The Big 12

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The Big 12 was a great league--in football, basketball, women's basketball, and most other sports. Today, it's just a shadow of its former self. The powers that be have allowed this thing to deteriorate to the point that now we are simply trying to avoid further public embarrassment. I never fully understood why we demolished the Big 8. That conference seemed about the right size, a manageable size, and its teams were competitive. Generally, these conferences are about football. The Big 8 was anchored in the north by Nebraska University and in the south by the University of Oklahoma. The University of Colorado and Missouri were both a force to be reckoned with and the others, including Oklahoma State University, Iowa State University, Kansas and Kansas State had their moments. There was nothing greater than the rivalry between Nebraska and Oklahoma, a nationally televised football game every Thanksgiving. The whole nation anxiously awaited this game.

For some reason we decided to expand to a twelve school conference. The old Southwest Conference was dying and we allowed four of them to join with us and form the Big 12. The addition of the University of Texas, Texas A & M, Baylor and Texas Tech rounded out our conference. There was little reason to bring in Baylor, except to placate the politics of the Lone Star State. This Big 12 didn’t dominate the football world, but their claims of national titles, and their contention each year for an opportunity to play for the national title, certainly meant that every year they were going to be a factor to be considered.

Political mistakes were made in the operation of this conference. The league probably acquiesced too much to Texas in allowing that one state to dominate the governance of the conference. But, those things happen when you consider that one-third of the conference was in the State of Texas. And, Texas University is a rich and powerful school, so much so that an alliance between them and any other school gives new meaning to the phrase, “unequally yoked together.” The conference should have from day one stated the rules. They should have explained that each school got one vote and they would all have to live with the vote. And, if they did not want to abide by that simple rule, they should have had no place in the conference. When Texas decided to act independently, without going “independent”, by creating their Texas Network in conjunction with ESPN, this was a death knell for the conference. This should have been stopped before it ever got on the drawing board. There should never have been any place for such a “network” because the Big 12 should have formed its own before Texas ever suggested theirs. But, this wasn’t what started the fractures in the conference.

Every team in the league has had its “ups and downs.” Texas and Oklahoma, who seemed to dominate the conference, have had their moments at the head of the table and, in other years, they have both been deemed a mid-tier team, even though neither has been considered a mid-tier program. For years, the northern division of the conference was weak. Nebraska, of all teams, was weak. They had a change in their coaching staff and it has taken several years for them to get back on track. Colorado, after capturing a national championship and being a powerhouse was relegated to the sidelines of contention for a title. Iowa State and Missouri would show glimpses of talent, but they were never in contention. Kansas State enjoyed remarkable success under Bill Snyder and Kansas showed signs of improvement, but only briefly.

While the northern division of the conference only achieved mediocrity, Oklahoma State University was slowly climbing above that level of play and breaking into the level of contention for the top spot. If Nebraska, Missouri and Colorado had spent more time paying attention to their own program and less to Texas, they too could have improved and been competitive. Oklahoma State just got better. A donor helped bring their facilities up to date, but, more than that, they brought in a coach, a very talented young coach, who had ties to the university and would not use the position as a stepping stone to a bigger and better school and program. They have improved each year until the present season in which they are contending realistically for a shot at the national title.

There were early rumblings when the conference expanded to twelve members. Offices were moved to Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, and some events which had always been in Kansas City were moved to Dallas. Not everything which oriented the conference in a southerly direction was bad. The four Texas schools were part of the conference and it was right that their geographical interests be taken into consideration as well as everyone else.

Once, in an interview, the head coach of the Texas Longhorns, referred to the time when “the Big 8 decided to join the Southwest Conference.” That revisionist history plays well in Texas, but it is of little value and merit elsewhere. The Southwest Conference disbanded and four of the homeless teams were invited to join the Big 8 and become the nucleus of the Big 12.

There were signs of weakening in the conference which were present in various teams, and it soon became evident that cracks in the team would corrupt the stability of the conference. The coach who led Colorado to a national championship was replaced by someone unable to continue their tradition. The same thing happened to Nebraska. Their coach retired and he was replaced by someone from that long, storied tradition who seemed poised to keep them up to their expected level. But, another administration came in who saw fit to replace him with someone with no understanding of the Nebraska tradition, someone who seemed to worry more about opposing teams’ mascots than with his own team’s performance. They were weakened and the conference paid the price.

Kansas State’s coach retired and his replacement was unable to build on the work of his predecessor. Texas Tech’s coach had a controversy with a television personality’s son and he was accused of mistreating the kid. The university fired him and, in so doing, weakened the team. We quickly saw that a team cannot be harmed without doing harm to the conference. And, then we saw it again in Kansas. A coach brought them out of the basement of insignificance, only to be discovered cursing at the players. He was mean to the kids and they ran him off, damaging the team and cracking the foundation of the conference.

Missouri, for whatever reason, decided it wanted to leave the Big 12. They wanted to go to the Big 10 where they had greater academic standards. We all smiled at that rationale, knowing all along that there was more to it than that, suspecting that their anger at Texas was the greater reason. They toyed with this for some time and the Big 10 decided they needed to expand. They invited Nebraska to jump to the Big 10 and Nebraska jumped. Nebraska had never tried to hide their contempt toward Texas and the way they had attempted to dominate the conference. It may have been short sighted, but Nebraska cut its ties with traditional rivalries and alliances and moved on the Big 10. Missouri? Their invitation to join the Big 10 must have been lost in the mail; they had to remain in the Big 12.

Oddly, as Nebraska was cutting and running to the Big 10, Colorado left the conference and became a part of the PAC 10. We didn’t see that coming. Perhaps they too thought they were moving to a better academic conference. They don’t have any better sports record in that conference than they had in the Big 12. The cracks in the foundation of the conference were getting worse.

This year has been a year of instability for the Big 12. Playing with only ten teams, following the departure of Nebraska and Colorado, realignment has become the major story both in this conference and throughout the country. For a time, it looked like the Big 12 might cease to exist. Texas A & M announced it was going to move into the SEC. Oklahoma and Texas announced they were being courted by the PAC 10 and were considering a move. Several of our smaller members had no idea what would happen to them or where they might be able to go. It was finally announced that Oklahoma and Texas would remain in the Big 12 and try to make it work.

Texas A & M did little to hide their disdain for Texas and their complaining suggested an inferior feeling, a feeling they could not compete with their big brother living down the road. A & M has a tradition in football and they should be able to compete with anyone. It isn’t likely that they will be able to do any better in the SEC than they were could have done in the Big 12. I hate to lose them.

Missouri stuck its ugly head up again, saying they were going to the SEC. They didn’t say this time that they were seeking academic excellence. Had they done that, we would have probably broken out in laughter all over the country. The interesting thing is that today (10/31/2011) we are still waiting to see the formal invitation from the SEC to Missouri to join them.

The conference has tried to hold its numbers together by the addition of Texas Christian University (TCU) and West Virginia. Whether these will be successful additions to the conference is still to be seen, but the resulting conference cannot be as good as when it included Nebraska and Texas A & M. It’ll do, but not much more than that can be said.

No one knows what lies ahead for the Big 12. Perhaps one day Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas will go ahead and relocate with another conference. If that happens, the remaining teams will be left trying to make do as best they can. The real problem is that we are sparsely populated in the Great Plains, the natural geographical location for the conference. And a sparse population means limited television sets and television money drives collegiate football. That’s why we need an alliance with Texas. That’s why Texas carries such a big stick; there’s a lot of television sets in that state.

Whatever is going to happen in the future, this is where we are today. We still have member universities, including Iowa State, Kansas State, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Texas University, Baylor, TCU and West Virginia. We are still waiting to for the SEC to extend its invitation to Missouri. If and when it does, Missouri will be gone and they will likely not be heard of anymore. The remaining members of the conference will continue to be member universities. Texas will still be Texas. Oklahoma will continue to be Oklahoma. We will all have good sports programs, we will all battle for conference titles and, from time to time, we will compete for national titles. The rivalry between Oklahoma and Nebraska is a thing of the past and it is sorely missed. The rivalry between Kansas and Missouri will become a thing of the past and it, too, will be sorely missed. But, the Big 12 will continue to be a force in collegiate sports.

A Dinner for a Date

Any young man who doesn’t learn to cook has a miserable life ahead. I try to explain to my son that he should have more pride than to expect a girl, or a wife later on, to cook for him. And, it is a shameful reflection on his parents, us, for that to occur. Every boy, every young man, needs to be able to cook for himself. The more independence he can assert for himself, the better person he will be, and not only that, there are a lot of girls, and young women, out there who cannot cook. So, every young man needs to be able to cook for himself.

There is a second benefit for being able to cook: it impresses girls. So, allow me to walk you through a date night, your place, a meal prepared by you for a girl you want to impress.

Clean your apartment, or other place of residence. (If you’re living with your parents, stop it. Move out and get your own place, something you can afford.) No one wants to spend the evening in a messy place. The best way to clean a place, and keep it clean, is to get rid of stuff, simplify your life and living. Get rid of clutter. Get a magazine or a sales catalogue from a hip store specializing in young people’s life and décor, and try to decorate using their suggestions. Find a picture you like and mimic it. Once you get it clean and organized, keep it that way. It is a lot easier to keep it clean than it is to get a dirty place straightened up. Simply make it a habit of picking up after yourself.

Get a pound, or slightly more, of round steak which has been run through one of those meat tenderizers, the kind that somewhat shreds it. It will take you a little time to prepare, but this, your major course, can be prepared while she’s sitting there in the kitchen in awe of your many talents. Cut the steak into bite sized pieces and throw it into a microwaveable safe dish. I prefer to cook this in a Corning Ware dish, just large enough to hold everything.

