To America's Young People: Hold High The Torch

In a weird twist on an old science-fiction and physics conundrum—that is, you cannot go back in time and kill your grandfather, or, if you do go back in time and kill someone like Hitler when he was a boy, the future world will likely change in very unforeseen ways—the dastardly plans and unanticipated consequences of fictional time voyagers have been carried out in our schools without the need for time travel at all. The present-day assassins who have, since 1999, killed 149 students and teachers may well have taken the lives of the next Mozart, the next Einstein, the next Picasso, the next Steinbeck, the next Lincoln. [I know there are many more, depending on how one chooses and ranks the statistics—I have chosen what I believe are the major incidents, but my argument extends to all]

Who can say that among these too-soon-extinguished lives was not a Nobel Peace Prize winner; a discoverer of a cure for glaucoma, or diabetes, or Alzheimer’s, or cancer; an inventor of a source of truly clean-energy; a diplomat whose skills united a divided Middle East or stabilized the Korean Peninsula; the first woman to set foot on Mars; the first person to detect the signal from space that tells us we are not alone in the universe. The adults who died were not finished with their lives’ work of molding and inspiring their students—what more work could they have done? The killers who rampaged through those schools denied 149 children, teenagers, young adults and their teachers, coaches, and mentors, the chance to do any of those great things for humanity.   

·        But now let’s take a look at who the shooters did not kill. They did not kill tens of millions of young people between the ages of 15 and 25. They did not kill the balance of the students, for example, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. They did not kill some of the nation’s most promising leaders, doctors, scientists, inventors, writers, artists, musicians, philosophers, teachers, mothers- and fathers-to-be. And, most importantly—at least it should be of prime importance to the men and women in Congress and in the White House today—they did not kill tens of millions of young people who are now mobilizing as never before to wrest unseemly power away from the established government and replace it with leaders of conscience and substance.

There are tipping points that move entire nations to act, and I believe America has reached such a tipping point, though at the heavy cost of young lives, and the forever burdens resting on their families’ hearts. How do we as a nation come to terms with such sadness and longing for an answer? How do we identify and act on this new tipping point? Perhaps we can find some direction in the words of a 103-year-old poem, written in the middle of another great crisis in which young people were dying.

In 1915, during World War I, at the Second Battle of Ypres, Major John McCrea, a Canadian military doctor and artillery commander, was so struck by the battlefield death of a friend of his, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, that he penned the words to a poem that has come to symbolize all the frustration, sorrow, and pointlessness of war.  McCrea wrote,

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”

McCrea was issuing a challenge to the living who were enduring the horrors of that war—and future wars. The words, “To you from failing hands we throw the torch…be  yours to hold high…” spoken from the graves of the fallen to the hearts of the living, urged an end to the ferocity and atrocity of war as a compact of faith between those who died and those who survived.

Far more than 149 students and teachers rest uneasily in too many hushed and grass-enfolded versions of Flanders’ Fields all across our nation. I write the word “uneasily” because their deaths have not yet been paid for, have not yet been addressed to society’s satisfaction, and until our society finds a way to bring an end to this unholy war that is killing our children and their teachers and demoralizing our communities, the dead cannot rest easily. Nor, for that fact, should any American—or any politician—rest easily in the comforts of their homes until we have brought gun deaths to bay and eliminated the root causes of such violence against humanity.

It is my belief that the young men and women we have seen on television and across social media—the well-spoken, thoughtful, and properly-angry students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and their student peers nationwide—are in a perfect position, by dint of their age, energy, and their passion, to transform America’s political landscape. It is to them that the torch has been thrown; it is to them the up and coming generations of Americans will look for leadership and fundamental change in Washington and in every governor’s mansion, state legislature, and city council.

Such change will take time, but time is what the nation’s teenagers and young adults have and that my generation does not. The movement by young people to take America in a new direction, a course away from death-by-gunfire and toward life-without-fear, must either be supported by those who hold office, or relinquished to younger, more capable hands. Either way, tomorrow’s America, an America unafraid of gun violence, is going to be shaped by a new and determined generation whose power at the polls, and whose aspirations to run for office, will reset our path, and reclaim our nation. 

Tribute to a Dad

Clifford James Moore Jr. 1921-2003

Fifteen years ago today, February 17, 2003, our home in Alexandria, Virginia, was surrounded by 16 inches of snow, a record for that date. The temperature was in the low 20s, and the wind was out of the Northeast, gusting to 26 mph. Our north-facing living room windows shook with each freezing blast, and the cold seeped in wherever it could find a crack. My wife and I and our two dogs were waiting out the storm, humans and beasts sharing a nervous discomfort that did not yet have a name, but which was about to make itself known in stark mortal terms.

Sixty miles away, on a small 25-acre plot of land, in a house overlooking a modest lake, my father was dying. He had been ill for many years, the victim of diabetes and glaucoma and other ailments which had evaporated his mobility and drained his once-impeccable mind. For the previous several years, I, and a team of care givers, had been his constant companions, tending to those needs that frighten all of us who are still upright and in touch with our minds.   

But when pop was upright and in touch with his mind, he was a wonder.

           He was a pilot.  He was a Group Commander or a Base Commander or a Wing Commander or a Division Commander.  He was a pilot who did these other jobs as they came along;  Orders from the Secretary, approved by a General, passed on to a Colonel, handed over to a Captain, written up by a clerk somewhere down a corridor, within a bay,  off a ring around the Pentagon.  

         My mother was religious about keeping pictures – wicker baskets full of dog-eared Kodak booklets, their bright yellow, plastic spiral-bound covers, stained with countless fingerings,  ball-point pen marks and occasional jelly or drool smears.  Faded, hazy Kodachrome slides -- their dyes deteriorating,  their images yielding to time.  Box-camera prints -- some with corrugated edges, others, less sturdy,  brittle and cracking -- spill out of the baskets, distributing themselves -- and the years --  haphazardly across the carpet.

          The pictures, slices of time, like lifelines to the past, take the place of memory and are my mother's best effort to maintain some semblance of family history as we slid from one continent to the next, pack-ratting our way across the Atlantic.  Pressed into the bottom of the baskets are manila envelopes containing official documents in silver halide.  Glossy eight-by-tens of the aviator in his various ranks; it is with these that I have attempted to extrapolate his life.  

         There is the West Point cadet in parade dress...handsome, eager, fire in the eyes.  A gunman on the skeet range, a champion.  There is the student pilot...rolling inverted in an open cockpit, engine roaring, flying wires singing in the bitter, thrilling wind.  The student becomes a professional...but not yet a killer.  Pictures of P-38's in echelon over California's San Joaquin Valley in 1944,  their twin-boom empennages reflected one after the other,  guns and cannon in the nose, earnest faces, hidden by masks and Lockheed sunglasses, peer through the perspex.  Father or fantasy?   Eight by tens of a fighter base in England, snaps of his planes, Uninvited I and Uninvited II, and a young (choose one:  lieutenant;  captain; major) posed (choose another one:  smiling in the cockpit; seriously in the cockpit; casually, by a propeller; formally with ground crew in front of the plane).  Shards of time. 

       In one basket I found a snow scene.  There were fir trees laden with heavy white cloaks in the middle of a driving storm, the suggestion of a balcony in the foreground, and a curious, latticed construction half-buried in mid-drift. I asked him once about the picture; I'd found it in his den, but he didn't recall the place...or the time.  Perhaps an officers' club.  He was an existential artist with a Rolleiflex camera and a Weston light meter.  Wicker baskets.  Pictures of a man moving through the world of rank and privilege.  Glossies of the clear-eyed, goggles-on-top-of-the-head Major.  Glossies of the just-come-home Major.  Glossies of the new Lieutenant Colonel.  Glossies of the new Colonel.  

         The pictures don't show it, but he smoked.  Back from a mission, once again a survivor, he stayed in the cockpit.  I think it was the one where flak ripped into the cooling system -- a dicey ride home not knowing if the fan would seize then and there.  Maybe it was from his first one-on-one combat -- a quick burst of the cannon as machines careened through four dimensions, passing one another in both a moment and an eternity -- one machine disassembling, the other escaping. I can't remember all the stories, but he stayed in the cockpit because his legs were shaking.  A crew chief stuck a Camel in Pop's mouth and his legs worked again.  By the time he was 24, he'd become the old man.  I suppose it was the last time he was young.

         He wrote letters home.  Poetry in V-Mail.  The letters were collected and bound in gilt-edged leather.  Letters to Liz.  Letters to Jim.  He is a charmer with his narrative.  I lived his first mission and his last. I read words of endearment I will never hear him repeat. His daughter is born.  He kills a man. Then several more. A certain number of heartbeats and he will be home. Mom and Pop seemed closer then, five thousand miles apart, than I remember ever seeing them when they were together.  It is not a subject to dwell on.

        He was a military public relations man's dream. In the wicker baskets I once found pictures of the wedding reception at Chasen’s – a fancy restaurant near Hollywood. There were lots of cigarettes, slightly boozy, dull-eyed stars, screenwriters, producers and assorted hangers-on assembled for the pleasure of the bride and groom. Pop looked very much out of place.

         I’ve already opened the door on my father’s contributions to my life – you met him when I was five, in my story Major Sevenths–  but there is more to know about him than what you have seen so far. He was 81 when he died, alone without his wife, nearly blind, unable to care for himself.

