Life in Hell: An American Bad Dream

CULTURE.HELL

 

by Stacey Warde

My life, as the lives of so many others, has been playing itself out like a bad dream.

I’ve entered the dreaded dark wood of Dante’s Divine Comedy, which begins with the Inferno, where gods and holy personages, the people we thought had our best interests at heart, are seen for what they really are: Evil, gluttonous, corrupt, and villainous. I’ve met my share of them, mostly, like Dante, in the church.

It’s almost 3:30 a.m. and the neighbor’s dog complains through the window next door to be let inside. Her owner sleeps soundly through the plaintive barks.

The moon will be full in less than an hour.

A distant great horned owl hoots, echoing into the crystal blue moonlit shroud covering the surrounding valley. A cop prowls with his lights off, driving slowly, like a drunkard, down the wrong side of the road.

Another car passes every few minutes, the whir of its tires against the cold, blue asphalt sounds like the sudden splash of surf rushing up black sand on a winter night.

Who the hell would be out driving at 3:30 in the morning? And where could they possibly be going? Or, coming from? What occupies their hearts and minds?

It doesn’t make sense to me, the quiet slinking under cover of darkness. Few things do in the underbelly of night, and even more so in the broad light of day when the slinking of ill-intent is less obvious.

This journey of the dark night leaves me with many questions. But one, more than any other, stands out: Where do I belong?

Like Dante, I’ve “wandered off from the straight path,” disoriented, astray. Virgil has not yet arrived to guide me through hell to my Beatrice.

The flat, two-dimensional view of life in popular American culture — good and evil, rich and poor, black and white, gay and straight — no longer serves as an adequate guidepost for what is real.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

And worse, the church, that paragon of all that is good and virtuous in American life, and which claims to know the “Way,” stumbles blindly, reeking of its own hypocrisy, meanness and wrongdoing, unable even to guide itself.

Without a Virgil, I’m lost. We’re all lost. The gods are silent but stirring.

I’ve given up on church and religion. Its answers about God — “The God” — sound like crystal shattering in my ear. They feel trite, contrived and false; wishful thinking and adolescent fantasies. A moment of silence and prayer for the lost? How about weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth?

The New Age solution to think positively makes me want to puke. It’s whistling in the dark.

CULTURE.JOBI think of Job in the Hebrew scriptures, the most modern book ever written. There are no easy answers. Not even the wisest, most orthodox or even hip person can answer Job’s complaint. His sufferings, as the worlds’, are an anomaly.

And God — “El Shaddai,” the Hebrew word for Almighty — what is God in that story? A cruel and arrogant brute not unlike the Greek gods of antiquity who sadistically toy with their helpless supplicants.

El Shaddai, or rather his consort, Satan with El Shaddai’s consent, murders Job’s 10 children, destroys his household and property, mercilessly assaults Job’s body with disease until he is covered in boils, lamenting his woes, alone in an ash heap. Job, longsuffering and faithful to the bitter end, is the only one who remains virtuous. Even God fails to answer Job’s complaint.

Like Job, I demand an audience with the Almighty to lodge my complaint, and claim my innocence, to protest the senseless suffering of so many. There’s no plausible reason for these sufferings, for the bad dream I’ve been living in concert with others.

“You create your own reality,” one of Job’s New Age friends tells him.

“You’re full of it,” he answers back. “If I create my own reality, what do I need God for? What do I need you for?”

Unlike Job, however, I’ve given up on God, at least the one I have known until now, the one who is All-Everything except dark, contrary, mysterious and evil.

I should consider myself lucky, a friend told me recently, that the Inquisitor isn’t shoveling hot coals onto my disemboweled intestines. He’s right. Five-hundred years ago, my body would have been splayed open and savagely torn apart for spreading heresy against the church.

But I know the real reason for such holy violence. I know, as do Dante and Virgil, the dark secrets and lies that bishops and priests keep safely tucked under their pious collars, how vicious and mean and cowardly they are, how much they deserve their painful, eternal sufferings.

I don’t believe in the devil, another Christian contrivance conceived as the bugaboo of all that is horrible, painful and unexplainable. The devil, the dark god, if you will, is, I believe, just another face of God, if God is the Ultimate Reality.

The primitives knew this long before the church fathers turned the One God into two — black and white, body and spirit, good and evil, God and Satan. Our ancestors understood there was no difference, only shades of grey, turning from light to dark to light again.

They had names, both male and female, for these different shadow-like faces of the One Spirit: Wotan, Loki, Freya, Odin, Kali, Astarte, each emerging from the primordial soup as another aspect of the energy activating the cosmos.

These existed long before there was a church, eons before there was a devil. The devil is a scapegoat. Even Flip Wilson — “The devil made me do it” — knew that.

The dark god inhabits the Underworld, where sooner or later everyone visits — in dreams, mythology, Dante’s Inferno, in life and death. There’s no escape. And when we arrive at the Underworld, we don’t necessarily encounter a devil, only shades of ourselves, our enemies, all that has been rejected from our consciousness.

We have met the enemy and enemy is us. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” What then? What remains of this dark night? What am I to do? There’s no turning back.

The dark god dwells in the loam of our own repressions and denials, appearing in the night with horns, cloven hooves, and the pungent vitality and fecundity of earth.

He inhabits the shadowy wooded places where men and women have danced naked together for ages, drunk in their own eroticism, muscled, virile and potent, drawing sustenance from one another and from their Dionysian longings to release their own vibrant power.

It’s no wonder that the Western world, driven by the Christian ethic to subdue the earth and deny the body, has nearly decimated the world’s forests. So why not give up on God, at least on the one-dimensional Western monotheistic Monolith we’ve come to know? The one who drinks our blood and eats our flesh, and asks us to sacrifice our loved ones on the altar of faith?

We need the dark god, not a being separate from but the other face of God, to awaken from our nightmares and make sense of the parts of our lives and ourselves we fail to understand, to finally discover where we really belong, to know there is no really true safe harbor for this passage.

The cobalt color of the full moon’s light slowly, reluctantly gives way to the silver sheen of dawn’s arrival and the world emerges from the shadows of night but remains as dark as ever, cloaked in ignorance and religious bigotry.

I wait for my Virgil to show me the way through this dark passage, to guide me through the stench and horror of the Underworld, where perhaps I may gain some insight, an advantage from sufferings, and emerge finally to find a home. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice.

