MY AMERICA

(A work in progress. There are currently seven chapters posted taking us from my youth and world events at the time in the USA, Brazil and Central America with some history, and the first half of the roaring 60s. We begin with conscience formation)

Chapter One: Conscience

A six year-old boy straddles a worn stuffed upholstered armchair.
“Giddy-up, giddy-up,” the young cowboy orders his palomino as he rocks back and forth coaxingly. His left fist grips the reins. His leather chaps and felt Stetson flapping in the imaginary wind, he scoots across the wide range firing his six-shooter after the bad Indians. Just like his favorite star Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger, the fearless boy is protecting his people against the savages.

“BANG! BANG! Gotja. You’re dead.”

CRACK! CRACK!

The cowboy stops dead in his tracks.

“That sounds like real bullets”, the boy, his big brown eyes blinking widely, says warily to himself.

He dismounts and walks hesitantly to the smudgy window facing a dirty Newark street. From the second-floor apartment building, he can see a human figure on the sidewalk across the street. A boy is sprawled face down. A red liquid oozes from his back. An apple rolls slowly from his hand. A large man in blue uniform hurries up to the boy. He holds a pistol in his hand as he looks down upon the boy.

“Are they playing cowboys and Indians too”, the little cowboy asks himself frightfully?

Later that day, Grandpa Tony came home and the boy heard him whispering to grandmother Nana.

“Radio news reported that a policeman saw the boy steal an apple from Abe’s store. The policeman says he yelled for the boy to stop but the kid ran. The policeman grabbed his pistol and shouted, `Halt or I’ll shoot.´ The boy ran faster. The policeman fired a warning shot up in the air, then another. Apparently there was some sort of disturbance up in the air, which the bullet hit, and its trajectory altered. A bullet ended in the boy’s spine. He was just eight years old, not much bigger than Ronnie.”

It was too difficult for me to comprehend, but I did understand that the boy would not play cowboys and Indians anymore. That frightened me. I could have been that boy. With my young mind puzzled and my heart skipping, Grandma Nana told me to forget all about it. What happened to him couldn’t happen to me. After all, I was not a thief nor, most significantly, was I black. I felt relief, yet shame. That day I learned I was privileged: I was white, never to be black.

In 1992, I was on a speaking tour in Europe and California from Cuba. During the discussion period at King’s College a woman asked me why I became a revolutionary, what got me started? Her personal question stopped me short. I usually begin answering as a questioner finishes her or his last syllable. This time I had to ponder. Then it hit me. Racism! Hating people simply because of their skin color, that very notion sickens me. I think of what Nina Simone said when she left the United States behind, in 1973. She could not understand nor accept a destiny as a victim for something so absurd and misanthropic as racism. I was trapped in the color barrier too, despite the fact that I was born with the “dominating” color.

Now, the figure of that boy, a hungry black boy bleeding to death on a greasy sidewalk with a red apple in his hand, lay before me as I looked at the querying woman. Tears welled in my eyes with this picture of the enormity of man’s cruelty. Since his murder, I have heard of and read about many bullets being shot by policemen “in the air”, which mysteriously ram into the backs of blacks and other oppressed people, who are often shot fleeing from men in blue or brown uniforms. Sometimes the victims do not even flee, they are just shot for being at the, “wrong place at the wrong time”.

Standing at the classroom podium, it became clear that I must tell others this story, the story of my life engulfed in racism’s hate, an engaged life led through the most devastating, destructive and transforming times in human history. My generation has witnessed so much “progress” that we cannot assimilate it and many, who are not killed by it, become numb. As I started to gather information to tell this story, I saw reports from researchers who study violent conflicts. This is just one summary of the extent of the destruction: From World War I up to the second war against Iraq, the world has experienced constant wars, which have cost around ONE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE´S LIVES. That many people have been killed in war or died as the result of war, such as from radioactive fallout or unexploded bombs or land mines triggered later on. Of these deaths, about 80% have been caused by the major powers, the self-proclaimed “democratic free nations”: The United States, Europe and Japan.

The United States has surpassed the Roman Empire, and all other nations, in the numbers of wars in which it has engaged: 222 times (up to the second war against Iraq). In almost all of these wars, the US has been the aggressor and has acted outside of or against the international laws to which it has signed—laws such as: The United Nations Charter and many of its resolutions, International Court at Haag, Nuremberg Court, even the rules of NATO and the US’s own constitution and many its laws. During my own lifetime, since the Second World War, the United States has been the aggressor, or among the aggressors,159 times in 66 countries. In addition, it arranged 35 coups in 28 countries between 1947 and 2004.

(There are many sources for these figures of mass murder, not the least is the excellent UK website: www.krysstal.com/democracy.)

This is what I thought as I tried to find words to explain why I became a revolutionary.

End Chapter….

CHAPTER TWO

Early Years
1939-1956

What are the ingredients in the life of a human being, which make him a revolutionary? To answer that question one must look into one’s childhood environment. That is the purpose of this chapter.

I was born in a small middle-American town, Fredericktown, Ohio, on the first of October, 1939. My mother, Norma Hyatt, was a frail woman of 20 years when I was born. She came from an English Anglo background. When I think of her now, the blondie Hollywood actress Doris Day comes to mind, an image of a believer in serendipity, seeking the cushy life at no costs. Norma married my father, Robert J. Ridenour, right out of high school. Bob came from a family of German Saxon farmers. Unlike my mother, he had one sibling, a brother (Rex) five years older, under whose shadow he grew insecure. He compensated with sarcastic arrogance. When I was born, my father was working as a furniture maker. He had a good deal of bodily hair. His strong thin face and brown eyes were partially covered by dark-rimmed glasses. He became bald early, as did most men in his family.

Mother’s father had left her mother, Dee (Nana to me). Nana later married a wanderer named Tony Mathews. My father’s father, Jay, had been forced off his small farmland by the exigencies of freedom, that is, the free market economy. Jay became one of the many subjects of the inherent principle of the large buying up, or stealing from, the small. Thereafter, my grandfather led an unsatisfied life as a worker in what few industrial jobs he could find in Ohio’s countryside. My father’s chubby mother, Eva Keck, led the life of a nervous hypochondriac housewife. Her spacious wood-frame house was so meticulous that dirt seemed to be a dirty word.

These blood and culture ties put me in the club of the nation’s chosen ethnic group: White Anglo-Saxon Protestant—WASP.

I recall very little of the first years, although I have a clear picture of my grandfather, whom we called Pap. He had to sneak a smoke outdoors. He and I relished in pissing off the backyard steps. You could laugh at Pap. He didn’t care. In fact, he got a kick out of it. It used to get him chuckling whenever I’d roar at the sight of his drawers. He wore those long cotton underwear, the kind that fit snugly even on his slim body. It’d be cold and he’d have to take off all his clothes, in order to put on his pajamas. He’d get all shivery putting them on then he’d run to bed and jump in under the covers, burying his head beneath all those quilts and blankets. Then I’d roar, and he’d chuckle. I guess that’s where I got my habit of putting my head under the covers, especially when I want to forget who I am or where I am. I’d want to get back into pleasant times. Those few times when everything was fine, everything peaceful, like when Pap was alive and I was small and we were there together shivering our way to warmth.

My brother James (Jim) came along when I was two, just as the USA entered the Second World War. Shortly before his birth, my family had moved to New Jersey. Bob got a job in a steel mill where Tony had some sort of foreman position. I don’t recall seeing my father much until I was eight. When I was about three, he joined the military to fight for his country. Later, I was told that my mother protested his enlisting because he could have obtained a deferment, being the only supporter of a family of four. But Bob was a “man of honor,” loyal to his country. He taught the values of pride of the fatherland, of not lying, of leading a life of integrity.

It was too difficult for my worrisome mother to cope with two small boys, so she “let me out” to grandmother Nana. Mother lived in West Orange and Nana lived, sometimes with Tony, in a small apartment in Newark, New Jersey, not far away from mother and across the Hudson River from New York City.

I was with Nana from ages three or four to eight, apart from a few visits to mother and to my father’s parents in Fredericktown. Nana was dark-haired, a bit plump. Like Norma, she loved tiny dogs, whose only trait, as I saw it, was to make terribly squeaky noises. Nana played solitaire card games and cross-word puzzles. She, like Tony, was not as keen on honesty as my father, and often cheated at her games.

My memories of Tony are vague. He was tall and gray-haired. Nana and Tony often took me on Sundays to Coney Island Amusement Park, a long and fun train ride out to the end of Long Island. I loved to ride the merry-go-round. I sometimes wore a sailor’s suit or cowboy clothing. I usually rode a palomino horse like cowboy Roy Rogers. While riding, I ate foot-long hot dogs with onions, relish and mustard. A root beer waited for me at my grandparent’s table, where they sat drinking beer and smoking. The cowboy star inspired me to ride the plains in endless joy. I dreamed of living on a ranch, riding my faithful horse, feeling carefree. I smiled a lot during those carousel days.

But I couldn’t just be a boy-child. I was also a man-in-training, who had to learn to protect himself against the evil in the world. I had been beaten up and nearly suffocated to death in the snow by three boys, all bigger than me and all black. My offense was that I had walked into “their” territory without being invited. Outsiders, especially whites, are not welcome in the ghettoes that whites impose upon them, and as an outsider I must be punished. At that time, my father was visiting me after the war ended. He and Tony tried to teach me to box. My bony hands were supposed to deliver the power of dissuasion. I did not feel convinced. I figured out how to walk around the tough boys’ area and found another way to my friend’s house. He must have lived in the same general neighborhood because he was black. I lived in a rundown area, where everybody was white.

