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.

Memorial Day

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” I have seen this quote attributed to both George Orwell and Winston Churchill and the truth of its origin will probably never be known of any certainty. But, the sentiment is true. It is easy to be a pacifist when there are others who are willing to see to it that we live in peace, safe from those who would intentionally do us harm.

In America, following World War I, there was an effort, a movement, on the part of some to become serious pacifists. There may have been such movements following our other wars, but if so, those movements did not gain a strong foothold in American society. The thing that made the movement of the 1920s and 1930s different was that we had come through a terrible war, the Great War, the war to end all wars. Thinking people could see how technology, which was exceeding all expectations, was overtaking our desire to fight among nations. War was simply becoming too horrific to be tolerated. The wanton destruction of people and things had achieved such levels that people felt they had to seek alternatives and find some kind of peace. And, just perhaps, they thought, they needed to take a stand, refusing to fight at all, refusing to engage even in a defensive effort.

That was all very well and fine during peacetime. When no one is attacking you, it is easy to be a pacifist. When the only people threatened by warfare are those who are outside the parameter of those for whom we have any concern, it is easy to ignore atrocities and violence and take our stand on a higher plain of pacifism.

Harry Emerson Fosdick comes readily to mind. He was perhaps the most influential preacher of that era and he used his influence to try to form a pacifist movement in America following World War I. He, personally, became an avowed pacifist. This worked fine until the atrocities of Mussolini’s Italian invasion of Ethiopia and Hitler’s expansion into neighboring European countries, together with Hitler’s persecution of the Jews as well as weaker elements of German society, came to the knowledge of informed people in America. (His persecution of the weak and underprivileged was known early, however the full extent of his atrocities were unknown until after World War II.)

Those of us who have not fought for our country, regardless of the conflict, have benefitted greatly from those “rough men” who stood ready to do violence on our behalf. Recognizing the truth of this should in no way glorify war. There is nothing glorious about it. Sherman’s remark that “war is hell” is true. It wreaks havoc and destruction on life and property. And when it is all over, has anyone actually come out victorious? The simple answer is that sometimes indeed there is a victory. But, sometimes the conclusion is tenuous at best. Often, the same conclusion could have been reached through diplomatic methods. What was really accomplished by the defeat of Hitler’s armies? Land boundaries reverted back basically to their pre-war placement. Governments remained intact. An evil regime was defeated, certainly a good thing, but the question will never be satisfactorily answered as to what created this evil in the first place. Had the evil not been created, the war would never have happened.

This sounds overly simplistic, but it is so complicated that the achievable goal of peace is too often not achieved at all.

We should and do honor those who serve in the military, securing our independence from other sovereigns who would deprive us of our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. One of the things I have always found amazing is the dedication our military has for the rule of law we cherish in this country, and our mutual devotion to the principals contained and promulgated in our Constitution. In the history of this great nation, there has never been a time when our armed forces, or even a segment of it, have attempted to depose civilian control of the government or even the military. This is guaranteed by the Constitution and is obviously a sacred idea for the military. (One can perhaps argue that the secession movement leading to the Civil War was a violation of this principal. However, there is every reason to believe that had it been left to the soldiers in the military who eventually served in the Confederacy, they would never have agreed to secession from the Union. Secession was decided by politicians and only then did those military men from the South agree to bear arms against their country.)

A very small percentage of our overall population has served in the military. And, only a tiny fraction of that number has died in service to their country. These people must be honored. In our collective memory, young men, eighteen and twenty year olds, died to defend us against the aggression of the Nazis of Germany and the Imperialists of Japan. These young men who never got to know their wives and children, who never knew what it was for their hair to turn gray and for their joints to ache from such a simple thing as old age, who never knew the joy of playing with grandchildren, these young men must not be forgotten. The tragedy of their youthful sacrifice is a sacred memory.

Regardless of the politics of the war, we have a sacred duty to honor those who died in our name. And, a sacred duty to honor those who even served in our name.

With that said, we must be cautious about setting the military up as an idol. They are not “super Americans,” they are simply Americans who have chosen a certain life of danger and sacrifice. Is their worth greater than that of a school teacher? Only during the heat of battle. In the classroom, helping young children grow to manhood and womanhood, I would put my money on the teacher. Is the military’s worth greater than that of a garbage collector? Yes, in the heat of battle. But, if you have ever seen a large modern city during a garbage strike, you know that the service of those men and women under such circumstances is incomparable.

The honor we give to men and women who serve in harm’s way is both special and deserved. It is appropriate. These men and women have agreed to bear arms. They will kill in our name and they are on the front line of battle where they may be killed in our name. They are the “rough men and women” who make my sleep possible.

No one in my family has served in the American military since the Civil War. My great grandfather fought for the Union while my other great grandfather and great, great grandfather fought for the Confederacy. One of my grandfathers was born while Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States. Born during the Civil War, his life was shaped and defined by that terrible war. My father was born just after World War I and his life was shaped and defined by that war to end all wars. I was born during World War II and my life was shaped and defined by that terrible worldwide struggle between the nations on the earth.

Now, having tasted the horrors of war, we have come to understand that there must be a better way to resolve our conflicts. Our technology has become too destructive to unleash it on one another. That was a lesson we learned in World War II. The problem is that today’s wars are not being fought between “civilized” nations, nations that follow certain rules of engagement and declare a cessation of hostilities when peace terms are agreed on. Today’s wars all too often involve uncivilized fanatics who, having perceived that they have been deprived of opportunities in the present world, have cast their lot with religious and self-righteous zealots in a conflict they can never win, yet one in which they likely will never be defeated.

My grandfather was too old to fight in World War I; I do not know what caused him to avoid serving in the Spanish-American War. My father was called up near the end of World War II, but for its own reasons the government allowed him to return home. I came of age during the war in Vietnam, however, I was neither drafted nor did I look for the line wherein volunteers stood offering their own lives in a losing cause. I never criticize people who did not serve during a time of war because, when the time came, neither did I. However, I do criticize those who avoided service and then are loudest in demanding the commitment of our military to death demanding conflicts. There is no honor when those who avoided fighting demand others fight and die. There is no honor when men and women call for wars in which their own children are not required to fight, yet the sons and daughters of others are suffering injury and death.

Whoever said it, I am one who sleeps peaceably in my bed at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on my behalf. And, I honor those who make it so.