          A rotating staff of nurses tended to his needs – bathing him, changing him, medicating him, cooking for and feeding him. His days were spent in his den, either watching television – which he mostly heard since his vision was almost gone – or listening to the music of his younger days – big bands, Gene Krupa, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, Peggy Lee, Ray Conniff, Benny Goodman, and patriotic marches. He had a special affection for movie musicals, and I have known him to watch My Fair Lady from sunrise to sunset, crying at the sad parts, laughing at the humor, and mouthing the words to all the lyrics.

        He was easy prey for telemarketers and television hucksters; he once spent $7,000 on a gutter replacement scam we knew nothing about until after the workmen left. He ordered “commemorative” coins or kitchen gadgets for which the staff or his family had no practical use. We found out about them when the FEDEX or UPS couriers dropped them off.  He could do those things up to the last half-year of his life because he fancied that he had a sound mind and knew perfectly well what he wanted – he just didn’t give a damn about he cost or the practicality of his actions.

         His care alone set his rapidly diminishing estate back about $200,000 per year – but he didn’t give a rat’s ass and he angered quickly when it was pointed out that the money he was spending was not actually his, but rather the remnants of a trust that belonged to his wife, intended to be handed down, and not necessarily discharged like Niagara into the waiting coffers of the nursing agency.

I often pointed out that his pension – his legitimate work product – would be sufficient to support him in any one of a number of excellent nursing facilities, including one tailor-made for Air Force retirees.

        I used to tell him, “Pop, this is a place where everybody is Air Force and the care is as good as you’re getting right here.”

“Just get me a gun.”

“What?”

“Just get me a gun, because if you think I’m ready for a home, I’d rather shoot myself.”

“Pop, all I’m saying is you’re rapidly running out of money – you’ve got to plan for what’s going to happen when it’s all gone.”

“How much do I have?”

“About $800,000, more or less.”

“I heard it was more than a million.”

“It was once, Pop. When it was more. Now, it’s $800,000, which is less.”

“Fine, then I’ve got enough for a while.”

“A while, at your current rate, Pop, is four years.”

“The doctor says I’ve got at least ten years in me.”

“That’s great, Dad…I don’t doubt it. But do you see the problem?”

“Which is?”

“Which is six years of no money.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that when the money is gone, in four years, it will be a bit too late to decide where to go. I’ve told you we will modify our house and build a room for you, and that’s the best I can come up with.”

“I’m not leaving here until I’m dead.”

“I’m not sure that’s an option, Pop.”

“Get me a gun.”

         We would go through that exercise regularly, and I sometimes think he got more mileage out of my frustration than he deserved.  I was comforted by the fact that all the handguns in the house were trapped inside a big brown box, wrapped many times in tape, and stored on a top shelf far beyond his reach should his wheel chair ever be so inclined to roll that way.

         We were all baffled when my father retired after 30 years in the military, and made a very clear decision not to work another day in his life. He was relatively young – 52 – and there were a number of aerospace and consulting firms that were wooing him to accept an executive position in what was fast-becoming the foundation of the high-tech future.  This was back in a time when the term “Silicone Valley” referred to the cleavage between the boobs of Playboy Bunnies, starlets, and strippers.

         For years we – family, friends, West Point classmates, and former colleagues – speculated on the real cause of my dad’s intransigence to even remotely consider stepping into a private sector vice-presidency. As a colonel, his salary was adequate within the military world. However, it was but a pittance when placed on a scale of potential corporate earnings, especially in the space-applications market, the electronic engineering fields and the emergent computing technology firms. One of my father’s oldest friends, a former Air Force colleague, who, like my dad, retired as a colonel, took a leadership post at TRW, the huge California-based aerospace company. He walked out of the Air Force with a respectable five-figure salary, and into TRW and a serious six-figure introductory income. Within five years, what with stock options and advances in position, my father’s friend was a millionaire twice over and was calling my dad begging him to come to the coast to partake of the excitement and rewards. The answer was always ‘no,’ and if pressed to explain it, he’d just say he was happy being a “gentleman farmer,” and that was that. The truth was not even close.

         He was a West Pointer who became a fighter pilot, a spy, a bomber pilot, and a retiree all in 30 years. Once he left the service, he never looked back – but he also never looked forward. A bullheaded stoic, he would refuse treatment for any injury short of a torn-off limb, and he had a maddening habit of half-smiling through adversity. “I love you” was not in his daily lexicon – not that he didn’t say it, he just didn’t say it much and, more often than not, he preferred to respond to an incoming “I love you” with, “Me too.”  I rarely got a rise out of him despite my many unplanned attempts, including one that involved his favorite typewriter and a can of extra-hold hair spray. What he would do was to become quiet. Very quiet. Don’t-even-go-there quiet. And then he would utter those five words that would just slay me every time: “I’m very disappointed in you.” 

        It took me years to shovel out the manure under which the truth was buried – but then, the crap the covered the truth had been accreting for at least 30 years. He was the son of a World War I Cavalry officer, born on an Army post in the south, mostly raised there except for a stint in the Philippines as a young boy. He was educated at a mix of schools and was never really an outstanding scholar, but he never fell below the middle of the academic list either. He managed to get into West Point after failing his first set of entrance exams.

       He was a loner as a kid, preferring to spend time building model planes, fiddling with the aerodynamics of wings, seeing what would and wouldn’t work. He could spend hours whittling away on a slab of balsa or gopher wood until just the right airfoil emerged from the once-featureless block.

          His persistence for perfection contributed to his pursuit of an engineering degree; his first school of choice was Georgia Tech, but the university’s aviation program couldn’t match West Point’s. The regimented world of the “Trade School,” as my father reverently referred to the Military Academy, suited my dad to a T. “Yes Sir,” No Sir,” “No excuse, Sir,” were mantras that kept my father’s life on a steady keel, and allowed him no margin for experimentation with anything outside the bounds of perfection as defined in the West Point handbook. Failure was never an option, and success was always taken for granted. That same pursuit of perfection worked like an acid on the lives of his children.

         Like so many Norman Rockwell kids of the 1930s, my dad had a devoted dog, Buddy. Buddy was a German shepherd and Buddy was a legend. On three occasions, Buddy either saved my father’s life, or certainly kept my dad from serious harm’s way. The first time, Buddy got between my father and a cottonmouth snake; the second time, he ran interference when Pop wandered into a bull’s pasture; and the third time, Buddy launched himself at my dad and knocked him out of the way of an oncoming car.  Buddy took the hit from the car and suffered massive injuries. My father had most of his right ear torn off as Buddy slammed into him, but the ear was stitched back; Buddy was not so easily repaired. When the veterinarian suggested Buddy be put down, my father’s father said “No. This dog saved my son’s life – now you save his life.”  Buddy pulled through and lived another five years. There would be another Buddy in my father’s life…and the outcome of that relationship would haunt my father forever.

         There aren’t too many other childhood stories about my dad; it’s not that there weren’t any; kids are kids and they do kid things despite circumstances. But my dad, in all the years I knew him, seemed to have relegated his youth to a packing box, heavily taped, and stored in a musty repository far from his willing consciousness. If he had boyhood friends, their names are lost to him. Did he have a youthful crush on some freckle-faced little girl? He couldn’t recall. Could he have possibly engaged in some risky but harmless prank of youth? I think so, but I’d have to make one up, because he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, go there. On the other hand, his reluctance to dowse for memories is completely consistent with his embrace of military regimen, which rewards the transient life with virtually no opportunities for concrete experiences to set; they remain permanently impermanent. You can lift the plastic sheeting that protects them years later and find they are still wet to the touch – easily capable of taking a new impression, or of being smoothed over again and again.

         Pop frequently listened to big band music whenever I’d drop in for a visit. One day, a Sousa march, the Thunderer, was pouring out of the speakers in all its patriotic glory.  I turned around and watched him as the music swelled – the proud warrior no longer on the reviewing stand, no longer returning the salutes of hundreds of airmen in their parade dress as they passed beneath his gaze.  No more would the formations of B-47s or B-52s grace the air above a base under his command.

          I have a picture of him in his West Point parade uniform. No cadet ever looked sharper; no cadet’s eyes ever shone as brightly with the light of patriotism.  The man I saw in the recliner was that same man, the sharpness of physical stature had been dulled by disease, but the clarity of vision…the light was still there. 

         Many years would go by before I learned most of the truth about my father’s career. He didn’t advance beyond colonel, not, as he rationalized it, because he wouldn’t play the Air Force’s political games – real as they were – but because he couldn’t. He didn’t have the guile for politics or the vision to see beyond the obvious. He also had no feel for what he could have contributed. His performance ratings throughout his career were top-notch, and by the 1960s, the Air Force was clearly grooming him for his first star. In July, 1960, a month before he turned 39, Pop’s rating officer wrote, “…I consider him an excellent potential for a Wing Commander in SAC. Colonel Moore is also ideally suited for air attaché work.” One year later, his evaluation included this: “All of this combined to move his new unit from last in 2^nd Air Force and SAC, to second in 2^nd Air Force and third in SAC in the space of one quarter…Definite wing commander potential.” The accolades continued into 1962: “Colonel Moore is an affable and immaculate officer…He is an excellent emissary of the Air Force.” In 1963, he was on his way to bigger things, reflected in his rating officer’s entry for that year: “His ability here has led to his selection to command Barksdale Air Force Base, the home of Headquarters Second Air Force.” 