G’ma loves Cassius Clay

But here was Clay on our TV, blustering, making horrible threatening faces, shaking his fists at the camera, calling Liston a “big ugly bear” and predicting his demise at his own hands in unparalleled bombast. AP Photo/John Rooney

But here was Clay on our TV, blustering, making horrible threatening faces, shaking his fists at the camera, calling Liston a “big ugly bear” and predicting his demise at his own hands in unparalleled bombast. AP Photo/John Rooney

by Dell Franklin

It was January of 1964, shortly before I was inducted into the U.S. Army as a 20-year-old, and then-Cassius Clay and soon-to-be Muhammad Ali was going to fight terrifying heavyweight champion Sonny Liston, an ex-con whose scowl in the ring was so menacing several opponents melted before the first punch and folded like accordions.

But here was Clay on our TV, blustering, making horrible threatening faces, shaking his fists at the camera, calling Liston a “big ugly bear” and predicting his demise at his own hands in unparalleled bombast.

Dad, an ex-amateur champion boxer out of Chicago who could have turned pro but instead chose baseball and reached the Big Leagues, said, very sourly, “He hasn’t fought anybody, except Archie Moore, and he’s fifty years old for Chrissake! Moore would’ve made a fool out of him ten years ago. This guy’s all talk, a showboat blowing his own horn, Liston’ll knock him out and shut his mouth.”

Mother, an Eleanor Roosevelt Democrat, said to me, very quietly, but matter-of-factly, “A black man has to blow his own horn in our society, or he’ll never be heard.”

We all watched film of Clay training. He danced and glided around the ring, occasionally going into a frenetic shuffle and throwing punches so rapidly he reminded you of a lightweight, and it was hard to believe anybody could lay a hand on him, much less beat him. He was undefeated and had embarrassed every opponent, and only Doug Jones, who lost in a decision, had come close to beating him. As we continued to watch Clay spout and threaten and predict, making those faces, Gramma, about 4-feet-10, Russian born, who raised seven kids (including my mother) without much help during the Depression piped up, “Oh, that man, look at his eyes, they’re so kind and gentle. He’s a beautiful young man, he’s just putting on an act.”

That was it for me. Gramma had the wisdom, the X-ray insight. Mother nodded. I was all in on Mr. Clay.

***

A month later, I was in my third week of basic training at Ft. Ord, California, and our company DI announced, to our disappointment, and his sadistic gratification, that we were to clean our barracks and no radios were allowed for us to catch the Clay/Liston fight. Luckily, our platoon DI, a three-striper named Jeffries, a towering scary black man, informed us if anybody found a transistor radio, we could listen to the fight, because he wasn’t going to be around, he would be watching it on closed circuit and didn’t give a goddamn what we were doing as long as the barracks was tip-top in the morning.

So, around 40 of us surrounded a small transistor radio. Almost everybody favored Liston. My dad, with whom I’d gone to fights and watched the Gillette and Pabst Blue Ribbon bouts on TV and listened to his predictions of when and with what punch would end most of these fights, and was almost always right, picked Liston.

I picked Clay as bets were made.

We were glued to the radio, yelling, whooping, and when the fight was called and Clay won, all those who picked Liston yelled “Fix!” The few blacks who had picked Clay were shuffling, throwing punches, gloating, boasting just like Clay. I called dad a couple nights later and the first thing he said was “Fix. Goddamn fix.”

Yeah, sure. Later, when I saw the film during my 15-day leave, and Cassius Clay was now Muhammad Ali, I told dad, “Look at the size of Ali, dad. He’s BIGGER than Liston. Nobody’s gonna beat him. Let’s face it—he is the greatest!”

Dad didn’t want to hear it. “Bullshit,” he muttered. “Joe Louis takes him out in five.”

***

September of 1966 I had about three months left in the Army, was stationed in Northern Italy, and my first sergeant, a black man who’d been in the Army since 1940, Pastell Gardner, wanted to borrow my car to drive to Frankfurt, Germany, to watch his man, Muhammad Ali, dismantle the German contender, Karl Mildenberger.

At the time, I was a Spec 4, a medic, and owned a VW Beetle I’d managed to buy with black market dealings with Italians, for no GI could afford to buy a car clearing $118 a month. Our company was primarily black, but for some reason Sergeant Gardner, the slickest person I’ve ever known, a bulky Sugar Ray Robinson look-alike with a walk and an attitude right out of a New York Jazz joint (he was originally from South Carolina) took a liking to me, and I have to say I admired him as one of those special characters who come along and show you how life should be lived to the fullest—and with uncommon style.

I asked couldn’t he just take a train? But no, the sergeant wanted some independence, promised to be good to my heap, and so I said yes, and he took off toting his finest silk suit and wide-brimmed hat, and when most of the post gathered in the EM club to watch the fight on TV, if you looked closely, there was Gardner, ringside, a blonde German woman beside him (he was thrice divorced) as he puffed on the biggest cigar he could find.

As most of the white GIs rooted for Mildenberger, representative of a country we’d defeated in a war just 20 years earlier, every black rooted for Ali, who sliced Mildenberger up like beefsteak, and once again every black GI in the room slapped hands, danced and shuffled and threw punches to the wind, while white guys shuffled off in defeat.

No fix here. When Gardner returned, my car in tact with a full tank of gas, he couldn’t stop smiling. “Greatest time of my life,” he said, as I visited him at his desk in the orderly room, a framed, autographed photo of Ali on the wall near the one of President Johnson. “Ali, my God, you got to see the man up close to believe it. Ain’t nobody like him, never has been, never will be. Man is magic.”

He handed me one of his cigars. How he got them from Cuba I’ll never know.

***

One of my customers, who knew I was a fanatical fight fan and liked Ali and supported him all during his exile from the boxing world, gave me a poster by Leroy Neiman of the coming fight.

One of my customers, who knew I was a fanatical fight fan and liked Ali and supported him all during his exile from the boxing world, gave me a poster by Leroy Neiman of the coming fight.

Before the Frazier/Ali match in March of 1971, as I tended bar in a hotspot in Manhattan Beach, California, one of my customers, who knew I was a fanatical fight fan and liked Ali and supported him all during his exile from the boxing world, gave me a poster by Leroy Neiman of the coming fight, and then framed it for me—brown and tan wash depicting sleek Ali, rough charcoal portraying gnarly Frazier, so different from Neiman’s other colorfully gaudy fight posters. I quickly hung it up in my studio apartment—my only (to me) museum piece. Forty-five years later, it’s still the centerpiece among my collected art.