Sprinkle a little salt and lemon/pepper on the meat and allow it to sit while preparing something else. Have a little wine available for you and your date, along with a small tray of cheese and crackers. Have both a red and white wine available so she can have a choice before dinner.

In the refrigerator, have a salad made of mixed spring greens, in which you have dropped a few cherry tomatoes. You can buy it already made, but transfer it from its packaging into a bowl, covered with Saran Wrap, so it will give the impression of homemade. Also, buy a packaged dessert, a desert similar to a cheese cake. It is easy to make, just follow the directions. After completed, put a little canned cherry pie filling on top and keep it in the refrigerator.

Get some walnuts, no more than a handful, and toast them in a non-stick skillet. Simply place them in the skillet over a medium heat and allow them to toast. Mix well and often, shaking and tossing them. Don’t allow them to burn. It would be preferable to do this while she is there watching you because she will be impressed with the shake and toss method, but do it early because they need to cool down after being toasted. Set aside.

Earlier in the day, you should get some frozen rolls and prepare them according to directions. Try to have them come out of the oven just in time for dinner, or a little earlier. I recommend serving with a soft margarine, or, if you want to really impress her, get a quart of whipping cream and, assuming you have an electric mixer, mix it in front of her until it becomes whipped cream. Then mix it a little longer and it will turn to fresh butter. Mix this with honey to form a honey-butter spread. That little touch will be a winner and she will be duly impressed. If you smoke, I could tell you how to impress her by lighting your cigarette, but you don’t need to be starting now. And, she doesn’t need to be kissing a smoker; it’s something like licking the bottom of an ashtray.

You will need a bell pepper, red or green or a combination, cut into slices. You also need an onion peeled and cut into slices which are then separated into rings. You can prepare these two items, onions and peppers, ahead of time if you want and have them available in the refrigerator. Dump these pepper slices and onion rings on top of the meat. If you don’t have enough room, you need something a little larger. Next, dump in a can of Campbell’s Golden Mushroom Soup. Pour in enough red wine to cover the meat, cover and place in a microwave. Cook for 25 minutes on high setting.

Put on some music, some soft crooning preferably. Don’t play hard rock or anything else which would suggest agitation and dancing. The only dancing you want to consider is slow and close. Besides, you’re going to be busy preparing the rest of the meal. With slow music, she can sip her wine and sway to the music, all the time admiring your domesticity. I would recommend something by Frank Sinatra or, to show you are really cool, something by Landau Eugene Murphy, Jr.

While the dish is cooking, prepare either rice or egg noodles or chicken flavored Rice-A-Roni. If you prepare rice, use the 5-minute instant rice; it’s easier. And, if you prepare noodles, cook them, drain and put in a pan with butter; heat, salt and pepper to taste. But, I recommend the Rice-A-Roni. Have your oven set on 195° which is an appropriate temperature to keep your plates warm, as well as keeping anything warm which is prepared before the stew is completed.

Have a pot of boiling water in which you place some salt. Drop in about 8 asparagus spears. With asparagus spears, wash and cut off about the lower 1 inch of the spear. There is a more precise way to clean asparagus, but this will do for now. This is all the preparation asparagus needs. Place it in the boiling salted water for no more than 5 minutes. If you want to, experiment ahead of time. You want asparagus to still have some snap to it when served. It would probably be best to cook the asparagus after the stew has completed cooking. The stew will stay warm while you prepare the side dishes.

Prepare the salad dressing while she is sitting there. Don’t do it ahead of time and don’t pour it out of a bottle. This little action of making your own dressing will impress her. In a mixing bowl, place three tablespoons of raspberry jam and about a ¼ cup of apple cider vinegar. Thoroughly mix the two with a whisk. Add a tablespoon of Italian spices and whip in about ¼ cup or so of olive oil which is added slowly while whisking. (This is called “emulsification.” She’ll be impressed if you use that word.)

By now, the stew should be done. She may ask you what the name of the stew is and you should tell her it’s an old peasant dish, intended to bless a young couple’s relationship with health, prosperity and longevity. You’ll see a slight smile on her face as she takes another sip of wine. As the dish is preparing, when you have a break in the action, sit with her and join in with the wine and the cheese. Tell her how much you enjoy Landau’s singing.

Take the salad greens from the refrigerator and place in the bowl in which you have made the dressing. Mix the greens in the salad dressing and then place in two salad bowls which have been kept chilled in the refrigerator. Place the walnuts on a cutting board and rough chop with a chef’s knife. Sprinkle the walnuts on the salad in the individual bowls and then place two cherry tomatoes on each salad.

Using a slotted spoon, place some of the stew on each plate. (Remember, the plates have been kept warm in the 195° oven.) The liquid is simply for flavoring, you don’t need much of it on the plate. Place some of the Rice-A-Roni on the plate and then the 4 asparagus spears on each plate. Have a little melted butter ready and pour a little on the asparagus, then salt and pepper to taste. (A little lemon juice in the melted butter would be a positive. If you do that, use some of the lemon zest as well. But, don’t make it bitter to the taste. You just want a hint of the lemon.)

These servings don’t have to be overwhelmingly large. Remember, you’re not there to fatten up. You simply want to quit being hungry and, in the meantime, you want to impress her with your culinary prowess.

So, there you have it. There are two plates, separated by candles, on which you have the stew, the asparagus and the Rice-A-Roni, with a roll. You have the soft honey-butter which you have made in her presence. On the side is a salad, dressed with your very own dressing which she has watched you make. Serve this with a nice red wine, perhaps Chianti or Shiraz.

Afterwards, serve dessert. She didn’t see you make this, but she will be able to tell that you did. She doesn’t need to know you made it from a mix, but, if she asks, tell her the truth. Don’t lie when it’s unnecessary. Serve a light wine with dessert. I recommend a German wine, Liebfraumilch, which literally translates into English as "Beloved lady's milk.” You can tell her that.

There you have it. A perfect evening with Landau Murphy singing in the background. Now, I’m outta here and you’re on your own.

Ken

The day after I was born, my brother celebrated his third birthday. He was born November 2, 1941, just a month and five days before the Japanese attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. He was that close to being a “war baby. “ I suppose there is a name for that generation; perhaps he was a “pre-war baby” or a “depression-transition baby.” Whatever his generational placement, he was my older brother.

We were close enough in age that we had some common and contemporary interests. But, he was older than me and he was turned in another direction. It was not until recent years that I came to realize it wasn’t his fault and it wasn’t my fault either. It was Eddie’s fault, our oldest brother. Eddie was the oldest kid in the family, and he was an accomplished and entertaining person. Kennith naturally found himself in a position to compete with Eddie for attention and status within the family. He didn’t have to be concerned with me, he was older and faster and stronger and smarter than me. He had to focus on Eddie who could and would outshine him in just about any contest. As Kennith was three years older than me, so Eddie was four years older than Kennith.

Kennith became Ken in his later years, but while he was still “Kennith”, while he was a very young “Kennith”, he decided what he would do with his life. While still in elementary school, he decided he wanted to be a math teacher, a goal he pursued with some enthusiasm. Graduating from high school in 1959, he enrolled in college and went straight through, completing his undergraduate degree in four years. After graduating from Oklahoma Christian College with a B.S. degree in Mathematics, he began his teaching career at Western Heights High School in Oklahoma City. The year 1963 was an interesting time in public education in Oklahoma. Typical of his peers, he began his career earning about $3,000 annually. Yes, for that time and in that place, $3,000 wasn’t much money. And, it surely wasn’t much money for a person with a college education and a professional certification.

He taught there for a brief period and then moved to the Detroit area where he taught at Michigan Christian College. By then, he had completed his work on his M.S. degree in mathematics. He taught at M.C.C. for the next ten years.

Kennith started something by going to college. There were five children in our family and when you review all the education and higher degrees we hold, it is amazing when one considers our mother did not complete her senior year of high school and our father quit school in the eighth grade, not an uncommon situation among Depression Era kids. Ken was the first in our family, and the first in either side of the family, to attend college and eventually graduate with a degree. Both my sisters and I followed him to college where we were all able to get at least a master’s degree and even more. I’m not sure any of us would have done this without his example.

After ten years in Michigan, he returned to Oklahoma where he gave up his teaching career to work for Southwestern Bell. He began there about the time computers were making their way into the workplace. Not only were they new to companies, but the personal computer was making its way into the American society. The company purchased a large number of these and Kennith saw his opportunity to make his mark. They were a company with a host of powerful pieces of equipment, but their employees didn’t know what to do with them. Seeing an opportunity, he began rewriting the instruction manuals so the workers could understand the new versions written in plain English. He then began teaching employees to use these new devises and how to apply them for greater productivity. For years, when I was asked what my brother did for Southwestern Bell, I had to simply tell them I had no idea, all I knew was that he did something with computers.

I was always envious of Kennith. As kids, he was faster and stronger than was I. I thought he looked better than I did, and there was no doubt he had much greater self-confidence. I think he had a more positive high school experience than I did. He was three years older and, thus, three years ahead of me in school. When I went to high school, I tried to follow in his steps. I joined the same organizations he joined and tried my hand at the same activities he did before me, sometimes with greater success than he experienced, often with less.

After going to college and securing his degree in math, he entered the teaching profession. I followed three years later and selected math as my major as well. I was pretty good at arithmetic, so why not. I discovered calculus my second year in college. He tried to help me through it, but it simply made no sense at all. Even before my calculus experience, I was losing interest in math. Even as a kid, I had always been interested in the past. I liked stories and I liked to tell stories, not just for the entertainment value, but for the educational value. Of course, it doesn’t hurt anything to be entertaining as well. I first moved into history and then into religion and eventually into the ministry, leaving all thoughts of math behind. Math was Kennith’s interest and I realized from that point on that I needed to be my own person and quit trying to follow in his steps.