One day, my friend and I were playing in his yard. I stood on top of his narrow picket fence. When I jumped, I landed smack-dab on a long nail sticking up through a board. The rusty iron spike sliced through my tennis shoe and into the middle of my little white foot. I can feel the pain as I write. Fortunately, my friend’s father was home and came running out upon hearing my cry. He pulled me off the nail and carried me in his big arms. He got me to a doctor, who gave me an injection against infection and bandaged me up.

Another strong impression from my first eight years was the first television set I ever saw. It was placed by the same window where I had seen the black boy killed. This was opposite a little alcove where the ice box stood. A big man used to come with a block of ice over his shoulder for the ice box. We would sit around the black TV set and see strange things. There were so-called family shows and comedies, in which someone was always putting other people down. What I hated most were the boxing and wrestling matches. Tony and Nana would tell me that the wrestling was fixed so that nobody really got hurt, but it was hard to believe with all the eye-jabbing, hair-pulling, kicking and screaming that went on. Why did they want to hurt each other?

After I saw the black boy shot to death, I was repelled by my own fantasies, about what my own six-shooter could do. It might have been fake, but, as I later learned, youthful fantasies can become adult reality. It was the big policeman who pulled the trigger that killed the little boy. The thought that I could have been that boy plagued me.

When the world seemed too complicated, or when something awful happened and a reason or might not be obvious, Nana would proclaim: “ignorance is bliss.” I didn’t understand what she meant by that. Much later, I understood that many people follow her advice by remaining as ignorant, or indifferent as possible so as not to get in the way of trouble. Being black was trouble in itself. Asking too many “impertinent” questions was asking for trouble too, even for whites. Many people in the richest lands know, if not consciously then instinctively, that they benefit materially from others´ misery, so they don’t ask questions.

Tony was often away. He left once never to return. Nana and I lived for a while in a dark cellar-apartment in Manhattan. I was living with Nana when my half-brother, Richard, was born. A vacuum cleaner salesman, John Spatola, had seduced my mother after he came knocking at her door to sell a machine. She was lonely. My father was off in the Pacific conducting weather forecasts for the Air Force. He might have had something to do with the atomic bombings of Japan. My father returned at the war’s end to find his wife with a new-born baby. Bob put me in Nana’s care while he started divorce proceedings, against my mother’s will.

The divorce agreement gave Jim and, naturally, Richard to Norma, and me to Bob. It was not until 1948, when I was eight years old, that Bob remarried and took me with him to Oklahoma. My mother never forgave herself for her “life’s sin”. She took up religion as her solace.

Looking back on my youth in the east, I do not recall having any friends in Manhattan. I played alone in the cellar or on the sidewalk. There may have been a few white playmates in New Jersey but none that are memorable. There were, though, a few black kids in my life; some beat me up and some saved my life. Once living with my father, I was soon to learn that I was privileged in other ways than skin color. I was born in the UNITED STATES of AMERICA, the world’s greatest freedom-loving, democratic land, God’s own country.

Jean Flint was a librarian whom my father had met at a military library. Unlike most other soldiers, Bob enjoyed reading books on subjects other than war, sports and cars. Jean was five years his younger, slightly plump, a dark-haired comely person with a warm heart. Once married, they moved to Midwest City, Oklahoma, close to Tinker Air Force base, where Bob was assigned. I was brought into a military environment. Although I gave my step-mother a hard time, she seemed to take it calmly, as she did most things. She also kept her opinions to herself.

I think I led a rather ordinary childhood from the ages of eight to 12. I got my first bike at nine and played a bit with others, more than I had in the east. But I do not recall ever having real friends. I was ten when Lois was born. I watched my half-sister grow with mixed feelings. She was OK, but she took attention from me.

I liked to play baseball. I could run, catch and throw the ball well enough but I wasn’t much good at batting. I did not excel in anything at school, nor did I think I was particularly special. Though, upon adult reflection, I was different or “special” in two ways: I felt a bit of a loner, an outsider, and I did not share in the sadistic intrigue of racism.

My first date was with a strikingly beautiful blond classmate. We must have been 12 years old. I was lank, long-legged, a bit bony but sinewy tough. Some have likened me to Mark Twain’s Huckle Berry Finn. I went to pick up my date at her family’s small farmhouse. As a product of my military father’s discipline, I was polite, and addressed adults with “sir” and “mam”. (Mam or ma’am, is short for madam or madame, and can mean anything from a lady or mother to a brothel owner or the queen of Britain.) When I called the pretty girl’s mother “mam”, the woman slung harsh words at me, something to the effect: “Don’t you call me that nigger name!” That was the first time I had heard someone offended by the polite term “mam.” She might have associated the term with the fact that blacks were forced to call white women “mam”. She must have thought it “beneath” me, a white boy and one dating her daughter, to use a “nigger” or “cotton picker” term. I felt uneasy about the whole circumstance. I never dated that pretty girl again.

We soon moved to a basement apartment in Washington DC. Here, I took an initial step into manhood. I drank liquor with my father and his friends and became ghastly sick.

From Washington DC, my father got assigned to train Brazilian airmen in weather operations at a military base near Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, a northeastern province. Recife was known as the Venice capital of Brazil, because of its many rivers, canals and bridges, some of which ran through the city’s center.

My first impression of these three formative puberty years was hearing my step-mother calling to me from behind the bathroom door of the house father had rented in Recife. He had studied Portuguese at an Air Force school and then flew to Brazil before us to prepare for our arrival. Bob met us at the airport and drove us to the new house. He had to return to his work and left us in the care of the newly hired housekeeper, Maria.

Jean had inadvertently locked herself into the bathroom. Maria could not hold back her natural laughter. Her broad smile revealed the toothless gaps in her wide mouth. I hit it off with her right then and there. Maria tried to open the door but could not, and she had to care for Lois, a feisty girl of 2½ years. I was nearly l3 and felt that I should be able to open the door, but I could not. Maria jabbered away but none of us could understand her Portuguese. It wouldn’t take long, though, before Lois, and I somewhat, mastered the melodic language. Poor Jean had to wait for hours until her handy-man husband came home and managed to get the door open.

Everything was new to me in this tropical country: the sun shinning hot over the bright and gigantic sky; the great variety of strange and sometimes dangerous wild animals and insects; the mountains, rivers, jungles, and the vast green foliage with tasty fruits, the majestic palm trees; the big house with maids who “took care of us”; and the stark contrasts of privilege and poverty. I was suddenly one of the “rich,” a white foreigner from the great northern neighbor. This gave me a special status, not always desirous.
Poor people came begging daily at the back door of our spacious house of several gables. Some would rummage in the garbage cans set outside the surrounding concrete wall, as high as a man’s height. I distinctly remember that I counted 30 people who had come begging in one day’s period. They were women and children, and a few older men. They wore ragged clothing and were dirty. Maria attended them, often giving these cast-a-ways food left over from our plates or from large cooking pots.

What I loved most about Brazil was the ocean. I never tired of it and swam nearly everyday. The warm Atlantic coast currents caressed by body, making me feel secure. I soon became a good swimmer and body surfer. The high strong waves offer an exhilarating joy and danger when body surfing. You have to scout for the waves as they form, sometimes as far off the shore as hundreds of meters. You wait for the wave to grow, or swim towards it, and “take” it just under the crest. When you do it right, the strength of the wave can take you all the way to the shallow shore water. As the wave recedes, it gently leaves you on the sandy beach. Recife is known for its fine white sandy beaches, many lined with palm trees.

Once, I took a wave in the wrong way. It was a gigantic wave that confused me. Its energy must have swirled me towards it too soon and I landed on top of the crest, a gleeful experience as unforgettable as when I first parachuted two decades later. I raced exultantly towards land with my stomach flat on top of bubbling water, my back and legs buoyant in the warm air. I wanted the fun to continue forever. The crash came suddenly! Imagine you are up in the air four meters high, riding a smooth palomino, which unexpectantly turns into a bucking bronco. The wild mustang threw me straight down onto the ocean floor and toppled me over and over again. It took great effort to summon my strength to fight the liquid lioness. She gave me no quarter. She twirled me about in her swirling bubbles, smashed me down onto the hard sand bottom again and again, and stomped on me. With my breath gone, I relaxed. I accepted defeat. I lay cuddled into the sand, which now comforted me like a soft bed; the ocean covered me with her blanket. My mind raced effortlessly over my life. I saw my family as a small child, pleasant memories of playing in the snow. Family members and others I’d known came to say farewell with pleasant expressions. When I awoke, I lay flat on my stomach on the sandy beach, still breathless but intact. The liquid lioness had simply taught me the lesson of how she must be ridden and then discarded me on the sand adjoining her territory.

But I couldn’t swim and enjoy the beauty of the land all the time. I had to go to school. My parents did not wish to put me in the normal public school for fear that I would “get behind” and not be prepared for school upon our return to the United States. There were only handfuls of US airmen and a small US naval base in Pernambuco. There were not enough children for the armed forces to conduct their own school, as they so often do in foreign countries. So my parents enrolled me in correspondence schools, first the Calvert School of Maryland and then the International Correspondence School, headquartered in Pennsylvania. These schools were mainly for Americans who live abroad. (1)

My step-mother became my tutor. She supervised my lessons, which came by mail, and sent them in to Pennsylvania to be graded. I conducted my studies in my bedroom, reading the books and lessons of literature, English grammar, mathematics, geography, history, typing and other normal subjects that students of my age in United States public schools were required to take.

When I got tired or bored, I would walk about 300 meters to the ocean for a swim, or sometimes I’d lie in the hammock on the veranda, and would often watch our Saquin (marmoset) monkey play. I would take him out of the cage and watch him climb the interior walls. The monkey was small, squirrel-like with soft fur and a long stripped grasping tail. Our parrot once bit my thumb so hard that I still have a scar. We also had a dog. The first one Bob named LB, short for “little bastard”, because he barked so much. LB acquired rabies and poor Lois had to take painful daily injections for three weeks for fear she had contacted the deadly disease.