I awaited the fight with dread, having watched Ali against Quarry and realizing he was not the same, he was heavier, slower; rusty from a 3 ½-year layoff. At this point, dad sort of admired Ali, but still insisted Liston took a dive, and I told him I thought Liston probably quit both fights because Ali had him psyched out and terrified of looking embarrassed in the ring in front of millions of boxing fans who once admired him.

Dad picked Frazier over Ali. I insisted Ali would have easily beaten Frazier had he fought him in his prime. As it was, in defeat, Ali stood up from a devastating left hook in the 14th round that would have retired most boxers, showed his courage as he fought gamely on, and humility in this first defeat, and came back to beat Frazier and all the contenders while being half the fighter he had been before they took his championship away. He was also easy to hit, bigger, slower, with only sporadic dancing and electric footwork, but he still had that jab and those hands—and the will of two teams of oxen.

Much later, when he became a human punching bag for Larry Holmes, I refused to watch. Every fighter comes to this point in his career, but Ali? Yeh, Ali. He was mortal, and damaged beyond recovery, and as time passed and he lapsed into the most severe symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, became largely mute and unrecognizable in his puffiness, there was still that twinkle in his eyes, like he was still putting you on, what my gramma described as “kind and gentle, a beautiful young man.” §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., and publishes his observations on sports, politics, and culture on his website, dellfranklin.com, where this article first appeared.

Pacific Coast League Reunion

Oldest living New York Yankee recalls early Southland pro baseball

by Dell Franklin

CULTURE.REUNION.NOREN CARD

Irv Noren threw and hit gracefully left-handed, led the league in just about every offensive category, and went up to the big leagues in 1950 and had an accomplished career until 1960, including three World Series victories with the Yankees.

While attending the Pacific Coast League reunion down at the Huntington Beach Library, and browsing through old photos and scrapbooks guarded by fanatics who followed and felt the PCL of the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s was indeed the golden age of baseball, somebody told me Irv Noren was in the house.

I had been talking to aged diehard PCL fans and pointing out pictures of my dad engaged in the biggest, bloodiest brawl in the history of baseball between the Hollywood Stars and LA Angels in 1953, and when I spotted Irv across the room I instantly became a dog frantically wagging his tail and made a beeline toward him.

Irv was on a cane and as he conversed with several old geezers (that’s all there was at this gathering) I waited patiently beside him until he turned to me and I said, “My father, Murray Franklin, played with you on that 1949 championship team.” Then I showed him the ring awarded those champions that I had inherited from my father, and he shook my hand.

“Remember Murray very well,” he said. “Great guy.” And it was apparent right off that Irv, though in his nineties, was spry, mentally acute, and still inspired. I told him that in all the years my dad played pro ball (from 1937 until 1953) the Hollywood Star team of that era was his favorite. Of course, on that 1949 team, Irv could have been the inspiration for Robert Redford in “The Natural.” He threw and hit gracefully left-handed, led the league in just about every offensive category, and went up to the big leagues in 1950 and had an accomplished career until 1960, including three World Series victories with the Yankees, who got him in a trade with the Washington Senators after he had two solid years.

As soon as we were alone, I said, “You must be 92.”

“I’m 91. Going on 92.”

“You hit .319 in 1954. I had your card.”

“That was a pretty good year,” he conceded.

He said he roomed with the great hall of fame pitcher Whitey Ford from 1952 until 1956. They were still tight. He said Yogi Berra never got credit for being a great athlete, because of his squatty build. “I don’t think Yogi had three passed balls a year. He was as good as they come behind the plate.” A few enthusiasts began hanging around, for, with most of the old PCL players now deceased, Irv, along with Paul Petit and Dick Adams, were the only celebrities left. Before I moved on so others could pose for pictures with Irv, an admirer asked, “What about today’s players, Irv?”

“Bigger, faster and dumber,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. “I think Jerry Coleman told me that.” Coleman was his team mate with the Yankees and later a San Diego Padre broadcaster.

Another man who was part of the crew running the reunion came up with baseball card-sized black-and-white photos of Irv standing beside a famous singer as part of the local lore of the entertainment and film culture that surrounded the Hollywood Stars. Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Kim Novak and Anne Bancroft, among others, regularly attended their games. I instantly recognized the photo as one I kept among my dad’s archives.

CULTURE.Franklin, Murray - Detroit 1941

The author’s father, Murray Franklin, played with Irv Noren on the Pacific Coast League’s 1949 championship team.

“My dad’s in the picture,” I said. “And so is Sandlock, Frank Kelleher and Maltzburger.”

“We cut your dad out,” the man confessed.

“You know what my dad was like,” I said. “He’ll rise from his grave and kick your ass.”

“We know that. We’re sorry.”

***

One had to be around to appreciate what the old Pacific Coast league meant to kids my age, which most of these people running and attending the reunion were when the league was all we had out here, the games were televised, the rivalries were rabid and tribal. I was at the game during The Brawl between the Angels and Stars, and since my father was in the thick of it, I told these geezers how I was out beyond the ropes in the outfield for the crowd over-flow, fought with Star knot-hole kids, and ran across the field and through the stadium and into the clubhouse, where, after the half hour brawl that took 50 LAPD to stop, the clubhouse looked like a field hospital in a combat zone.

One man in a wheel chair told me, “Those were the days. I loved the San Francisco Seals. That’s where I’m from. I’m still pissed off the Giants and Dodgers came out here. What they call the PCL now is a crock of shit.”

The big leagues were what we got on Saturday’s televised “Game of The Week.” The PCL was a quality league full of veterans who’d played in the big leagues and those moving up (Joe DiMaggio, Bill Mazeroski, Ir Noren, Gus Zernial, etc). Games were televised at night Tuesday through Friday with a day game on Saturday and a doubleheader on Sunday. The ball players on all the teams along the coast—from Seattle down to San Diego—were heroes to us kids, and since I was the son of one of these men, to come to this reunion was a nostalgic journey and a thrill unparalleled.

Wherever I went, with my three friends who came with me, I told stories. Dick Adams, 96, former Hollywood Star, player-manager, high school teacher-coach, professional musician, sat at a table with his baseball cards, a few teeth missing, bright and jovial, telling stories. I told him of the time a pitcher named Bear Tracks Greer with Houston of the Texas league dusted my dad, who played for Beaumont, four times. Dad was ready to charge this scary backwoods monster, when the catcher warned, “Bear’s crazy. He’s not like other people, he’ll drill you with that ball from five feet, right between the eyes, dehorn you. He can’t get you out, so he figures if he’s gonna walk you he might as well knock you down four times—nothing personal.”

