to drive up to Cologne, where the BAOR had its headquarters and buy the necessaries from the NAAFI Store (Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes; NAAFI administers facilities that are equivalent to our PX, commissary and officer's, NCO and EM clubs.) There were particular little bits of Britain without which the Colonel couldn't survive, including Peek Freans biscuits (cookies to you and me) and a particular type of Single Malt Scotch our Class Six didn't carry.

Twink drove the Colonel's Rover P6 3500 Sedan (powered by a license-built Buick V-8 engine) for the trip up to Cologne (Köln) and on the autobahn we clipped right along at 90 or better. That's British miles per hour, not KPH. We got passed by the occasional Wankel-engined NSU RO-80 sedan, one Corvette, with Luxemburg plates and the rather common  white and green  Landespolezei Porsche 911 Targa pursuit vehicles. Oh, and a German courier on a military BMW twin, riding flat out in the left lane.

I had privileges at the NAAFI -- and the Brits and Canadians had reciprocity at our facilities as well; the best source for electronics was the RCAF PX near Frankfurt, as I recall -- but bought little. (A matter of finances, not finickiness) The first or second time we drove up, we did a bit of sightseeing, including the Cathedral. It was magnificent, huge -- I'd seen both the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Unfinished (Er, ah, Divine actually) and St. Patrick's, both in NYC, but this place was immense. And, as irreligious as I am, I could feel the spirituality. Although hit by 70 aerial bombs in the war, the spires kept standing and the cathedral was rebuilt beginning in 1956.

Hohe Domkirche St. Peter und Maria, Köln

So, as I said, while I was, just like many of my contemporaries, a prisoner of the Army for another year, I tried to enjoy myself in the Federal Republic of Germany as much as possible. I do remember some guys stationed in the bleak industrial areas saying that it often seemed as if some of the Germans were waiting to rotate out, too, but maybe they just wanted to re-conquer Poland. Not that that would have been all that much of an improvement, from what I heard. {;-)

As for my treatment by the German people, aside from them not wanting us to date their daughters -- and that was true in the states, as well -- they treated me pretty well.

A side note, if I may: When I was in language school in the DC metro area, my classmates and I went out to the college bars in Georgetown. One of our bunch had a local college ID, which got us in. We'd been asked by the wonks at the State Department -- who administered our Lao language program. Lao wasn't taught at the Defense Language Institute, West Coast in Monterrey, California -- not to wear the uniform. They wanted us in civvies and not looking military, lest we frighten some of the NGO students they were also training in one of their programs. Officially, we were enrolled in the Defense Language Institute, East Coast, based at Ft. McNair and at Arlington Barracks, but our program was under the auspices of the Foreign Service Institute of the State Department. Got all of that? Good, because it is not really germane to the story. ☺

So, anyway, we went bar-hopping, four or five young GIs with non-regulation haircuts and non-PX clothes. In DC at the time, soldiers, sailors and airmen were at the absolute bottom of the pecking order, dating-wise. After all, these young women didn't come from Corn Patch, Iowa to meet some GI from two counties over. (No disrespect to Iowa or the corn-fed beauties therefrom intended, of course.)  They wanted to meet someone interesting. So, when people asked what we did, we said, "We work for the government." "Oh, so do we," the young ladies would reply. "I work at Agriculture," one might say. "What do you do?" "Well, ma'am, I can't talk about what I do. It's classified at the highest level." Ah, an unassailable air of mystery and our military employer disguised. Since we would be working for the uniformed branch, so to speak, of the National Security Agency -- or No Such Agency as it was known back then -- we were technically correct. As it turned out, our subterfuge was for naught, and I ended up importing my own girl from Connecticut after we met when I went home for a two-week leave. (And that's a whole other story for another day. Remind me.)

So, then, back to German-American relations. When I started hanging out at and later tending bar in Treffpunkt, a local Gasthaus near Patton Barracks, older German men often spoke of their time in the war, and always made sure I knew that they had fought mostly on the Eastern Front. I know that Hitler threw a huge number of men into that campaign, but a lot were lost. Why was it that none of them had served on the other front or in North Africa? I surmised that many of the old vets didn't want me to think that they had faced my relatives in the forests of France or elsewhere on the Western Front. They bought me drinks, they shook my hand. We were now kameraden after all.

Rudi, who owned Treffpunkt -- which means "Meeting Place" -- was pretty much an unreconstructed Junker, (It was Graf und Ritter Rudolph Something, Something von Somewhere as I recall) who had been a Nazi because it was required of officers. He had a great deal of admiration for the British pilots who shot him down -- twice -- during the days of the Battle of Britain. Like Douglas Bader, the RAF Ace, Rudi had lost a leg (Bader lost both of his in a pre-war crash) and had a prosthetic. For some reason Rudi and his two daughters took a liking to me, and I found that I was no longer hanging out at Treffpunkt as a customer but was pouring drinks.

I was also sort of laundering money. German businesses weren't supposed to take US Dollars. They all did, pretty much. So, once a wekk, Rudi gave me his dollar take and I went to the US Army Finance Unit and exchanged it -- at the artificial military rate, for D-Marks at a ratio of 1 to 4, making a D-Mark equal to a quarter. Most of us in my office also took our paychecks -- which, through a hustle, we got early -- down to the Bundesbank at the railroad station and got them cashed, even pre-dated as they were. We'd get the funds in D-Marks and then exchange them for dollars, a reverse of what I did for Rudi. The nice thing is that we had money for a couple of days when most of the poor unfortunates didn't, which allowed some of us to act as bankers. I didn't, but a lot of guys did. When the people at the Finance Unit asked -- which some would -- I explained my handful of old, rumpled dollars -- fives, tens and some twenties -- as poker winnings, which no one questioned further.