Lois was full of energy, a sweetheart and a pain in my ass. I took good care of her, except for once when we were swimming. A wave came up and swept her away from me, but she soon surfaced and I snached her from the lioness.

Jean usually left the kitchen to Maria, who stayed with us permanently. Maria had family way off in the countryside, who she visited on her free days. We also had two other maids. They did housekeeping and other chores under Maria’s guiding hand. Maria was strong and muscular, though flabby. She usually washed our laundry in a wash basin attached to the house in the back yard. Jean did some shopping, but Maria shopped as well, especially for local foods. Jean had plenty of free time, which she often used to sew clothing on an electric sewing machine.

Jean eventually got stressed as my teacher. I asked too many questions she could not answer, or I could not understand her answers. She convinced Bob to take over. He understood astronomy well. It was part of his training as a weatherman. But I did not—and still do not—understand how all the lights in the sky came to be and that they are so old and far away. Time and distance baffled—baffles—me. Bob soon gave up tutoring. He lost his patience much quicker than Jean.

It was difficult to win my father’s appreciation. Nor did he and I have many moments of joy together. Bob was an aloof person. He kept his feelings to himself and with a chip on his shoulder. He could explode into a violent rage, and a few times he hit or threw me about. He scoffed at me when I tried to help him with car repair. I didn’t know one part of the machine from another, not one tool from another, or how to use them, and I never learned thanks to his condescending, disdainful jibes. But when we played softball, we were close. Airmen and sailors played either at the navy base or on a beach outside of the city. My father played catcher and I was in the outfield. I was the only non-military player, but I could pick a runner off base from left or centerfield. I finally received Bob’s appreciation when a ball was hit far out in my field and I had to run backwards to get close to it. As the ball came down, I jumped upwards and backwards, grabbing the ball in my glove just as I fell on by back and right hand, breaking a finger. The ball did not leave my glove and that made the batter out. But there was a runner on third base and he tagged up—stepping on the plate after I caught the ball—and sprinted toward home plate for what would have been a run (point). I stood up and with all my might threw the ball straight to my father, who was waiting for the runner at home plate. The ball swished through the air straight into my father’s catcher’s mitt. He had just the time needed to tag the runner out. We won the game, in part, due to this double out. I was a hero for the one time in my relationship with my father and he bragged about me to others. To this day, my finger is brokenly bent. I never had it straightened, because, I think, the joy of being appreciated by my father overcame whatever pain I may have felt.

I loved to run and climb trees. I even learned to climb the tall branchless palm with a rope looped around the tree and my waist. The one other time I recall receiving kudos from Bob was when I climbed a palm tree by our house to rescue our cat. It had climbed up the tree and sat fast on a bunch of coconuts under the long fronds. It was too scared to climb down and cried for help. I shimmied up the tree to its rescue only to receive many slices on my face and shoulders. But I finally grabbed the cat fast in one arm and climbed down to the joy of Lois and Jean, and a smile from Bob.

Lois liked to play ball with me, and she even participated in family ball games, such as when the US military men and their families went picnicking on a beach. We came packed with all sorts of savory foods and cold drinks and games to play. One day, a large group of local people looked on from a nearby cluster of palm trees. They watched us silently. I especially remember the children, their wide black eyes glaring at us. What were they thinking?

When Bob was sad, frustrated, angry or joyous, he would drink. He always had a stash of good liquor: whiskey, gin, Jamaican rum, and cachaca, Brazil’s national sugarcane akvavit. He let me drink a bit, and I drank more on the sly. When my parents were gone, I could be so impudent to “order” Maria to mix me a gin cocktail and bring it to me while lying in the hammock. Young master Ron. I was an unusual teenager: drinking cocktails in a hammock in the afternoon, watching a monkey climb a wall and listening to Mozart or Beethoven. Both Bob and Jean liked classical music and I picked up their musical tastes, as I did his interest in chess and poker card playing.

I developed a trusting relationship with Maria, especially after I learned street Portuguese. She was a warm woman, who possessed a strong dose of common sense. Maria confided in me that she was a believer in an Afro-Brazilian animistic religion, quite common in much of Brazil and other countries—such as Cuba, where I came to live for many years—where Africans from Nigeria, Benin and Angola were forced into slavery. This history is quite paradoxical:

The first Europeans in Brazil were Portuguese, conquistadores who landed in 1494. They were soon followed by the Italian Amerigo, then English and French, and the Dutch in Pernambuco. The natives these conquerors first met were Araucanian, who lived in the northern Amazonian area—also in Chile and Argentina. They were among those many tribes, who had traveled by foot over what is now the Bering Straits when the lands of Asia and Alaska were not divided by water. They had been in the Americas for 15,000 to 25,000 years when the Europeans tried to enslave them and force them to mine minerals, grow coffee and cotton, and slash sugar cane for precious sugar and spirits. But the Indians were free souls and could not survive enchained. The so-called Christian missionaries from Portugal brought the first black slaves to South America. These missionaries were part of the Jesuit sect started by the Spanish soldier Ignatius Loyola. The church later named him a “saint”. Their moral rationale for enforcing Africans to do the hard labor for no pay was to “protect” the American natives, who were not such sturdy hard laborers. Despite the Christian “charity”, most natives were wiped out either by murder, suicide, European-brought diseases, or in battle. Many Araucanians fought the pale faces for three centuries before being finally defeated. Other families of tribes, such the Tupi-Guarani, who lived in Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, also became victims of the Catholic-Jesuit opportunism.

The 1986 English-made film, “The Mission” (starring Robert de Niro, Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson) dramatically portrays why and how the ruling royalty of Spain and Portugal, with the collaboration of the Christian Church, committed genocide against these people. The domineering elite had to eliminate their “bad example of the good example.” These people lived peacefully and cooperatively, sharing what nature and their labor provided for them. They were “children of nature”, who created a “paradise of the poor.” This was not well seen by “civilized” rulers, who thrive on the “right” of private property, which demanded the cheapest of labor for the highest of profits, that is, slavery. The Indians´ way of life also became, inadvertently, a strong economic and social competitor to the brutal have and have-not system of mercantile-capitalist Europe. The few remaining native Americans are being wiped out by United States Americans for the interests of loggers, miners and farmers, who encroach upon their decreased homelands. Recently, “free enterprise” sees it as necessary to rout out the natives in order to drill for oil. As in the colonizing centuries, the rationale for the conquests is not stated truthfully but clouded under the “moral” argument of ”protecting human rights”.

Maria took me to a séance, something she assumed from her African ancestors. She and other belivers used animals as sacrifices to their gods, who possessed human qualities and vices. I observed their ritual with fascinating curiosity and skepticism. Spellbound, I watched them dance and shake. One woman fell into a trance, speaking in “tongues.” I did not feel at arm’s length from these people, despite the fact that I was the only white person and foreigner present. I never told my parents of this experience.
On the other hand, there were times when there existed greater disparity between me and non-black Brazilians. I had one white friend. He was the son of a light brown-colored Brazilian woman and a pale Swiss father, who owned a pensión where the boy and I played soccer on a coin machine. We sometimes played real soccer on the beach or on a dirt road, but I was frequently unwelcome by some Brazilian youth. I was sometimes pushed away and derided. The word “Yankee” was slung at me disparagingly. My friend stood by, just watching me being humiliated.

My hesitating friend’s father was a kind, gentle man, one I could confide in. I asked him why I had been so demeaned. He, and one of his restaurant workers, explained that many Brazilians were angry with the rich and militarist Yankees, because they dominate Brazil and all other Latin American countries. They, like their European forefathers, bulldoze their way through the beautiful lands, skimming it for its natural wealth, and commandeering products made by laborers to whom they pay a pittance. Brazil is the sixth largest country in the world with the fifth largest population. Their greatest export wealth comes from coffee. They are the world’s largest producer. And they have an abundance of cotton, sugar, cattle, cacao, wood, rice, fruits and corn. But many millions go hungry, because they are subjected to an economy controlled from the Yankee north, which sees to it that the Brazilian government usually conducts the national economy and politics in the interests of the United States. The restaurant worker was also angry at the US for not entering the Second World War until it was forced to by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

“The US does not help us or other countries, rather it takes from us what we have with its greater military strength,” he told me.

I do not recall how much of this sunk in, but I do remember that it felt wrong that I should be ostracized because of something American adults did to the Brazilians.

I got to see quite a bit of this majestic land. My father took our family to Rio de Janeiro, still then the wonderful capitol. I climbed up to the gigantic figure of Jesus Christ, Cristo de Corvocado, and took the swinging chair lift to Sugar Loaf Mountain, where I learned that I had a fear of heights when I can not control the apparatus.

I saw the world’s most renowned lent carnival in Rio, and joined in the dancing and perfume sniffing. Most everyone buys aerosol cans of intoxicating perfume. It is like a gaseous deodorant, which people spray over one another. It produces a euphoric high, something like I later learned marijuana does. During carnival many people smoke marijuana and drink a great deal of booze, especially cachaca. Carnival is a special time for the poor to release their pentup feelings stemming from poverty. People, especially women, use much of the year preparing for this three to five day holiday. They pinch a penny here or there for garn to make their own colorful costumes. Carnival is also an occasion for many to settle scores with an enemy, a neighbor one dislikes or someone who has done you wrong. The police are busiest in these times, trying to cope with many murders. But few murderers are caught as the police attitude is rather blasé about one poor person killing another.

My father and I took a canoe tour into the Amazon river, an unparalleled spectacle. I saw many animals: monkeys, apes, crocodiles and poisonous snakes. Once, Maria saved me from the deadly poisonous bite of a small snake, which I had picked up from the dirt road in front of our house.

I sailed a few times with a fisherman on his jangada, a very light balsa raft with a small sail. Jangada fishermen fish with a line and hook or a net. They sail with their catch, or troll them to a beach not far from where I lived. There, fish is sold to housewives and family maids. I learned again that the sea is your friend but one to respect for its many dangers, including sharks.