“Knowing your dad,” Dick said, “I’m surprised he didn’t charge him.”

“He was backwoods, Dick. Crazier than Bobo Newsome. Only reason Bear Tracks Greer wasn’t in the big leagues was because he was too crazy, tearing up bars at night—uncivilized. He met dad in the clubhouse at the Texas League All Star game, drunk as a skunk, put his arm around him and said he loved him and offered him a slug of the jug he was holding. He was supposed to start the game but passed out on the training table.”

“Yeh, if he’s crazier than Bobo, I can see it.”

Dick then told me and my friends about a woman in an elevator who informed Joe DiMaggio, who was with two pals, she could make him happier than his wife of the time—Marilyn Monroe. When Joe refused, his buddies asked if she’d mind taking them on instead. She told them to get lost.

Dick left us with this one: “I never drank much and I’m still kicking at 96, but I only got one year in the big leagues. My brother Bobby drank like hell and got in 14 years!”

***

Later, a good Samaritan found the glossy of the original photo that had left my dad out. My pals and I wandered over and met with Noren. He was still standing, cane discarded, asked one of my pals, Dave, if he could get him a glass of water. Dave took off. When he returned, Irv thanked him, drank, and we got him to talk. The man was a star athlete at Pasadena High and Pasadena City College, actually played professional basketball for Chicago in the NBA during the 1946-47 season.

He talked of his baseball teammates, guys like Hank Bauer and manager Ralph Houk, who served in WWII. “Seems like all of us served, and a lot of those guys saw heavy action, but they never talked about it. Mickey Grasso, a catcher, my teammate with the Senators, was a tank commander, in charge of a bunch of those cracker-box tanks we had, and they were no match for those damn Panzer tanks, and they were out-numbered. It was toward the end of the war, so Mickey had his guys jump out of their tanks and give the heil Hitler salute. You were better off captured by the Germans, because they weren’t like the Japanese.”

I held the black-and-white glossy of Irv and dad and his teammates and the celebrity singer. They all looked so young, and especially Irv, who was 24 at the time and about to go up the following year to start his big league career. Now Irv was the last one standing, Mike Sandlock having died recently at 100. Mike used to pick me up off the ground when I was a 7-year-old in the clubhouse, rub my face against his rough beard, and say, “You a lover or a fighter, Little Meat?”

“A fighter!”

“Thatta boy.”

My friend snapped a photo of Irv and me, the photo held out front in my hand. Afterwards Irv sipped his water and asked, “Who brought me this glass of water?”

Dave said, “I did.”

“Thank you very much,” Irv said, all grace and appreciation, just like he played the game. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his rescue dog, Wilbur. More of his sports essays can be found at his website: dellfranklin.com.

Raped in her own backyard

Don’t let this incident rob you of your self-worth. You fought for your life, and you’re here, and you won. It took a lot of guts to fight that guy off.

Don’t let this incident rob you of your self-worth. You fought for your life, and you’re here, and you won. It took a lot of guts to fight that guy off.

by Dell Franklin

I just get to work at 4 in the afternoon and I’m sent downtown to wait for a lawyer to lead somebody to my cab from the courthouse across the street from the old art deco Fremont Theater. I park in front of the Fremont. There’s activity here: lawyers in double-breasted suits carrying brief cases and talking on cell phones; secretaries in fetching outfits talking on cell phones; a flow going in and out of the coffee house beside the Fremont and the Italian eatery and rib joint on the corner—San Luis Obispo’s beehive.

I keep my eyes on the city hall building. I wait 5 minutes. I do not like to wait. I do not like lawyers. I get out and pace, malevolently eyeing the bee hive. Finally, a short fire-plug of a man, around 35, who fills out a beautiful suit like a weightlifter, scampers across Monterey Street from the courthouse and signals me. We meet on the sidewalk beside my cab.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he says right off, taking in my sneakers, thrift store shorts and faded Harvard Business School T-shirt. He offers a hand, introducing himself as Larry. “It’s just that I have a hysterical client. Somebody tried to rape her in Los Osos. She was at the police station. I’m her family lawyer. She’s still in the courthouse. Be patient, please. I’ll take good care of you.”

Please be kind to this lady, ey? She’s been through hell. Right now the police are trying to find the bastard who attacked her. She’s in a lot of distress. She’s very fragile.

I say okay and he hustles back across the street, obviously a one-time high school football fullback. I’ll usually run the meter when I have to wait for somebody, demanding the fare pay for my time, but I’m not going to press a rape victim. Five minutes later he leads her across the street, an attractive but ragged-looking thirty-something woman with long mussed honey-colored hair, dressed in work shorts, and a man’s baggy T-shirt.

The lawyer introduces her to me as Gail. She is still in an extreme state of agitation and perhaps shock and does not look at me as the lawyer helps her into the shotgun seat and continues counseling her. I wait for him on the sidewalk. When he is finished comforting the woman, he hands me his card.

“I don’t have any cash on me right now. Can you come to my office up the street when you get back to town?” Los Osos is 12 miles away.

“Well, we’re not supposed to go out of town without collecting first. And I don’t like coming across town when I can be at the airport. But I also don’t like conducting myself like an asshole, so I guess I have to trust you. If I can’t, maybe I can hire you to sue yourself.”

He chuckles, but he’s not quite sure of me. Still, he says, “I can go down the street to the ATM if you want.”

“Nah, I’ve decided you’re a good lawyer, a very extinct breed.”

“Thanks, pal. Please be kind to this lady, ey? She’s been through hell. Right now the police are trying to find the bastard who attacked her. She’s in a lot of distress. She’s very fragile.”

“I’ll take good care of her. That’s a promise.”

“Thanks.” We shake hands. I get back in the cab. I plow through the beginning of rush-hour traffic, headed for the highway leading to Los Osos. I decide not to initiate conversation with the sniffling figure beside me, who is curled into the side of the door, as if trying to make herself smaller. I fiddle with the radio, find NPR. Once on the highway, we ooze into a 50 mph flow of traffic. I glance at her, offer a reassuring smile, as if saying: “I know it’s tough, but you’ll live through it.”

“Thanks for taking me home,” she says in a wee voice. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without my lawyer. He’s such a great guy.”

