The Boys From Carondelet

By Steve Erdmann

Stream-of-conscious memoirs of his personal life.

Another version of this article can be seen at

The Boys from Carondelet

https://wordpresscom507.wordpress.com/2020/06/07/

PROLOGUE

No doubt those who stumbled upon this autobiography will find it difficult to decipher or even work with as it is more of less constructed as a ‘steam-of-consciousness’ type narrative. This is not a strict scientific document (said for the sake of my ‘purist’ friends), but my own, private thoughts and romantic outlook and philosophies.  But, even then, there is a lot of truth in these pages; I guess I speak that as a modernist-humanitarian of exotic expressionism and renaissance-growing.

THIS IS ALSO PARTLY AN UPDATED VERSION OF A LETTER SENT TO MORIARTY WILD (NOT THE REAL NAME) DATED SEPTEMBER 26, 2008: there have been continuous revisions since then (and probably does not resemble the original letter); Please look for the latest update.

Many (wide and radical?) revisions and changes will come about over the next months and years. Some identities will be disguised to protect people. This does not mean it is an untrue account, just a disguised account much like the retired intelligence officer and spy, “Mr. X”, was a composite person of many sources in the intelligence community in Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, or many characters are introduced as semi-fictional to carry multiple layers of truth.

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin is somewhat like that (Delacorte Press, 2009);”A finely wrought portrait of Alice [in Wonderland] that seamlessly blends fact with fiction,” said Publishers Weekly of Alice. There is only one other character like that in this manuscript, but he is also portrayed as his real name in several instances and not his fictitious name/literary device. In only one other character is the name changed as some kind of buffer on his and his family’s identity to mute total embarrassment as to his real-life amazing claims he makes about himself and his family. Somehow, a lot of respect was held for this man and family, despite incongruous actualities and real-life events. Sadly, Mr. X will protest under some phony composite of ‘perfectionism,’ ‘anti-modernism,’ ‘historical retrogression,’ or allusion to his private quest to distort reality according to constant subjective perversion about what he feel is ‘scandal.’

Far too much ‘rambling’ has been done regarding UFO topics and participants, and I suggest heavy editing and even some deletion to make it smooth. Parts of this manuscript may be copied and pasted as separate manuscripts. It may change to widely different formats: things will be knocked around, cut, swapped, and jostled, in Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Stephen King and Raymond Chandler fashion. Incoherent parts will be rearranged (I said I would ‘ramble’) and perhaps the letter (now, looks like an article, manuscript or document) actually will be turned into a fiction story (maybe semi- autobiographical/ semi-fictional): who knows at this point? If I die in the meantime: that’s it! You’ll have to go with what I did to my End. Publish in any way that is successful and profitable. 

Stephen Charles Erdmann.    

PART I

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…….” A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens. (Chapman and Hall, London, 1859).

Chapter One – The Ghosts Arise

THE ‘ROSEBUD’ OF THE COMMON MAN

I stood there, watching the heavy snow fall and tis leafy snow-white flakes  wave and sweep back and forth through the air, covering and uncovering the trunks and branches of trees lining the property of the Evangelical Lutheran Orphanage one 1950s Winter.  It was my home for the time being. In that distant past, an eight-year-old boy looked through frosted panes of glass and into a Currier and Ives Winter landscape at 12325 Manchester Road.  I was an orphan, or precisely, as Peggy Greenwood would say, a ‘half-orphan,” at least for a few years until my mother could make adjustments, get her “act together” as some would say, for a widow and her unattended child, and if the orphanage juvenile authority deemed it proper, I could come home – back home – to a family: my Mom, my brother, my half-brother and his family, my grandparents – grandpa and grandma Bork, ,grandpa and grandma Erdmann, uncle Max Erdmann …. My cousin Betty, who last I remembered was living with my Mom on Castleman Avenue in the Shaw neighborhood of south St. Louis…

In that winter of the 50s, Washington University students had come to visit the children at “the home” (as it was often referred to). I recalled wrestling and “rough-housing” with one burly student in the west wing basement visitor’s room, almost as if he were secretly saying: “Come on fella, it’s not so bad, you’ll be okay: today we play, tomorrow the sun will come out!”