One time I thought sharks were about to devour me as I was taking my usual afternoon swim. There were only a couple of commercial pilots resting on the beach when I dove in and swam out. All of a sudden, up popped a large fin, and then another. They were headed for me. Believing they were sharks, I swam to the beach faster than I knew I could. When I climbed out of the water, their finned backs were nearby. The pilots laughed. I reproached them for making fun of my danger. They told me that the fins belonged to dolphins. Then I saw that they were the friendly mammals as they began springing about. I returned to the water to play. I got as close as they’d let me. To this day, dolphins, along with chimpanzees and deer, are my favorite animals.

Another danger of the sea is its ability to snatch bathing trunks from boys in puberty. I was still a virgin in my 14th year, but with all the sensuous female bodies about me on the beaches and streets, at the exuberating carnivals—Recife is known for its wild carnivals second only to Rio—and with all the sex talk I heard, my loins were exploding.

A sergeant, who befriended me, was a tall handsome charmer. One of his several women accompanied me to the beach one day. She was sexy in a bikini, and she was not shy about having sex with men other than her airman friend, but she was not taken by my youth. She did let me fondle her body in the water as we swam, but laughingly resisted my stiff member. When she left the water, I stayed in and sought to coax her back. It was at that moment that I “lost” my trunks. I feigned that a wave took them, but I think I helped remove them more than the wave. It was an excuse to tell her that I was now naked and she’d have to do something. She picked up a towel and teasingly told me to walk towards it. She held it in front of her fine body and watched me walk towards her from the water. She had fun watching my nakedness but she did no more than wrap the towel around my waist and told me to hurry home and dress. When I got home, my mother saw me running up the stairs with the towel on. I told her what had happened, at least the part about the enigmatic wave. She repeated it to father, who relished in telling his military friends in a mutually understanding undertone about my escapade with the wave.

My pensión friend and another boy decided to give me a birthday present on the evening of my 15th year, a present I never have forgotten.
We took a bus to a red light district near the fish market. The prostitute houses were just across from the wide beach. The boys told me they had had their first women and it was time I did too. They would pay for my “whore.” I took the first woman we came upon. She was taller than me and had a wide, smiling mouth. She was dark-skinned with a mixture of bloods in her hot veins. She took my hand and led me upstairs. I immediately grabbed for her blouse to undress her, but she gently held my hands and told me to relax, to “take it slowly”. She unbuttoned us both as my body pulsated. I simply couldn’t retain myself and jumped on her. I could not relate to foreplay and penetrated quickly. My juices soon leapt into her. I didn’t wish to stop but she told me we were through.

My friends awaited us and asked how it had gone. I remember looking out at the jangadas and the turquoise clear, starry-lit sky, and suddenly fainted. I fell on the sand. Momentarily, I opened my eyes to see three worried faces looking down upon me. When the woman saw that I was alright, she laughed. She may not have meant it to be a mocking laugh, but it sounded so to me. There were other prostitutes looking at me from their windows and they laughed too. I was so embarrassed that I ran away. I ran and ran, until I reached home. When I came inside, I rushed upstairs to my bedroom. Mother asked if I’d had had a good party. I could only mumble yes. I was simply too overexcited and overexerted.

The next day, it pained to urinate and pus formed in my penis. I got scared, remembering airmen speaking of venereal diseases. My symptoms sounded like what they called “the clap,” or gonorrhea. I was horrified that I might have something like that and that my parents would find out. I went to the naval doctor at the US naval base and made him swear not to tell anyone. He examined me and concluded that I did not have a venereal disease, only “a strained penis.” My excitement of first sex and my overenthusiastic exertions produced a strain which soon would pass.

When I healed, I wanted sex. I made someone suffer for my horniness, which I have regretted. I began courting a middle-class Brazilian girl, who had to be chaperoned. I wanted her sumptuous body, but she always put me off with pecking lips. She had to be married before she would bestow anymore. I was no marrying catch. This only frustrated me all the more. I had to so something with my lust. I decided to impress her with my Yankee wealth. My mother kept a box of jewelry and I rummaged about it to find a gift for the sophisticated girl. I took a bracelet, which I gave her on one of our walking dates. She was gleeful and gave me an unusually warm kiss. I was all the more horny when I returned home. The third maid was to babysit me that evening. I lay on my bed all too aware of the maid’s presence in the living room downstairs. I walked over to the stairwell holding onto my penis, stiffening in my hand as I waved it at her. She stood up and stared at me, laughing. I paraded about, asking her to fuck me. She laughed again, and then asked what I’d give her for that. I had some pocket money from my parental allowance. Not long thereafter, my mother discovered that a piece of her jewelry was missing and asked if I knew anything. I felt awful. I felt all the worse as I lied. I cast suspicion on the maid I had made to fuck me. Mother and father decided to fire her. My parents never told me that they believed I had lied. That was one of the dirtiest things I have ever done.

Besides introducing me to sex and disgrace, Brazil was my introduction to imperialism. I saw it in real life before I became cognizant of its reasons. Imperial domination is primarily economically motivated. The rich, and would-be rich, earn enormous profits by exploiting people for their labor. This domination is superimposed by the mightier nations over the less economically developed nations, especially in the warm south—the so-called Third World. This is a battle much like bullies on the block lording over smaller kids.

It is no “communist propaganda” that Brazil was raped by Europeans, and continues to be so by “Americans.” A quick read in many history books shows us that. I will recapitulate a bit of that history here, in order to explain what I learned about this phenomenon first hand.

Brazilians are a mix of indigenous natives, black slaves, and the national mixture of white Portuguese and other Europeans with the oppressed people of color. They are a tough breed. They have fought many battles for their sovereignty. In 1815, they were one of the first peoples to throw off their colonial shackles. They were also the only nation in southern America to select a monarch of their own, a Brazilian called Prince Pedro. The national monarchy lasted for three-quarters of a century until Pedro II stopped the slave trade, in 1889. This affronted the power of the Christian Church, national plantation owners and the army, which combined to overthrow the king. The rich alliance, guided by United States´ “manifest destiny,” construed a constitution shaped after that of the United States. There followed three decades of strife between the emerging national leaders and local leaders.

The first strong presidential leader was Getulio Dornelles Vargas, who became president in 1930 with dictatorial powers. He put a stop to the power conflicts, and he dealt equally hard with ideological enemies, both fascists and communists. In 1942, Vargas brought the nation into the Second World War on the side of the allies. After the war, he fell from power. A more sharing-the-powers constitution was adopted in 1946, yet the new president prohibited the Communist party. Vargas was reelected in 1951. He committed suicide in 1954 due to a “political crisis”, according to western reports.

Vargas was a classic caudillo leader, a nationalist popular with the have nots and local businessmen. He was anti-communist and anti-fascist, and ruled with a hard hand, which all western powers appreciate when the hard hand rules in their favor. But he came into ill graces with the United States, because he sought better economic profits for national producers.

My father came home mad the day Vargas committed suicide. He spoke harshly about him, in words like these: “The ingrate blamed his suicide on us, after all the United States has done for his country.”

Bob did not consider that his own country had some hand in the “political crisis”. My father viewed the United States as innocent, a bountiful land in all ways, replete with charity.

Brazilian congressional investigations, economic institutional analyses, investigative journalistic reports, and US Federal Trade Commission reports show why Vargas committed suicide.

“Vargas hoped that his blood would buy salvation for the Brazilian people,” wrote Eduardo Galeano in Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pilage of a Continent, one of the best documented and well written histories and analyses of the rape of Latin America.

Before Vargas shot himself through the heart, he wrote a moving testament, which partly reads:

“The crisis in coffee production came, and the price of our chief product went up. We tried to defend the price and the answer was such violent pressure on our economy that we had to give in.”

That was long before the Brazilian people voted overwhelmingly for one of their own: Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, a factory worker and union organizer. When he was inaugurated in Brazilia, January 1, 2003, 300,000 celebrated in the streets, the first time in history that a presidential inauguration became a people’s festival.

But why would Vargas commit suicide over the price of coffee?

More than half the coffee sold in the world is consumed in the United States. Just after the US put its preferred military dictatorship into power, in 1964, the price of coffee for US companies decreased significantly. If the 1964 coffee crop had been sold on the US market at the prices extant when Vargas died, Brazil would have received $200 million more. The price continued to drop under Marshal Castelo Branco’s comprador (factotum) government. Coffee cost 30% less for the US coffee companies during 1964 to 1968, yet US consumers paid 13% more. At the same time, the price Brazilian producers received for each coffee sack fell by 50%. Six US coffee concerns controlled much of the coffee leaving Brazil, and another six US companies controlled the coffee entering the US. They gouged the difference. (2)

The wealth of iron also played a role in Vargas´ death, and it overthrew two successor presidents, Jánio Quadros and João Goulart before Marshal Castelo Branco and the army grabbed the reins. US iron and steel corporations confronted Vargas with the same threats as did the coffee cartel. In a military pact with the US, Brazil had been persuaded to agree not to sell raw materials to any socialist country—so much for free enterprise’s fair trade. But Vargas wished to achieve better prices for his nation’s people, and he sold iron to Poland and Czechoslovakia for much higher prices than the US companies paid. The US talked turkey with its military friends in Brazil’s army, and they threatened Vargas. That is the “political crisis” so delicately stated by western reports, and why the democratically elected president decided to save the national face by killing himself.

In 1961, the socially progressive lawyer Jánio Quadros won the elections to the chagrin of the US. In his seven months of rule, he fought corruption and sought to solidify a foreign policy oriented to Brazil’s interest. He annulled the US’s Hanna Mining Company ”rights” to Brazil’s iron, which it had illegally obtained in the state of Minas Gerais. Four days later, Brazilian generals—many trained in the US and some at the School of the Americas, which instructs in the use of torture—forced Quadros to resign. He wrote: “Terrible forces have risen against me.”