“I liked him right off.” She sits up a trifle. “So, you live in Los Osos…you like it?”

“Well, I do…I mean, I’ve lived there a while. I guess I like it, but after today, I don’t know.”

“You look familiar. I used to tend bar at Happy Jack’s in Morro Bay. You ever in there?”

“Uh-huh. I used to go there to dance before I met my husband. I don’t go to bars anymore. My husband doesn’t like them.”

“That’s probably where I saw you.”

She sits up a little and replaces her handkerchief in her purse. “Somebody tried to rape me,” she says. “I was out in the back yard tending to my gardens. I have a really nice yard and garden. I grow tomatoes and peppers and we have an avocado tree and a lemon tree. I love working in the yard. My husband really likes the way I keep things so beautiful and tidy. I was watering my plants, and out of nowhere this guy jumped the fence and threw me down and put his hand over my mouth and tried to rape me! He slapped me and punched me and said he’d kill me if I screamed. Oh God…”

“What did you do?”

Her voice cracks with a slight sob. “I fought him. I fought for my life. I kicked him. I bit him. I scratched his face. I fought and fought. He ripped my clothes off. I punched and scratched at him and I screamed…I didn’t care if he killed me. There was nobody around, everybody at work. I was crying so hard, and fighting so hard, and screaming so loud, he just took off.”

I glance at the scratches and bruises on her face and the discoloring from bruises on her arms and legs. She starts to cry again, quietly, holding her face.

“Go ahead and cry,” I tell her. “It’s good for you. You need to cry it out.”

We are cutting through the bucolic serenity of green farm and ranch land with shadowed foothills on either side, homes and barns nestled into crevices under trees.

“I’m so worried about my husband.” She sobs louder, looking out the window away from me.

“Why?”

“What if he doesn’t believe me?” She’s looking at me, near hysterical.

“What do you mean—doesn’t believe you? There’s a police report, right? You went to the hospital. Look at your bruises and scratches.”

“I know, but maybe he’ll think, well, that I…invited it.”

“Why would he think that?”

“I don’t know. He might, though, think I ASKED for it.”

“No way. What kind of man is he?”

“He’s real macho. He’s a contractor. I’m just so ashamed, so worried he won’t believe me.”

“Look, what you do is you don’t try and convince him of anything. You direct him straight to your lawyer and the police.”

“He’s already talked to my lawyer by phone.”

“Have you talked to your husband?”

She nods, sniffles. “On the phone. I don’t think he believes me. I don’t know what to do.”

I was watering my plants, and out of nowhere this guy jumped the fence and threw me down and put his hand over my mouth.

We approach Los Osos, a swale adjoining Morro Bay Estuary. Big generic shopping center on our right. No main drag. A notoriously scrumptious bakery emitting hellacious aromas every morning to counter the miasma of a thousand septic tanks and sumps. At one time Los Osos was a low-rent encampment of biker types and plenty of meth, but since real estate went crazy in the ‘90s it’s become somewhat gentrified, with a scattering of holdouts intimidating Cal Poly professors and suburban retirees tooling its rutted curb-less side-streets and driving to San Luis Obispo for trendy shops, Trader Joe’s and Costco.

“What you need is a drink,” I say.

“Yes, I think so. I’m not much of a drinker these days.”

“Just get a half pint, enough to take off the edge, and relax you a little. What do you usually drink when you do drink?”

“Bourbon, I guess.”

“What do you like to mix with it?”

“Seven-Up, or Coke.”

“Okay, we’ll find a liquor store. You get a half pint of bourbon and a Seven-Up. Go into your living room, lock up the house, turn on the TV, and have a quiet drink or two, and wait for your husband.”

“If he doesn’t believe me I don’t know what I’ll do,” she wails.

“If he doesn’t believe you, leave him,” I say. “I know it’s none of my business, but how the hell can you have a relationship if your husband doesn’t trust you and he’s not even here after what you’ve been through?”

“I’m so screwed up,” she admits, as we pull into a liquor store parking lot. She sniffles. “I just wanna die.”

“Listen,” I say. “You’ve just been through a traumatic ordeal and you’re not thinking clearly. You’ve been violated and humiliated and made to feel dirty…by some animal, a criminal. It is NOT your fault. Don’t let this incident rob you of your self-worth. You fought for your life, and you’re here, and you won. It took a lot of guts to fight that guy off. You’re a victim. Your husband will understand. Now go in there and get yourself a bottle to calm your nerves and don’t worry about your husband. Everything’ll be okay. I’m positive.”

Still shaky, she enters the liquor store. A few minutes later she returns with a package. I drive through neighborhoods to her modest house. The front yard is tidy with rows of flowers in full bloom and hedges edged sharp as razors.

“I wish I had money to tip you,” she says.

”You owe me nothing. Go on in there and relax. You didn’t invite this. You’re a nice gal. Have faith in yourself. It’s been a bad, nasty day, and things’ll be rough for a week or two, but then you’ll be thankful to be alive and have good days. Hang in there. Good luck. Now go in there, and make your first drink the biggest one.”

She starts to leave. “Look at my yard…isn’t it beautiful?”

“Very much so.”

She looks at me, her red-rimmed eyes well up and register utter despair, almost terror. “I won’t be able to go out there anymore! My back yard, it’s my favorite place in all the world…and I’m afraid to go out there now!”

“Listen, that was a one-shot deal. He’ll never come back. All this will pass.”

She faces me, trembling, leans toward me, ever so slightly, and I take both her hands in mine, give them a little squeeze. Her shapely knees are grass-stained and scratched raw. “Hang tough, kid—sometimes that’s all we can do. It’s not the end of the world. That’s what my mother always tells me, and it’s true.”

I let go of her hands. She gets out of the cab and opens the gate of the short, white picket fence and walks past a cat and up to the porch and front door, opens it, shivers, turns and waves at me, then disappears into the house, the cat right behind her. The door slams shut.

When I get back into town I pull up to her lawyer’s office and get out of my cab. I hear somebody shout, turn to look out onto Marsh Street and see the lawyer, who is encased in a white baggy outfit of the kind of plastic material a vermin exterminator or astronaut might wear. He is heading toward me on a skateboard, sneakers having replaced his Oxfords, his knotted tie the only trace of his former attire. He pulls up to me in a sideway skid and grins. He hands me three twenties for a $36 fare and tells me to keep the change.

“This is therapy, man,” he explains. “How’d it go?”

“I got her to do some talking. She’s still in a panicky state.”

