The Patriot At Home

My father, my infant brother and me, circa 1968

To my father, patriotism was of utmost importance.  He exhibited the love of country more common in a recent immigrant, even though we could trace our family lineage in California back several generations.  Love of country was just all-important to him.

My father was born at the start of the Second World War, and his mother, a descendant of those who lived through the potato famine in Ireland only to become ensnared in the Great Depression and watch as her family lost their farm in the Dust Bowl, transferred her food insecurities to her oldest son.  We were commanded to finish everything on our plate each evening at dinner, and we were taught to live frugally.

My father came of age just after the Korean War ended, and by the time Vietnam kicked up, he was a young husband with two kids to feed and a stay-at-home wife.  So he was not drafted, but he had two younger brothers who went to that war, one of whom contracted spinal meningitis in boot camp and never made it to the front while the other died years after the war from skin cancer caused by Agent Orange, the popular jungle defoliant.  Seeing his one brother struggling to walk again with crutches and his other brother suffering from PTSD and cancer inspired guilt that he had somehow failed as an older brother to set an example.  They were brave and went to war; he did not.

Instead, war movies became my father’s refuge.  He loved and idolized John Wayne, and his favorite movie was The Battle of the Bulge (1965).  Later, he religiously watched the 1962 television series Combat! starring Vic Morrow.  Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day and the Fourth of July were sacred holidays to my father.  He also revered the National Anthem and “America the Beautiful.”  At church on those holidays, the choir often sang American hymns like “God Bless America” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  My father soaked it all up.  He was not blessed with a singing voice, so he would listen, spine stiff and his eyes forward.  He felt every note.

His patriotism carried over in one strange way.  Whenever we watched a sporting event on TV, when the game began with the National Anthem, he insisted we stand, place our right hand over our hearts, and remain so throughout the entire anthem.  Only when it was finished could we sit back down on the couch.  The one or two times I questioned why we had to do this in our own home where no one could see us, I received a sharp answer.  “You show respect,” he would growl, “no matter who can see you.”

The biggest argument I ever saw my parents have occurred over an article of clothing on a long ago Memorial Day.  In the 1960s and 70s, it was fashionable to sew an American flag patch to the seat of one’s jeans.  It was all part of the anti-establishment years when protests over Vietnam were running hot and the line between the younger generation and the older became the “generation gap.”  Nothing got my father more riled up than to see the flag patch on a “hippy’s ass.”  My father responded to this act of disrespect by affixing to his truck bumper the popular sticker “America, love it or leave it.”  Next to it, he placed his National Rifle Association sticker.  These two stickers became the hallmarks of his Republican conservatism, something I never shared with him.

That year, on the holiday to remember those who gave their lives for our country, my mother gave my father the gift of a full barbecue apron and chef’s hat made out of an American flag.  She saw it as patriotic that he would wear the outfit while barbecuing on this most American of holidays, second only to the Fourth of July.  My father exploded when he unwrapped the box and opened it up.  In his view, this would be in line with the American flag patch on torn jeans.  It would be sacrilegious  and disrespectful to country.  He was enraged and would not listen to any attempts to explain alternative views.  My mother was in hysterics.  The outfit went back into the box never to be seen again.

On a holiday to sacred memory, I remember my father.  He never got the chance to serve his country in war, which I know was a disappointment to him, possibly even something to be ashamed of.  But I am happy he got married and started a family before the draft came for him.  In America, there are many ways to be patriotic.

A Dark Night in the Forest

Christopher Thomas Knight after his arrest for burglary

Christmas 2016.  It is an uncertain world, as it is always an uncertain world.  I’m also skeptical about this as a season of peace and light.  There is desperation in the air.  On the commute home, people fly by me as darkness falls.  Drivers swerve and change lanes without a backward glance.  Everybody’s frantic; everybody’s impatient, in a rush.

I went to a Christmas party last week where the hosts actually worked off of a script timed to the minute.

“I want to welcome you all to our annual Christmas party,” the host said.  “We’ll have a half hour for small talk and then we will eat.”  And exactly 28 minutes later, we ate.  “The main course here is barbecue,” she gestured with a Vanna White wave of her hand.  “And over here we have our vegetarian entrees and our gluten-free options.”  They had covered all the bases.