Quadros’ vice-president, Goulart, took over the presidency. He tried to follow in Quadros’ footsteps, but when he sought to stop Hanna from controlling the country’s national iron reserves, Goulart was met with the same threats. In 1964, a coup d´ état was organized in Minas Gerais. “The revolt that overthrew Goulart...arrived like a last-minute rescue by the 1st Cavalry,” for Hanna, wrote the US magazine Fortune, April 1965. Goulart escaped with his life but was forced into exile.

As usually occurs in US backed military coups (3), the military iron men selected one of their own “presidents”, either administratively or “elected”. In 1965, they chose Humberto Castelo Branco. He prohibited previous democratically-elected leaders from participating in politics. He banned all political parties, forbad strikes, sent thousands of protestors to their death and jailed many others.

Branco graciously pleased Hanna Mining Company by offering it the great wealth of iron under the Paraopeba valley. Hanna chairman George Humphrey became the US Secretary of the Treasury and director of the official Export-Import Bank, which finances foreign trade operations. Branco’s iron deal was similar to the one Vargas’ predecessor, President Eurico Dutra, gave to Bethlehem Steel: forty million tons of manganese for only 4% of the export income. Bethlehem only paid taxes on $12 of every $100 dollars it invested in extractions.

The New York Times wrote, January 19, 1969: “The [Branco government] treatment of foreigners [read: US business] in Brazil is among the most liberal in the world...There is no limit to the percentage of the registered capital that may be remitted as profit...”

After the death of Vargas, foreign capital flowed into Brazil in great magnitudes. Denationalization of ownership of the land’s resources was legalized and mainly ended in the hands of US corporations and Japan’s emerging international capital. Since then more Japanese came to live in Brazil than any other land outside Japan.

The names of US companies which took over Brazil are the same we find dominating the rest of the Americas: Anaconda Copper (the company, along with International Telephone and Telegraph, stood behind the military coup against socialist democrat Salvador Allende in Chile, in 1973), Ford (trading partner with Hitler during the holocaust war), Chrysler, Union Carbide, US Steel, American Can, American Machine & Foundary, the Rockefeller owned Chase Manhattan-Standard Oil consortium, and others.

My father could not have known all of this. Nevertheless, I believe that even had he known it would have made no change of life for this myopic American Dreamer. US Americans possess a strange and unique psyche in the history of national psychologies. There are parallels with other mighty empires, but to the adherents of the “American Dream” their psyche is unique. They negate any American responsibility or criminality regardless of how many wars they start or engage in, regardless of how many people they kill, even torturing people into vegetables or to death; no matter how many people suffer needless hunger and starvation, needless illnesses and diseases and early death, in order that a few people (many of them Americans) can be richer. Most Americans who work for their income do not see themselves as workers but as “middle class” associates with their rich, whom they admire and envy. They do not wish to see their employers as their exploiters for the profit, or their politicians as being in the pockets of the rich. This phenomenon has even affected the direction of communist opposition to US capitalism. One United States Communist leader, Earl Browder, went so far as to conclude that Communists would have to accept the “fact” that the US working class is “the exception” to the Marxist thesis of inevitable class struggle.

I looked up to my father in my early years. I admired him for his honesty and dependability, for his knowledge and large vocabulary. He would often send me running to the dictionary. Yet he was also self-righteous, impenetrable to critique, authoritarian, and never accepted criticism of his fatherland. On balance, though, he nudged my curiosity about life, which in a few years led to our parting of ways.

The end of father’s tour in Brazil brought with it the end of the easy life for me. No more Master Ron being served cocktails in a hammock. Many changes were about to occur as the summer of 1955 began. We were readying to return to the United States, again to Midwest City when a letter arrived from my birth mother. Norma had finally decided to leave her husband, and, with grandmother Nana, sought to gather all three of her boys in one home. She wanted me to help make this new home in Mansfield, Ohio, close to where most of the Hyatts and Ridenours had been born.

I had mixed feelings about this proposal but was mostly excited. I wanted to be loved by my real mother and get to know my brother. I had fond memories of my years with Nana. I must have had kisses and hugs from my step-mother and father, but I do not remember them. I might have thought that more tender loving care would be forthcoming in this “reunited” home.
My father was not too keen about Norma’s plan but did not oppose it. We had a rare father-to-son talk. He related that my mother had been the cause of their divorce, since it was she who bore a son out of wedlock while he was off fighting for the fatherland. That was a hard bit of news but I decided to be sensitive towards my “weak” mother.

We all moved into a small apartment in Mansfield, all, that is, but Richard. His father refused to let him go with his mother, and sent him to live with his paternal grandmother. Richard was John’s ace-in-the-hole to get his wife back. Mother was downcast about the separation but attempted to set up the new home, hoping John would eventually give in. We had only mother’s and Nana’s small savings to start with. I took a part-time job as a package boy in a market. Mother got a job as a cashier. Nana took care of the apartment and most of the cooking. Jim and I started school. I was in the 11th grade.

I had been oblivious to the entertainment developments in the land of my birth and it felt strange to hear the melancholic tales of James Dean films and his sudden death, and the new rock music of the wild Elvis Presley. In an effort to integrate myself into this odd world, I joined the high school football team. My slender build was unsuitable for tackling and being tackled. In one practice game, I caught the passed ball and was running when a bunch from the opposite team tackled me. They pounced upon me, one after another, until my brain received a concussion. The impact jarred me for days and I never returned to this brutal “sport,” which is really a training exercise for future soldier-conquistadores. Gerald Ford, for example, was a popular football player. His football skills and military history played a significant part of his political campaign for the presidency.

Mother taught me to drive her car. As I turned 16, I took and passed the drivers exam. That was my one achievement before mother decided to return to her husband. We had only been a “family” for a few weeks but she missed her youngest son too much to stick it out. At the time, I did not relate to her loss as much as I did to my own perceived needs. I felt a disdain for Norma, even contempt, for her weakness and lack of resolve. Jim and I had just begun to get to know each other and were still in the stage of finding our own identities and rank order. The break-up resulted in his returning to the step-father he hated. Jim had a temper and was a scrapper. Even as a young boy, he had challenged John for hitting his mother. John convinced Norma that it was to everyone’s benefit to send Jim away to a private school: “To teach him discipline.” Not long after arriving at the military academy in tears, he was raped by several of the “inmates”. Jim never got over the pain of humiliation and impotence. At 14, he was strong enough that John never dared to lay a hand on him or his mother again.

Upon reentering Midwest City High School, I stuck to activities I was good at: chess and tennis. Although I felt left out by most students, and did want to be popular, I could not stand the popular ones: bubble-gum smacking, chauvinistic and obnoxious braggarts. Seen as a recluse, and perhaps a bit of a “sissy”, I had to beat up a “tough” kid once, in order to be held with a bit of respect. Stupid, isn’t it?

I did try joining with the mainstream once. Someone asked me to join the Demolays, the youth group of the Establishment men’s secret society of Masons (stemming from Middle Ages Free masonaries, a secret society of skilled stonemasons). I attended only one meeting. I was thoroughly turned off by the mumbo jumbo secret passwords and blind codes of honor and obedience.

I did better at my school lessons than in becoming popular. I earned mostly A and B grades, mainly because studying through correspondence taught me to be a disciplined student. I joined the high school newspaper, “Bomber Beam”, named after the football team and military might. Looking over my archive copies of the newspaper, I see that I tried to integrate myself by writing about football games and visiting military recruiters. I even wrote a bit for the city’s daily newspaper, “Midwest City Leader”. Reading these articles now, I can see the editors were not demanding ones.

Another way of trying to be popular was to have a motor vehicle, so I took a part-time job as a shoe-shine boy in a barber shop when my father was away on a military assignment. I earned enough to buy a used motor scooter. I distinctly recall driving in a suburban neighborhood when I saw a little girl standing on her lawn by the street. I stopped to say hello and we chatted before her mother came stalking out the front door to admonish her daughter.

“I have told you never to talk to strangers, NEVER. Do you hear me?”

I drove off feeling a chill of estrangement. How horrible it feels that people are made to feel afraid of what harm strangers could do to their children.

When my father returned from his assignment, he was angry that I was shinning shoes. This was not work suited for whites. This was “colored work”. I don’t believe he said this in a racist manner, rather as a “matter of fact”. This work was “beneath” the dignity of his son. He forced me to stop. I got a job as a package boy again, this time at the largest supermarket, Safeway. Here, I learned more about alienation of an economic nature, though without understanding its alienating causes. I somehow felt it justifiable to occasionally take coins from the cash register.

In my second school semester, I started writing editorials, and this led me to contemplate about why we humans act as we do, why we fill ourselves and our conversations with clichés and our lives with inanities.

A neighbor boy, two years my elder, had worked the previous summer at a large forest under the jurisdiction of the federal government. He was to return and asked me if I wanted to come along. One had to be 18, and I was only 16, but he said I could lie on the application. I took the chance. It was a long bus ride to northern Idaho, to the beautiful great northwest country. I took a room in the little logging town closest to the national forest. I applied and was accepted for the brush crew, those who clear the earth from foliage, in order to prevent brush fires. We slept in log cabins on bunk beds and got up early. It was hard work and we ate like lions. Our early morning breakfasts included as many eggs and bacon, or even steak, as we wished, with potatoes, pancakes, fruit, juice, milk and coffee. I was smaller than most of the men and the youngest of the lot, but I had the energy and sinewy strength to keep up. And I was too young to spend my good earnings on drinking bouts, so the foreman offered me a promotion after a month on the job. He needed a lookout tower man, those who keep watch for fires. It was a job of responsibility with greater pay. I was pleased. But before I could start, paperwork had to be sent to the federal government. That was my first time coming into conflict with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the famous and infamous FBI. They had to check to see if applicants were “subversive” or criminal, or old enough. It was here that they learned I was l8 months under aged. When my foreman received this information, I had to be fired.