Kennith raised two daughters, both of whom are a credit to their parents. Like most of us, he has lived a quiet life, enjoying his family and trying to make a difference in his small community and circle of friends. And, he has made a difference. He and Linda have taken on a cause of helping abused, battered and neglected children. Through his social club, he has championed these underprivileged children, taking their pains as his own, and their needs as a cry for help he could hardly ignore. He took to heart the words of Jesus, “Insomuch as you did it to the least of these, you have done it unto me.”

Kennith became Ken and, following his retirement from Southwestern Bell, he began teaching at the Oklahoma State University campus in Oklahoma City. He teaches math. It all makes perfect sense to him and he is masterful at imparting that knowledge to his students. Some people are talented like that. Perhaps the final words used to describe him should be, “Master Teacher.”

Kennith, as he’ll always be known to me, will turn 70 his next birthday. He will be the second of the Franklin kids to enter the eighth decade of life. The 40s didn’t bother me at all. The 50s and the 60s were taken in stride, but when my oldest brother turned 70 a few years back, it was difficult for me to take. We weren’t supposed to get older; we were supposed to remain carefree kids on the farm, as we were so long ago. But, Eddie turned 70; now, Kennith is about to turn 70; and, I’m only three years behind him.

“If I Were a Rich Man”

Fiddler on the Roof is one of the classics of musical theater. Set in 1905 Tsarist Russia, it features a milkman named Tevye, a member of a Jewish community who faces conflicts in his life, both within his family from his wife and daughters and from the authorities who, by the end of the play, will order the expulsion of all Jews from the area. Toward the end of the musical, or the movie if one watches the film version, there is the pathetic movement of the refugee Jews leaving what was their homeland, carrying and dragging and pulling and pushing their few meager belongings. However, with all its sadness, the story is a delightfully funny study of human relationships.

The story is based on Tevye and his Daughters (or Tevye the Milkman and Other Tales) by Sholem Aleichem. Tevye is the father of five daughters, three of whom are of marriageable age. He has been married to Golde since they were young and the two of them have not accomplished much in life, monetarily. The show in its most early scenes shows Tevye, the local milkman, delivering milk. His horse is lame so he is shown pulling the milk cart himself. Speaking to himself, deploring his lot in life, he asks God, who would it hurt “if I were a rich man?” He then breaks into a song by that title, “If I Were a Rich Man.”

If he was a rich man, of course, he “wouldn’t have to work hard.” More than that, he’d “build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen, right in the middle of the town.” That house would have “one long staircase just going up, and one even longer coming down, and one more going nowhere, just for show.”

Poignantly, he also thinks of his wife, Golde. “I see my wife, my Golde, looking like a rich man’s wife with a proper double-chin. Supervising meals to her heart’s delight. I see her putting on airs and strutting like a peacock. Oy, what a happy mood she’s in. Screaming at the servants, day and night.”

Then he turns the song to the most important thing he could enjoy, if only he were a wealthy man.

The most important men in town would come to fawn on me!
They would ask me to advise them,
Like Solomon the wise.
“If you please, Reb Tevye…”
“Pardon me, Reb Tevye…”
Posing problems that would cross a Rabbi’s eyes!

And it won’t make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong.
When you’re rich, they think you really know!
To sit in the synagogue and pray.
And maybe have a seat by the Eastern wall.

And I’d discuss the holy books with the learned men, several hours every day.
That would be the sweetest thing of all.

I can relate to Tevye. Who would it have hurt if I were a rich man? I, too, would live in a fine tall house with three staircases, one for “up”, one for “down” and the other just to look at. I’d have ducks and chickens and geese in the front yard, making noise as if to say, “There goes a wealthy man!” And, like Tevye, people would think I was smart. I could discuss the holy books with the learned men of town and I might even get a choice seat at church. And, I might be consulted in order to give my opinion about issues which matter.

I once attended a rich man’s funeral. A large crowd showed up to share their grief with the hundreds of people who filled the sanctuary to capacity. I told someone I didn’t know he was a member of the church which he so loved and worked so hard to carry on his own shoulders. Eyes rolled with a simple declaration, “He was on the rolls.”

Ah, yes, I thought, as I tried to think of six people who would care enough if I died that they might serve as pall bearers.

If I were a rich man,
ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum.

Linda and Johnny

Linda and Johnny were married Friday night, on the 23rd day of September, 2011, at the Quail Spring Church of Christ in Oklahoma City. I was there.

Sometime earlier, Johnny called me and told me he and Linda were going to be married and would I perform the ceremony. He started the conversation by saying, “Hershel, this is Johnny.” I replied, “Okay.” I had no idea who this person was and tried to run through my mind who I knew by that name, and I couldn’t come up with anyone. The first person who entered my mind was Johnny Weissmuller, but I was sure it couldn’t be him as he was dead. Even following several moments of awkward silence, even after he had told me his last name, I was still perplexed as to the identity of the caller.

I hadn’t seen Johnny since we graduated high school in May, 1962. He, Linda and I were classmates in Sayre, Oklahoma. I had kept up with Linda somewhat over the years. We had a similar background in that we were both raised in the Church of Christ. I remembered her from when we were in elementary school, she in Sayre and I in a little country school of eight grades called Hext. I remembered her coming to Hext to play sports, especially basketball. I remember her as one of the cutest little girls I had ever seen. Of course, like most boys that age, I thought all little girls were cute and fell in and out of love easily.

My freshman year of high school, I went into town to continue my education and found myself in class with both Johnny and Linda. Those four years were not the most momentous of my life, nor can I say I really enjoyed my high school years. But, I did form a few friendships. I have not remained very close to any of them, but there are some I have reached out to from time to time. I lost contact with Johnny altogether after graduation. In high school, I knew he had had a difficult childhood, but I wasn’t sure it was any more difficult than mine and several others. He was quiet, as was I; an average student, as was I. Socially, both of us were reserved and, somewhat uncomfortable in the social structure in which we found ourselves. We perceived ourselves as of a lower socio-economic class than our peers. All of this may have very well been just a perception, not an actuality. Johnny was an athlete and participated in most of the high school sports. My only extracurricular activity was public speaking in those venues provided by the Future Farmers of America (a social and academic organization run in conjunction with the Vocational Agricultural program in the school). Linda was much more involved in high school activities than either Johnny or me.

We graduated from high school in May of 1962 and that would have been the last time I had seen Johnny until the wedding last Friday night.

Not long after our graduation, Linda had suffered health problems which resulted in her being left with difficulties in speech and mobility. She had to learn to crawl and to speak babbling words all over again. Her vision was impaired. She worked hard at her rehabilitation and eventually reached the point that she could continue on with her education. And, then she was able to secure employment in the state library system where she worked until retirement. She still has some vision and speech problems, but nothing which holds her back from living a normal life. She does not consider herself handicapped or limited in any manner. She uses a cane to walk, but, then, don’t we all.

Johnny had lived away from Oklahoma his entire adult life. He tells me he had lived in Phoenix until his retirement recently, whereupon he wanted to come home. I don’t know how he and Linda made contact, but after a renewed friendship of several months, they decided to get married. That was where I came in.

Earlier in the evening, we went through the rehearsal. I assured them I had never seen a good rehearsal or a bad wedding. It was quick and uneventful. Then, at 7:30, Johnny and I stood behind closed doors, awaiting the sound of music. There was a flautist who began playing, our cue, and we entered the sanctuary, taking our place in front. I was frankly somewhat surprised at the number of people there. I would estimate the number to be about 150 people. We stood there as the maid of honor entered the room and took her place. We looked toward the other entrance and watched as Linda entered. I asked the audience to stand and we turned as if at attention to watch her make her way to the altar.

She looked lovely. Radiant. A smile crossed her face like I had never seen, something like sheer happiness warming those of us blessed to be sharing the moment. “Do you take Johnny to be your lawfully wedded husband?” I asked. “Do you promise to love, honor and cherish him, in sickness and in health, in prosperity and in adversity, and do you promise to keep yourself to him and to him alone so long as you both shall live?” “I do,” she replied.

I had Johnny place a ring on the third finger of Linda’s left hand, hold it and repeat after me, “With this ring I thee wed, and all that I am and all that I have, I give to you.”

With the exchange of vows in the presence of God and in the presence of that company of friends and family, sealed by the giving and receiving of rings, “by the authority vested in me by the State of Oklahoma, I now pronounce you husband and wife.” And, with that, they kissed.

It was a joyous event. We don’t often marry at our age, usually that is something younger people do. But, as I stated during the ceremony, the thing we have in common with the younger people is that we have the rest of our lives ahead of us. And, Linda and Johnny have the rest of their lives ahead of them. If there was any sadness in the whole evening, it was that Linda’s mother and father were gone and did not get to see her happiness that night.

My best wishes go with the two of them.

By the River of Babylon

In 587 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar’s armies from Babylon surrounded and conquered Jerusalem. The numbers of Jews slain at the hand of this fearful war machine can only be speculated at. Over four thousand of the most influential people, those who determined state policy and were responsible for carrying out its policies, were carried to Babylon as captives. They lived there for nearly a century before they were allowed to return to Jerusalem and attempt to reestablish their nation. It was a hard time for these people who had seen their homeland scorched by the enemy and their city, their national and religious identity, decimated. And, their Temple completely destroyed.