I will add as a note that my ability to struggle along in first-year HS German did give me an edge and there were a lot of times when the young Germans we drank with would practice their English, of which they were a bit uncertain and shy to use and I would do the same in German. As the beer flowed, the tongues became more adept and every once in a while, someone would say something really outrageous and there would be mutual ROFLOAO ensuing.

My acquaintance relates very different experiences. So, again, two guys of about the same age but with vastly different experiences in more or less the same place and time. Odd.

When the reminiscence bug grabs me again, there are more tales to tell of those days of yesteryear, maybe not thrilling, but -- well, they were interesting to me as I lived them. Let me know if you liked this and remind me if you want more.

Perception is Not Reality

I have recently been involved in a rather lengthy email debate -- running over several months -- about the perceptions by the public of the police in this country in light of several incidents, including the one I blogged about back in July (http://randommusings-jamie.blogspot.com/2011/07/abuse-of-power-canton-ohio.html ) This is only the most recent exchange, but in contains some of the most reasoned response, devoid of some of the hysterical trappings of other exchanges.

Here is a response to an email of mine, which is quoted at the beginning. My response follows R****'s: (I have disguised the names of my correspondents for their privacy)

 "While you and some like you may consider the police universally  to be
jack-booted thugs akin to the Nazi SS or Gestapo, for the most part they are not."
  =========================================================
R***** writes:

Jamie your comment illustrates the problem. As long as a nontrivial number of citizens view the cops as Gestapo like thugs there is a problem...even if the cops are not thugs. In many cases the 'perception' is the problem not the facts. 

To begin to find a solution the cops must first find out why they are viewed in such a manner. Then being painfully honest with themselves they must decide if the perception is based on observable fact. If it is then the cops need to change those observable behaviors for the better. If it can honestly be shown that the perception is not justified by police behavior then a campaign of information to convince the public of the error of their perceptions is needed. It has taken a long time for people to form their negative perceptions and it won't be changed over night. 

Today much of the problem springs from the fact that cops for the most part refuse to believe that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. Typical cop think is that as long as citizens give unquestioning and immediate obedience to any cop's order everything will be just fine. Anything else is unacceptable. 

I personally believe that the problem will never be solved satisfactorily and that a continued and ever more rapid deterioration in the citizen/cop relationship is inevitable. As a result every cop, even the few good ones, are in danger of being offed for trivial reasons just because they represent the strong arm of the government. Perhaps it's a sad thing but lacking any reasonable efforts to solve the problem it just isn't going to go away.

This is my response:

Given that there is a criminal underclass in this country, it is next to impossible to eradicate some of the ill will that exists toward the police. There is an axiom in the profession that if you are being proactive -- not just responding to calls for service, but paying attention to situations that might develop, quickly, into crimes; being concerned with quality-of-life issues -- the Broken Window approach -- you will cause some percentage of people to dislike cops no matter how professional, polite and helpful you are.

I have told the story before, but it illustrates, I think, quite well the situation cops find themselves in. When I worked in the public housing area of San Francisco's Hunter's Point/Bayview district HP/Bayview is a location that has a lot going for it -- views across the Bay toward the Contra Costa hills, a view of the Bay itself, hill-top locations and the like -- but is located above the former Naval Shipyard at Hunter's Point, a toxic Superfund area that is very slowly being brought back and under the City's control. When they decided to build public housing -- almost all of them town-home-style units rather than high-rises (SF no longer has any high-rise public housing. Around the country, this type of accommodation has proven nearly impossible to control and keep safe for the residents, the majority of whom are economically disadvantaged but perfectly decent folks).

So, town-homes. Even with some degree of pride in ownership -- although they are rented, they do seem like single-family dwellings not all that different from non-public housing around the area -- there is a feeling of decay, of too much trash overflowing dumpsters, many of which show signs of one of the local hobbies, dumpster burning. There are often used condoms and crack pipes broken on the ground in common areas, including areas where kids play. Crack whores ply their trade in utility cabinets, wedged up against electric meters and only partially hidden from view by kids and their moms passing by. At times, the drug-dealing gang violence hits a peak and the trash trucks only come in with a police or Housing Security Police escort. The buses that serve the area have not entered on several occasions until the drivers were promised protection from the rock and bottle throwing hordes of teens. When I first worked there, we were driving rented vehicles and found it hard to explain to the folks at National why there was graffiti on the car, why there was broken glass and, especially why there were bullet holes in the sheet metal.

As a supervisor, I went to all the neighborhood meetings. We tried to address concerns and often acted as ombudsmen taking the problems of the people to other City or Federal agencies to try and get positive resolution. Sometimes we prevailed; often, we did not. The Federal units were the hardest, because we had to go through a maze of middle-men, none of whom could make decisions, passing the buck upward in an endless attempt to reach a decision maker. (Getting paid was almost as hard and the folks at HUD were always at least 90 to 180 days in arrears in paying on the contract. This eventually bankrupted the contract security company, who had an outstanding balance of a couple of million dollars owed by HUD,  but was so deeply in the red that they threw in the towel. This is not an uncommon story, I am told.)