My father was away on another military mission, and I didn’t want to return home “a failure”, so I hitch-hiked across the country to Ohio to visit my grandfather. It was still reasonably safe to hitch-hike in 1956, but I had to stand many hours in the rain with my thumb out. I got rides mostly from truck drivers, who used hitch-hikers to keep them awake. One such ride scared me to death. This trucker asked me to take over the wheel after he’d driven a while. It was late at night and he was dead tired. I told him I had no idea how to drive this huge truck with so many gears. He quickly showed me how to shift gears and insisted I take over. I tried, but was too scared. I pulled over and left his truck. I eventually arrived in Ohio.

I was flat broke and Pap got me a job at the raincoat factory where he worked. My grandfather worked a hard eight-hour assembly line job and received the minimum wage, $1 an hour. I got the same wage. This seemed unjust to me, a boy of 16 earning the same as his grandfather of retirement age. I worked alongside my grandfather for a few weeks and had many a good laugh with him. It was the last time I saw Pap and my grandmother Eva. They both died not long thereafter.

I had earned enough money to take a bus to New Jersey to see my brother Jim and my mother. Jim and I got along better this time. I was cool with mother, who was full of remorse. The last time I saw my step-father was at his vacuum-cleaner store in New Jersey. He always had policemen drop in for a whiskey in the back. He bragged that in a wide radius of the state’s cities, he never got a traffic ticket because he had policemen friends. They even gave him a business card so that policemen who did stop him for traffic violations would recognize him as “a special friend.” John was also known for being in the same Spatola family that sported Mafia figures. Cops respected him for that.

John boasted about how he sometimes “stooped” women as “payment” for fixing their cleaners. He had the audacity to tell this to his wife’s oldest son. Moreover, he said that he sometimes told women that their cleaners needed new parts when they were simply clogged up. If they couldn’t pay, he would offer to “stoop” them for the fee. These women were poor and most often black.

My stomach churned bile as I listened to this asshole. I also felt contempt for my mother for sinking to such opportunistic levels, living with a man she despised or ought to despise. I saw that my mother’s decision to leave “our family” because she wouldn’t be without her youngest son held only part of the truth. She didn’t want to give up the material comforts her corrupt husband could provide her.

I now believe that my personal disappointment over my mother's lack of true family values, her weakness for material wealth, influenced me to hold wealth at a distance. My negative feelings about my mother’s weakness, her sinking to solace in religion, also influenced my distrust in religion. My father never spoke about religion. I believe he was agnostic. Jean believed in god and church but rarely attended church. She tried to get me to attend but I usually refused or pretended to go whilst I played “hooky”. Once, Jean went to church with me and a girl I was keen on. An evangelical preacher conducted a captivating delivery. I sought connection with my step-mother and the pretty girl, and I became somewhat mesmerized by the preacher. I stepped forward to take communion. With the “blood” of Jesus in my mouth, I cried to be “saved”. When we exited the church, I was bubbling over. Soon, however, I “woke up”, feeling that I had cheated myself, that I had lost control of myself. I sensed the duplicity of the church and in myself for wishing to be “saved”. I did not return to the opiate institution.

We senior students were required to take an intelligence test. The adult responsible would not tell us our score but she indicated in which areas we were more or less capable. The woman clearly did not want to disillusion me but she hinted that I had large holes in my intelligence. My ability to abstractly understand intangibles was (is) severely limited, as are my mechanical and electrical skill capabilities. These limitations were no small barriers in the practical world. The one area that saved me from retardation was my ability with words.

Soon thereafter, my father and I were listening to the radio in the autumn of 1956, as political events in Hungary were exploding. There were different fractions contending for political direction. Soviet Union’s power was in question. The United States was backing the “liberal” “democratic” fraction and the CIA financed the “uproar against communism.” Political power passed from the pro-Comecon Rákosi to the more pro-Western Nagy, who asked the UN to help his country get the Soviets out of Hungary. Russian troops trudged triumphantly across Hungary’s borders. Battles occurred on November 4 and in a week the Soviet troops had crushed the opposition. János Kádár took over, and the US government rattled its swords. When my father and I heard of this “poppycock”—a favorite expression of my father’s—I proclaimed that I’d join the military to fight communism. My father was proud of this decision. As I was only 17, my father had to sign a waiver for me to leave school and enter the military.

The last editorial I wrote for the “Bomber Beam” seems quite prophetic upon reflection. For the November 13 edition, just three days after “the defeat of the democratic forces,” I wrote about the meaning of Armistice Day.
“In 1938, the Congress of the United States made Armistice Day a legal holiday (after) the treaty of peace was signed between the Allies and Germany on November 11, 1918...

“On this day, we should stop and give reverence to the dead on both sides, for they were fighting for what they believed in also. Don’t curse the dead enemies, for our enemy is someone else’s hero.”

END CHAPTER

1. “Americans” is the common word used for people who come from the United States of America. However, both inhabitants of both American continents´ are “Americans” America was given that name because an Italian merchant-explorer, Vespucci Amerigo, explored Brazil and other areas of the new world a decade after the first explorer, Christopher Columbus, “discovered” America. In 1492, Columbus landed at the Caribbean island now known as the Dominican Republic. He thought he’d come to India, and therefore called the hospitable natives “Indians.” Though Italian, Columbus was in the service of Spain and not as much in favor by many European powers as was Vespucci. He became popular after his travel letters were published in 1507. So Amerigo´s name was Europa’s ruling classes’ designation for all the Americas. Just for the record, Brazil is formally The United States of Brazil, and Mexico is the United States of Mexico. Many “Americans” wish to give the impression that they are the only Americans, at least those who most count. And many of these”Americans” are proud to be known as ”Yankees”. Originally, Yankee referred to those living in the North during the liberation-colonial war and afterwards. Later, those in the south were “Confederates,” because many preferred a confederate type of government rather than a federal national structure. After the Civil War, with the federal structure implanted to favor the industrialization of the entire nation, Yankees became the term many foreigners, especially in the rest of America, used for the ”Manifest Destiny” Americanization of their economies and society. Yankees became a dirty word, referring to the imperial government and soldiers, and civilians, who identify with this manifest destiny. Despite my objection to referring to those living in the United States as “Americans”, thereby implying that all other Americans are something else, I will succumb to referring to US Americans as Americans. It is the common usage and, thus, expedient.

2. These figures come from 1968 data from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, Banco Central and Instituto Brasileiro do Café, and from a 1962 report of the Federal Trade Commission.

3. See the overthrowing of democratically elected popular governments of Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Panama, Ecuador, Chile, Guyana, Granada, the Congo, Indonesia, Southeast Asia—the list is long.
________________________________________

Chapter Three
Air Force: 1956-1960

A decade after the black boy was shot, an incident I had long forgotten, I joined the United States Air Force to fight for freedom. But I nearly did not make muster. Before being accepted into the military, everyone must take tests to ascertain intelligence and capabilities. It is possible to be so ignorant or retarded that one is rejected. After I took the five tests, I was called in for an interview. An airwoman held the scores before her. “I have never seen such a poor score on the mechanical test: 01. That is the lowest possible score.”

I blushed.

“And your electronics score is also subnormal: 25.” “However,” she continued, “you came just over the line because of the other three tests: 60 on the general, 85 for radio operation, and 90 for administration, which shows writing ability. And to your credit, you have an honor background from high school. So, we can accept you.”

I was now a basic airman with serial number AF18522596. I was sent for basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, near San Antonio, Texas. I was to learn how to conduct myself as a proud American. I was assigned to flight 1463. We were forty young men under the lead of training instructor (TI), airman second class Arlington. I volunteered for any duty, striving to prove myself to my fellow recruits, the TI, and especially to my father. The training instructor chose me to be the barrack’s scribe, and I soon became the squad’s flight guide as well, setting marching pace under the TI’s beady eye. I kept my bunk bedcovers tight, my locker in neat order, my shoes shinning spick and span.

As bivouac training neared, MR. Arlington informed me personally that our flight would start last in the company of four flights and it was our duty to come in first. He placed confidence in me to set a quick pace and find the right moment to maneuver around the flights in front of us. While I was zealous to perform, I was not the only young proud American setting out on bivouac that day. When I quickened step, the others in my flight tried to follow. Though most fell in, others stumbled. The TI scolded their clumsiness, which I took as an indirect praise of my quick and steady steps.

Encouraged, I concentrated on the flight we neared, glancing about for the right moment to pass them up. The last line of recruits just ahead zig-zagged in front of me and broke line. They were not playing by the rules and this angered me. I swung around the last row in front of me and “my” men followed. The recruits in the other flight sought to out-maneuver us and our formations broke up. I heard several TIs shouting something, but I did not hear their message, or I ignored them. Now in a trot, I saw a large man with several stripes on his sleeves standing directly ahead of me. He roared at us to stop. I could not. It was my duty to come in first. There were men running all about me now, and he was a big man. I increased speed, thinking he’d move. He did not. I ran smack into him, toppling him. All was amok. Only fear prevented chaos.

The man I had run down was the top sergeant, over all the TIs. The company was called to attention. The sergeant boomed at us. He demanded that the culprit or culprits reveal themselves. Who was responsible for this mess? I guess I thought my TI would say something, but he did not, so it must be my responsibility to speak out. We are responsible for our actions, my father stressed. I had often heard about our first president and how he had come forth to admit that it was he who had chopped down the cherry tree. “George Washington was an honest boy and became our first president.”