Judeans living in captivity under the Babylonians was better than being in such circumstances in some other nation. Israel had been conquered by Assyria nearly a century and a half earlier and Assyria’s policy toward its captives was much harsher than the policy of Babylon. The Israelites were carried off and dispersed. Their identity was completely destroyed and lost. These are the ten lost tribes of Israel, around whom there is so much mystery and speculation. The Babylonians set the Judeans up as a community within their borders. The Judeans were encouraged to enter business, marry and have children, and, generally, live as well as possible. But, they were still living in bondage, something the Judeans would have found intolerable. Their shock at their circumstances was heightened as they recalled their existence as slaves in Egypt, from which they escaped and formed their national identity.

The Judeans also had the national memory of seeing their city and temple burning as they were force marched away from their homes and toward Babylon.

While they endured their existence in Babylon, they continued their community. They engaged in commerce, both among themselves and with others. They married and raised families, always telling their children about Jerusalem and the temple. Their stories were a longing for what was, sometimes coupled with what might be.

One of the most beautiful poems written was produced by one of these captives in Babylon. In it he shows the longing for Jerusalem and the temple. It is recorded in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament as Psalm 137.

1By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
2We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
3For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
4How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?
5If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
6If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. (KJV)

Sitting by the river of Babylon, the poet recalls Jerusalem. And, everything he remembers is good and beautiful. Everything he remembers about the temple is righteous and holy. He may have never seen Jerusalem. As he writes, there doesn’t appear to be any shackles or forced labor. He is sitting by the river writing poetry. They have been there long enough that they have either broken out or replaced their harps. They have time to sing and play harps. Their life is pretty good considering the circumstances, but it’s not in Jerusalem. They have hung the harps in the willow trees because they refuse to sing for their captors. Even when requested or demanded to do so.

I will never forget Jerusalem, declares the Jew. We will never forget Jerusalem, sings the poet. I would rather lose my right hand than forget her. I would prefer to lose my ability to speak than to forget Jerusalem.

This is a beautiful poetic expression of a people’s love for their homeland. Their belief was that this land and this city were given to them by God, a fulfillment of a promise He made to Abraham. And, it was more than that. It was where they met with and communed with God. They believed there was one God and that he was the God of the world, but they knew that in Jerusalem they communed with Him.

Elsie

I don’t have all the dates worked out completely in my mind, but my dad bought a new milk cow sometime in the middle or late 1950s. We had other cows, six or seven at a time, which were part of our small dairy herd. In those days, our farms were not exactly subsistence, but we did try to produce as much as we could for our own living. A family of four young kids could always use the milk to supplement their diet, it’s being a staple in both drink and in cooking. After drinking all we wanted, we separated the cream from the milk and saved it aside until the coming Saturday when we would take it into town to sell. This produced a small cash income for the family which would go a long way toward meeting our regular daily needs. The left-over milk was fed to the hogs to help fatten them up. They were another cash crop on those small farms in Oklahoma during those years.

Most of our milk cows were just range cows we had tamed for the sole purpose of milking. For some of them, it was a challenge to sit down on their right side near their hind leg, place yourself in a position of danger and start the milking process. These old range cows considered this an unnatural intrusion on their dignity and their only response was to kick the fool out of you. We did have a somewhat gentle cow, a large one which was part Jersey or Guernsey. Her name was “Babe.”

We named our milk cows. While I don’t remember them all, I do remember Babe and another named “Flossie.” The others escape me. Then, one day my dad brought home a small Jersey cow, yellowish tan in color with small horns curving to the front of her face. She was the perfect appearance and disposition of a Jersey cow, very gentle and productive. She looked exactly like the mascot for the Borden Dairy and, probably for that similarity, we named her Elsie.

As time went on, we pared down the dairy cows. As they got older we didn’t replace them and reduced the numbers we were milking. Eventually, we were down to Elsie and Babe, and still later we were just milking Elsie. My dad had found employment nearby which reduced the necessity of selling cream for cash and my older brothers left home which greatly reduced the milk hands, reduced, in fact, to me. Wherever we lived, my parents always wanted to have a milk cow. It was probably in part to give me something to do and it was their way of holding onto their past. They were children of the Depression and remembered times when people had little to eat. I believe they felt so long as they had a milk cow and a fattening hog, they would be alright. They might have to buy flour, salt and corn meal, but so long as they could do that, and so long as they had milk on hand, they could feed themselves and their children.

As kids moved away and the family at home got smaller, the one cow produced more than enough milk for us. It wasn’t pasteurized and the facilities were not at all sanitary, but we never got sick from drinking this raw milk. Milk, butter milk, cream, sour cream, butter, cottage cheese, all these were staples in our diet. We might sit down to a simple supper (dinner to the rest of the world) of cornbread and milk, but we were grateful to have it. And, as I look back at it now, mother had been working on the family farm as much and as hard as the rest of us, if not more, and she was probably too tired at times to prepare anything other than a pan of cornbread. Our diet was usually much more hearty than that simple fare, but at times that was all we had and we never complained.

We reached the point that Elsie was the only milk cow we had. When we left the farm, we took her with us. The galvanized milk buckets we used held about 3 ½ gallons and she always produced enough milk to fill it, twice a day. And, I would say that at least a third of that was cream. That much cream twice a day makes a lot of butter and whipped cream. She remained almost a member of the family. Even when a fifth child had been born and there was no one there but me and my younger sister, 14 years my junior, and my parents, we kept Elsie as part of our daily routine. When we moved even further from the farm, we finally quit milking. Elsie was allowed to run with the remainder of the cows, a small herd of mixed cows usually run with a pretty good Angus bull, to produce calves which were a cash crop on the family farm.

Elsie was getting older and I was told to go by the farm and feed her apart from the others. I locked her up in a lot and gave her a special feed, some sorghum rich grain and some hay. She had water available and I petted her and talked to her while she ate. I left her there in the lot, intending to come by later and let her out. I don’t know what it was that I had to do, but I was distracted and forgot to come back by the farm. Two days later, my mom and dad went by and found her dead there in the lot.

I felt terrible and my dad, foolishly, ate me out for leaving her there so she could starve to death. That bothered me for a long time until I finally realized that a cow, which had access to water, won’t starve to death in a day or two without food. It’s not good for them, but it won’t kill them. The truth of the matter was that she was old and weak and that was why I was feeding her a special feed. She simply got old and died. As do we all.

We never had another milk cow, Elsie was the last. I remember well those cold winter mornings I would trudge out into the freezing weather to call in the cows. We would bring them into the barn and put them in the feeding and milk stations. We would sit down beside them, place our cold hands up between their flank and their udder to warm them, and then milk until the bucket was full. The cats would come around and make a nuisance of themselves and we would squirt some of the warm milk into their face. They would lick it off and go back to bothering us. By then we would have enough to pour some into a pan so they would leave us alone and quit trying to climb into the bucket. They had their job and we had ours. Theirs was to kill as many mice and snakes as they could and that was worthy a drink of warm milk a couple of times a day. It wasn’t really hard work, it was just constant. Every morning, every evening, the cows had to be milked.

Milking the cows was my dad’s job. Then it became his and my oldest brother’s job. Soon, it was the job of my two older brothers. Then my middle brother’s and mine. Then mine. Then, we were out of the milk cow business. It’s funny how that works. My sons would have probably been better people if they had had a cow to milk.

A Tribute to an Oklahoma Staff

In a previous treatise, I related my experiences with a police officer from the University of Oklahoma who was rude and boorish at a concert. (The essay may be read in Thoughts I Thunk, a collection of essays written in 2010.) It was a critical commentary, however, in order to be completely fair to the University, a further comment is appropriate.

On September 3, 2011, I attended a football game at the University of Oklahoma, in which we were playing Tulsa University. I have been attending these football games for the last 25 years and in recent years it has become difficult to sit through them. My legs hurt. A few years ago, standing on concrete for four hours began causing extreme pain and a Saturday’s pain didn’t subside until Wednesday or Thursday, just in time for another game the following Saturday. That was in earlier days; it is worse today. Now, I try to go to one game a year and rely on television for the rest.

As we played Tulsa, I was continually standing up and sitting down, pushing myself off with my cane each time I tried to rise. The pain is caused by arthritis in my knees and nerve damage in the feet and legs, the result of diabetes. Most of the time I was standing on concrete and the pain got steadily worse. We decided to leave at half-time.

I got up to leave and had to walk through a crowd of people sitting on my row. Uncomfortably insecure, I used my cane to help keep me from losing my balance, and, even then, I had to reach out and hold onto a stranger’s shoulder to keep from falling on him. People moved over to give me some room to maneuver, and a young girl held back to allow me to get into the aisle so I could leave. I walked up four or five steps with some difficulty and then there was a long ramp leading down into the common area beneath the bleachers. Walking down the ramp, one of the ushers stopped me. She asked if I needed help going down, apparently noticing how difficult it was for me. I thanked her and told her that once I got to the rail I would be able to make it down.

After getting to the bottom of the ramp, with some difficulty, I still had quite a distance to go before leaving the stadium. I was moving very slowly with small, short steps. It was a hot night; the temperature at the beginning of the game had been over one hundred degrees and it hadn’t cooled down in the last couple hours. As I approached the exit, a second young lady saw me coming her way. My family had gone ahead and as far as she knew I was alone. She saw me looking like I was bothered by the heat and walking with a cane in those short, halting old-man steps. My legs were hurting and felt very weak, as if they could give out on me at any moment.