Forty minutes later:  “we will now play holiday-themed games.”

Thirty-five minutes after that:  “now it’s time for dessert.”

I felt like I was doing one of those Olympic events where contestants run so many miles, then swim, then shoot rifles at targets, and then bicycle.  If this constitutes the holidays, let me off the train.  I’m not in shape for this.  I left the party exhausted.

I cannot get into the mall parking lot.  The lot for my mailbox at the UPS store is overflowing with angry people trying to get at their mail.  The car wash is full.  Even gas stations have lines.  Where is everyone going?  Did Armageddon come and I missed the warning signs?

Yesterday, I read a story about Christopher Thomas Knight, who lived undetected in the Maine woods for 27 years.  He was known as the North Pond hermit.  Before he was caught and arrested, he committed 1000 burglaries of cabins and houses in the area, stealing only food, kitchen utensils, and books.  He did not need anything else.  He was tried and convicted, spending seven months in prison.

Over the course of almost three decades, he lived in a campsite just a few hundred feet from someone’s cabin yet he was undetected.  He met only one other person in all those years:  a day hiker with whom he exchanged greetings.  When he was taken into custody, his communication skills were so rusty, he had trouble answering basic questions.

When he walked into the woods in 1986 at the age of twenty, he did not say goodbye to anyone nor did his parents report him missing.  “We’re not emotionally bleeding all over each other,” Knight said.  “We’re not touchy-feely.  Stoicism is expected.”

A psychologist who evaluated him thought he might be autistic.  He comes off as rather emotionless and blunt.

It’s weird how some people simply fade into the shadows completely off the grid.  In Knight’s case, no one can figure out how he survived on his own for so long, especially in winter.  He said he slept from 7:30 PM to 2 AM.  If he stayed awake and moving during the coldest part of the night, he could survive the subzero temperatures.  Otherwise, the steam from his own body would freeze him in his sleeping bag.

Suddenly, the irony is real.  Sitting in gridlocked traffic, thousands of us in our metal cocoons inching toward home, we are surrounded by the disappeared, the invisible.  They are tucked up under the concrete buttresses of the freeway in their cardboard shelters.  They are above the angst and frantic energy of all of us in this holiday season, but they are tortured as well.  For many, the trauma of everyday life brings back memories that are overwhelming, debilitating, full of images of war, violence, and loneliness.  Like Christopher Thomas Knight, they walked off into the wilderness of their lives and chose to live in the urban jungle in anonymity for reasons known only to them.  They all have stories, but very few get to tell them.

For many people in this season of anxiety, dropping out of the rat race is a romantic notion.  Some of us long for Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond.  But we must be careful; Thoreau’s cabin is just a version of Ted Kazcynski's shack in Montana.  A respite from civilization can all to easily become something dark and sinister, even murderous.  The homeless of Los Angeles might have something in common with Knight:  they have no need to text or email or post their status on Facebook.  They stay huddled in their cardboard, castoff, makeshift rooms and try to escape the cacophony hammering inside their skulls.  This is the parallel universe of Christmas, the darker twin of the season of peace and light.  It is unsettling, and much too real, but it exists, and we must bear witness.

Christopher Thomas Knight's campsite for 27 years in the Maine woods

Ghosts of New Years Past

Years ago, I was working two jobs and going to school full time.  Rarely did the two jobs overlap, but one of the few times they did was on a particular New Year’s Eve in the mid-1980s.

I worked security at a shopping mall forty hours a week.  The job was good because it paid better than flipping burgers and it offered plenty of down time to study for my classes.  My second job involved playing keyboards in various bands in dives around L.A. and at weddings and bar mitzvahs.  At the mall, I met many off duty LAPD officers who moonlighted as additional security.  All of the officers and my fellow security personnel knew I was a musician, and most of them also were familiar with the places where I played.