         Once we got to Barksdale, Pop did a bang-up job there as well, getting kudos from high command within 6 months of his arrival: “Barksdale is noted as one of the finest appearing and cleanest bases in the Strategic Air Command. Colonel Moore’s organization of the elements of the base command has achieved this result…This officer has great potential for command and should be considered for a wing commander position…I consider him general officer potential at this time.” By 1965, Pop had, indeed, been moved upstream, leaving base administration behind, and taking on the responsibilities of a vice-wing commander in SAC, at Barksdale, where B-52s and KC-135s reigned supreme just as the air war in Vietnam was heating up. Although half the wing flew over to Southeast Asia, Pop’s half remained at Barksdale, gearing up for deployment. He’d done his job well enough to merit a second vice-wing command, returning us to Lincoln in late 1965. Just before he departed, my father received his last evaluation at Barksdale. In that evaluation, Pop’s immediate boss wrote, “Colonel Moore is intelligent, adaptable to new situations, and exhibits an unusual ability to foresee and anticipate requirements. He has been selected to assume command of a SAC wing at another station. It has been my pleasure to have been associated with this outstanding and dedicated officer.”  

           It was with great interest that this file entry referred to my father getting the full wing command job, when, in fact, the job was a repeat of his vice-wing command at a base of lesser stature than Barksdale, and a base that was going to be eliminated from the SAC inventory within six months of my father’s arrival. And yet…he did what he always seemed to do, as reflected in these January, 1966 comments from SAC headquarters: “Colonel Moore impresses me as that rare breed – the officer who does everything well. His personal standards of conduct and performance are high, and he has the happy ability to motivate his subordinates to match his standards. His brand of leadership produces a tightly knit, family-type organization in which outstanding results are the nor, the atmosphere is cheerful, and panic is unknown. The past three months presented a challenge which few commanders are better qualified to accept than Col. Moore: the accelerated phase-out of a B-47 wing and associated support activities. His planning was accurate, his execution precise. During this difficult period, Col. Moore’s personal imprint appeared on every facet of the project…I believe that his promotion to the grade of Brigadier General would be in the best interests of the Air Force.”  Not just SAC, mind you… but the Air Force…the big show. This particular recommendation was shared by a three-star general who had known my father for years. Short of Curtis LeMay signing off on the order, my father was as close to a shoo-in for his first star as any 45-year-old colonel could get.

By the fall of 1967, having not been officially recommended for an operational command, Pop focused his attention on finishing out his last five years before retirement in Washington, and not a word more of flying or field command was ever mentioned in any of his subsequent evaluations.

I think he was, at heart, an honest country boy, the Tennessee roots were deep. 

Now, on February 17, 2003, my father was dying. We knew—my wife and I—that it was important for us to see him, to get out to the country house and be with him, to tell him we loved him, to escort him through those last moments in the company of family. But the weather was cruel and unyielding. We’d gotten a call from his nurse earlier in the day letting us know that his end was in sight, and it was our mission to be there, to move whatever drifts were between us and him and hug him, talk to him, comfort him.

As the blizzard drove relentlessly on, we got in my big Expedition, me, my wife, and our dogs, and dove into the storm, angling to the Northwest, driving into the teeth of a weather system that had no mercy. We were not able to drive more than 20 miles—less than half the distance to the country house—before it was clear we would either be lost in some off-the-road trench, or stranded on a snow-swept highway. We had to turn around and go home. I think even the dogs were crying.

By the time we pulled into the driveway, our hearts were darker than the descending night. I called the country house to explain we could not get there…tears streaming down my face, frustration vibrating in every bone and muscle. The nurse, herself stranded in the house with a fellow caregiver and my father’s dog, let us know that my father was comfortable and in his favorite chair in his den. The hour was late, the storm raging unabated. We hung up and waited.

The phone rang late in the night…I cannot recall the hour. It was his nurse, and pop had only minutes left. She held the phone to his ear and we said our goodbyes and I-love-yous, and then he was gone.

The snow continued. It was February 17, 2003. Good night Pop. 

Fuchs You, Mr. Trump. You're In A Klaus By Yourself

Klaus Fuchs, Soviet Spy 1940s. Revealed America's Atomic Secrets

With respect to the latest indictments handed down from Justice regarding the Russian manipulation of the 2016 election, and Mr. Trump's (and allies) continued denial, let me say this (historical reference): Fuchs you, Mr. Trump. Fuchs you. More to come, but it's worth looking up to see the depth and breadth of Soviet/Russian interference in our science, politics, and society. Fuchs you, Don. You and your ilk are in a Klaus by yourselves.

Gun Control? A Hard Rain’s a’ Gonna Fall

.

And I’ll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it

And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it

Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking

But I’ll know my song well before I start singing

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard

It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall*

I was raised around guns. As a military dependent, living on Air Force and Army bases in the United States and in Europe in the 1950s and 60s, there were guns aplenty—not just the military-grade weapons, but small caliber .22 rifles, .38, .45, and .357 caliber pistols, and 12-gauge shotguns. I learned to shoot on NRA-sanctioned ranges located in the far corners of the bases, and got all the NRA medals. I became a proficient, competitive, and champion-level skeet shooter on skeet ranges in Ohio, Nebraska, Louisiana, and Colorado. I was a fair pistol shot with our pistols fired on base ranges, or, when available, at civilian ranges off-base.

It was a family thing with us. My father was an excellent marksman; my mother was as well. We had handguns, shotguns, and long rifles in our houses for most of my life. Oddly enough, I guess, we were not hunters. Killing was not our thing. Punching hole in targets, or powdering clay pigeons made up 100-percent of our time with our guns. By the time I departed for college in the late 60s, and my parents were getting older and considering retirement, our gun collection began to dwindle. We sold a few of the pistols, and cleaned, oiled, and stored the shotguns and rifles. By the 1980s, our guns were barely remembered artifacts, encased in a chest in the basement, never to be fired again…with the bulk of them sold after my father’s death in 2003.

The same story, with variations, was true for many of my military brat and civilian friends and their families from that age in America where guns were relatively common, often used for hunting in those parts of the country where that sort of thing was safe and acceptable, and otherwise used to punch holes in targets and powder clay pigeons. It never occurred to us—the commonest of people—to turn our guns into human killing machines if or when we had a beef with someone, or if or when we descended into depression, or if or when life did not go our way and someone cut us off on the freeway or disparaged our dog or mowed their lawn not to our liking. It also rarely occurred to any of us to own a weapon that made absolutely no sense to own—like a semi-automatic rifle capable of spraying a room full of children with death.

Now, let me be totally frank here. The world around my childhood was hardly cotton candy and carefree hours. I grew up in White-only America, in states where lynchings occurred, where beatings, bombings, burnings and brutalities unimaginable happened to Black Americans and their white sympathizers and defenders. I know physical and psychological bullying, having been the target of a schoolyard bully and seeing how even my best friends turned away from the taunts and beatings that rained down on me from a 14-year-old thug and his buddies. I have a personal connection to alcoholism that was ruinous.

And I know the ominous tones of vitriolic hate speech aimed at men, women, and children who did not fit the White version of America as far too many of my acquaintances and their parents wished it to be (and as it never was). You have not felt true embarrassment until you hear the most venomous racial epithets trip blithely off the lips of a pearl-wearing Leave-it-to-Beaver next-door neighbor mom, or spit violently from the adolescent tongue of someone you thought was your best buddy. These were not uncommon words. They were the lingua franca of a large portion of America. I heard those words in the North, the South, the East, and the West. I heard them from teachers, businessmen, mothers, fathers (thankfully, not my mother or father, though my father had a hard time accepting the assimilation of Black-Americans into all roles of American life). I heard these words from privates and generals. There are few things as jarring as hearing an otherwise-revered war hero extrude the N-word from his lips as if he were simply molding some racially-textured Play-Doh for the amusement of dinner party guests.

We have not ended such attitudes; we have only put an ill-fitting lid on them, and the rancid stew of inequality and injustice simmering beneath that lid is getting hotter, not colder. You need look no further than the current White House and it’s socially-misguided population to know we stand on a crumbling precipice of perverted potential, one misstep away from descending into irreversible degeneracy, suspicion, and subversion. Aided and abetted by a segment of the media that glorifies all who are white and wealthy, or cruelly pretends to dignify all who are white and ignorant, our national leadership casts aspersions and doubt upon all who are black, yellow, beige and brown (thank you, Nina Simone and Langston Hughes for Backlash Blues).

I also grew up in an America that objectified and denigrated girls and women, and stigmatized them if they did not measure up to some unreachable standard, or if they pushed back against the social norms of the time. Many men of the time read Playboy, and news stands in many markets and convenience stores displayed far more crude magazines next to Family Circle, Good Housekeeping and Readers’ Digest. The female form was reduced to a sexual snack, gaudily painted with lipstick, carefully airbrushed, and wrapped like candy in silk for male consumption. And, like racism and guns, Americans defined and accepted—frequently celebrated on fashion and contest runways, in magazines, books, and big silver screens—women’s proper role in our society.

We have not ended such abuse and disrespect; we have only glossed it over and made tentative strides toward addressing the underlying misogyny, denigration through popular music, political imbalance, and income inequality that continue to derail women’s reasonable aspirations. As for pornography, it may not appear on store shelves as it once did, but it is thriving in the virtual world, and it is tolerated—and apparently paid for—at the highest levels of government.

Note that I have not—nor will I here—discussed the darker side of America of the 50s and 60s: abortion, drugs, spouse abuse, alcoholism, closeted homosexuality, the shame of priests, rapacious environmental pollution and destruction at the hands of the huge coal- and mineral-mining companies and the energy plants and vast factories they continue to feed, the Cold War, nuclear threats…the list goes on. There remain today holdovers of these and other ills, and we still approach them with great reluctance and lack of a galvanized national will.