The staff member asked me if I was all right. I assured her I was okay and she offered to get me a chair to sit down. She also offered to get me a wet rag to cool my face and neck. It was a generous offer, but I assured her I would be alright and didn’t have all that far to go until I would be able to sit in an air conditioned car and that I was not alone. I thanked her for her kindness, and really did appreciate her expressions of concern. I was also appreciative of the other usher and for the kindness she showed. I continued my walk and soon ran into my family who were coming back to see if I was dead.

The kindness of the staff at the game meant a lot to me. After my disappointing encounter with the young police officer, I was glad for this experience. I only wish my legs were not quite so weak and painful.

“Go Goose, Go!”

In our church, we seldom say, “Amen.” It’s a cultural thing. We may agree and even be moved by something the minister says, to which we may silently nod our head in agreement. It’s just not us to shout out an “Amen!” and thus call attention to ourselves. When someone does, we fight the urge to look around to see if we have a visitor in service. We are like the story Mark Twain told of giving a talk in New Hampshire and no one was laughing at his stories like they did in other places. After thirty minutes or so with no one laughing, he wondered what had gone wrong. After the talk, a man came up to him and said, “Mr. Twain, that was one of the funniest talks I ever heard. There were times I could barely keep from laughing!”

There is a time in our service when small children are invited to the front of the sanctuary where they are told a little story. It can be a Bible story, a morality tale, a review of something they have done of which we are proud or even a reminder of some upcoming event in which they will be involved. On a particular Sunday, Venita, the children’s choir director, was doing the Children’s Sermon. She was up front and had the small children sitting in the floor around her. She reminded them of seeing geese flying south in a V-formation for the winter and then fly back north in another V-formation for the summer months. Yes, they responded, they had all seen it.

“The reason they fly in that V-formation is because the goose in front has the hardest job,” said Venita. “He has to cut through the air and then that makes it easier for the others to follow him. They put the strongest goose in the lead because he has the hardest job. He goes until he gets tired and then he falls back to the end and another goose takes his place. They keep doing this all day long while flying, keeping the strongest goose in the lead.”

She then turned to the subject of the honking. “And,” she said, “have you ever heard them honking as they fly along?” Yes, they responded, they had all heard that honking. “Do you know what they are doing with all that honking?” No, they had no idea. “That’s the way they encourage the lead goose to keep going, keep cutting into the air for the flock to fly through. It’s like they are saying, ‘You go, goose, you go!’ Without that encouragement the lead goose might not be able to keep going.”

It was interesting. I had learned something in that “Children’s Sermon” I didn’t know. I was glad I was there. Later, the preacher, Dick House, was delivering the regular sermon and I was still reflecting on that goose which was being encouraged to cut through the air so the flock could fly south.

A few years back, our state voted for a state lottery, and once that was passed, it opened the flood gates for Indian Tribes to open casinos throughout the state. Overnight, a state which would have frowned on flipping for coins became overrun with casinos. While these provide employment, good employment, for many people and contribute positively to the economy of the Tribes, it also has created an atmosphere that for the first time requires public service announcements on where to get help for gambling addiction!

On that Sunday, Dick was preaching and during his sermon he mentioned this problem. I don’t know if he was planning it, but he reflectively noted that this was a problem and this was why he had personally worked on defeating the lottery initiative in the first place. “Sometimes,” he said, “you feel like you’re working all alone against insurmountable odds on things like this.”

There was a pause. He may have planned it as a pregnant pause, a time in which we could reflect on what he was trying to get across. It was one of those moments I should have probably said “Amen.” But, I was still moved by that story Venita told and I shouted, “You go, goose!”

Perhaps I shouldn't have done that.

The "Soul" of America

In a recent production about the American South, that region’s culture is celebrated. It has contributed to the music, cuisine, sports and many other elements of our American culture. Interviews with people of the South finally concluded with the assertion that “the South is the soul” of America.

The South has always been a curious and interesting place. It has made contributions of significance, in the above noted fields as well as literature, science, philosophy and religion, and, yet, it has been only in recent years that light has been shown in what was for a long time a dark and mysterious place. It has been exposed to the light of day because of better travel after World War II and better communications. It has also been opened up to the world, thanks to air conditioning and, not a small matter, collegiate football and television. It has sights, tastes, sounds and smells which delight our senses.

Of interest to me was that the entire program never talked about the Antebellum South. It’s as if that part of their history never existed. Normally, when travelling through the area, that’s one of the things we like to see, the Old South and its aristocracy. What the program presented was more the other side of the South, the poor to middle class, children of people who worked hard to eke out a life and living in a hard place in a hard time.

They spoke about the damage done to the psyche of the South when they lost the Civil War. Entire towns were burned, one-fourth of the southern men of fighting age were lost. There were other horrendous casualties of the war. (Nor did they dwell on the failed Reconstruction policies following the war.) At no time, however, did anyone ever suggest that perhaps their political leaders, those of the Antebellum Aristocracy, should not have picked that fight.

Another deafening silence in the program was the failure to mention hardly at all the very significant number of African-Americans in the South. There was a famous Black football player interviewed, as well as a college professor, the mention of the Blues music scene in Memphis and the obligatory Black choir singing spirituals. The only mention of slavery was in the context of a slave who took his master’s steamship and delivered it to the Union Navy. He was commended as a hero by Abraham Lincoln and after the war he returned to his home in South Carolina where he bought his former master’s home and was elected to Congress. There were a lot of Blacks in the South who did not get to walk the halls of Congress.

I love the South. I never considered my state to be part of the South; it was more a part of the Southwest. But, my roots run deep in the Confederacy. When we celebrate it, or any region of our great country, we should discuss it, warts and all.

Under the Bus

My son is an African-American child we adopted as a new-born. Born in 1995, he was part of that generation which saw a large number of babies born which we called “bi-racial.” I will always be of the opinion that this influx of babies born in those days probably will do a lot to improve race relations in America as many, if not most, of them had grandparents who dote on them, regardless of race. Shortly after his adoption, I ran across against a man I knew who couldn’t wait to tell me his personal experience. He told me he had one of “those” too, his daughter had “taken up with a black kid and came up pregnant.” She and the baby were living at home with his wife and him and as he spoke about the little baby I could tell he was the light of his life. I knew this man and knew he was a redneck racist, but this little baby was melting his old rotten redneck, racist heart. He was a better man because of his little grandson.

There are many people who believe a child with any degree of African-American bloodlines whatsoever should be raised in a black family. Their argument, simplified considerably and perhaps unfairly, is that only a black family is socially prepared to raise these children and that if they are raised by white parents, or, I suppose, by mixed parents, they will be confused and this will be detrimental to their well-being. This argument was first proposed years ago by a group of African-American social workers; however, it has been discredited in more recent years. The new idea is that the child will benefit from having two loving parents dedicated to providing a wholesome environment for the child or children regardless of their racial differences.

Here is my observation: We may call a child of mixed blood whatever we want, but if there is a single drop of known African-American blood in him or her, they will think of themselves, and society will think of them, as African-Americans. That may not be reasonable, but it’s reality. The African-American social workers would say, “See, we told you so.” But, I come from a completely different background and look at things completely differently than they do. I see this attitude as a hold-over from the slave days in the Old South and the Jim Crow era. In those times, people were considered to be Black even if they had a single drop traceable to an African lineage, thus making them subject to slavery during the days slavery was allowed in America and susceptible to discrimination while the Jim Crow laws were the law of the land. I personally like the designation, “Bi-racial”, but I have lost that battle for now. I’m hoping I have not lost the war.

My son, when he was very small, had no idea what it was to be Black. In day care, there was a mixture of kids, giving it the look one would expect to see in a day care at the United Nations. There were Blacks, Indians, Indians from South America, Chinese, Hispanics, Bi-racial and God knows what else. There were even a couple of White kids there as well. None of those kids had any idea what “race” was, nor did they think they should act any differently toward anyone. That observation and that reaction took a while for the kids to learn from their parents and did not manifest itself until about the third or fourth grade in elementary school. I watched my son go from having no idea that he might be any different from anyone else, to slowly becoming aware. He didn’t understand what it was, nor did he understand what it was to be “Black”, he just knew that whatever Michael Jordan was, he was. He was the only child of African-American descent in the family, and we didn’t have that many friends of this bloodline. We did not intentionally expose him to a Black culture as this would have been foreign to us and would have come across as artificial. So, he had some difficulty in deciding who he was. We did not try to hide it from him, nor did we try to shield him from the experience. We openly spoke of him as a bi-racial child, and assumed this would be his identity as he got older. However, it soon became apparent that he was going to identify himself as an African-American child; he never did accept that he was bi-racial.

He was in about the fifth grade in elementary school when he was becoming more aware. His friends in school didn’t treat him any differently because of his race and I felt I saw positive signs for our nation in that young generation. As he’s grown up, I’ve become more and more impressed with the tolerance of younger people. I believe my generation has been better than that of my parents and now, it seems to me, my children and grandchildren are better than mine. They do not have the suspicions or the fear of people not like themselves that characterized earlier times, and that may be, in part, caused by the presence of so many bi-racial children his age.

Still, he considered himself “Black”, as did his classmates, even though he had more “White” in him than “Black” and a not insignificant amount of American Indian. I’m not sure he thinks all that much about it, nor am I sure his friends and classmates think all that much about it. This is as it should be, but I’m not sure if the reaction would be the same if he had darker skin.

He was in the fifth grade when I decided to take him to lunch with me. We were driving to Oklahoma City where I intended to take him to a place called Family Affair. While driving, I told him this was unlike any other restaurant he had ever been to. I explained that it was in an area of town which was predominantly, if not exclusively, populated by African-Americans. I told him it was owned and operated by some Black women and most of the patrons would probably be African-American. After I had told him this, he simply asked if I had been there before. I assured him that I had, in fact, been there several times. That was all he asked, he seemed satisfied.