He nods. “Thanks for your trouble. I appreciate it.”

“Well, I hope she’ll be okay.”

He shrugs, rolling his eyes in a helpless manner. “We do the best we can, man.” Then he smiles and we shake hands and he zooms off on his skateboard, expertly gauging traffic on the street, like a teenager. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his rescue dog, Wilbur, a very needy chocolate lab. He writes of his years as a cabbie, bartender and athelte on his website, dellfranklin.com.

The Great Mother

She nurtures and devours

CULTURE.devouring mother

A pantheon of mythological devouring mothers from Durga to Kali to Isis reaches across cultures and down through history. There’s even a tiger goddess who both nurtures and devours.

by Stacey Warde

A soft gentle voice, much like my mother’s, calls to me, a young boy of 4, while I sleep, “Stacey, Stacey, Stacey….”

I awaken in the dream and look about the room from my top bunk; in the bunk below, my younger brother sleeps soundly.

I notice the squarish light fixture on the ceiling in the darkness, and turn my gaze to the bedroom door.

At the side of my upper bunk, towering menacingly above me, nearly touching the ceiling with her enormous head, a saber-toothed tiger, blood dripping from her fangs, walking on her hind legs, slowly approaches me. My heart begins to pound wildly with fear.

As she nears, I can see my mother’s sweatshirt on the saber-toothed monster. I start screaming until my real mother appears.

I had the worst recurring nightmares as a child; ghouls, monsters and wild animals filled my early childhood dreams.

These dreadful nightmares occurred with alarming regularity. I sensed concern from my young parents, and from relatives at whose homes I often slept, where I could awaken an entire household with blood-curdling screams in the middle of the night.

“What’s wrong with him?” I remember an older cousin, whose room I once shared, asking my aunt. I was staying with them, and attending school in Laguna Beach, where mom grew up, while she recovered from a life-threatening illness.

“Nothing’s wrong with him,” my aunt said, “he’s just having a bad dream.”

“Yeah, but does he have to do it in here?”

Finally, Jiminy Cricket appeared in a dream, probably stirred by a Disney episode I might have seen in which he asks Pinocchio, the wooden puppet, if he’d like to become a real boy, and in the first of a series of lessons sings “Always let your conscience be your guide.”

“When you get into trouble and you don’t know right from wrong, all you gotta do is give a little whistle.”

I could give a little whistle and feel safe again. I’m not sure I even had a conscience then but I wanted to be a real boy and needed the security offered by this peculiar animated bug friend.

I have no idea what triggered my rescue from these night time horrors of a devouring mother by this bumbling Disney character, but the nightmares ceased.

I worked on becoming a real boy.

I wavered between two questions that sprung from this recurring nightmare, adding to the horror and confusion it brought: What did this monster do with my mother? When did my mother become a monster?

I’ve since learned through psychology that a devouring mother image suggests an overbearing and anxious woman attempting to compensate for her deficiencies and insecurities. She’s controlling and critical. She can be harsh and judgmental.

The sons of these mothers often grow up to be puers, little boys who need their mommies, who never venture out beyond the safety of mom’s apron strings and become independent men, or the authors and heroes of their own lives. They remain dependent and seek dependencies in relationships that mimic their mother complex.

They are commitment phobes, never quite able to break the primitive bond with mother. The challenge is to break away, to pursue a life free from maternal dependencies or attachments, to become a person of independent means and bearing and character.

This is no easy feat for boys whose mothers were themselves still children when they gave birth.

In a way, mother and I grew up together.

She was 17 when she gave birth to me. I suspect she felt a lot of insecurities, as any teenage mother would, and she mustn’t have felt any more secure when, at the age of 20, she was left alone with two young boys, after my father walked out on us and never returned.

I suspect she did her best to protect me and my brother, to give us a safe haven from the rigors and perils of life. I never felt unsafe, except when monsters pursued me in the night.

***

Western tradition’s finest example of a puer who bolts from under his mother’s wings and grows into a man of formidable power and influence is Perceval.

Through trial and error, he moves beyond the clutches of his overbearing and protective mother, who does not want him to become a warrior like his deceased (read “absent”) father, killed in battle when Perceval was too young to remember.

Eventually, by following his bliss, and through numerous mishaps and the counsel of more worldly, perhaps wiser, souls, he grows to become one of the great knights of the Roundtable.

***

Once, I remember flying over the front seat from where I stood on the back seat in one of those clunky ‘50s chevys, long before seat belts were mandatory, when mom had to suddenly apply the brakes. I wound up on the floor boards under the glove box.

“Are you OK?” she asked in a panic. I was fine.

She was pugnacious and caring, if not overwhelmed and frightened in those early years. She found her way, remarried, built a home and family; and I never had another nightmare of a devouring, blood-dripping, saber-toothed tiger wearing my mother’s sweatshirt.

A pantheon of mythological devouring mothers from Durga to Kali to Isis reaches across cultures and down through history. There’s even a tiger goddess who both nurtures and devours. Ultimately, as these powerful figures remind us, we shall all be devoured by the Great Mother Earth.

But that’s not all.

The First Mother also nurtures and sustains.

On the more personal level, of course, the same holds true for our mothers who birthed us. They can also nurture and sustain and devour.

It seems the only way out, the only way to free one’s self from the harm of this devourer is to create a life of one’s own, grounded in but not held captive by mother’s nurturing and protective instincts.

Eventually, a man must break away from his mother and become his own person. Cultures recognize this in which boys are taken at a certain age from their mothers and joined to the men, from whom they learn the skills necessary to survive.

In the U.S., this does not always happen. Many men grow up without a father, their upbringing charged mostly to their mother, who attempts to be all things to her children. Sometimes, boys will grow up, as I did, with dependencies which can be extremely difficult to overcome.

I’ve lived the greater part of my life under the shadow of this primal monster of my early childhood nightmares, afraid to disappoint or to stray too far. But I’ve also learned to venture out, believing that behind my biggest dragons are my deepest treasures.

Mom, meanwhile, would like nothing more than for me to uncover these treasures, my birthright, to live in good conscience and when troubled with fears of being devoured to give a little whistle.§

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice. He can be reached at roguewarde@gmail.com.

Murder and rape in Cayucos

Why do we remain silent, or worse, defend the perpetrator?

by Stacey Warde

(Screen shot from KSBY.com)

(Screen shot from KSBY.com)

In a small town like Cayucos, with a population of only a few thousand residents, at one point or another, you’re likely to run into just about everyone who lives here, including the nut cases and predators and their friends, not to mention the few people who don’t like you.