If we cannot fulfill the vision of an America that is open to all, safe for all, filled with achievable opportunities for all, tolerant of all, listening to all, answering to all, uniting all, and celebrating all, how can we possibly deceive ourselves into thinking we have any chance for reasonable and effective debate on what to do about guns? And if we cannot debate the issue, we certainly cannot solve the problem.

We thought we were ready to end racial hatred and embrace our differences to such a degree that they would fade into the mists of time. We are not there yet.

We thought we could address women’s economic and social equality and set but one bar for men and women—and government—to clear: the bar of equal rights. We are not there yet.

We thought our education systems would elevate our children’s intellectual and practical futures to world-class competitiveness. We’re not there yet—and that goal is disappearing in the dust of nations ready and willing to fill the intellectual vacuum our schools are creating.

Clearly, we are not ready and willing to act to bring an end to gun violence and killings in schools, killings in theaters, killings at music venues. If we were, we’d be there. It’s as simple as that. Our national baggage of misguided and failed programs is so filled with the junk of past generations it is a wonder we can make any headway under such a loathsome burden.

The enormity of the gun problem is beyond comprehension. Hundreds of millions of weapons in the hands of hundreds of millions of people. A miniscule percentage of those people will use their guns to do harm; the vast majority of Americans will not be able to relate. They can’t relate now. No number of deaths will cause Americans to break the chain of ownership. Legislation is not a viable option. Sorry. Just not happening.

What would be legislated? A guns-to-plowshares program? A pay-for-gun collection program? A “well-just-come-get-your-gun” program? An electronic tagging program? Oh, sure, that will go over well. How about a turn-in-your-neighbor-who-seems-crazy program? Or a “Well-he-looked-dangerous-to-me” program? More mental heath screenings? Given that the path of conservative government is veering away from funding programs that might help identify troubled—and potentially violent—gun owners or possible purchasers, mental health programs are simply unworkable and unscaleable.

To think we can resolve the gun problem before we have achieved success in grappling with our other issues—some of which are eroding the foundations of our democracy at an ever-increasing pace—is to deny the reality that we just don’t have the will to protect our young people—or anyone—from the killings that will continue unabated. There are no answers ahead; only coffins of many sizes.  

It’s a hard rain that is falling. And it will only get harder.

*© 1962 Bob Dylan

The Alpha and the Omega of a Baby

As I look at the face of our newest grandchild, five-day-old Julia Mae White, sleeping in her mother's arms, I am escorted softly back by the warm zephyrs of memory to three other moments when I looked at newborns in their mother's arms--our three children, Charlotte, Carter (father to Arlo), and Fletcher (now mother to Julia).

In particular, I remember with such clarity Charlotte's face moments after she was ushered into the delivery room, and I saw, in one fraction of time shorter than the Big Bang, the entirety of every life she represented--the lives before her, and the lives she would influence far beyond my own visit in this mortal coil.

Char and I stared at each other--sharing an unspoken greeting from one portal of life to another--and from that moment on, I became aware of the energy of atoms, the inner workings of the Earth, the breaths of the rain forests, the meanings of the songs of the great whales, the radiance of stars, and the slow dancing swirl of galaxies beyond human understanding.

These thoughts came back to me again with the births of Carter and Fletcher. I felt those feelings when we heard about little Arlo's birth under the Southern Cross...and those thoughts flowed deep into my being five days ago when I looked into Julia's face and beheld the starry wonder of life.

I believe babies are the universe in macro and micro. They are the alpha and omega of our hopes, dreams, aspirations, and better angels. They are innocence and kindness and tenderness and love in all the purest forms.

When A POTUS Loves A White House

With apologies to Michael Bolton and Percy Sledge

"When A POTUS LOVES A WHITE HOUSE"

When a POTUS loves a White House
Can’t keep his mind on nothin’ else
He’d blow up the world
For the good thing he’s found
If he is mad, he can’t see it
He can do no wrong
Turn his back on the truth
If it puts him down

When a POTUS loves a White House
Spends your very last dime
Trying to hold on to what he needs
He sell out all of your comforts
Make you sleep out in the rain
If Ivanka said that’s the way
It ought to be

When a POTUS loves a White House
He’ll take everything you have
Trying to hold on to his clueless base
Donnie, please, don’t treat us bad

When a POTUS loves a White House
And he’s got no soul
He can bring us such misery
If he’s playing us for a fool
He’s the last one to know
His lying ways are clear to see

Well, this nation loves a good man
We give them everything we have
But you hold on to your heartless love
Donnie, Donnie, please, don’t treat us bad!

When a POTUS love a White House
He can still do her wrong
He can still want some other girl
Yes, when a POTUS loves a White House
We know exactly how he feels
‘Cause Donnie, Donnie, you’re not our world

Why Not A Trump Parade? Part III

On Wednesday night, I saw an interview on NBC with a retired Army veteran, Sgt. Steve Colson—who served in Korea and Vietnam—at a Charlotte, NC, VFW post. Sgt. Colson was one of the few people interviewed who said he thought the idea of a military parade in Washington was a good idea. He said, “I was in the military for 20 years. I’ve been in some those parades… I think it would be a great thing.”

First off, I have to thank Sgt. Colson for his service, and I don’t mean that in an offhanded, faithless way; I love America’s soldiers, sailors, Marines, aircrews, and Coast Guard sailors. I grew up in the 50s and 60s, the son of a West Point graduate, a World War II veteran who became a Cold War warrior and a Vietnam-era commander, and my father, like his father before him who served in World War I and World War II, believed to his core (and to his Corps), in the sacred duty he carried out in defense of the Constitution. My mother’s father served in the Army in Europe in World War I; my wife’s father served in the Navy in the Pacific in World War II.

One of my nephews was a Marine, and countless friends of mine with whom I worked on Capitol Hill, at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and for the Pentagon were combat veterans from World War II, Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, the First Gulf War, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am proud to call “colleague” a handful of Medal of Honor recipients, and one of my immediate supervisors at VA, Lt. Colonel (Ret) Tammy Duckworth (D-Il), who lost both her legs to enemy fire in Iraq, is now a United States Senator who has the fire and pride to call out Mr. Trump for his shameful excoriation of Democratic Members of Congress who would not applaud during his State of the Union address.

Like my dad and my grandfathers and all our ancestors from the Revolution on, Sgt. Colson took the honorable path down a road strewn with the bodies and washed in the spent blood of generations of servicemen and women who, despite the fierceness of the fight before them, ran toward the danger, faced it head on, and acquitted themselves with great honor. Too many of them did not return; too many returned with external and internal wounds few civilians—save their families and medical teams—can ever imagine. That is why I love them; that is why Sgt. Colson and every man and woman I know who has worn, is wearing, or will wear the colors of our Nation’s uniforms deserve the unqualified thanks of a too-often ungrateful, or unthinking, nation. I would be proud to stand on the front row along Pennsylvania Avenue and applaud as Sgt. Colson marched by. So why not a parade to reaffirm our affection, or to shore up our wavering gratitude?

Because the kind of parade envisioned by Mr. Trump has nothing to do with Sgt. Colson, my dad, my father-in-law, my grandfathers, or any of my veteran and active-duty friends. It has everything to do with a draft-dodging business thug and shameless provocateur for whom the military is nothing more than a child’s chest of toy soldiers, tanks, ships, and planes. Soldiers do not fight and die in the plush pile carpet of a spoiled brat’s playroom. They fight and die in places this president has not even deigned to visit.

Our military does not need the kind of three-card-monte, barren-of-sincere-public-adulation envisioned by Mr. Trump at a time when the very reason our military personnel serve, fight, and die is under attack from within the government that sent them to war in the first place. The parade as envisioned by Mr. Trump would be a Potemkin display of vainglorious honor and self-serving tribute. It would be little more than a hollow and meaningless nod from a national leader who is systematically gutting—or certainly making every effort to pull down—the pillars of the Constitution, and to undermine the foundation of public trust from which those pillars so nobly rise.

In memory of Col. Clifford James Moore, Jr. 

August 15, 1921--February 17, 2003

The Emperor’s (Costly) Parade, Part II

Aaron Blake, writing in this morning’s Washington Post, as part of the story of Trump’s order to the Pentagon to stage a massive military parade down Pennsylvania (Pennsyl-Vain-ia) Avenue, mentions one particular chipped facet of this flawed gem of an idea: the budget for such a extravaganza.

But Trump's hand in making this a reality, in a way, can't help but make it about him. In fact, this might be the most thoroughly Trump idea of his presidency. Not only are we talking about a huge show of pageantry and strength that could test the bounds of practicality (not to mention the federal budget) but we've also got Trump upending decades of American political tradition to do so — and undoubtedly drawing the ire of opponents who will allege he's acting like an authoritarian.

At a time when the president is cutting this and ripping out that (State Department and other agencies budgets are being slashed); and as he hectors the Congress and the American (and Mexican people, apparently) to fund his wall; tears out the financial foundations for renewable energy production; lops off whole sections of the national parks; pulls us out of the Trans Pacific Partnership and threatens to re-jigger NAFTA; is seriously considering sending millions of otherwise law-abiding not-yet citizens to homelands they haven’t seen in decades (if ever); proposing a trillion dollar infrastructure program; AND, giving the nation’s wealthiest individuals and corporations tax relief that will never, never, never trickle its way down to the common Jane and Joe, he has the gall to tell no less than 18 generals that a parade in his honor (make no mistake about it, it’s not in honor of the military) will make all of us stand up and cheer for our men and women in uniform. 