One New Year’s Eve, I had to work my regular shift at the mall before running home to change, load up my equipment, and get myself to Hollywood to play at a Filipino night club called The Bayanihan.  A friend of mine recommended me for the job.  He was the regular keyboardist for the house band, but he had a more lucrative gig that night, so he asked me to sub for him.  He owned top-of-the-line equipment; in those days, that meant the latest digital synthesizer on the market, the Yamaha DX7.  I owned a Rhodes Electric Piano, an old, old instrument that had only one sound, albeit a classic one from the 1970s and 80s.  My friend also was a master at sight reading whereas I had to study the music and practice to get it right.  Getting it right and sounding like the original recording are incredibly important when playing keyboards in a top 40 cover band.  So going in, I was at an extreme disadvantage.

One of the officers, a helicopter pilot, and another, a Hollywood Division officer, were on duty that day at the mall.  As I left, they wished me well on my performance that evening while grinning and elbowing each other.  There was something up but I did not have the time to ponder what they might be planning.  I made it to the gig on time and set up my heavy, outdated equipment and tried to ignore the concerned looks of my new band mates.  The three Filipina singers plopped a huge, overfilled binder on top of my Rhodes and told me that was what they would be covering that night.  I paged through the book.  I knew the songs from the radio, but I had never played them, and the charts were intricate, demanding exactitude if I was to help the band cover the tunes in a recognizable fashion.  Plus, the only song I saw that utilized a Rhodes piano was the Billy Joel classic, “Just The Way You Are.”  To this day, I hate that song.

I stumbled and bumbled my way through the first set, and I think the singers wanted me fired right then and there, but since there were no other keyboard players in the house, they were stuck with me.  The Filipinos dancing and drinking in the club seemed not to notice my ineptitude, and of course, the longer the evening went, the more drunk everyone became, so my off-key blunders were of no concern to anybody but my fellow band mates.

As we closed out a set, I noticed two uniformed police officers enter the back of the club.  One waved at me, and I realized it was Jerry, the Hollywood Division officer who had worked the mall with me that day.  He was a tall, strapping cop, a former Marine, with his blond hair in a crew cut.  His partner I didn’t know, but he was another tall, muscled white guy with a tomato-red complexion.

The band took a break, and I walked back to say hello.  Jerry introduced me to his counterpart, Mike, and told me that the club had a standing arrangement with the police that if they came by while on duty, they could eat for free as a way of adding additional security.  The band also got to eat free; we just went to the kitchen and asked for different Filipino delicacies hot off the stove.  Jerry and Mike made their selections and since I had never eaten Filipino food, I ordered what they ordered.  Then we went outside and sat in their patrol car to eat.

We were well into our plates of vibrantly red meat, something that looked like chow mein, and fried or steamed rice as well as other unknown dishes and sides when Jerry made a startling claim.  “This is the best dog I’ve ever had,” he said around his mouth full of food.  The cops were known for their practical jokes.  In fact, they often spent whole shifts playing tricks on their fellow officers and on the security staff.  But Jerry seemed to be serious about his proclamation about the meat on his plate.

“This can’t be dog,” I sputtered.  “You can’t serve dog in a restaurant.”

Jerry and Mike both started laughing.  “Sure you can,” Jerry said.  They don’t put it on the menu; you have to ask for it special.”

I called bullshit on this.  “What about health inspectors?  And where do they get the dogs?  The local animal shelter?”

“Yeah, the local animal shelters,” Jerry said.  “They’re just going to kill them anyway.”

“That cannot be true,” I replied.

This seemed to irritate Jerry a bit.  “Who did two tours in Vietnam?  Who took his leave in the Philippines?  They eat dogs, man, all throughout southeast Asia.”

I did not know if what he said was true although just to be safe, I was done with Filipino food.  At least the meat.  What could be done to vegetables?  Still, I wondered if dog meat could be the secret ingredient on menus across the city in restaurants from southeast Asia.

After our break, as we were assembling on stage for our next set, I casually mentioned to the guitarist as he was tuning up, “I just had a great plate of dog.”  I smiled at him like the meal had been a revelation from God.

“Yeah,” he said leaning close so I would hear him over the rest of the band tuning their instruments.  “They marinate it for a long time and slow cook it; that is what makes it tender.”  He winked at me with a smile.  Now I was left to wonder if he was playing his own joke on me or if he was serious about how to cook tender, succulent dog.