When we drove into the community where the restaurant was located, he didn’t notice that everyone on the street was Black. He didn’t notice the bars on the windows and on the door which were placed there to prevent break-ins, even though we didn’t have such security measures on our windows and doors at home, nor had he ever, so far as I knew, ever seen such a thing. We walked into the restaurant and to his surprise, and mine, the place was nearly full of diners. It was busier than I had ever seen it. And, every person in there, patrons, wait staff, cooks, everyone was Black. He grabbed my leg in a bear hug, holding as tight as he could, so tight it would have been impossible to slip a cigarette paper between us.

I was painfully aware that he had no experience at all in being around African-Americans and he was frightened. Was it unreasonable? Yes. Was it understandable? Yes. Did it say anything bad about him? No. It probably was a greater testimony on me than it was on him and the reader can pass judgment as he or she sees fit. I won’t argue the point. I was reminded of a lawyer I once worked with. She was raised in a military family and she had travelled the world, always living in base housing. She was always a small minority, racially speaking, wherever she lived. In 1973, she came to the school where I was teaching, a school which had a large number of African-Americans. Her father had retired and he brought his family to this, his home town, to live. She told me later, after we were both lawyers, that when she moved to that little town she was terrified. She had never lived around so many Blacks and she brought with her her own stereotypes and prejudices, together with her discomforts and fears. My son was seeing in this restaurant more Blacks in a single setting than he would see in a year’s time. More importantly, he and I were clearly the minority and all the talking I had done beforehand had not prepared him for this experience.

There was an empty table next to us and another across the room. I pointed them out and asked him where he would like to sit. “This one,” he replied, selecting the table nearest us. We sat down and he looked around the room. It seemed all eyes were on us and then he leaned closer to me. In a stage whisper I am sure most everyone heard, he said from the corner of his mouth, “Dad! Dad! Everyone in here’s Black but you!”

The Night We Got Bin Laden

The civilized world celebrated when President Barack Obama announced that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. And, it continued to rejoice as we learned more of the details of that night. The Navy Seals, Seal Team 6, or some such name, got all the notoriety. They are supposed to do things in secret, drink a little Jack Daniel and enjoy a quiet celebration among themselves, and then go off to their next rendezvous which may or may not be a meeting with destiny. No one should ever know.

That’s not the way it happened this time. It really doesn’t bother me that the Seals broke a cardinal rule of engagement by allowing their existence and involvement to be made public. What bothers me is that if they are not going to hold the Seals to their code of secrecy, my friend and I shouldn’t be forced to be silent either. So, I am going to tell you the story of our involvement even if it is against orders. What are they going to do, shoot me? Perhaps it isn’t discreet to ask it just like that. They may. I’ll just have to risk it.

It started back when my friend Jerry and I learned about the Navy Seals. We both had a little extra time on our hands, having retired a few years earlier. We were just a little tired of the fact that the man who admitted to his involvement in the 9/11 attack was still running around free. We had a few ideas on how we could take him out. It involved the two of us and a rusty pocket knife. The plan also called for our friend David carrying the knife in his Depends for a couple of weeks prior to our leaving on our mission, but that part’s classified as it comes under the heading of “bacterial warfare.”

We first went to an Army recruiter and volunteered to sign up. “You want to join the Army?” he asked.

“Hell, no,” I replied. “We want to sign up for Special Forces, Delta Force preferably.”

At first, they laughed. But, when they saw we were serious they explained that they were full up with Delta Forces types. As we were leaving, one of them suggested we visit the Navy recruiter, he thought they might be taking applications for the Navy Seals. We thanked him and agreed that we should check it out. “In fact,” he said, “I hear they’re putting together a special group of Navy Seals to go after Bin Laden. You know, they can’t find him in Afghanistan because they think he’s hiding out down in the Tahiti Islands. It’s just the mission for a group of Navy boys.”

“Really,” said Jerry. “Hersh,” he said, turning to me, “that makes a lot of sense. He can’t be hiding in Afghanistan, or even Pakistan for that matter. These Army boys would’ve found him by now if he was there. They haven’t found him, it just stands to reason that he’s not there.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s brilliant. He’s hiding in plain sight right there in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

As we were walking out the door to go see the Navy man, the recruiter told us not to tell them we heard about the plan from him. He explained that it was highly classified. He also told us not to take “no” for an answer. He told us to tell the Navy we were “By God Republicans” and that we were close friends with John McCain. “And, don’t just walk in and say, ‘Hey, I’m a Republican.’ No, sir, you guys just march right in there and say, ‘Hey, I’m a By God Republican!’”

We thanked him for that and left to see the Navy man.

At the Navy recruiting office, we thought seriously about seeking a different assignment other than killing Bin Laden. We thought seriously of joining the N.C.I.S. Neither of us ever knew about the Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) until we began watching a show about it on television. We didn’t think we would be too old for that since we had seen Mark Harman in that show. Hell, we couldn’t be a lot older than he was. And, that little girl from Israel on the show was clearly a bonus. Sharp, good looking, and she could help me fight my way out of any bar or football game against Louisiana State University. But, when we presented the idea to the recruiter he told us the NCIS was full up. I was getting a little curious about that situation. I thought there was a shortage of people volunteering for service and here Jerry and I had run into “full up” twice in one morning.

Going back to our first plan, I said, “We’re here to join the Navy Seals.”

“The Navy Seals?” he replied.

“Yep.”

“Aren’t you guys a little old to want to be Navy Seals?”

“Is there an age limit to wanting to serve our country, sailor?” I asked.

“Well, I guess not. But, but…”

“Don’t tell me they’re full up,” I interrupted. “Because I’m getting a little tired of hearing that.”

“Oh, no, no, I wasn’t going to say that. It’s just that…”

I could see he was trying to be evasive. “Did I mention that I’m a Republican?”

“You’re a Republican?”

“Hell no,” I answered, “I’m a By God Republican!”

“A By God Republican?”

“That’s right,” I said, “and not only that, we know John McCain.”

I had him with that one. He looked around the room to make sure no one was listening. Then, in a low voice, something like a whisper, he said, “Look guys, you seem to have a good sense of what we need. I would have some difficulty placing you with the Seals. You men have too much to offer for those guys, but, we have a special category of service just for you. Instead of the Seals, I would suggest you be placed with the Navy Walruses.”

“Navy Walruses?”

“Right, the Walruses. It’s kind of an auxiliary unit for the Seals. You back them up. Those guys sometimes get into some things they shouldn’t because they don’t know how to back up and evaluate a situation before rushing in. They’re young and they sometimes rush in where angels fear to tread, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I think I know,” said Jerry.

“We make special use of your talents, especially your wisdom which comes only from living a good long life and we call you when needed.”

“Sounds good,” said Jerry. “What’s the training like?”

“That’s the beauty of the program,” he replied, “you train at home on your own. Just go home and train and wait for us to call.”

We shook on it and Jerry and I went home. Jerry had a set of tapes of Richard Simmons and another of Jack LaLanne we watched and worked out with. They proved a little strenuous, so I broke out my old Jane Fonda tapes which we were satisfied to simply watch. We continued following this training regimen for a week or so, but we slowly lost interest when the minutes rolled into hours, the hours into days and the days into a week. We tapered off on our training, but felt we were as ready as anyone should the Navy call.

It was a couple of years before we got that call. Jerry was the one who got it. The voice on the phone began with, “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” and Jerry assumed this was some kind of code talk. He wasn’t certain how to respond, so he simply said, “Nor can I.”

“Listen,” the voice said, “our records show you guys were helicopter pilots in Nam.”

“Yes,” Jerry replied.

“Well, listen, we’ve found ourselves in some kind of a bind. Can you guys still fly?”

“Heck, yeah,” Jerry told him. “It’s like riding a bicycle. Once you learn how you never forget.”

“Alright, we’ve planned a mission that has to go off tomorrow night. Get your buddy and go to Tinker Air Base. Transportation will be waiting for you and you’ll be briefed on route here.”

He immediately came and got me, explaining what he knew which wasn’t very much. But, our country needed us so we were off. While being flown to our rendezvous with the other team members, we were told what was going to happen. We were informed that Bin Laden was hiding in plain sight in Pakistan and that they were sending a mission of Seals in to get him. They were going to use two helicopters to send in the team, get him and then get out. It was a well-planned mission, but one of the crews, the pilot and co-pilot, of one of the helicopters got food poisoning at a local restaurant and their recovery would take too long for them to participate in the raid. There weren’t any other teams available on such notice and that was why we got the call.

I took Jerry aside and asked him if they had inquired into whether we still flew helicopters. He said they hadn’t asked that, they simply asked whether we could still fly. He had assured them we still could. “Don’t you remember how?” he asked me. I replied that I thought I did. “Sure you do,” he said, “you never forget a thing like that. To say otherwise would bring into question our military training and that’s, By God, un-American.” I agreed to that line of reasoning and we both reasserted our commitment to be By God Americans. So we returned to the briefing.

Ours was the second helicopter that flew into Bin Laden’s compound on that fateful night. Ours was the one which crashed on landing, but it wasn’t really our fault. It was late at night and we had been flying for some time. We’re old and with age comes not only wisdom but problems as well. I had excused myself to go back to the head. I had no idea that as I was taking a leak Jerry was taking a nap. He dozed off just as we were nearing the landing zone. Jerry woke up just as the wind shear from the other chopper caused us to lose lift and we crashed in the back yard of our target.