I raised my hand above the heads of hundreds of young recruits. The sergeant roared for me to come forward. My TI stood beside him and confirmed that I was his flight guide, though he did not tell the top sergeant what he had told me. I said in my defense that I tried to pass the flight in front of me in the interest of competition for first place. Whether or not the first sergeant saw the point of free competition, he ordered me under a sort of house arrest. I was to join in all the bivouac activities and when we returned in four days to our barracks, I was to report to him for punishment.

I performed the bivouac tasks well enough though with a lump in my throat. My TI was very angry with me and removed me from the privileges of scribe and guide. When we returned to our base, the top sergeant ordered me to dig a big hole by my barracks. When I was finished, he ordered me to dig deeper. Then he ordered me to fill the hole back up. I got very little sleep that night and never regained my earlier status as a model airman.

When basic training ended, I was sent to Keesler AF base, at Biloxi, Mississippi, for radar training. I would learn to track aircraft and prevent the enemy from flying over our territories. I was existed. Soon, I would be put to use for the upcoming attack against the communists. But, as so much in military life, I must wait. I was placed on permanent KP (kitchen patrol) until the class began. This seemed unnecessarily strict to me—KP was long hard hours of heavy and dirty work. One morning, after my first night away from the base in two weeks, I was violently awakened before dawn. The intruder ordered me out of bed for KP duty. My head pounded from a groggy. I informed him that I had received relief from KP duty yesterday as I was to begin school after the weekend. No matter: up and at `em. As we were marched in darkness towards the kitchen, a cohort and I stuck off. We had had enough. We spent the day playing like kids. In the afternoon, we were discovered and taken to the school director. Captain Ervin Glenn reprimanded us for being AWOL: absent without leave or “dereliction of duty.” We would begin class but upon graduation our first stripe would be denied us for at least six months. The commander would not hear of the conflict between promises and expediency. In the military, one is required to obey orders, no matter the reasoning or lack of such.

Radar operator training was interesting enough. I learned how to spot aircraft and track their flight patterns on the radar screen. Radar operators read aircraft position, direction and speed, over a headset to “plotters” standing behind a large plexi-glass board erected below the radar apparatuses. Plotters wrote backwards so that officers, standing on a dias behind the radar equipment, could see where aircraft were located and in which direction they were headed. If the officers judged something amiss, they were to order action, which could be scrambling jets to intercept aircraft that did not belong in the area. The jets could also be ordered to shoot down intruders.

In my spare time, I took and passed a general educational development test for high school level and soon received a diploma from Midwest City High School. I played poker and tennis. I made the base team and played in competition, both singles and doubles. My partner was a black man. On the one occasion we went to the town nearest base, we were chased away from entering a bar. I reported this to military authorities and was told that it was not our concern what went on in town. In the future, we should keep ourselves to the base. The lesson: Don’t stir American tradition, regardless of its racist immorality.

Japan Duty

Upon graduation from radar training, I received orders to a radar site in Japan. At that time, April1957, Japan was still under American occupation. During my leave, my father told me not to expect to be sent to Europe to fight the commies, because US politicians were too spineless. In Bob’s view, now that General Dwight D. Eisenhower was president he, like all other politicians, succumbed to diplomacy (read: “soft on communism”). Bob’s hero was General Curtis Lemay, commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). If he had ultimate power there would be war against all the communists until the last was killed or surrendered.

I’ll skip some years here to mention that the mad atomic bomber general in Peter Seelers movie, Dr. Strangelove, was fashioned after General Lemay. It should be remembered that at the end of President Eisenhower’s term of office, he spoke of the need to be wary of the “all too-powerful military-industrial complex”. Gen. Lemay, the Pentagon chiefs generally, and corporate America did not appreciate this honesty. And many more did not appreciate what Eisenhower later wrote in his autobiography of the “need” for warring against Vietnam. Eisenhower’s logic was based on the intelligence estimate that if the US had “allowed” free elections in Vietnam, 80% of the people throughout the separated nation would have voted for the popular Communists and their leader, Ho Chi Minh. Neither Eisenhower nor other American Dreamers could allow that, not even for the sake of democracy.

I had to change planes three times to cross the United States from Mississippi and over the Pacific Ocean to Tokyo, some 10,000 kilometers. It was an arduous and exciting trip. A long bus ride around the gigantic city, then over bumpy country roads, and up a mountain dirt road, led to my new home, Site 4, 611th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron. Approaching the guarded gate, a sign read: “Photographing of installation equipment beyond this point is Forbidden by order of the commander.”

From top of Mineokyama mountain, we had a magnificent view of Japan’s highest mountain, Fujiyama: 8,125 meters. It seemed as though the mountain’s snow glistened over the Sea of Japan and down upon the fresh blooming white cherry blossoms shinning before me. The USSR’s east coast was just across the sea behind Mt. Fuji. We were only a few hundred kilometers from Peter the Great Bay at Vladivostok. We felt consciously close to our enemy.

At the Quonset hut headquarters I was assigned to a barracks where about 20 white men were quartered. We slept in two-tiered, steel-framed bunk beds. A Japanese man was our “houseboy”. We had the privilege of having a defeated native clean up after us. Across the way was the mess hall where we ate American and some Japanese chow. Behind this building was the black barrack. The commander, Mayor Harold Hopkins, honored southern traditions. Though we worked side by side for the democratic model of the world, white and black GIs lived segregated.

Before starting my first shift—we rotated three eight-hour shifts each week—an officer instructed us new radar operators about our mission: vigilance and control over the skies. If we detected enemy intrusion over “our” territory, we must coordinate air attacks against their aircraft.

Normal operation dealt with keeping our military planes, and commercial aircraft, from crashing into one another. Inside the dark radar hall, we scrutinized the electronic devices and chalked flight patterns on the plexi-glass screen. It was a constant strain on the eyes and wrists. We sat at the scope an hour at a time. After a short break, we took up plotting for another hour.

After a four-day shift, we had from one to three days free. In my free time, I took walks on the Mineokyama mountain top through the numerous pine trees. Looking at photos of that period, which have been kept in boxes for nearly half-a-century, I can see a likeness to my thin frame and face, and bushy crew-cut hair.

Veteran barrack mates prepped me for my first night on the town. “You can drink the strong Japanese whisky and biting beer, and fuck all the good pussy you want. It’s all cheap.” They also warned me to keep with the other GIs. “Don’t wander off alone and stay away from the off limits Red district. There are commies about.” It had been a long time since I had had sex, and I was eager.

We had to obtain a pass from the sergeants in charge of our shifts. We were transported by bus to the nearest town, Awakamogawa, 20 kilometers from Site 4. The bus ride took us alongside numerous rice paddies, small water fields where men ploughed through mud. One managed the plow while another led an ox drawing the wooden plough. Behind the fields stood straw-thatched, small huts. These were the workers´ simple homes.

Awakamogawa was a small town. A handful of us walked along narrow dirt streets lined with small shops and wooden houses. Some had tiled roofs and wooden balconies. There were few cars and many bicycles. We stopped at one of the GIs haunts, Bar Loge. The women dressed in pretty kimonos or tight-fitting, colorfully-patterned dresses, which covered their tiny bodies from neck to ankles. The Japanese bartender served me whisky, which I downed quickly to take off the edge of excitement. He chattered with the women. Girls giggled as they watched my face twist at the taste of strong alcohol.

I entered the WC to pee and was surprised to see a woman sitting over a toilet bowl. She laughed at seeing my face. She told me, in broken English, that this was a unisex bathroom, and she offered me a trick.

She led me to a room which contained little more than a narrow bed with a hard mattress. She sucked my penis hard and then guided me into her. This was my first experience with fellatio and the best sex I had had since Brazil. I would become a fast customer at Bar Loge.

I volunteered on the small staff of the base newsletter, Radar Echoes. I was readily accepted since I could use a typewriter, and I learned to churn out the sheets on the mimeograph machine. I also received my first stripe, and sewed my airman third class emblem on my uniforms. I earned a commendation certificate for instruction in code of conduct and weapons familiarization firing.

I was proud, yet there were things nagging me. The authoritarian manner of conducting our work, the constant ordering about, the intolerance to dialogue, and the weekly Friday “intelligence” briefings were all too boring and condescending, hypocritical as well. Do as I say not as I do. One set of rules for us and another for “them.” The “intelligence” officer ranted on about the evils of communism in such a fundamentalist frenzy that its impact fell by my wayside.

“The commies are evil, atheist liars who can’t be trusted to keep international agreements,” we were told. That must be the reason, I thought, why we violated those treaties. We sent two reconnaissance aircraft from our military bases in Japan over Soviet skies each day. These RB50s were but two spy planes the US reconnoitered to which I was aware. Additional US sites were responsible for sending other spy aircraft. It was the logic of: attack first before being attacked, a preventive war. During the year I was stationed in Japan, I never saw or heard of any intruding Soviet aircraft. Moreover, the Soviets did not shoot at our spy planes, not until after my tour of duty when they shot down the U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Powers, on Mayday 1960.This was the first time that the Soviets decided to shoot down a US spy aircraft. They did so in order to embarrass the United States and let it be known that Russia also had the technology and determination to defend itself.

I also felt ill at ease with the base segregation and put-down language white airmen routinely used against black GIs and the Japanese people. But I wasn’t yet a dissident and I sought acceptance. So I took to town with the entire barracks one day “to show the commies” what stuff Americans are made of. The leading clique decided to invade the off limits part of town, where our houseboy lived.

We were a dozen white men in civilian clothes marching down the main street and into the Red district. We boldly shouted Yankee chants and songs. A rock or two were thrown at some possible symbol of subversion. One window was smashed. Then we arrived at our houseboy’s home. He was surprised to see but only smiled, and he welcomed us to his humble home as we guffawed. His wife made us tea and we soon departed. Word of our forbidden adventure circulated the base and the commander called us into his office. He chastised us but did not punish us. After all, our infraction was conducted out of a sense of patriotism.