I’ll admit, I’ve befriended a few of the nut cases.

We’ve had our share of them, and I’ve loved them all, and for the most part they’ve been decent people, in spite of their peculiar behaviors. This town, as small as it is, embraces the stranger, the oddball, I’ve seen it more than once, so long as he gets along, does his share, and generally respects his neighbors.

In this town, we like to say that we watch out for each other, especially those who are vulnerable, the elderly and the young, for example, and we keep a close eye on our children. We’re a quick easy stop for kooks traveling the coastal road between LA and San Francisco. Sometimes they stop and stay, sometimes they keep moving. We’re wary of strangers who don’t quite fit in and, trust me, we know who you are.

Which is even more important when it comes to people of questionable character, whether they’re passing through or actually living here, those who do more harm than good, who prey on the weak, lie, cheat, steal and inflict pain on others, including murder and rape, both of which have recently occurred here.

Thankfully, I’ve managed to avoid getting too close to the predators—and we’ve had more than one in the neighborhood.

Matthew James Levine, for example, reported his grandmother, Dorothy Vivian Autrey, 84, missing from her home on Hacienda Way, where he also lived with her on the southern outskirts of town, at 7:30 p.m., Feb. 21, 2008, about a day after she was last seen alive.

Dorothy Vivian Autrey, whose body was never found, was murdered by her live-in grandson.

Dorothy Vivian Autrey, whose body was never found, was murdered by her live-in grandson.

Dorothy, apparently, had been getting on Matthew about his lifestyle and an argument ensued, and she disappeared. He claimed she must have gotten lost, being old and forgetful and all, wandering who knows where. Maybe she got swept out to sea. It happens. Her soggy purse was later retrieved near the Cayucos Pier but she was never found.

Meanwhile, according to one account, Matthew handed out fliers about his missing grandmother, asking for clues and signs, anything to help him find her, even boarding a Cayucos school bus to enlist the children’s help.

Matthew turned himself in a month later and confessed to killing his grandmother. He’d stuffed her body in a suitcase and threw it over a cliff near Ragged Point, a treacherous stretch of Highway 1 that winds high above the jagged Pacific coastline in Big Sur. Her body was never found.

He claimed to have misjudged a blow to his grandmother, a warning bump, an accident perhaps, because he’d been under the influence of marijuana and cough syrup. He got scared and took the mafioso approach to hiding the evidence, tossing her remains into the sea. She is still reported as a “missing person.”

I didn’t know either Matthew or his grandmother and this tragedy may or may not have been avoidable, but there must have been signs of trouble. Someone in the neighborhood or family or circle of friends might have seen the signs, and made note of them. That alone would make us safer, just noticing, talking, making sure everyone’s ok.

Maybe it’s unfair for me to categorize Matthew as a predator because I didn’t know him but I suspect he had other motives for moving in with his grandmother than simply keeping an eye on her and making sure she was safe. He was later convicted of first degree murder and elder abuse.

I suspect that something darker than good intentions were also at work in the case of Oscar Higueros Jr., a former volunteer Cayucos fireman and citizen in good standing, who was recently convicted on several charges of raping a minor and human trafficking, and faces the likelihood of spending the rest of his life in prison.

I doubt his actions in keeping company with an underage girl rose solely from a desire to protect and love her, as has been conveyed to me by friends who know and like Oscar, and who have tried to convince me there’s more to the story than meets the eye.

Nonetheless, a jury found Oscar guilty on numerous counts and he will be sentenced for his crimes beginning at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, May 9, at San Luis Obispo Superior Court. He faces a minimum of 64 years and a maximum of 183 years in prison.

I noted the fact of his recent conviction in a Facebook post, suggesting that it would serve the community well to begin a dialog about how we might in the future protect our children from others who wish them harm: “Dead silence in Cayucos about predators in our midst. When do we start the conversation about how to protect our sons and daughters?”

I got the following comment from the wife of someone who worked with Oscar at the Cayucos Fire Department: “Stacey, you need to get all the facts before you lash out.”

I responded to this effect: “What are the facts? Let’s hear them, especially since the court that convicted Oscar, and Oscar himself, might be interested, if the facts can show that he’s not guilty.” She deleted her comment.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been scolded or corrected after mentioning Oscar’s arrest and conviction, as if there were details I should know—such as he was in love, or the underaged girl was a tramp.

At Schooner’s, soon after Oscar’s arrest, a friend of his told me over beer that Oscar really loved this girl. He was protecting her, as a good fireman should.

“You really don’t know what you’re talking about, dude,” he said, as if my mentioning the news of Oscar’s arrest had put me in the wrong. I had mentioned only the facts of the case as reported in local news media, which basically was a rewrite of the district attorney’s press release on the subject.

Maybe I didn’t know the whole story, I responded, but the court would find out whether he really loved this girl, or was using and abusing her. In any case, I added, the fact that she was underage might have been clue enough for Oscar to leave her alone. So, why didn’t he? And why didn’t those who know Oscar, and who still defend him, warn him that he was treading on thin ice? Or, for chrissake, why didn’t they report him?

Well, came the response, love knows no bounds and people do what they must when they fall for someone. Perhaps, I said, but the law is pretty clear, even for firemen, regarding sexual behavior between adults and minors. Oscar crossed the line. Now, he’s guilty of rape.

I respect and understand friendship and loyalty, but these qualities, as I’ve known them, would never, in their best form, tolerate or quietly condone the abuse of a minor or elder, regardless of whether their friend was in love or his victim a tramp. His actions were reprehensible and cannot be defended on any grounds that I know.

I’d give less consideration to defending one who has been deemed a predator, a menace to the community, and put more focus on the victims who have suffered from their abuse. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice.com.

Crossing the color line—again

Cuba, baseball and Obama

by Dell Franklin

GAME TIME—President Barack Obama and President Raul Castro of Cuba applaud a run by the Tampa Bay Rays during an exhibition baseball game between the Rays and the Cuban National Team at the Estadio Latinoamericano in Havana, Cuba, March 22, 2016. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

GAME TIME—President Barack Obama and President Raul Castro of Cuba applaud a run by the Tampa Bay Rays during an exhibition baseball game between the Rays and the Cuban National Team at the Estadio Latinoamericano in Havana, Cuba, March 22, 2016. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

I was four when we lived in Havana, and though I recall nothing concrete, there are swirling images of bright colors and energy and activity and non-stop, fast-talking voices and rousing music. My father was playing professional baseball in Cuba during the winter after a season in Tampico, Mexico, where he played after leaving the big leagues for better money.