The Seals came running to us, in whispered shouts they asked us how we were. We were all safe, but that wasn’t good enough for them. “I don’t know why they let you old walruses come along on this mission,” the mission leader said. I started explaining that they needed pilots and that they called us on short notice. I tried to explain the wind shear caused by the first chopper in the enclosed compound walls, but I didn’t mention mine and Jerry’s peculiarities just before the crash. He cut me off and called over a Seal named Mike, giving him orders to stay near and take care of us. It was a little condescending.

We all approached the building closest to the landing and immediately met resistance. There were several people out there shooting at us and we were shooting back. Everyone was shooting except Jerry and me, we didn’t have any guns. I crawled over to commander of our group and asked for our guns. He replied that they forgot to bring them and ordered me to get back over with Jerry and Mike. Then he yelled over to Mike to take “those old geezers into that building and keep them out of the line of fire. If I’ve gotta lose someone I’d rather it be them, but let’s try not to lose anyone at all.”

Mike took us into the building and closed the door behind us. All of those Seals looked alike. They were tall and muscular and they cut their hair off leaving a look similar to Mr. Clean. On the other hand, Jerry looked a lot like Stan Laurel and I looked a lot like Oliver Hardy. It rather amazed even me that we were on the same team.

As I was making these observations, I suddenly realized sending us into this building was a stroke of genius. It became evident that this building was the heart and soul of the Bin Laden operation. Four men and a young teenage girl, about thirteen years old, came charging us. They were unarmed, but they were screaming like a banshee as they rushed toward us. Mike told us to take out the little girl while he dealt with the others. Mike crammed the heel of his open palm into the first one’s nose and we saw him fall down in a heap. He grabbed another in a headlock and while holding him in a deadly lock he swung him around, knocking another one to the floor. He then drove his hand in a chopping motion into another’s throat, rendering him unconscious, and then knocked the one in the headlock out with a single blow to the face. The other man, the one he had knocked down to the floor using the one he held in a headlock, had gotten up off the floor and was staggering toward Mike.

“I don’t understand,” he said, “we trained for just this type of encounter. We trained on monkey bars.”

“Yeah,” replied Mike, “I’m sure training that intense would’ve washed out a lot of us Seals.” He then reached over and pinched the guy’s nerve at the base of his neck, something like a Vulcan Nerve Pinch Mr. Spock would have put on someone.

In the meantime, Jerry and I were trying to take out the little girl. Don’t ever underestimate how tough one of those little girls can be. She was scratching and biting and clawing, kicking and kneeing, while all the time screaming at us in some language we couldn’t understand. We were trying to be gentle with her at first, both of us having a daughter. It just wasn’t in us to hit a girl, but she sure had no reservations about hitting an old man. She knocked Jerry down and he rolled across the floor, nearly upending Mike as he was trying to get the four men under control. I grabbed her while her back was turned and threw her to the floor, actually falling down with her where I luckily fell on her and was able to use my superior weight to hold her down.

Jerry got up off the floor and rejoined the fight. I was trying, without success, to put a spinning toe hold on her and Jerry was slapping her with his open hand when Mike came over to assist us. “Good God Almighty,” he said as he reached down and put the Vulcan Nerve Pinch on her, thus putting her into a deep sleep for about the next forty-five minutes. Jerry started jumping around like a monkey, looking for someone else to slap. I slowly got up off the floor with Mike’s help, bending over to catch my breath. “You two fighting warriors come with me,” said Mike.

We went outside and found that the rest of the crew had pretty well wrapped up their assignments. They were gathering Bin Laden into the chopper, together with a treasure trove of papers which would later prove helpful in our country’s fight against terror. We were going to load up to leave when the commander came over to the three of us. “Mike,” he said, “what with losing a chopper and with all this stuff, we’re going have to let you guys walk out.”

“Skipper, you don’t have room for the three of us?” asked Mike.

“No. We have room for just one more.”

“Well?”

“Now, Mike, I can’t leave these old walruses here by themselves and the two of you work so well together. You can walk them out of here, but I’m afraid they’d never find the way by themselves. You can do this, Mike. Remember, we can’t leave anyone behind.”

“Skipper,” said Mike, “I apologized already, and I didn’t know she was your sister.”

The commander smiled as he loaded up in the chopper and they flew off into the night. Mike, Jerry and I walked out, a little jaunt that took nearly a week to cover the thirty miles or so to a friendly base.

I have probably violated several secrecy laws by telling this story. I will probably lose my security clearance, but this story needs to be told. When the President announced we got Bin Laden, everyone was elated. I listened to everything he said and every report on the incident and in all that euphoria there was absolutely nothing said about the contribution of the Navy Walruses.

Grandma’s Light Switch

My grandparents, Albert and Mary Reed, lived near town, just across the road, and they, therefore, had electricity. It wasn’t much of a house by today’s standards, a kitchen, a living room and three bedrooms. There was an outhouse behind the house. Later on, after getting the town to run a water line across the road, they built a bathroom on the back of the house. The house was built in an “L” fashion, with the living room and kitchen in one of the legs and the three bedrooms in the other. I never knew my grandparents to share a bedroom. Running alongside the inside of the “L” of the house was a screened in porch they retreated to during the day for some cooler comfort on a hot summer’s day and beds were kept there for sleeping on those hot summer’s nights.

When I was young they got a propane tank and brought gas into the house for cooking and heating. Before that, they had a kerosene stove they used for cooking and I do not remember what they used for heating.

At some point, again because of the proximity to town, they were able to get electricity. People today don’t have any idea what it was like to live without electricity or just how much getting that one little item of modernity raised one’s standard of living. And, for those who are now for the first time contemplating what it must have been like to get electricity for the very first time, one should be careful not to think what we had was anything like what people have today, either the electricity or those appliances which run on it. There may have been an outlet in each room, but no more than a single one. They had a yard light which was seldom used. And, there was a single light, one bulb, probably no more than a 40 watt bulb, if not a 20 watt, suspended on an electrical cord from the ceiling in the middle of the room with a pull chain switch on the socket.

These amazing technologies astounded me as we had neither at the farm. I loved going there and spending the night when I was 4 or 5 years old. I always slept in my grandmother’s bed and I loved her room. She had shown an absolutely brilliant adaptability to contemporary technology, especially considering the time period was the late 1940s and she was born in 1883. She had tied a string, a piece of yarn, to the chain on the switch and the other end onto the post of the headboard on her bed. That way, late at night, when the shadows had been driven into hiding by the darkness, she could merely lift her arm over and turn the light on and off from the comfort of her bed. I don’t know how often I lay there before she came to bed and reached over turning the light on and off.

My daughter had a ceiling fan with lights in her room. There were two switches on the wall next to the door, one operating the light and the other operating the fan itself. On the fan fixture, there were two chains, one for the light and the other for the fan. She was very young and complained that she had to get out of bed and go over to the door to turn her light off and on at night. I told her the story of my grandmother’s light switch and the next time I went upstairs, she had two strings running from the ceiling fan to the post on her headboard. She showed me how she was able to turn her light on and off at night without ever getting out of bed.

With that, this little girl, born in 1997, was reaching back into the past by way of kinship, forming a relationship with someone she never met and never knew who was born more than a century earlier.

The Summer of 2011

Now and then there is a summer of unprecedented heat and drought; this is one of those years. The old standard by which we judge all summers are those of the 1930s, the years of the Great Depression and, in my part of the world, the Dust Bowl. Day after day we have experienced triple digit heat and the moisture of heaven has remained in heaven. This will not last. It will eventually cool down and it will eventually rain.

Of greater concern is the socio-political climate sweeping the nation, the polarization separating us all. The Tea Party (the members of which called themselves “Tea Baggers” until someone explained to them the realities of life) arrived on the scene in 2009, bullying their way into the limelight as they yelled their hatred for government in every venue possible. There was never a clear and concise explanation of what they believed in, but, rather, a continual diatribe of invective speech, laced with insults and, often, because of this particular administration, racial epithets. They tapped into a general discontent over the economy, never offering a positive solution, but offering a hurtful and spiteful view of government and anyone who didn’t agree with them. They turned the momentum they had gained in yelling their obscenities at legitimate congressional town hall meetings into a political force to be reckoned with. They took over the Republican Party and the Democratic Party completely failed to meet their challenge. The election of 2010 saw many of their numbers added to Congress. They brought their prejudices, their jingoism and their limited view and knowledge of American history and government with them. They shockingly promoted many of the discredited ideas on which the Civil War was fought, among which were nullification and secession.

In this summer of 2011, these members of Congress, who now control the Republican Party, are wreaking havoc on the political system in the governance of the nation, by actually refusing to enter into the responsible governance process. These are not ignorant people, nor are they evil people. They simply have a simplistic view of government, viewing it with distrust and suspicion. The logic seems to be that less government is good, thus, no government at all is perfect and everyone knows what the opposite of perfection is. They hate taxes and the social safety net which has been there to help “the least of these” in this country for years. Many of them have pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps and they feel everyone else can also. Of course, many of those who claim to have pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps were standing in their daddy’s boots.

Of greater concern to me personally is that these people are not fiscal conservatives at all. They never met a war they didn’t love and never demand that our involvement in such foreign affairs be paid for as it is prosecuted. They want tax loopholes and even subsidies for themselves and for the oil companies which are currently the recipients of our national largesse. But, it is not simply that they are so-called “conservatives” (which they are not). It is also that they are the same old so-called social conservatives we have said no to for years. They are anti-union, pro-business and anti-abortion advocates. They are opposed to gays and anyone else who does not fit into their expected social behavior. They still campaign on their slogans of God, guns and gays and will continue to do so as long as it is rewarded by their likeminded constituents. They use government to promote their own ends and condemn others who might want to use government to promote traditional values as we have used it in the past. They claim an exclusive relationship with God and condemn all others to a life without a valid deity. They claim Jesus is one of them, a claim which should be repugnant to all Christians everywhere.