Let me make this very clear, Mr. President. I say this as the son of a veteran, the grandson of veterans, the inheritor of a bloodline of heroes extending to the American Revolution, and as a federal employee who worked for more than  30 years on behalf our our Nation's veterans and active-duty troops:

We already stand up and cheer our troops…they are the finest in the world, and they do for Freedom what our hearts do for Life. They are the tireless, ceaselessly beating defenders of democracy. Their life’s blood has been spilled in places you will never see, nor probably have never even heard of. That blood runs like a crimson ribbon of courage across the war-tattered pages of the American story.  Your parade will not change or enhance our love and admiration for those who are serving, or our abiding affection for those who rest in Elysian Fields.

If ever a sign was needed to show that the man in the White House has no sense of propriety, compassion, decency, and practicality, this nutty notion of a military parade should be like a triple flashing, sirens-blaring, railroad warning that a massive train of public outrage is rolling down the tracks, and Mr. Trump has stalled his presidency directly on the crossing.

There is simply no way our nation’s budget (or, for that matter, the meager budget of the District of Columbia) can handle such a parade without causing serious ripples across the Pentagon and beyond the Potomac. Can such a parade be paid for? Yes. Should such a parade be paid for with public funds? No. No. No. And if that is not enough. Hell no. And there shouldn’t be a parade at all (as noted in my previous column).

It is one thing for a Presidential Inaugural Committee (three of which I’ve been a part) to raise funds for the every-four-years celebration of the presidency, but even a PIC budget covers only a portion of the overall costs of an inauguration. The Department of Defense, the District of Columbia, local and state governments, all chip in, and the manpower costs just for security, maintenance, and oversight are enormous.

Trump has no idea what the fuel and maintenance costs of running just one $9 million, 60-ton M1 A2 Abrams main battle tank are (much less just getting some tanks to the parade: it takes one C-17 to fly a single tank anywhere, or two C-5s to deliver two tanks, if there aren’t enough tanks in the local DC area); he has no clue what the price of a fighter and bomber flyover would be (jet fuel isn’t cheap, nor are all the attendant costs with re-positioning the aircraft in order to organize and coordinate such an airshow, which has to be practiced); and he has no idea what the cost of assembling thousands of troops and their equipment would be against the overall readiness needs of today’s military. And these are only small examples of what would have to be accounted for should the president actually get his way with this cockamamie scheme.

We are in the middle of an opioid epidemic; we are in the middle of an education/intellectual deficit; gangs cruise our neighborhoods and bullies cruise our schools; our roads are falling apart, our bridges are falling down, our air traffic control system is on the brink of failure; too many American children are still going hungry three times a day; too many single mothers or fathers are trying to cope with slender or no budgets in order to keep their kids in school and away from violence; for too many Americans, health insurance is out of reach; too many students are crushed in debt; and we are sorely lacking in congressional leadership at a time when cool heads and reasoned debate are called for to address the systemic problems that are eating away at the American confidence in a steady drip of partisan acid. 

A military parade is not going to solve any of these problems, nor will the expenditure of any public funds for such a parade improve our treasury’s ability to wrestle with the very real and present dangers facing our nation.  Mr. Trump, if you must find a new way to admire yourself, I suggest you dig into your own pocket for another golden-framed full-length mirror, and preen for yourself like the clueless peacock you are. 

Mr. Trump, As Your "Parade" Costs Rise, So Does Its Stink

There are many horrible ideas hatched at the White House, of that there can be little doubt. But among the most egregious is Mr. Trump's little-boy insistence on--and the Pentagon's capitulation to--a Red Square/Pyongyang-style show of military strength and penile extension in November. With a price tag now closing in on $100 million, there is so much wrong with this idea it's hard to know where to begin.

Having been an Inaugural Parade coordinator and co-designer for two Inaugurations (Reagan's second and Bush 41's only), I can tell you that we struggled with requests for heavy military equipment (main battle tanks and other large tracked vehicles) not only because the logistics of getting them to Washington were daunting, but because of the projected damage the equipment would do to Pennsylvania Avenue. It is a good thing that the Pentagon has at least pushed back successfully on Trump's request for heavy gear. It's not a good thing that thousands of troops will have to go through the onerous process of preparing for, rehearsing, and then marching in a parade promoted by a mad man.

But that's not the main objection to a Trumpian show of U.S. military might marching on the streets and flying in the skies over the Nation's capital. The main objection--in my humble and outraged opinion--is that such a show of force has only one purpose: to show the world that president Trump can grab and gratify himself in public and get away with it.

We are not a banana republic (though we're getting there under Trump's plan), we are not a totalitarian state (yet), we are not a cowed collection of fearful citizens who are called upon en mass to show up at a parade with specially-colored banners or pieces of cardboard coordinated to show the 10-acre-sized face of our dictatorial leader. We are not a nation of citizens who are afraid not to clap with our dear leader speaks lies to truth; we do not equate lack of applause with treasonous activities or disloyalty. We do not line up with bags of gold or grain or pounds of flesh to have them weighed against the mighty fat of our self-anointed king. And we sure as hell do not believe the men and women in uniform who protect us should be paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue to appease a lunatic.

Mr. Trump is a symptom of a cancer that is working its way--metastasizing if you will--from the fringes of our national soul to the very organs of justice, truth, and confidence in our Constitution that sustain each and every American.

The very idea that Mr. Trump thinks it's a good time to pull off his parade near Veterans' Day is anathema to everything that honorable day is about...Veterans' Day is a day of reverence, of sacred thoughts and abiding thanks to those heroes who either gave their all or who stood ready to do so with no mental reservation. The crisp cadence of ten thousand bootsteps marching down the streets of the Nation's capital will never replace the stark crack of rifles saluting 21 times the fallen who rest in Arlington and in National and state cemeteries around the country; such a parade will do nothing to assuage the pain of the families of men and women who served with incredible honor and who only seek recognition for their loved-one's service.

To all the veterans who come to visit the capital, to all the veterans watching from VA hospital beds, to all the veterans who struggle with tangled memories and unanswered questions from their service, this parade sends only one message: "Hey, look at me! I'm your president, see?! Hey, over here, look at me!"

There are times for flyovers--my father, inurned at Arlington, was the recipient of a flyover during his funeral...followed by the rifle salute and taps. There were no missiles on transporters, no Abrams tanks, no armored personnel carriers, no self-propelled guns, no massive shows of airpower. There was only respect and a cascade of tears that day when another American of great honor was laid to rest. I have been to too many burials at Arlington...at each one, I remember the sacred silence and unspoken words of honor that marked each service. Whether we gather to honor our veterans and our fallen heroes on Memorial Day or Veterans Day, we do so out of respect, with dignity and devotion.

Mr. Trump, just because France chose to show its power during Bastille Day does not mean you must somehow whip out your insignificant reproductive and waste-pouring appendage and pretend it is America's might. You will never be the soldier-citizen you wish you were, bone-spurs and all, and America's military is not your play toy. Your parade idea stinks more than it when you first laid its egg on the public and on the men and women who must now march to your command, and the stink--and cost--will only get worse.

The Yazoo Racer--Promises and Lies

The Hateful Yazoo Racer from 1961

There is a landscape that so often fails to measure up to the expectations that rise from the pure hearts of children. I learned from my parents that it is possible to spend one’s whole existence in a backwater, safe from the currents of change and the eddies of whim and never fear for the unknown results of unintended consequences. Heaven forbid that the river of life might send them swirling, not quite in control, headlong toward their destiny. My parents studiously avoided that journey. I watched them retreat from the rushing waters of new experiences as if they were afraid that the river, by some mischievous calling, would overflow its banks, sweep them up, and transport them to…to…where?  They lied to each other about their dreams for themselves and for their marriage. 

They lied by not talking plainly of their plans and concerns. They didn’t talk of them at all. In their unwittingly complicit silence, they avoided the possibility of being caught in a rising tide of unattainable goals, choosing to believe that they would just be disappointed when the waters receded and left them on the banks of a distant and untried life. Their lies were sandbags of denied hopes, piled up to keep the river at bay, and to divert it from the doorstep of their failed aspirations. And they lied to me whenever my dreams exceeded their expectations. How many lectures about setting attainable goals did I endure; how many times were my youthful fantasies slowly submerged in the stagnant pool of my parents’ status quo? Enough times to convince me that lying to avoid jumping into the mainstream of life was the only form of protection against the pain of taking the plunge. What I didn’t know then is that the plunge is painless; it is the anticipation of the plunge that stirs up the fear. 

But my folks never got past that part – for them, taking a chance that life might be better than what the military offered, that life outside the gates of every base we ever lived on might not be nearly as secure, was too much to contemplate, and way too much to act on. “Keep your expectations to a minimum and you will never be disappointed,” was their mantra. What that meant for me was having to suppress my disappointment rather than upset their theory. Kids do that for their parents; we hate to hear that awful phrase, “I’m disappointed in you.” 

But when I was boy, I couldn’t keep my expectations to a minimum, hard as I tried – I was filled with all the boyish visions of new worlds to conquer, great adventures to be had, lofty spires to climb and from whose pinnacles I could soar to the edge of the universe. No idea was too big not to be considered, no dream too unlikely not to be dreamed. “Ad astra per aspera,” would have been my mantra if I’d known the phase then – “To the stars through difficulties.”  But I grew up with a mother and a father who had stopped dreaming for themselves, for each other, and for me. It made no difference to them how I expressed my hopes; they were bound and determined to fall short of my expectations. I suppose many kids rebel against such parental denial. 