It would be a few years before I’d watch the 1941 “Orson Welles” movie Citizen Kane (I recall lying on the front room floor as a young teenager on Michigan Avenue a few years After leaving the orphanage and intently reacting to the black-and-white TV-drama presentation), but I could easily have been asking myself as I gazed out onto that long straight driveway that led to and fro to the front door of the orphanage (perhaps a little reminiscent of the yearly showing of Judy Garland’s Yellow Brick Road, The Wizard Of Oz), in the somber whispering voice of tycoon Foster Kane at the last moments of his life, those cryptic, haunting words “rosebud”.

I wondered when I saw the movie in the 50s, and I wonder now: what will be my “rosebud”? That item that Kane referred to, rosebud, at the end of his life, had connected with Kane’s unspoiled and innocent youth when he lived with impoverished parents that “sold” him to “save” him, was, of course, the sled that had been given to him by his family one long lost winter in his distant youth. But millions of ordinary people play out a real-life Foster Kane every day, in their own special way, with their own twists and turns in life. Many not as magnanimously and with as much notoriety, and certainly not the riches and wealth, as that of Foster Kane, but each with their own private and personal depth and melodrama, many never making news headlines, movie scripts, or bill boards, but all having the personal depth, feeling and even tragedy of Kane; their lives hurdling towards their own personal “Rosebud.” It is to them, myself, and people like us that this story is dedicated.

There were many memorable scenes and experiences for a lower-income child of the 40s-50s. Amazed by life, a child feels that happiness is something that comes as a natural right with an excursion through the birth canal and into the slap of external uterus life and reality outside the womb. What you may not know, or had the first-hand opportunity to perceive, is that there are millions of Dave Pelzer’s in the world – frightened, lost, and scarred (A Child Called It and The Lost Boy, 1995, Health Communications, Inc.). Likewise, Liz Murray’s personal survival from a nightmare family [the father seemed like the only person hanging onto hope] described in her autobiography Breaking Night (Hyperion Books, 2010), where “she describes the everyday life of a coked-out household where blood was spattered on the kitchen walls, on clothes, even on a loaf of Wonder Bread….” (Tara Mckelvey).

In another case, whether she had sixteen personalities or not, the psychological scarring of Shirley Ardell Mason by her schizophrenic mother, Hattie Dorsett, happens all too often (Sybil, Grand Central Publishing, April 1, 2009). And the fear in the childhood of Joan Crawford’s daughter Christina Crawford (Mommie Dearest, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1978: “I was frightened because I hated the screaming and yelling and kicking and pounding.  But I wasn’t afraid for my mother. I was afraid for myself.”). There were children struggling with their parents, for their parents and in opposition to their parents, brothers, relatives, families. Some could pick themselves up psychologically by their own mental “bootstraps,” but many got lost in the muck of life – not sure how to help themselves – grasping at the edge of the boat, trying to pull themselves back aboard, but not always succeeding. Others, unable to grasp searching and willing hands out-stretched to nab them and wrestle them back aboard, fall back into the sea of despair, flaunting and screaming about, or sink with a shock of depression and hopelessness; finally, lastly, consoled as best can be done by loved ones. All of us, oft times weakened by physical illness, disease and age, are ultimately visionless by the relativity of it all.

Vivaciously, to all humans living, existence is a nostalgic blend of all that is good and beautiful and bad when we retrospectively look back in remorse, longing and wonder. No matter how difficult, how hard, how bland parts of our lives may have been, God has given us beauty, love and hope to intertwine in the fabrics of our lives. I am reminded of the stories of Nazi holocaust survivors, stories of war victims, of people who have barely survived alive – but who came back many times over with some lovely and exotic rendition of life and who gave back something of great value to humanity in some way or some form. In the end, the awesome struggles and pleasures we all share in common – the lives of our protagonists, the ‘common man.’

Reminisces of the 1940s radio program, the 1948 motion picture, and the 1950s-60s television series The Naked City, exposed and intruded into the private struggles and tragedies of everyday citizens revealing that we all, each one of us, are larger-than-life heroes and heroines, survivors, conquerors, scandalizes, and evil or good pedestrians on the road of life. “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them,” voiced the program’s hard, stoic slogan.    