At one of these meetings, an older woman, I'd say in her sixties, with steel-grey hair and a strong, bright personality spoke up. She asked us, speaking as the representative of one block of homes, if we could do something to clear out the drug gang that was infesting the area. They had made the place unsafe, scary and unpleasant to live in, she told us. She was passionate and sincere and we took her request to our chain of command. Part of the dynamic in these housing projects -- and I understand that it is not limited to SF but is a national problem, or was -- is that many of the gang members live with older relatives, typically an aunt or grandmother. (Some do live outside the projects in better neighborhoods and come to HP/B to transact business, arriving in their blinged-out Lexus or MB or BMW or Hummer.) The ones who live with granny or auntie often maintain control through a combination of blood-loyalty and fear. Family members are fearful of not only the potential violence from gang members but also of being evicted. In an attempt to deal with the problem, HUD and other public housing agencies at the City level have instituted tough policies of evicting residents if criminal activity takes place in their unit, even if they are powerless to stop it. (Another example of a zero-tolerance policy that is often grossly unfair.)

So, with the grey-haired woman's concerns in mind, we began to put together a task-force of city cops, sheriff's deputies, HUD Inspectors with LE powers, the contract security teams with limited police powers and people from the City's Department of Social Services. We met several times trying to decide on a course of action. We investigated several gang members, all of whom had criminal records, some of them extensive. We got warrants, both to search and to arrest. After a month of meeting and planning,we set a date for a raid.

Long story shortened, the raid was successful. We arrested a number of bad guys, turned up a lot of dope -- all kinds from pot to meth, heroin, ecstasy and prescription drugs in unlabeled containers -- guns and money. As I was walking one of the miscreants we'd arrested to a van for transport, the grey-haired woman approached. I expected a quiet thank-you, since we were doing what she wanted. I was wrong. "What you doin' with LeRoy?" she asked. "Ma'am, LeRoy is on his way to jail," I replied. "No, no, you wrong. LeRoy a good boy. He a nephew of mine on my sister's side. LeRoy, he ain't no criminal." She was getting as passionate as she had been at the meeting. "Ma'am, we had a warrant for LeRoy from a previous case. He was wanted before this. And he's been in jail several times on felony charges. Now, we found LeRoy in, I think, you sister's place. She looked pretty scared of him. We found a gun and some drugs and a lot of money, mostly tens and twenties, drug money, we think. He can't have a gun, ma'am, since he's a convicted felon." She was shaking her head, not buying it. "And, there was a young woman in his room. I assume it was his room, with the posters of LeBron and Tu'Pac and all. She was naked in his bed, and if she's eighteen, I'm Captain Kangaroo. So, our definitions of a good boy are pretty different." I put a hand on LeRoy's head and helped him into the van for his ride to 850 Bryant Street and booking into City Prison, to await his hearing. And, in her eyes -- I could see it, the anger rising, the steely determination -- we were the bad guys. Her nephew, LeRoy, was a good boy.

In that manner are the police seen in some places as the enemies of the people, even when you are doing exactly what the people want. When it comes to family -- close or extended seems to make little difference and some of these families are multi-generational and have trees with so many branches it is hard to count them -- they are right and outsiders are wrong. This woman was influential in her community. She would talk about the wrongful arrest of LeRoy, her nephew on her sister's side and how the po-lice made a mistake and arrested this good boy just because he was Black and had posters up in his room.

So, while I agree that cops should clean up their act -- and in some cases, clean house; some departments are so riddled with corruption that nothing short of starting over would work; NOPD is a classic example -- as long as cops arrest people, other people are going to see the police as the problem. If the police, as a profession, did all the things that reasonable people want done -- and that, IMO, need to be done -- and the militarization of the police at all levels is stopped and politicians quite declaring "war" on various problems and find new language to describe what they are doing and having the police do, there will be a number -- a non-trivial number -- of people who will hold the views we have been discussing. I know people who resent, deeply, being stopped and ticketed for traffic violations that they rightly earned who now hate cops. Most won't act on that feeling, but under the right circumstances, given the right opportunity and with nothing to lose they care about, some will act on that anger and hatred. And some of them have long memories and won't let go of those feelings, ever.

Jamie

++++++++++++++++======================================++++++++++++

There are days when I grow weary trying to defend a profession I respect. I know it has flaws, serious ones, but there are so many people who for one reason or another, personal or political, seem to hate cops, all cops, good cops and worse cops and bad cops and they don't seem interested in making much distinction among the three.

There was another part to the response, fro the list-boss. He has a near-life-long dislike for cops and glories in finding any instance where a cop has done wrong, pouncing on it like a hungry weasel on a vole. This is what he said, and below that, my response.

A***, responding to R*****'s comments on something I wrote, had this to say:




Well said, and a perfect analysis of the problem. To address Jamie's statement again, I guess I need to word this carefully, so as not to be misunderstood, but: 

Neither was the problem of the Nazi SS or Gestapo, likely the problem of the MAJORITY of SS or Gestapo -- who I'm sure were mostly family men, bounced babies on their knees, and were kind to puppies and kittens. (In fact I seem to remember seeing historical footage of SS or Gestapo notables cuddling a litter of puppies.) The problem was that the majority of SS and Gestapo supported or turned a blind eye to their colleagues who did those things we abhor. 