My own children are quick to let me know when they are upset with me or with their mother when we have not hit the mark they had hoped we would. Their expectations for us are high, but not unreasonable, and they know that we will take their observations in stride. Their expectations for themselves are coming along fine. But that was not how it was with my folks. They never seemed to understand how important dreams are to a young boy. They couldn’t imagine that not only was I dreaming of jumping feet first into life’s tumbling surf, I also was dreaming that one day they would too. It was unlikely, to their way of thinking, that I might have expectations for them.

When I was three or four, my father literally dropped me headfirst into our swimming pool, figuring, I guess, that I’d swim. Holding me by my ankles, he said he wouldn’t drop me until I was ready, but when I showed some reluctance to tell him to let go, he let go anyway. Did he lie to me? I suppose. But I did swim. I met his expectation. To explain this, here is the story about the Yazoo Racer and how it came to symbolize the futility of all of my youthful expectations.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, go-carts were a must-have item for pre-teen and pre-drivers’ licensed teen boys. I cannot begin to recall the times I mooned over a magazine featuring the hot new go-carts burning up the tracks in places like Covina and Pasadena California. Living in a tiny town, as we were, on the perimeter of a not-very-glamorous minor-note sort of Air Force base in the middle of Ohio, California was perceived as a dreamland, and anything that happened or just existed there automatically attached to our mid-American dreams. I relied on the savvy of my dad – a former fighter pilot, and, in 1961, a base commander in the Strategic Air Command – to intuitively understand my longing, to appreciate as only a guy can how important a go-cart really was and what its potential was to forge a new direction in my life. 

Now wouldn’t you think that a man who had risked life and limb over Germany, facing an onslaught of Messerschmitts, splitting the skies at 400 miles per hour in the God-Chariot that was known as the P-51 Mustang, ratatattatting at German flak trains, and blowing up factories and bridges would have at least an iota of interest in zooming across the face of the earth in a really bitchin’ little cart? Me too.

Apparently, though, the zest for speed and the devil-may-care lifestyle of a West Coast Karter, resided in a different father – the one down the street who had, in fact, ponied up sufficient bucks to make his son’s California dreamin’ a reality. That son’s go-cart was delivered, (get this) on a flat-bed truck, and was rolled down a ramp in front of all the neighbors and half the kids in town. It was a GoKart model 800 made by the GoKart Manufacturing Company, with a 250cc Villiers Mark 33A English motorcycle engine putting out about 25 horsepower on pure alcohol). This was the very same model of the carts which were competing in the National Championships in Rockford, Illinois just two states away. It was sea green, with slick racing tires, a leather-wrapped seat with a shoulder harness, honest-to-God brake and accelerator pedals, and a cool little steering wheel – also leather-wrapped – and, best of all, it had a huge engine on the back. Okay, maybe 250 ccs don’t sound so huge today, but in 1961, to a soon-to-be twelve-year-old, the fact that it was a motorcycle engine, and not some Briggs and Stratton lawnmower two-stroke on steroids, it was huge. In any event, it was, to overuse a word, awesome for Wilmington, Ohio. I hated that kid – even more so once the Yazoo Racer came into my life.

Failing to ignite my father’s inner Indy-500 heart with sparks of testosterone, I ratcheted up my hint campaign as subtly as I could. I deposited clue-like articles about go-carts throughout the house (how subtle could The Karter Magazine be, draped over the hamper in the bathroom, page open to the pictures captioned, “Karts for all Pocketbooks,” eh?). It was not to be.

I also slipped my copy of the Evans Supply Company’s May, 1961 Kompetition Kart Catalog, in among my parents’ Time, Life, and National Geographic magazines, with a page turned to the absolute ultimate in karting, the Evans Special. Evans, an Illinois company, tricked out the Evans Special with armrests, rack and pinion steering (whatever the hell that was; at the time we pitched those phrases around with no real clues), and a bay behind the driver’s seat for an engine of mythic proportions. The Evans motto, “Track Tested, Trophy Proved,” carried a lot of weight, and when they said their karts were “the finest, fastest, best-handling karts ever built,” they had bankable bragging rights.

While the visual campaign was doing its subliminal thing, I backed it up by commenting in almost reverent tones on the latest trends in cart construction or cart powerplants (“Can you believe that some go-carts have jet engines on them?” I’d ask with feigned incredulity. My parents would respond with somewhat less impressive credulity, “Oh, really?” or “Imagine that.” The worst was when they combined the two phrases, “Oh, really, imagine that,” with no question mark whatsoever in their inflection.) I was getting nowhere, and I was getting there as fast as the go-cart down the street was hurtling my neighbor around the local carting track.

As much as I am noted for my lack of memory, I am even more famous for my sheer persistence and ability to hold out for what I want. Whining is not my forte; wearing down the opposition, laying siege to the gates, starving out the warriors behind the walls, sending flaming pleas for surrender into the highest ramparts – now that’s where I shine.

My campaign for a go-cart began in the fall of 1960, with a target of May, 1961. I was willing to let the cart slide off my Christmas list if taking my time and plotting a successful assault on my folk’s bank account would yield the desired results.  This is as good an opportunity as any to talk about Christmas let-downs since I have come to realize that the seeds of the Yazoo fiasco were sown several Christmases prior to the 1960 holiday.  I just failed to connect the dots of disappointment until later.

I have a theory about parents and gift selections. The level of detail with which a child describes a desired present is in inverse proportion to the actual characteristics of the gift that is laid under the tree on Christmas Eve.  It doesn’t matter if you tape a picture of the exact item you seek to the refrigerator door, or place it at eye level on the mirror in the bathroom or actually, coherently – when prompted by the parent in question – describe the desired item in terms that include product name, manufacturer, color, cost, store from which it can be purchased, and how many batteries (and what size) it will need before it can be successfully operated.  What the parent apparently hears is only a dull humming noise emanating from their child’s flapping lips. They translate this noise into instructions to buy a gift that resembles the child’s version only insomuch as it is a present to be opened. For proof, I beg your indulgence while I digress and offer the story of the machine gun that wasn’t.

We were still living in Germany, on an Army and Air Force base that was overflowing with soldiers with guns. Tanks abounded, as did large artillery pieces and very exotic airplanes that sported bombs and guns of many sizes. Playing war was a common…even daily…routine among the male dependents of the military personnel assigned to Wiesbaden. I would join up with half a dozen other kids, and we would spend hours in combat, pitching ourselves down ravines and over stone walls reprising those fierce World War II battles our fathers had only recently survived. Verisimilitude was important to us; shooting at one another, or at the imagined Nazi’s hiding amongst the trees, required believable weaponry. You can understand this, I’m sure, with very little explanation. So why is this a difficult concept for a parent to grasp?

“Chris, have you given any thought to your Christmas present?”

My mother asked me this question about three weeks before the holiday. Up to that moment, I think I’d mentioned at least a gazillion times my desire to own a full-sized model of a Thompson M1A1 – a submachine gun with a working action and a very loud ‘brrrrrrrmmmppppppp, brrrrrrrmmpppppp, brrrrrrmmmppppppp’ whenever the trigger was squeezed. I’d seen such an animal in the post exchange catalogue and I was pretty sure I’d shared details of the Thompson look-a-like with my folks well beyond the point of distraction.

“I’ve been looking at that real-action M1A1 at the PX. It sure would be fun to have that.”

“And what is an M1…whatever?”

“It’s a machine gun.  A model of one.”

I watched her face, waiting for some sign of recognition. Nothing.

“Actually, it’s in the catalogue, but maybe if you ordered it now it might be delivered before Christmas…if you think you might do that.”

Still nothing…no…no…wait, she seemed to be mulling it over. She turned away and walked over to the pantry, opened it, looked for something, then turned back to me, having put some distance between us. I can still see her grey-blue eyes sizing me up from her side of the kitchen. 

Then the most dreaded words.

“We’ll think about it.”

That was the kiss of death for the Thompson as far as I was concerned. “We’ll think about it” was tantamount to “Either think of something more appropriate or consider this a wasted wish.”

The next three weeks crawled by. I offered up a few lame ideas – plastic model planes, a magic set, a chemistry set – but nothing that eclipsed the M1A1 in real desire.

On the days leading up to Christmas Eve, presents piled up beneath the tree, but there certainly was no package as long as the Thompson should have been.  I picked up each wrapped box and gave it the heft and shake test. No sign of a machine gun.  I thought I discerned a chemistry set…a weighty box that had a metallic rattle when tipped or gently rocked. A couple of boxes certainly felt like plastic models. But the Thompson was just not showing itself.

On Christmas morning the chemistry set turned out to be a make-it-yourself crystal radio kit. A good present, sure, and one that I would later come to enjoy more than almost any present I’ve gotten since; it just wasn’t going to go ‘brrrrrrrmmmppppppp’ like the M1A1 would have. As the pile of boxes diminished and the pile of discarded wrapping paper increased, I resigned myself to another year without a really good prop for war games.

I sat a bit disconsolately among the remains of the morning, fiddling with the contents of the crystal radio kit, itching under the newness of a gaudy and fuzzy sweater sent by my paternal grandmother. My dad was experimenting with a pipe and its accessories, trying to tamp a small load of tobacco into the bowl with a silver tamping tool. The gift was from my mother’s father, the Hollywood producer who would always refer to my father as “the General.”   As Pop worked the tobacco into his new pipe, he looked over at me.  I must have presented a pretty sad figure there, a skinny 9-year-old with a burr haircut and crooked teeth, uncomfortable in my new sweater, uncertainly poking at the radio parts. My father got up and left the room for a moment, and I heard the front hall closet snick open and click shut. There was a brief rustle of paper, then he came back into the room carrying an oblong box which was maybe 18 inches long, six inches wide, and a few inches deep.