But memories and movies seem to blur together in the early life of a 1950s child; it was not the only memorable movie or even distinctive winter from that period.  There were early puppy dog pets (which bit us because we foolishly played as if we were trying to eat its food; I don’t even remember the little fellas name), small drug store pet turtles (which we carelessly killed due to childish neglect) — and the ring worm epidemic of the 50s that was being spread around in St. Louis. I received my infection while watching Black Beauty at a children’s’ matinee at the Shaw Movie Theater near Shaw Avenue and 39^th Street. I remember that distinct moment when the back of my head rolled back and forth on the cushion of the theatre seat – I can still recall something wet and slick on the cushion against my head. It was my introduction to ringworm infection. Shortly following that, it rapidly grew — discovered while my cousin Betty was ordered by her Aunt Clara (my mom) to “get him in the kitchen and clean him up!” — I had just been rolling around in the dirt, playing ‘monsters.’  As my cousin washed my hair, large clumps began to fall out: “Aunt Clara, come look at this!” I recalled Betty exclaiming.

It was officially called tinea capitis or ermatophytid.

And so began one of the continued and more frightful excursions of disappointment in my life, the lonely days during my hospital quarantine at the Children’s Medical Unit at Barnes Jewish Hospital, the smell of medical supplies, antibiotics, and the murmur, eerie whispers and solitude of the hospital late at night — the watching of my mom from my hospital window, seeing her down on the street — waiting for the bus on Kingshighway, a look of frustration over her face as she thought about her problem-riddled child. And then there were the very painful operative sessions in which the sores of infection, puss boils, had to be burst and medication put on them (these left deep indentations on the back of my upper head that were later covered over by youthful hair). There was talk and debate and worried whispers as to whether my hair would grow back. For several months I wore a “skull cap.” There was my mother telling friends about her constant praying for me. Most of my hair did slowly grow back, except for the small scarred area on the very back of my head — which could be covered by other hair and is usually mistaken now, in my old age, for male-pattern-baldness. When a teenager, with a 1950-60s pompadour and “duck butt” hair style and all, living with a more virulent body, my hair was much more profuse and could spread over the scar even more accommodative.  But it was still a bane and a personal embarrassment to me; a malediction that had somehow visited me and for my rest of my life. As a young child, it was unforgiveable.

The Shaw movie theatre at 3901 Shaw Avenue (now a confectionary/grocery store) was born in 1915, one of the hundreds of theaters that dotted St. Louis when the dawn of motion pictures was the glory of St. Louis pubescence.  In the early fifties, the Shaw had been owned by the Fran Chin and Mar Company, and was showing The House Of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello, Flash Gordon serials, as well as so many others of the 50s genus. One of the favorites that helped form the magic and wonder of my youth was the 1950 movie Harvey, starring James Stewart, and its mystical themes that helped form that spongy substance called a child’s brain.  Based on a 1944 play by Mary Chase and receiving play a 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Drama award, Harvey, both the movie and play, were noted for crisp and lively insights into human character.

 “P-O-O-K-A. Pooka. From old Celtic theology, a fairy spirit in animal form, always very large. The pooka appears here and there, now and then, to this one and that one, a benign but mischievous creature. Very fond of rum pots, crackpots and how are you Mr. Wilson?”  (Wilson reading about the definition of a pooka)   “I plan to leave. You want me to stay.  Well, an element of conflict is a very good thing. It means everybody is taking part and nobody is left out.”  (conversation of  Elwood P. Dowd at the mental sanatorium)    

Another movie that was the rave of that time and made a grand impression on this toddler’s brain and worldview was the showing of Christian Nyby’s The Thing From Another World, released April 29, 1951. My brother John took me to see the movie at the fabulous Shenandoah Theater at 2300 South Grand. From its beginning credits to the frightening ending, its ingenious use of low-tone dialog and monotone conversations in Dolby Original Mono sound (reminiscent of the conversational style used in the Jack Webb Dragnet police detective series), and the black and white filming and settings has not been matched to this day.

The Shenandoah Theater had been remodeled in 1941 by Leo. F. Abrams with a wider screen and 703 seats on the main floor and 369 seats in the balcony. It was a short distance from our house on Castleman and I recall visiting there several times, as well as the Shaw Theater.   

The beginnings for the Erdmanns and Borks in St. Louis go back earlier to Folsom Avenue (now a street cleared down to Tower Grove from a cul-de-sac behind the Children’s Hospital on Grand Avenue and Park; earlier records show that the Borks had lived at 3205a Utah Avenue), just haze and smoke of memories of that address then; I had to be a small baby. But reality became clearer and with more focus in my life at 4050 Castleman Avenue in the Shaw district of south St. Louis, not far from where grandpa and Grandma John and Marie Bork lived on Lafayette Avenue. That was long before Highway 44 was built in 1969 and there still were many homes in the area that carried that majestic Gilded Age announcement of themselves.