As a result, many a fine, All American Boy shot those family men and dog lovers in the head every time the opportunity presented itself, because they were part of a system that was what it was, and many a young child lost his kind and gentle father as a result. The problem was that for whatever reason, the majority in the SS or Gestapo chose not to heal their own system. Whether they had any real choice to or not is of course arguable, but it does reduce to only that. They chose the path that appeared immediately expedient, and many found they had chosen wrong. --A***

 
A***,

I think that what you are missing is not what decent men SS or Gestapo members were at home, but what they did at work. Frankly, the comparison of all cops to these Nazi elite is unfair to most cops, who are not only loving family men, but decent, professional cops at work. Were there reluctant members of the SS or the Gestapo? Maybe, but as units they carried out the dictates of the Nazi state with few quibbles and with little regard for the consequences. Cops in this country today are disciplined, frequently if not all that publicly, for their misconduct. I doubt that this was ever true for the members of the Nazi elite police and SS members. As long as they were carrying out the orders of their commanders, they were totally safe from censure. Cops in America today may not come in for as much official discipline as you'd like to see, but they are disciplined and that is in stark contrast, I am sure, to the Nazi thugs to whom you so often compare them.

As I said in my response to R*****, there will be people in this country who, no matter how well cops clean up their act, will view them as jack-booted thugs, either because of their own experiences -- a cop not as polite as they might wish, perhaps brusque, when giving them a ticket they earned or a cop issuing a field-sobriety test and than asking them to blow into the Breathalyzer and taking them in for DUI -- or those people whose politics, anarchic or nearly so, cause them to believe that even a good cop is the agent of the State, which is a hateful and unnecessary appendage which should be abolished. I suspect, taken all together and adding people who dislike cops for what they have done to criminal friends or relatives, the numbers are not trivial. With some people, no matter what you do, you can't win. That doesn't mean you don't try, and I'd urge -- and do -- that cops and their departments and the politicians who employ them (but for whom they really don't work; ideally, the cops work for us) make changes: demilitarize, purge the worst apples first and then try and retrain the rest, removing them if they seem unresponsive to training. But rest assured, cops will never be universally respected. Criminals have friends and those  friends -- and relatives, as I said earlier -- will often side with the criminal and hate the cops for putting them in jail. Guaranteed.

Jamie

=======================++++++++++++++++============++++++++++++++

I'd really like to know what you have to say about any of this, good or bad. 

Riots I Have Known and Not Loved

The piece I wrote the other day on the miss-named "flash-mob" riots spurred some back and forth emails and the reading of the blogs of a number of friends and acquaintances. It also jogged my memory of riots I remember from the past.

I was living in New York City during the 1964 riots, but they really didn't effect me much, since they were confined to neighborhoods I seldom visited. I do remember that I was told by a fellow jazz buff I had met  at Rhodes Prep School that it would not be entirely safe for me to come up and visit him or to go to jazz clubs in Harlem "for the time being."

The Watts Riots happened in August of 1965. I heard about them, but I was living in New York and had gone to Miami for the Columbia Record Company convention, in hopes that it would draw a lot of overflow talent that my partner and I could sign to management contracts. I fancied myself a music producer and manager. When I came home from Miami, Watts was erupting and I had gotten my draft notice, so things changed both in the macrocosm and the in microcosm where I lived my life.

I went to basic in New Jersey at Ft. Dix in September of '65 and observed the New York black-out of that summer as a dark horizon where there had been light. Amazingly enough, given all that had transpired in the previous year or so, the black-out produced more babies, according to legend, than looting or other disturbances. After basic, I went to language school, based in the DC Metro area and living in the District on 16th Street NW. I was learning Lao through the Foreign Service Institute, bound for a classified job with the Army Security Agency. After Language school, I went to Ft. Meade, up the BW Parkway just south of Baltimore for further training at the National Security Agency.

From there, I was the first in my unit -- and the only married man in my specialty -- to get sent to SE Asia. There is a whole story about how and why I came home and went where I did, but that is for another time. When I came back, I was assigned as a unit armorer with the Weapons Training Brigade of Ordnance OCS. I had been there, keeping track of a weapons room with lots of hardware and an ammo bunker with tens of thousands of rounds of ammo. One of the other armorers was from Detroit and he regaled us with stories about his experiences during the riots there in 1967 at his family's gun store, with all of them armed and a legally-owned machine gun mounted inside to  repel rioters, looters or anyone else that might decide that the store was a tempting target. We were all talking about it, and even the Black members of our unit sympathized.

On April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and the District erupted into flame. The members of my unit were on an off-cycle, having just finished our part in training the latest class of young 2nd Lieutenants. We were sitting around the day room watching TV when we learned that Dr. King was dead. The CO gave us all leave to go home and we left after lunch.

I drove from Ft. Meade to my apartment in Adelphi, near the UM campus. My wife was working in DC at the time. I walked in to a ringing phone. It was my wife asking me if I could drive in and pick her up. I assumed that she had gotten sick and said something about that and she said, "Haven't you heard? The District is burning and they're sending us home." I was still in my uniform and popped the white helmet liner on my head. I also tucked my .45 pistol in my waistband and a couple of magazines in my pocket. I drove into the District in my bronze '60 Ford Falcon. I was being waved through intersections by police and got to my wife's work in about the usual fifteen minutes. 

I asked her to drive and we headed home. Without thinking, she took the usual route, which put us right in the middle of the northern end of the rioting along 14th Street. It was a foolish mistake and we couldn't see the end of the short hood of the Falcon for the smoke from all the burning buildings and cars. Angry black faces appeared out of the smoke, hands slammed on the car and I had the .45 ready, with a round in the chamber and the safety on. When the gun was seen, they backed away from the car, but as we moved forward at a snail's pace, new faces replaced the old and it continued until we were nearly to the Maryland line.

The drive, which had taken me 15 minutes inbound took us over an hour going the other way and was as scary as anything I've encountered. When we finally got home, both pretty drained from the experience , I walked in to another ringing phone. It as the Staff Duty NCO at my unit calling us all in. They were using our unit to give refresher training with the shotgun and the bayonet as the 11th Armored Cavalry geared up for riot duty.