“Heard you might be able to use this,” he said, handing the box to me. He had that dad smile on his face – not a full out, open-mouthed smile, but a gently-pursed-lip, wry sort of affair that I later learned transmitted bemusement more than tenderness. I inherited my father’s smile gene, and I know I’ve been guilty of casting equally ambiguous grins.     That smile has often been the trigger for heated arguments between me and my wife when she has sensed, quite rightly, that when I employ this particular smile over some comment or event, I actually am facially exploring the margins of dismissal or derision.  My only defense, albeit a weak one, is that for too many years I watched, and tried to copy, the face of a master of benign deception. Little did I know that what I was attempting to emulate was not derisive; it was protective. My father was, after all, engaged in spy craft for the government. I didn’t know that at the time of this story – and I didn’t learn of the broad scope of his work in military intelligence until many, many years later. In retrospect, his enigmatic smile was a cover for much more than just a father’s love.

I took the proffered box from my father and felt its weight – or more accurately, its lightness – and knew right away it was not the Thompson.  What to say?

“Hey, thanks, Pop!”

“Hope you like it, old buddy.”

Now, that phrase, ‘old buddy’ should have been a dead giveaway that my father, in a genuine attempt at tenderness, really believed that what was in the box would be welcome. ‘Old buddy’ evoked a collegiality that transcended the father-son relationship. It had a whisper of conspiracy to it that was a little thrilling, hearing it from my dad, whose day-to-day activities, I would learn much, much later in life, were centered around life-and-death, cat-and-mouse games with the Soviet Union.

I peeled off the wrapping paper, hoping against hope that whatever was inside was so completely different from my other expectation that I would not risk showing any dissatisfaction with the present. Under the colored paper was only a brown box – no picture to warn me, no bold lettering screaming out that this was, indeed, not a nearly perfect replica of the Thompson M1A1 submachine gun with a 30-round clip.

With nothing else to do, I pried open the box. And there it was. A machine gun. Resting on a cushion of crumpled paper. It was fashioned out of brown, injection molded plastic, in the style of another popular machine gun, the M3 Grease Gun. The key phrase here is “in the style of” since the plastic gun I was looking at bore only a general resemblance to a real Grease Gun.  It was little more than a hollow shell, about half the size of the real thing, and with almost no moving parts. Well…there were the pink bullets. A small clip held ten little lozenge-shaped bullets, molded in bright pink. The bullets were shot out of the gun by the spring action of the trigger; they didn’t go very far and, in any event, and, pink or not, they’d be lost immediately in the woods and fields that were our areas of combat operations. A pull-back bolt on the right side of the gun also activated when the trigger was pulled, resulting in an abrupt raspy, ratcheting noise, far removed from the “brrrrrrrmmmppppppp” of the Thompson’s real-action bolt.  But, really, for a nine-year-old boy, it was the bright pink bullets which made this well-intentioned gift a virtual untouchable as a weapon in my adolescent arsenal. 

“Your mother said this was on your wish list.”

Pop sat down in his arm chair and leaned over to look at the gun. I was still sitting on the floor next to him and I watched his eyes scan the present.  I had the distinct feeling that he was seeing the gun for the first time, and I don’t think he had given it much thought up to this moment.

“Umm….well, I was looking at the one down at the PX, and I told Mom about that.”

I was on dangerous ground here; I didn’t want to hurt my dad’s feelings and I didn’t want to discredit my mom by suggesting that she didn’t get my hint.

“Will it do?”

An easy and a tough question. The easy answer would be a lie: “Sure, it’s great.” The hard answer would be the truth: “It’s not really what I had in mind, Pop. Pink bullets and all, it’s not the one I told Mom about.”

In my family, the lie was a common device to circumvent confrontation; the truth, whenever it was employed, inevitably led to arguments or, worse, long nights of silence between my mom and dad, followed by dawns of false civility. Lies, as morally corrupt as they were, provided a seamless, albeit a thin weave to daily life.  I learned early to swallow the truth and spit out the lie.

“Oh, it’s neat, Pop. Thanks.”  I put the bastard toy back in its box and picked up the crystal radio kit. “Do you think we can start on this today?”

With that, the matter of the improper gun was dismissed and I was left with the embarrassing task of actually taking it out for my friends to see and, predictably, to ridicule. For the moment, I was struck, not for the first time, with the reality that my parents were inured to my desires; their interpretations of what I wanted, of what was best for me, despite every indication to the contrary, would dominate their gift-giving opportunities well into the future.  For a nine-year-old, it couldn’t get any worse than the brown machine gun with the bright pink bullets. But it could get worse for a 12-year-old who longed for a go-cart.

By sunrise on May 5, 1961, in Wilmington, Ohio, I’d already been up for hours, following the exploits of Alan Shepard, America’s first astronaut, and wondering if this would be the day I’d get a go-cart of my own; nothing on a scale of the Corvettes all the astronauts were driving, but something at least as wonderful as the go-cart down the street. How I wanted to drive past that kid’s house in my own speedster

To be both brief and kind, Wilmington was a backwater.  Not the kind of fetid, dank, brackish backwater so popular in novels today – backwaters from which noble characters emerge to overcome the clutches of mediocrity and succeed against the odds of obscurity. No. Wilmington, the county seat of Clinton County, was just your garden variety backwater town. Famous for nothing, birthplace only of Wilmingtonians, occupying no notable perch overlooking a grand or sweeping vista, it was the gateway to nowhere in particular.

Wilmington sits unassumingly in the southwest corner of Ohio, a shade northeast of Cincinnati, a tad southeast of Dayton.  In 1961, Wilmington claimed 8,000 residents. I think I’m being charitable, if not optimistic with this number, but let’s let it be.  Certainly it was not a memorable town. In fact, it was so un-memorable, I have no recollection where I went to school, with whom I might have played, or, with one exception, where I went for entertainment.  I think I briefly fell in love with a girl down the street, but, to tell you the truth, in all likelihood I have her confused with someone else. The Wilmington of my memories was not a town conducive to love of any description. Take the example of my paper route as a lesson in Wilmington’s social lovelessness.

Shortly after we arrived in Wilmington, in the fall of 1959, I was encouraged by my parents to take up a paper route, a time-honored job for many boys in small-town America as a way of instilling in us the discipline of responsible work, the appreciation of personal income, and the ability to balance an overloaded bike while being chased by angry dogs or sideswiped by neglectful drivers. Every morning, I delivered forty copies of the Cincinnati Times to various houses in Wilmington.  

One house was noteworthy for the charms of the woman who often waited for her paper on her front porch. She wore a white terrycloth robe that was rarely tightly tied, offering a bit more than a glimpse of legs and cleavage.  She always managed to bend down facing me when she retrieved her paper from the walk or, if my aim had been good, from the porch itself.  I can’t recall whether her exposure excited me or embarrassed me, but I didn’t race home to tell my folks about it.  Suffice it to say that the lady in the doorway in Wilmington, wanton as she may have appeared to be, was not even in the running for a tawdry tiara. Nonetheless, on collection day, she would stand behind her screen door, either in the same robe or in a slip, with a drink in her hand, and apologize in a most breathy way for being unable to pay me.

I also loaded a newspaper machine in the front lobby of the Cincinnati Milling Machine Company located about two miles outside town. The paper sold for a dime, and I think my monthly collection from each subscriber was about four bucks (adding in the Sunday issue). From the Milling Machine Company, I earned a flat fee, something like ten dollars for a month’s worth of sales.  My route manager was a man named Red, who was probably no more than 20, but who seemed, to an 11-year-old, to be considerably older but rather pleasant – as route managers go. He only became upset when my sales records did not match his contracts – and that was often.  

I don’t know what it is about kindly old ladies and soft-spoken old men – or, for that matter, about sexually frustrated, exhibitionist housewives and reclusive war veterans – that causes them to stiff an innocent paperboy of a measly four dollars on collection day. (The exhibitionist housewife I can understand, in a rather dysfunctional way. For all that she either attempted to show me, or in fact, did show me, I’m sure she felt her subscription was paid for in trade). But whatever else it was, I usually fell short in my collections by at least twenty-five dollars. Red would come by my house on collection day to receive the canvas bag that held my take for my route’s subscribers. I gave him a slip that showed who had and who had not paid. It was a very predictable roster, and Red would seethe as he ran down the all-too-familiar names. Except for the housewife. Not once did I ever hear Red moan about her reluctance to pay.  Hmmmm. You don’t suppose…?

The only time I ever met my collections quota was the day my dad and I did the route together; he came with me to every door to “encourage” my customers to make good on their contracts.  He cut a pretty commanding figure in those days, so it’s not surprising that my canvas collection purse was full by day’s end.  What does surprise me is that for nearly 40 years I had no memory of his coming to my rescue. I didn’t learn about his good deed until one night on his farm when he, at 81, and I, at 52, were trying to make sense of our family’s peripatetic history. 