I earned a three-day pass into Tokyo. I was awed by its architecture, the bright lights and the multitudes. I entered a modern bar. A tall woman in makeup and western dress engaged me in conversation. She spoke intelligently in good English. She was also a prostitute and invited me upstairs. We began to kiss and pet. I groped between her legs, and suddenly pulled back my hand and dashed out the door. “I thought you knew I was a transvestite,” she-he called out.

Back at the base, I resumed visiting the local. I latched on to one of the haunt’s prostitutes, nick-named Dynamite. She gave complete fellatio, which thrilled me so much we spent a lot of time together. And we did more than fuck. We went swimming, took hikes, and once we rode a bus to Futomi, a small fishing village. The thatched houses were crammed together in rows near the sandy beachfront where small fishing crafts anchored. A group of boys stood on a sea wall fishing with canes. They were dressed in school uniforms with shower clogs for footwear. I see, in another photo, that I am squatting beside a stone Buddha, half my height. A photo of Keico (Dynamite) and me in bathing suits indicates we shared dark hair and skin color, but her nose is broader than my rather long narrow prominence.

It was Keico, and a studious Asian-American airman first class, who introduced me to her country’s history and Keico’s own “fall”. When the United States military occupied Japan, it made whores of many of the needy women.

My eyes were opened to new information kept from me by our military. I, of course, knew there had been atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--which were off limits to us--but I had no idea of the extent of wanton destruction, and the fact that vital information about the wasting disease that follows radiation contact was kept from Japanese doctors. For several months following the bombings, hundreds died excruciating deaths in hospitals every day, yet the US denied there was any atomic radiation. Some 200,000 people, mostly civilians, died directly from these two nuclear attacks. Hundreds of thousands more died in the coming years from the radiation and other hundreds of thousands suffered pain while alive. In March, even before the atomic bombings, General Lemay’s B-29s flew firebombing raids over Tokyo. They killed over 100,000 civilians. Japan’s emperor’s residence was off limits to attack. Over 20 square kilometers of city were burned to ashes; 265,171 buildings destroyed. Years later, I came across the figures of destruction and read of the terrible suffering the people experienced.

The Australian war correspondent Wilfred Burchett was the only western journalist to enter Hiroshima and wrote on-the-spot observations just one month after the bombing of Hiroshima. His dispatch to the London Daily Express (September 6, 1945), “The Atomic Plague”, is recorded in his memoirs, At the Barricades.

This new information from Keico, and my own experiences, led to frustration which I needed to act out. I made my first attempt to write a short story. It was a metaphor of hell at Radar Site 4. I portrayed sergeants and officers as devils lording over us enlisted men with lashes, forcing us to fight “the enemy”, who did us no harm.

I hung my story on the central bulletin board in front of headquarters. Later that day, it was taken down and I was called into the commander’s office. He reprimanded me angrily and set me to several days of KP. My stripe was stripped from me again.

If I were a believer in “fate”, I could have expected what occurred to me soon thereafter.

One night as I walked out of Bar Loge, staggering from drink and fornication, an older Japanese man stood before me. He shouted at me angrily in his tongue. Before I could understand his wrath, he had thrown me on the ground with quick hand and foot jabs and stormed away. I later learned that he was wrought with despair at the immoral Yankee domination over his land and his women. I was not yet prepared, however, to give up the greedy pleasures of that immorality, but I endeavored to balance fairness with injustice. And I was curious.

It was unjust to prostitute people, but since it existed and was institutionalized, despite any theoretical objection I might have, it was also unfair to discriminate among the underdogs. There was an unwritten code among white GIs that the bars in “our town” be segregated: bars and Japanese women for white GIs, others for black GIs. We not only took over the Japanese’s country, imposed our own constitution and laws, but we also insisted that they accept our racism.

I took to town in the late winter of 1958 and headed for a “black” bar. Heads turned toward me as I entered the packed room, however no one looked at or spoke to me aggressively as I ordered a drink. Black GIs engaged me in conversation and we drank together friendlily. There was more dancing here, a more lively atmosphere. I had sex with one of the women and rode the last bus back with the black airmen.

It snowed on our mountain the next day. When I returned to the barracks from my shift, several roommates grabbed and carried me outside and dunked my head in the snow. As I nearly suffocated, they shouted, “This will teach you to keep away from the nigger bars and the nigger women.”
From that day on, I was a marked man, and I was scared and ashamed. I could not fight them. They were many, and most were bigger and stronger than me. Nevertheless, I could not relent else I could not live with myself. My act of “integration” was morally just. I would not be immoral, at least not entirely.

After my act of defiance, black GIs looked at me differently than they did most other whites. One day a young black GI walked to the front steps of my barracks. I was lying on my bunk when I heard him call my name from the porch. Two men inside the barracks rushed out the door and pushed him off the steps. “NO NIGGERS ALLOWED. Keep to your own, nappy head,” they shouted. I saw his face before he turned away. He was seething.

Then the agitated whites turned on me. They threw me up against a bunk bed. While some held me, one went after an aerosol can filled with DDT insecticide. They all wore their favorite headgear.: baseball caps with KKK emblazoned on the visor. They sometimes even strutted about the base in uniform with these out-of-uniform hats. No superiors saw fit to stop this.

Now the KKK ritual began. They stripped me naked and took the mattress off the steel bunk bed. They trussed me onto the steel-spring bottom. Each of my limbs was pinned down by a man. The biggest man, a broad-chested Floridian, who often bragged about the alligators he had bare-handedly killed, took the DDT can. With a mocking, vengeful grin, he taunted me for being a “nigger lover”. Then he pressed his finger on the nozzle and struck his snappy Zippo lighter to the gaseous spray. I can see him standing over me now, his olive white face with large lips jeering down at me. The flame burned my black hairs and my groin. As I squirmed under the torch, the Arian Airmen held onto my ankles and wrists harder.

“We warned you last time you went to the niggers´ bar that you’d really get it if you kept up with these niggers. You little pussy, you’re not fit to be in the same barracks with white men,” shouted the alligator-eater.

As I lay there scorched and scared, the brave, honorable white men whopped tumultuously. The entire barracks participated, except two easterners. They kept quietly to themselves at the far end of the barracks.

That night I lay awake a long time feeling quite alone. One of the easterners spoke to me timidly, saying only that he was sorry for what had happened to me. I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, complain to “superiors” about this event and thus I had to live in that barracks for the remainder of my tour. During those two months, I counted the days.

I would like to say that I continued to defy the white man’s code, but I do not recall returning to the “black bar.” One black GI offered me consolation and recommended that I keep away from “their” bar for my own sake.

Around that time, I heard the name of Lenin for the first time in my life. I believe it was the Asian-American airman who suggested I read a book of Lenin’s, “Left-wing Infantile Disorder.” I never have figured out why he suggested I read Lenin, especially that book. But by now I was open for rebellion. There was no way to find such literature here so I wrote to my mother and asked her to find a copy and send it to me. It took the rest of my tour at Site 4 for the book to arrive. Mother wrote that she had searched high and low for this rare book. Finally, a used book collector secured one for her. I did not understand one word of that thin didactic book. Later on, I came to realize that the essence of Lenin’s critique of the extreme left, that of being motivated by “infantile” emotion and adventurous tactics, speaks to my “weak” side.

As my tour was up, I was given back my airman third-class stripe as a parting gesture.

Oklahoma and Discharge

My next assignment request was a radar side next to Tinker Air Force Base where my father was stationed. I wanted to be close to family and to see my kid brother, who was on his first visit to our father since the divorce. He had ear trouble and needed an operation, which would have been expensive if mother had to pay for it. Father’s military health insurance covered Jim’s operation at the military base.

I had a month’s leave before beginning my new assignment. Jim and I became reaquainted. He vowed that he would join the Air Force next year to show father that he was a good man too. Jim had healed from his operation and it was time for him to return east to mother. Our father took a leave and drove the family to St. Louis, Missouri to see the highly reputed Zoo. In a couple of days, Jim was put on a flight east.

I wanted to walk about the immense city alone. In the evening, I found myself walking across the “line” into East St. Louis. There were fewer street lights here and mostly run-down buildings. Suddenly, a police patrol car stopped beside me.

“Good evening, airman,” the driver greeted at seeing my uniform. He asked what I was doing here. I was surprised by the question and replied that I was on leave sight-seeing.

“There are better sights to see on the other side of St. Louis. This is nigger town and you are not safe here,” he friendily “warned” me.

I was speechless. He offered to drive me to the other side. Somehow, I felt I could not refuse. I knew no one here and felt suddenly threatened. To my shame, I let myself into the patrol car, the only time I accepted a ride in a cop vehicle. We drove to white safety.

I rode back with my family to their suburban home in Midwest City, Oklahoma, and reported for duty. My new living quarters were quite modern. We lived in regular buildings and each had a room to himself. And there was no racial discrimination here, at least not in the residences. The base also contained waves: airwomen. They had their own building. Some waves wished to start a softball team but they had no coach. Here, I saw my chance to get close to the opposite sex and volunteered to be their coach.

My step-mother’s father had just retired from his job at Nabisco food company. The administrators gave him the traditional “gold watch” for his loyal life-long work. Mr. Flint no longer had need of his car, a well-kept Mercury, and he generously gave it to me. With a car, I thought it would be easy to pick up American women. Nevertheless, I never scored with a wave. It might have been because I broke one of their noses.

During one of our practices, I was pitching the ball from home plate to the players in the infield and the outfield. I whipped a ball sharply at the third base player, who was not alert enough and the large ball smashed into her nose. She bled profusely. We carried her to my car and I drove to the nearest hospital. She got patched up but her nose was crooked and I felt guilty. The women no longer thought so well of me. So I started driving into the capital, Oklahoma City, and drank in bars. I too