The riots went on for 5 days. I went to work, training 11th Cav troopers how to deploy the shotgun and how to use an M-14 with the bayonet attached. My wife's work remained closed until the following Wednesday, the 10th. I drove her in and then took a little tour around the neighborhood not more than a couple of blocks from where we had lived before I went to SE Asia. It looked like photos of Europe after the World War. I never expected my nation's capitol to look like this.

One evening, the second day of the riots if I remember right, I got a call from the wife of one of my motorcycle racing buddies. They were both Quakers, teaching the deaf and they were a little uncomfortable around me, a close and visible representation of the war which they opposed. Becky said, "I'd like to apologize for the way we've been treating you, the distance and the cold shoulder, especially from me. Don sees you mostly as another bike racer, but, well, I saw you as a soldier first. There's some kind of tank or something on the corner with guys like you standing around it and I know that they're the only thing between us and that angry mob. So, thanks for being there and we'll try to treat you better. Have a good night." I didn't really have a chance to say anything to her until much later.

With the memory of the riots in LA following the not guilty verdict in the trial of the officers involved in the aftermath of the Rodney King car stop still very fresh in mind we geared up for the potential aftermath if the verdict in federal court went against the hopes and wishes of many people in the commnity. Based on our total lack of preparation for the relatively minor disturbances that followed the first verdict in LA, our department, assigned to the San Francisco General Hospital, located on the border of two fairly high-crime areas, wanted no problems. They cancelled days off and held everyone for double shifts. We were authorized more than the usual compliment of weapons and we patrolled the area around the hospital with four officers to a car. It was a pretty mellow night and the let-down after we had gotten ready for a tough shift was odd. Relief, of course, but also the feeling of being all dressed up and with no place to go. Not that we wanted a riot; but we were prepared. The effects of an adrenaline dump in those situations can really wipe you out.

So, those are some of my experiences with riots. In all the cases, the rioters were almost all Black. In most cases, they all seemed to feel that they had sufficient reasons. I have never thought that their grievances gave them license to destroy property and put lives at risk, but I'm white and have been told I couldn't understand: It's a Black thing, they say. Maybe. After the recent riots in Philadelphia and London, I still don't get it.

Flash Mobs -- Not

I got a link to a brief clip about an incident in Kansas City in toady's email from a frequent correspondent. It arrived wihout comment, but with this as the subject line: "A cure for the common flash mob." I opened the clip and watched it.http://gunfreezone.net/wordpress/index.php/2011/08/08/a-cure-for-the-common-mob/

Not always the best solution, but in some cases the best and only solution: oppose force with countervailing superior force and be prepared to shoot. That old 7.62x54R M1944 Russian bolt-action carbine may not be the best defensive combat tool, but it worked in this case just fine.

Now, neither the YouTube poster, the person who reposted it to Gun Free Zone, nor the news outlet from which this clip was taken ( http://www.fox4kc.com/news/wdaf-metro-man-says-teen-mob-terrorized-his-neighborhood-20110616,0,4762112.story) mentioned the term "flash mob." That was added by my correspondent, and I sent him a response, which I will share with you-all, since it addresses a point near and dear to me: accuracy in reporting. And that includes the casual reporting among email or Facebook friends and/or acquaintances.

"As you know, I am somewhat of a stickler for accuracy. The media has taken to calling the various and numerous mobs of predominately Black -- and in London, Black and Muslim -- youths "flash mobs." According to the dictionary definition of "flash mob" these riotous activities don't fit. From our friends at Wikipedia: "A flash mob (or flashmob)[1] is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and sometimes seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment and/or satire.[2][3] Flash mobs are organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails.[4][5][6][7][8][9] The term, coined in 2003, is generally not applied to events and performances organized for the purposes of politics (such as protests), commercial advertisement, publicity stunts that involve public relation firms, or paid professionals." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_mob) This is the understanding I have had for the term and if the use of a term in advertising defines it, then this is the definition most people will have from a current AT&T commercial for their text service.

In fact, in the case of the incident in Kansas City, the element of electronic communication seems wholly absent. The mob had already formed before they took action.

While it is possible -- even likely -- that many of the riotous bands of youths -- young thugs might be a better term, and until the various white anarchists got involved in London, mostly young,  Black thugs -- used the various electronic media to communicate their desire to gather and commit crimes, the rest of the definition counts them out as "flash-mobbers." If there was a political agenda -- and the spark in London seems to have been a possible act of police misconduct in the death of a young Black man ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/08/mark-duggan-profile-tottenham-shooting) -- then the initial gathering might be considered political protest. It quickly devolved into looting, pillaging and arson, with a couple of beatings and at least one murder thrown in. Hardly entertainment as we understand it or satire. Flash-mobs also usually disperse without the government contemplating activating the military, as the London Metropolitan Police and the city government did.

Another fairly similar explanation of a flash mob can be found at http://www.answers.com/topic/flash-mob. "A group of people who gather at a predetermined time and place to perform a silly prank such as yelling at the top of their lungs for 30 seconds and quickly dispersing before the police arrive. Using cellphones, the flash mob can change its venue if the first one has been compromised. Why do they do this? Because they can!" (more at the website linked)

So I am hoping that we can all refrain from calling these groups of young men --they are  mostly male  --  "flash mobs" and call them what they are: "Rioters, Looters, Vandals" or other older and more accurately descriptive terms. And, when they are mostly Black, we should not shy away from calling -- pardon me -- a spade a spade. And we also need to stop trying, as many articles recently published about the mob violence in Philadelphia and London, to shift the blame for these acts away from the perpetrators and onto society at large. The times are tough for most of us workers, Black, White, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, male, female and everybody and anybody else. But most of those effected by the current economic and social strife don't gather together and riot, loot, burn and vandalize in a relatively mindless and often counter-productive manner.