On my wall is a small black-and-white framed photo of dad with his teammates on his Cuban team, the only American among black and lighter-skinned men of Spanish ancestry against a backdrop of a rickety stadium. A man of high passion and strong opinion, dad loved Cuba and had already learned the language while in Mexico. As a man raised in the Great Depression and serving in World War II, he was convinced the secret to life was making the best of every situation, to ignore hardship and differences in culture and concentrate on the joy of relating to people and their customs.

Dad remembered Fidel Castro as a polite kid wanting to be a ball player and working out with his team and having a “decent glove as an infielder for a tall gangly kid, but couldn’t hit a bull in the ass with a bass fiddle as a hitter.”

He talked of the fans: “It was love-hate. They were rabid, much more so than American fans, even New York and Detroit and Philly fans, who were real wolves. Cuban fans bet on games, bet on innings, bet on at-bats. The cities and towns practically closed down when there was a game. They came to the park or listened on radio. They were rough on you if you didn’t produce, and if you were an American with a big name and came down and laid an egg, didn’t come through in the clutch, they would literally run you out of town. I was fortunate to play well down there until the malaria I got from the South Pacific during the war recurred.”

Mother said: “The Cuban people were very warm and good-hearted. No matter how poor they were they seemed good-natured and happy about what they had, there was a spirit and a soul about them, they were not afraid to reach out and embrace you. At night, Murray and I would go out after the games, very late, because it was so exciting, and also we had not seen each other for almost two years while he was away during the war, and we would go to the cantinas and clubs, and there was always music, and the people loved to dance, and we loved to dance, the parks were always full of people playing games or playing music, there was so much life and excitement in Havana, it was a city of ongoing festivity that never shut down.”

CULTURE.murray in cuba

Murray Franklin, back row, second from right, an infielder who played with a Cuban team in the late 1940s, said this about Cuban baseball fans: They were rabid, much more so than American fans, even New York and Detroit and Philly fans, who were real wolves. Photo courtesy of Dell Franklin

Dad talked of his teammates and players such as Minnie Minoso and Sandy Consuegra and many others, the black ones like Minoso not allowed to play ball in America no matter how gifted they were, while the lighter skinned Cubans were allowed to play before the color line was broken by Jackie Robinson. Minoso finally established an illustrious career in the big leagues in his 30s.

COMMENT.MURRAY @ BAT

Murray Franklin at bat in his Cuban team uniform.

Dad said: “The Cubans played with a different emotion, what you would call flair. You could call them showboats. They came from a different background, a different culture. What I learned about them was that if you made an effort to learn their language and made an effort to be friendly they would do anything for you and were very loyal, they would take you into their homes and no matter how poor they were or how little they had in their pantries, they would serve you their last plate of rice and black beans, because you were a guest, and they liked you. They had this inborn quality of thinking about you first, a trait I find very rare and good in people and which I tried to copy as a man, because, in the end, it serves everybody better to share what they have. You are always learning in life, and my experience in Cuba taught me humility, even though I was a pretty humble guy to begin with and always appreciated what I had.”

***

Cuban baseball players risk their lives to come to America to play the great game, possibly to live in freedom, make real money, and compete against the best to show us just how great they really are. They play with a different rhythm and instinct pleasantly devoid of over-coaching and over-training, like kids growing up in the sandlots and dirt parks a century ago, like Cobb and Ruth and the Gas House Gang; so unlike the controlling and insane supervision and overexposure of American Little League and the structured and robotic techniques taught to and applied by American players along with the new metrics moving them around by front office stooges and automat coaches like chess pieces.

Cuban ballplayers are colorful, ours are not.

Imagine the culture shock of Cuban ballplayers coming to America and facing the vastness of our country, the huge shiny powerful cars marauding our massive highways, the sudden big money, the freedom, the incredible hi-tech toys and the splendor of even our minor league systems, much less the luxury of the big leagues. Imagine their reaction to the tight-lipped grimness of the baseball tradition in America…

…And then imagine our players, raised in a culture of over-abundance and entitlement if you are a big league prospect, the best food and equipment and stadiums and pampering, and going to Cuba and playing ball there, seemingly for a pittance, in seedy surroundings, for love of the game and patriotic reasons of one-upmanship on a country like ours.

Baseball, our great game, is their great game also, and now our President, Barack Obama, is trying to renew relations with Cuba, recently by using baseball as a sort of bridge to build a new relationship of visiting each other and sharing.

Meanwhile, politicians on the right squawk sanctimoniously of how Cuba is a Communist country punishing its people and denying them human rights, while at the same time these very same hypocrites wish to deny women in our country the right to make their own decisions on abortion, seek to deny black people the right to vote, try to destroy the first health care provider in our country primarily for the poor, and hang on to a cold war mentality that has long ago dissolved, and a bombastic occupational foreign policy that has failed miserably and infuriated most of the world.

We negotiate trade and exchange tourism with Vietnam and China, supposed enemies, and seem to have no problem with their regimes, or their propaganda against America, and they seem to have no problem with our history of exploiting Latin and South American governments for decades, assassinating their leaders and replacing them with any ruthless despot who would do what we told them for military support while these military puppets and millionaire aristocrats tossed crumbs to their impoverished people and jailed or murdered them if they rebelled.

And for what?

What Obama is trying to explain to the mindless knuckleheads in this country is that what he is doing is about people—their people and our people. It is about allowing their people to taste a little of what we have while we taste a little of what they have, and in the process we can learn a little something about each other without trying to turn their country into South Florida. It is about no longer demanding THEY change before WE concede even to talk to them because of their terrible record on human rights, or about us imposing our political philosophy and ideology on them, or boycotting their goods and placing embargoes and strangling their economy and rendering their people poorer than they already are.

And for what?

Cuba is a proud country with as many social ills as we have, but what it is really about is Cubans and Americans, the lot of whom, if we ever met, would probably like each other, and have a great time together, if we just for a minute allowed ourselves to have a few beers and forget about politics and history and perhaps watch a baseball game together, whether it be here or there. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., and spent many years of his life active in baseball, teaching, coaching and playing, learning from all-time greats and keeping a wary eye on how the game is played. More of his work can be read on his website, dellfranklin.com