The summer of 2011 has revealed the logical end to the direction in which the so-called conservative movement has been going since Ronald Reagan put together his southern strategy for winning elections. Perhaps this movement pre-dated Reagan and should be attributed to Goldwater, Nixon and others. But, those men never said such things as, “The Government is not the solution to the problem, the government is the problem.” They recognized that some problems are so big that only the government is large enough to meet them.

I have voted for many Republicans during the last 45 years. But, several years ago I decided not to vote for another until the sane and decent people of that party regain control from the extremists. It should again be a sane and reasonable party which champions fiscal responsibility and smaller government with self-imposed restraints on excessiveness. This will not last. It will eventually cool down and it will eventually rain. The economy will improve and the pendulum will swing away from the Tea Party to sanity.

Jack Potter and the Lawyer

Jack Potter was an old rancher from Beckham County, Oklahoma, who lived northwest of Elk City. I don’t know how it was that he first came to my office, nor do I recall any legal problems he had which demanded my services. In fact, the memory I have of his coming into my office was simply to visit. I always had coffee at the office and there were some people who frequently came in just to drink coffee and visit. It didn’t pay much, but there were always benefits other than monetary to be had. I never did all that much for him for which I could have conscientiously charged him and I don’t believe I ever sent him a bill for anything.

Jack seemed to be an old man at the time, the early 1980s. of course, at the time I was in my late 30s and he was probably no more than early to middle 60s, an age which would have seemed old then, but now that I am in my late 60s, it doesn’t really seem all that old. An old rancher, I never saw him without a dirty old cowboy hat and a chew of tobacco. He never spat so it caused some consternation on my part to watch him vigorously chew regardless of where he was.

He never had all that much, other than a house full of kids. They had the necessities of life, but little else. Rural Beckham County in those days when he would have raised his family was a difficult place to scratch out a living. He had managed to put together three quarter sections of land, a total of 480 acres of land, by simply working hard and living longer than he had had any reason to expect. That much land might sound like a lot of land, but in that part of the state it takes a lot of land to run a cow-calf operation of any size. Even though it was a lot of land, by some standards, the cow-calf operation he ran was not all that large. But, then fortune smiled on him.

In the early 1980s, there was an energy boom in this country which included Beckham County. Companies began deep well drilling for natural gas. Wells of 18-20,000 feet deep were not uncommon. It seemed wells were drilled almost everywhere and they were discovering gas in almost every area of the county. Prices were at an all-time high and people were making money. Even those people who had no wells drilled on their property were benefitting from mineral leases. We were all rich and if not rich, we were all comfortable.

El Paso Natural Gas, through their exploration division, drilled extensively in that and adjoining counties. They were a major player in that boom. They drilled three wells on Jack’s little ranch, one on each of the three quarter-sections. They were deep wells, exceeding 20,000 feet in depth. When they drill that deep, they have expended huge sums of money and have a vested interest, if not an urgent interest, in getting a return on their investment. All three of these wells “hit,” that is, they produced natural gas in huge quantities. They were good for El Paso and they were good for Jack.

Suddenly, Jack was a wealthy man. He was a hugely successful cowman with a very profitable cow-calf operation, something which was profitable because he could supplement it with his other income, his mineral income for which he didn’t have to turn a hand. It was a dream come true.

Jack really didn’t change his lifestyle all that much. He didn’t build a new house or divorce his wife to marry a younger woman or buy new cars and trucks. He continued to live as he always had, allowing the money to accumulate. He did come into my office one day and announced he and I were going to take helicopter flying lessons. He had decided to buy a helicopter (which he could use in his cattle operation and, thus, charge it off on his taxes) and he wanted me to fly with him. And, he thought it would be a lot of fun if we would both learn to fly together. I explained to him that I really couldn’t afford to do that and he replied that he was going to pick up the tab for the both of us. He had gone to the public library and read up on how helicopters work and the proper techniques of operating them. He explained it to me as we drove to Oklahoma City to look at the one he had decided to buy. It was a glorious little flying machine. We needed to do some more research into his finances and agreed to come back and begin our lessons later. Within a week, he came back into my office and announced that he had changed his mind, that he could buy a new pickup every month for this amount of money. While it wouldn’t be as fast or fun, there were benefits to being on the ground when checking cattle.

There was another time Jack considered spending a lot of money. He came into my office and asked what I would charge to defend him on a murder complaint. His daughter had been mistreated by her husband and Jack has decided to kill the young man. Asking what it would cost to defend him in a trial clearly showed that he wasn’t entirely committed to the idea of murder, he was just weighing his options. I said, “Jack, you know those three gas wells you have?” He allowed that he knew them better than most. “Well,” I continued, “you should still have one of them left after it’s all over. I’ll have the other two.” As he thought it over, he asked, “What if I just give him an ass whipping?” “In that case, Jack,” I replied, “you’ll still have all three wells and I’ll buy myself a new luxury car.” The talking about it was all he needed and the young man was spared his life, something he may have never known was in danger.

Then, there was the purchase of a life-time. K-C Cattle Company was a company which owned a large ranch, more than 6,000 acres, which it no longer used. It was no longer in the cattle business and its land interests were limited to oil and gas exploration and production. Land on which to run a cattle operation was no longer in its portfolio. Jack had been around that land for years; he had secretly wanted it for his own, but had never been so bold as to express it to others as it was too expensive for him to ever realistically think he might be able to acquire it. But, that was before El Paso had made him a relatively wealthy man. The ranch owned by the K-C Cattle Company was within his grasp.

The head of the K-C Cattle Company was a man by the name of Champlin. Mr. Champlin was a decent man, an old style gentleman about the same age or a little older than Jack. The two of them visited about the sale of the land and agreed to the terms by which Jack would take possession of the ranch. Basically, there was to be a structure of payment based on the production of the wells by which Jack had recently struck it rich. When they parted, Jack suggested and Mr. Champlin agreed that he would have me draft an agreement whereby Jack would take title to the land and the purchase would be financed and paid by the production of the gas wells. The amount of the payments would still leave Jack plenty of money to stock the ranch with choice beef cattle and operate it profitably.

I drafted an agreement based on the report given to me by Jack, and after he read it he assured me it was precisely what he and Mr. Champlin had agreed on. I then sent the agreement to Mr. Champlin’s lawyer, a man named Singsong. [Singsong is not his real name, but why invite a lawsuit for slander, even if truth is a defense?] The next week Jack and I went to meet with Mr. Champlin and his lawyer in Mr. Singsong’s office which was a couple hundred miles away. We had to drive because we didn’t have a helicopter.

A word of explanation about lawyers: they’re quite often jerks. I have seen more deals killed by lawyers than I care to recount. All Mr. Singsong had to do was read that agreement, confer with Mr. Champlin to determine whether it did in fact recite the agreement of the parties, and advise him if there was anything illegal or unenforceable about the agreement. But, he, like so many lawyers, saw everything through the eyes of an advocate. We met in his office, he sitting behind it in his large “power chair,” Mr. Champlin sitting to his left at the end of the desk in a normal office chair, and Jack and I sitting across from him in a pair chairs which seemed to have had their legs sawed off four or five inches.

Jack and I sat there looking up at Mr. Singsong as he went line by line picking the agreement apart. He found flaws in every sentence and every word. He didn’t like anything about it. When I tried to explain why it was written as it was, he wasn’t interested at all. He interrupted me every time I tried to say anything. He was rude and condescending and treated the two of us as if we were a couple of conmen who were trying to take advantage of poor Mr. Champlin. Poor Mr. Champlin indeed. He was a very successful businessman who probably ate schmucks like Jack and me for lunch. On and on Mr. Singsong went, and I was surprised that Jack was sitting there taking it all in very calmly. I noticed he had removed his hat when we sat down, one of the very few times I had ever seen him bareheaded. And, he wasn’t chewing tobacco. Those two facts alone told me he respected Mr. Champlin and was conducting himself accordingly. Mr. Champlin was quiet during the meeting, saying nothing to us or his lawyer. It was hard to tell what he was thinking.

After about twenty minutes of listening to Mr. Singsong talk down to us and treat us like a red-headed step-child, I quite calmly asked, “Jack, do you want that place this bad?”

“I God-damned sure don’t,” he replied as he stood and put his hat back where it belonged. “Let’s get out of here.”

By the time I stood, Jack was half-way to the door of Mr. Singsong’s lovely office, the kind intended to showcase a prosperous lawyer, but which really shouts to anyone who knows the system that it houses a price gouging SOB. I was picking up my briefcase as I heard Mr. Champlin take over the meeting. He asked us to wait and then proceeded to dress down his litigator. He told him that the papers were exactly what he and Jack had agreed to, even throwing in a remark that “Mr. Franklin has done a superb job” and that we were not there to argue about it. We were there to sign it.

We sat back down and went through the formalities of signing everything. Then we said our goodbyes, shook Mr. Champlin’s hand and started to leave. I noticed that Mr. Singsong was holding back across the room and appeared to feel badly about his behavior of earlier in the meeting. Jack was perfectly happy to say goodbye to Mr. Champlin and leave, but I couldn’t let that happen. I walked across the room, shook his hand and said, “It’s a pleasure having done business with you, Mike.”

Jack Potter, may he rest in peace. He’s a man from my past I greatly miss.