Frankly, I can see the possibility of groups of conservative, perhaps Christian and mostly white folks, young and old alike, using the same technology that are typically used to call one of these things into being showing up to oppose the rioters with armed and determined force. Perhaps if the revolution is to begin, it will begin there. And it will be a race and class war as much as a revolt against the government. Perhaps that is just what some in the government want. It's not what I want, but I don't fancy gangs of rioters, looters, vandals, rapists and murderers of any race or class running free in a town near me."

Or a city or town near any of you either. Let me know how you feel and if you feel, like I do, the the US press is pretty much sweeping the fact that these riots and attacks are for the most part being perpetrated by Blacks, both here in the US and in the UK under any convenient rug.

The Rich Get Rich and . . . Re-Distrubution

I read a posting from my friend Claire who also blogs on Blogspot ( http://claireloveslifeback.blogspot.com ) She posted, without comment, a clip from Fault Lines, a production of Al Jazeera's English language operation that was entitled "The Top 1%"  whose first paragraph of text read: 

 "The richest 1% of US Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country's income and control an astonishing 40% of its wealth. Inequality in the US is more extreme than it's been in almost a century — and the gap between the super rich and the poor and middle class people has widened drastically over the last 30 years" 
 
Obviously, they were very critical of the disparity of wealth in the US. As I watched and listened, I began checking out the top fifteen billionaires in the world. I responded with this:

"OK, I can agree that the rich get an unfair break, mostly pushed by the Republican party. It is interesting to me that of the world's 15 top billionaires, only three Americans make the top five, Bill Gates, at #2, a man who has given huge amounts of his wealth to help people through his private charity; Warren Buffett, who spends a good deal of his money to help small businesses get started and Larry Ellison, who recently cut his salary to $1 and plans to give 95% of his wealth to charity. Only one other American is within the top ten, and that is Sam Walton's daughter-in-law and her family. Christy is known as a philanthropist. All of the remaining fifteen billionaires are not Americans, and some of them are from what most people would describe as Third-World nations, like Mexico and Brazil.

So, it is not strictly an American problem and I get tired of the re-distributionist left screaming to claim more of the earned wealth of the rich for themselves. Most of America's billionaires are self-made -- and that's true in the rest of the world, for the most part. Only a handful inherited their wealth, including Walton, but most of the inherited great wealth is from the Muslim oil-rich sheikdoms.

The story -- which I can hardly consider unbiased, coming as it does from Al Jazeera, not usually consider a friend of the US -- cites the great and widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots in the US and that the chances of rising from the bottom to the top are worse here than elsewhere. How many poor people in some of the rest of the world, especially the developing world where a good deal of personal wealth is held by the few (and especially, perhaps in the Islamic world to whom Al Jazeera primarily speaks) can aspire to become the next Mark Zuckerberg or Sergey Brin or Steve Jobs?"

As I said, I am fully cognizant of the divide between the very rich and all the rest of us and the fact that the gap between those of us who consider ourselves middle class and the working and unemployed poor is narrower than it was when I was a kid. No argument. But it irks me no end when the left -- especially the foreign left -- acts as if this is an American and only an American problem. 

Do I think that the richest should contribute more? Of course I do. Will they? Not as long as they have the Republican party tucked into their checkbooks like a bank card. The magic number that Democrats seem fixated on an income of $250K a year or more. But those folks aren't the really rich. These days, they are the top of the middle class, with that salary just about covering expenses and some well-earned luxuries. And for many, that wealth isn't wealth that they can spend, it is the value of their business and the profits from it. They are not the mega-corporate rich, they aren't Exxon or Bechtel. They are, mostly, mom-and-pop businesses, the sort of businesses that are the bedrock of America.

Both parties seem to be engaged in a war of words and one of the weapons they use is language intended to create class warfare, engendering a hatred for whichever group they don't represent. I am, nominally, a libertarian, but where I come to problems with the big "L" Libertarians, the Party, is in their belief that business and the rest of the private sector can cure all ills if allowed to do so. I'm sorry, the only thing I trust as little as I trust Big Government is Big Business, their all-too-frequent best buddy and hand-holding partner. I don't thin either of these Big Entities are the solution but are part of the problem.

I believe that government entitlements have a place in a world that has damn little individual charity -- this despite the work of people like Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda -- and has a need for a safety net for those who fall off the ladder to success. These days, that could be any of us. That the Republicans want to balance the budget by cutting benefits to the poor, the elderly and others in genuine need, infuriates me. But I think that the government, especially the progressive left wing of the Democratic party, has tried to do far too much, tried to be everything to everyone. And, like being the "Cops of the World" -- thanks, Phil Ochs, for that great title -- we just flat can't afford to do it. I don't think we ever really could, but as long as we were willing to keep getting deeper and deeper in debt -- and to for criminny sake, to the Chinese, of all people -- we could keep up the fantasy.

Do I have solutions? Well, being retired, having cashed out my retirement to cover current expenses long ago, and living on what Social Security sends me and my wife's paycheck (I'd like to work, and am looking, but at nearly 67 with pre-existing medical problems, I'm not  good catch, job-wise) the country can do what we do: decide what is vital, what is very important and what is necessary and just do away with all the rest. Do we need the latest whiz-bang military gadget? Probably not. 