We finished the evening with the countdown to the New Year and a list of top 40 songs, most of which I blew for the band.  They pushed on like real troopers around my discordant nonsense.  They more or less threw a check at me as I packed up and I knew I would not be playing with them again.

Out in the parking lot, I loaded my huge amp and casket-sized keyboard into my grandmother’s old Chevy pickup.  Suddenly, a helicopter came screaming over me at tree-top level and assumed a circular orbit above the lot.  The entire area lit up like it was high noon.  A voice came over a loud speaker on the ghetto bird:  “Step away from the vehicle and keep your hands in the air.”

My blood seemed to drain out of me as I was blinded by the light.  Then something clicked over in my brain and I realized it was another officer from the mall.  He was one of the few African-American helicopter pilots in the LAPD and his name was Lawrence.

“Don’t make me have to shoot you,” his voice boomed.  “Get down on the ground and spread your arms.”

I raised both hands to the sky and flipped him the double bird.  Then I noticed all the employees and even some neighbors were out on the street watching the event unfold.  There I was, standing in the 30 million candle power night-sun like a criminal caught in the act.

“Code 4, suspect in custody,” Lawrence rumbled over his speakers.  “See you at the mall, Tonto.”  The helicopter light blinked off leaving me in darkness again.  The sudden silence after its departure was profound.

That was certainly one of the strangest New Year’s I’ve had.

Because of all the New Year’s Eves I spent working, I am glad now that I can be at home as the clock ticks over into a new year.  We watch a movie, have a good dinner, and when midnight hits, we listen to the comforting sounds of gunshots and firecrackers and sirens knowing that we are indoors under a sturdy roof.  I am thankful for that.

In the weeks after that eventful evening at The Bayanihan, Jerry told me that there had been a shooting at the club and someone was killed.  I did not see anything in the newspaper about this, but the club was part of Jerry’s beat, so he would know.  The place closed for good sometime in the 1990s from what I could find in my research.

The only true thing I know about the dawning of a new year is that what is to come will be a complete surprise, but in hindsight, obviously inevitable.  That is how life and good fiction work.  I listen to those explosions of celebration and wonder:  what will 2016 be like?  How much wiser will we be as we roll over into 2017 twelve months from now?  These questions are really one question:  will we still be alive and kicking at the end of this new year?  Who knows?  We just live one moment at a time and do the best we can, even when we feel we don’t fit in, we cannot read the music fast enough to keep up with the band, and we are blinded by the light.  Not to worry:  the crowd is so drunk that it will always love us just the way we are.

On to 2016.

Time Away

Christmas Eve.  Probably the best one ever.  Just the two of us.  Quiet.  Peaceful.  Cold out, enough for a fire in the fire place.  Plenty of time to rest, read and sleep.

I have so much needed time away.  A moment’s pause in the rough and tumble universe.  Some days, I would step outside my office, look down the hill to the Santa Monica Bay and wish I could fly away.  Too many words, words, words.  I did not want to write or read another one.

But lately, I’ve felt the call to come back to the world.  It is time to pick up pen and paper again.  It is time to sit in front of the fire and read, read, read long into the night.  Contemplate the ideas we seek, the message in a bottle that is a good book.

It is natural to search for stillness in our lives, a shelter in the storm.  The holiday season can be brutal.  Car commercials interrupt my Pandora stream.  Deals and gifts and endless advertisements to change your life by buying and buying and buying.  Capitalism’s finest hour.  Black Friday.  Cyber Monday.  Last chance to get in on the deal.  Then the reprieve of after-Christmas sales.  New Year’s bargains.  Too much.

The man by the side of the freeway holding the sign.  The woman going through the trash cans up and down my street, mumbling to herself.  Prayers.  Oaths.  This is who we are.  No middle ground, just excess and emptiness, silence and the screams.

In the middle of it all, I think of Thoreau’s cabin.  I think of the high country.  Snowed in.  Silence as a rule, broken only by the pops and cracks of the fire.  Read.  Meditate.  Find the silent heart of the season.  The true meaning of Christmas.

This is why I needed time away.  I needed to find that silence.  It’s here, inside me again, and now it’s time to make my way back.

May you find the silence of which you dream.

May you find the stillness deep in the heart of a winter’s night.

Dare to dream.

And wake up to live again.