Wilmington’s biggest industry was Clinton County Air Force base sprawled just south of town. The base, essentially a 10,000-foot runway, acres of taxiways and concrete parking ramps, a dozen hangars, thirty or forty administrative buildings, barracks, and maintenance sheds, was my father’s domain. As the base commander, my dad was the mayor, police chief, fire marshal, landlord, and chief cook and bottle washer of the base, responsible for all the ground-related activities that supported a fleet of KC-97s – aging, propeller-driven airborne tankers.  The fact that my father was associated with the KC-97, and with a base which was as much a backwater to the Air Force as Wilmington was to Ohio, made clear to me many years later why there is a Yazoo Racer story to tell.

After Alan Shepherd’ capsule splashed down in the Atlantic, and on the heels of a bite of breakfast, my parents brought some packages into the living room and set them down on the coffee table. One package in particular stood out from the others. It had a bow with a ribbon that snaked off the coffee table, across the living room floor, and into the front hall.

“Happy birthday!” My mother was in major smile mode; my dad gave me his best grin.

I couldn’t stand it any longer.

“May I open this?” My hand was hovering over the ribbon-encircled package.

“Are you sure you want to?” my mother asked. “There are some other gifts you can open…”

My father was already chuckling which I took as a go-ahead to open the box. I ripped though the wrap and opened the white box within. The ribbon was tied around a note inside the box which read. “Follow me if you dare.”

“Hope you like it, old buddy.”  Now where had I heard that before?

I tore out the front door, following the ribbon to the rear of my parents’ Chevy Impala station wagon. There was another note stuck on the back window. “Open me.”  All I could see inside the car was a large blanket covering something long and wide. I yanked the back door open and lifted the blanket. There it was. A go-cart. I was looking at the engine end of the cart, and it was red. The engine and the frame around it were red. Two hard rubber wheels flanked the engine. They were secured to their axle by cotter pins, the same kind of pins you see holding lawnmower wheels to their axles.

My dad joined me at the back of the Chevy, and together we pulled the cart out of the car and onto the asphalt street. I don’t think I’d ever seen anything like it. I certainly never imagined a go-cart would look quite like this. Picture a giant red paperclip. Place it on its edge.  Now stick axles on it, running perpendicular to the clip and situated just below the rounded ends. The smaller of the two rounded ends was the front of the cart. The slightly larger end, the rear. A small platform welded to the bottom of the back of the clip supported a Briggs and Stratton lawnmower engine, its drive shaft connected by a chain to the right rear axle.

In the middle of this giant, red, paperclip was welded a seat which was fashioned out of a flat piece of iron bent at a 90-degree angle. No cushion. No armrests. No harness. Just a slab of metal formed into a butt-busting seat. The top middle section of the paper clip was open to allow the driver to sit in the seat and steer via a large, round metal steering wheel mounted on a steering column that extended down diagonally through the center of the paperclip to a primitive device sufficient to move the front wheels either left or right.  

I remember the engine was a five-horsepower affair with a rope pull starter and a spark arrestor used to shut the engine down.  The paperclip had two pedals. On the left was the brake pedal which, when depressed, caused a piece of metal to rub against the tread of the left rear tire.  I use the word ‘tread’ loosely, since all four tires were made of hard rubber with no appreciable “tread” in the grooved sense. Instead of an accelerator pedal, there was a clutch pedal. Pressing down on the clutch pedal engaged the chain drive, spinning the right rear axle. Relaxing pressure on the pedal disengaged the chain. The engine was controlled by the same kind of throttle found on most lawnmowers of the day – a flat thumb-sized metal plate attached to the frame next to the go-cart’s steering wheel. A stiff wire ran from this plate to the throttle on the engine. Pushing the metal tab down caused the engine to speed up; pulling back on the tab retarded the engine’s speed.

Going forward was a two-part process: rev the engine and press down on the clutch. If the engine was not turning fast enough, the clutch would overpower the chain drive and the engine would stall. If the engine was turning too fast, depressing the clutch guaranteed a smoking, spinning right rear wheel, followed by a crazed fishtailing or fast left-hand turn until the driver got the cart under control.  For all intents and purposes, my special birthday go-cart was a sit down, self-propelled, four-wheel, rear-engined lawnmower without the blade. Did I mention that it was fire engine red? All of it. Every last part – even the wheel hubs.

One of the advantages of having a base commander for a father is also having access to the expanses of parking areas and taxiways unused by airplanes. We took the Yazoo out to the base that very afternoon. Pop drove our station wagon out onto the tarmac at the far end of the Air Base, far beyond the ugly duckling KC-97s sitting forlornly on the ramp. I was grateful that we were far away from the prying eyes of any of my peers, and thankful that I had not made any friends so close that I would feel obligated to share with them my Yazoo shame.

Aircraft parking areas and taxiways are constructed of large slabs of concrete separated by expansion joints that are filled with tar. Airplane tires, which are considerably larger than automobile tires, roll over these expansion lines easily, but the small diameter tires of my new Yazoo, uncushioned by air pressure or any sort of shock absorber, hit those tarry joints with tooth-rattling jolts which were transmitted from the hard tires through the metal frame, up the unprotected seat, and directly into my spine. With the cart going at a flat out top speed of maybe 30 miles per hour, the shock of the jolts soon took its toll on my tailbone and back.

I ran the Yazoo Racer on the parking apron a few more times that spring and early summer. Once, we even obtained clearance to drive the thing it down the main runway. On the one hand, it was a privilege not granted to any other kid with a go-cart, but, on the other hand, it was a humiliating privilege because so many base personnel watched as I bump-bump-bumped down the two miles of concrete in my giant red paperclip.  In the final analysis, the Yazoo Racer experience was worse than the brown machine gun with the bright pink bullets. Here was something I’d been wanting so badly; yet, despite all the hints from me to my parents, the interpretation of the dream got lost in its execution.

But this disappointment in my birthday gift wasn’t the greatest tragedy surrounding the Yazoo Racer. This came many years later with the revelation of a lie of such enormity that it shook my heart to its very core. The go-cart was not actually a gift from my parents. It was meant to be a gift from my grandfather, the movie mogul who was so removed from his youngest grandson that only money and the gifts it could buy might be able to bridge the gap. What he did not know – and never learned – was that his affection for me was derailed over and over again by my mother. In her teenage days, and into her twenties, my mother pined to try her hand in the movies. Her father had the position and clout to help her, yet not only did he try to discourage her, once she finally did manage to complete a screen test, he saw to it that the resulting good reviews were quashed. She eventually discovered his lie and never forgave him. 

Her anger burned for years, and charred forever the bonds of honesty her children so desperately needed.  No matter what I received from him – letters, checks, presents, offers of help in getting to a good college, and support for my writing – my mother managed to re-credit most of his efforts as her own; and when, as with the college assistance, she could not take credit, she simply discarded the evidence. Only rarely did I see the true giving nature of a grandfather I thought had abandoned me. Thirty years after his death, I stumbled upon boxes of letters addressed to me from him, none of which I had ever seen before.

“My dear Chris. I hear that you are quite the young author. I would love to see some of the writing your mother has told me so much about. If you think of me, please send along your work.”

“My dear Chris. As you look at universities, don’t forget that your old gramps did a turn at Williams. I would be happy to put in a good word for you. Just say the word.”

“My dear Chris. Your mother tells me you are worried that your grades may not be good enough to get you into a good college. My friend at Harvard said he’d be glad to speak to you about an opportunity there.”

“My dear Chris. How I long to hear some word from you. Your mother says you are very busy. When you get some time for your old gramps, please write.”

“My dear Chris. If the go-cart is not what you wanted, just let me know and you shall have the right one immediately. Your loving Gramps.”

I read those letters for the first time in the basement of my parents’ house as my mother lay dying upstairs in her bedroom. I sat on the basement steps, the box of letters in my lap, and I wept. The tears poured out like acid, eating through years of perceptions with which I had woven the fabric of my life. What else didn’t I know? What was truth and what was fiction? It was a whole cloth of lies, and it was unraveling with every letter I read.

The story of the Yazoo Racer is instructive as I look back at all the warning signs leading up to my basement discovery. A family that refuses every opportunity for honesty and candor – a family that promotes dissembling, prevarication, beating-around-the-bush, and just plain flat-out lying – is never going to read one another’s true desires with any success. The letters in my hand made it clear we never had a chance to proceed in any other direction. Lying is what my mother did because that was the life she was born into; I suppose it was the only survival technique she knew. My father, in his misplaced honor to meet my mother’s needs – and having sworn a secrecy oath to protect his country –  granted himself permission to leave the complete truth outside the front door.

He never lied to me…that must be said. But he didn’t give full voice to the honesty that might have cut a better path for me. He knew that the Yazoo Racer’s cover story was a lie, but since it wasn’t his lie, he let it enter my life. Honesty may have served him well in his career, but he forgot how to embrace it in his life at home. The Yazoo Racer was the harbinger of many more years of lies to follow. Its very arrival into my world was predicated on a gross and ugly lie that took advantage of my unwavering trust in my parents. Their complicity in maintaining the lie, rooted in my mother’s selfish pride, and nurtured by my father’s reluctance to hold the moral high ground, yielded a decades-long harvest of deception. They had so many opportunities to respond to the ebb and flow of the everyday frustrations, fears, sorrows, and joys that pass through the lives of average families.

At any juncture they could have chosen a new course and taken a chance with the truth. But they couldn’t find the faith to act on those opportunities. They’d long ago lost the will or the vision to cast us down the mountain of their fears and enter the mainstream of life. As I sat on the basement stairs, awash in my tears, surrounded by the rising waters of lies, the stark reality of the origins of the Yazoo Racer picked me up by my heels and threw me headlong into the depths of the river. I swam, all right…but in the wrong direction.