(A side note, here: I recently watched a clip posted on a site for cops and soldiers about the gift of a $250 RC "toy" truck that has saved lives in Afghanistan. But we spend billions on all sorts of purpose-built military hardware, much of which is no more efficient than that "toy." Check it out at  http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/remote-controlled-truck-soldier-afghanistan-saves-soldiers-lives/story?id=14225434 ) 

Can we do without some of the money spent by our Congress Critters on junkets and pork-barrel hand-outs? I think we can. Can we perhaps look at the pensions we dole out to people who have served in Congress or as President and see if we could cut them? How many former elected officials make lots of money writing, speaking and advising industry? Quite a few, and yet we're paying them a pension based on, in some cases, only a few of years of service. Also, since almost no one is elected these days without a substantial amount of personal wealth, perhaps it's time to totally re-evaluate the practice altogether.

So, those are a few cost saving ideas, none of which would be popular -- especially the pension one -- with the people who make laws. But if the American people get together and vote for candidates whose platform includes some of these ideas, then perhaps we can actually save some money. Oh, yeah, and find a way to make the richest -- not the middling rich, the mom-and-pop rich -- pay more of their huge wealth to help support the nation.

Obama's Gun Problem

Sometimes, I find that I am operating in a different world from some of my friends. I recently was engaged in an exchange on numerous topics with an old friend -- and former girlfriend -- who lives in New York state. I mentioned, as if it were common knowledge, the current BATFE scandal originally known as "Fast and Furious." She wasn't familiar with it. Even my wife, who is a sharp woman, didn't recognize the name, although when reminded, did remember that there was a scandal over some weapons that had been "walked" to Mexico. So, I will try not to overstate the case by explaining, briefly, some of what happened.

There has been some concern by the Obama administration, among others, about the possible involvement of guns acquired through retail sales in the US in the violence in Mexico. BATFE came up with some figures, which many dispute, claiming at one point that as many as 90% of the guns used by the cartels had come from here.

One field office of the BATFE began an operation that they codenamed "Fast and Furious" a rather telling title and, indicative, I think, of the fast and loose way in which it was undertaken. In short, they were going to encourage -- facilitate, even -- the purchase of military-style weapons in gun stores in Arizona which they knew would be taken to Mexico and resold to the cartels. They planned -- or outlined; this operation seems bereft of much real planning -- to track these weapons, much as the DEA tracks shipments of drugs, hoping to find the end-users and get a line on the chain of command, the lines of authority of the operation.

That's fine, if it works. But from the start, is seems that the BATFE lost sight of the guns, or a majority of them. And they began to show up among weapons captured at crime scenes in Mexico. And, in at least one case so far, at the crime scene of a murder on US soil of a CPB agent, Brian Terry. And from that point on, it all went downhill

A couple of gun-rights bloggers and activists, David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh, got wind of the operation and blogged about it. Eventually, the mainstream media, who had ignored it until then, decided to air a story. CBS put the story out there and, eventually, seemed to take credit for "breaking" the story.

So, are you with me so far? (If not, read David's and Mike's blogs; they explain it more deeply and better than I can in a quick overview) Everyone on both sides of the gun-rights issue and on both poles of the political spectrum seems to have an opinion on this. There are investigations of the operation in Congress. It is discussed in the blogosphere ad infinitum and it even gets some mainstream ink and air-time.

One person who weighed in was a law professor from UCLA, Adam Winkler. He wrote, in part, in a Huffington Post editorial http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-winkler/obamas-growing-gun-proble_b_917104.html:

'The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive ("ATF" ...

"Operation Fast and Furious" ... allowed approximately 1,700 guns to be

sold illegally to suppliers of the [Mexican] cartels and then failed to

keep track of the weapons. Many of the guns have since been recovered at

crime scenes, including two guns recovered at the scene of a fatal

attack on a U.S. border agent ... Fast and Furious may have been a bad

idea, but Americans can understand the dire situation that led to the

program ... Although Fast and Furious hasn't garnered much attention so

far in the mainstream press, it's become the talk of the gun rights

community ... Unfortunately, the early signs are that Obama is going to

handle this controversy as poorly as he handled the debt ceiling debate.'

Now, I don't have much of an argument that the Obama administration has handled the ATF scandal poorly. My quibble -- or maybe it's a quarrel -- with Professor Winkler is that the problem that ATF was trying, poorly, to address was "dire." He seems to have bought into the government's conclusion -- or fantasy -- that the major supplier of weapons to the cartels was the US retail firearms market. So, I wrote to Professor Winkler and said this:

"Professor Winkler,

I fully agree with your statement that Obama and his administration have caused themselves no end of trouble by stonewalling on "Fast and Furious." I don't see it as a legitimate sting, since there appears to have been poor oversight -- something necessary to an effective sting --  and no end-game. The very name selected for the operation -- "Fast and Furious" -- seems to indicate a rather cowboy approach to the perceived problem. And the magnitude of the problem before ATF allowed so many guns to walk across the border is debatable, too.

Like many people who seem to oppose the free and uninfringed exercise of the 2nd Amendment, you "miss" a few salient points. While there may be some guns being used by the cartels that originated in the US through retail channels -- we know of some 2,000 that did, with the help of ATF --  many of the weapons are not military-style semi-auto weapons, but full-auto military weapons, rocket propelled grenades and the like,. So, another source for those is obvious. Given the number of weapons floating around on the black market that originated as military aid by either the US, the Soviet bloc or China, one must draw the obvious conclusion: there are corrupt police and military people in Mexico and elsewhere who are the source of those truly military weapons. These unfortunate truths are overlooked by the Obama administration, it seems.

I will quickly admit that the very existence of a drug problem in Mexico is a result of the drug laws in the US. We have repeated the errors of the Volstead Act and prohibition, creating another criminal enterprise as bad or worse than the ones created back then. We also refuse, it seems, to acknowledge the levels of corruption inherent in the Mexican system, where the mordita, the "little bite" or bribe is universal. In a poor nation, just as in the ethnic neighborhoods from which the Prohibition Era gangsters largely came, any quick route to great wealth will be exploited by any and all comers. Just as we created wealthy and powerful men like Al Capone from the poverty of Chicago's Italian neighborhoods -- who without Prohibition would have been a relatively minor criminal -- the US and Mexico have done the same with the narcotraficantes.

Placing even some of the blame on the legitimate sources in the US seems overly disingenuous. And, for those of us who do not trust government -- especially a Democratic one -- where our 2nd Amendment rights are concerned, imputing a hidden agenda, an agenda that includes infringing on those rights, is not a stretch.

I'd love to hear you and Eugene Volokh, also a UCLA professor, discuss the issue. I've had the privilege of corresponding with Professor Volokh and know that he could set you straight on some things. He could even get you to use the correct nomenclature for the device that holds the ammunition in a firearm. It is a magazine, not a clip."

The Professor Volokh to whom I referred is considered an expert on Constitutional Law, especially the First and Second Amendments. He maintains a web log at http://www.volokh.com/ which is always an interesting read.

So, I seem to be involved in the discussion of this matter even more widely than I had intended to be. I am not, let us be clear, a fan of the BATFE. They have been used in the attack on the individual right to keep and bear arms (RKBA) for decades. Usually, it is either at the behest of the administration or, in some cases, in the attempt to curry favor and larger budget allotments from the Congress.

Check out the various sources, if you want to know more. And stay tuned, since I doubt that this will be the last you hear from me in the subject.

The 27 CLub

I learned of Amy Winehouse's death from a posting on Facebook a bit over a week ago. I wasn't a fan, really, but I liked what I had heard of her music. There was a lot of talk about her being one of the "27 Club," musicians, some of them great, even iconic, who had died at twenty-seven. A lot of the Rock-n-roll greats I remember from the '60s never made it to thirty. Morrison, Hendrix, Brian Jones, and, from the next generation, Kurt Cobain are all mentioned. Since I enjoy music of all sorts, I've listened to all of them from time to time. It wasn't until I watched the MTV Unplugged episode with Cobain and Nirvana that I really appreciated his music. Like Morrison, Cobain was a poet who wrote songs. Interestingly enough, one of the members of Cobain's wife's band Hole, Kristen Pfaff, also inducted herself into the 27 Club when she died of an accidental OD.

I was sort of aimlessly traipsing through some YouTube videos, sparked by a Facebook entry from a prep school alum who is a serious '60s music freak. The clip he posted was of a Dead tune by Pig Pen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FgdqYzI0EI&feature=share. There are a series of photos of Pig Pen and the Dead, including one taken on the steps of the house where the Dead lived, 710 Ashbury Street. Ron had Janis at his side, and was copping a feel. Janis had one of the biggest smiles I've seen on her face, lighting it up as I'd seldom seen it. I remembered that Janis was also a member of the 27 Club and looked up Pig Pen. Damn, so was he.

I learned of Joplin's passing driving up Second Avenue in NYC. As I neared the Filmore East -- which I knew as The Village Theater, a former Yiddish Theater when the Lower East Side, was mostly made up of Jewish immigrants -- I saw the marquee draped in black with Janis Joplin's dates. I was two days shy of my own 34th birthday. I had to pull my VW to the side, since I couldn't see to drive through the tears. I'd seen a lot of shows at that theater, including one with Chuck Berry that some friends produced. And I'd sat in the light booth or on the Joshua's Lights scaffolding for most of them. In those days, I seldom paid to go and listen to music, for I had friends in the business, as they say. One of the reasons, odd as it is, that Janis resonated with me is that she was from Port Arthur, Texas, a town where my grandfather had worked and lived when he was building ships for Consolidated Steel, a couple of years or so before I was born. It was, in fact, where Pop died not long before Pearl Harbor.

I couldn't say I knew Janis. I loved her music, and when she was in New York, she tended to hang out in places where I hung out, and one year I saw her almost nightly for a week or more in Nobody's, a bar with a great kitchen. She was in the company of the character actor Michael J. Pollard. I don't know if they were an item, but they seemed to go together well. I learned that Janis and Pig Pen were a couple for a short time, and then friends for the rest of their short lives. For some reason, her death, so young, hit me hard.

I don't know what it is about being twenty-seven that it seems to be as far as so many really fine musicians have taken their life and careers. Ana says that maybe, staring thirty in the face and confronted with having to at least contemplate growing up or just growing older, some of them just can't handle it. She may have a point. I was twenty-seven twice. The first time, I was really 17, but the phony draft card I used had my birthday in 1934. And then, not long after I got out of the service, I turned 27 for real. I faced the specter of turning thirty in three years with some trepidation, but, being no musical genius -- or much of any other type -- and with no one counting on me, no entourage, perhaps it held less fear for me.

So, this afternoon, I've spent thinking about the curse of Twenty-Seven, the losses the world of music I inhabited the edges of at one time has suffered and, as I contemplate turning 70 in three years and a bit, I've listened to the music of a lot of people, many my contemporaries, who won't ever be looking at that number.