Grandparents Steve and Elizabeth Erdmann lived in a small home on DeMerville Road not far from Reavis Barracks and Telegraph Roads in south county Lemay, Missouri. Step-brother Ed referred to it as “the farm” because his memory goes back years before my visit there in the 50s; on his visits it probably was much more country-like, having a few farms—he remembers chickens and pigs and things and experienced far more family episodes there. I recall the Erdmanns more vividly as living on the lower floor of a duplex in St. Louis itself for a while at a Virginia Avenue home directly east of the Susan Blow Grade School at 516 Loughborough Avenue. Grandparents Erdmann moved about St. Louis somewhat, but the DeMerville home may have been their last residence; Brother Ed recalls a farm-type residence other than DeMerville.

I vacationed with them at the Virginia Avenue place, and doing their German ‘thing’, they had a chicken or two in the backyard. I had the ‘opportunity’ to watch Grandpa Steve cut the head off one of the chickens and, to my amazement, see the chicken run  around headless for a minute or so before falling dead to the ground. Grandma Erdmann would serve this great-tasting, rich soup—which I would rave about and constantly asked for—until one day; as grandma sat watching me drink the soup.

“Stevie, do you know what you are really drinking there?” she asked in that unique and characteristic Hungarian-German brogue.

“Soup! Your good soup!” I proudly described.

“Yes, yes, grandma’s good soup,” she spoke apprehensively, as she was about to make a new announcement.  She paused briefly, “But do you know what it is?”

“What, grandma, what?” I felt teased.                          

“Blood, Stevie. It is the chicken’s blood” she disclosed. I felt my world quickly make a paradigm revision before my eyes. I held the spoon in a form of suspended animation. Noticing my shock, she finished her education as she got up to disappear, having done one of her grandmotherly lessons, “But it is very good for you, full of vitamins and healthy food.  It is good medicine.”

I never ate grandmother’s special soup after that, not even when begged to.

Grandpa and grandma Erdmann could have been a great spot in my early life, but that never really happened due to friction between my mother and their family; I could never actually get a handle on it, other than the Erdmann’s always wished that my mother would have married Max Erdmann after my Dad passed-away. My Mom attempted visits with them, but it always seemed to end in a furious argument on this very topic of marriage. Somewhere around my early teen-years, we lost contact with them, Max died from a heart attack, grandpa Steve had a stroke, and I never had the sense or nerve to keep in touch with them.

Later, when in the orphanage, they did come to visit me, and got permission to take me out for a drive in the ‘machine.’ I was given a basket of fruit as a gift.  I recall driving to an open-air festival of some kind. To this day, I often wonder now how different my life would have been, and perhaps even how happier, if my Mom had gotten along much different with the Erdmann’s.

One of the more memorable sights in the Shaw neighborhood, especially as a tiny tot, was walking along Lawrence or 39^th Streets and looking up hill, East, on Shaw or Castleman Avenues and see the looming white edifice of the majestic Compton Hill Water Tower (now a historic landmark). Built on a 36-acre park during William McKinley’s Presidency in 1898 by designer Harvey Ellis, it was a big attraction at the 1904 World’s Fair. The 179-foot tower, with observation deck, camouflaged the standpipe that pumped water to the area. It was built in 1899 by George Mann. Just behind the tower was the huge walled concrete reservoir. It could hold 60 million gallons. It was built earlier in 1876 by Guy Study. Adjacent to the tower is a bronze statue of a naked woman called “The Naked Truth” (an invention of sculptor Wilhelm Wandichneider of Berlin); brewery-owner Adolphus Bush said he was shocked upon seeing the art. St. Louis had about 500,000 people at that time, and the Shaw area consisted of wealthier families of German descent. The German American Alliance did an “official” unveiling of the park on May 27, 1914.

There was one unusually hot summer afternoon I recall that my mom, Betty and I gathered up large towels and our swimming gear and headed up to that intimidating concrete edifice to cool off – apparently, the city owners had allowed the public in to the water reservoirs to ward off the heat. I recall looking down into the crowd surrounding the large basin of water and wondering if the water was shallow enough for me.

Of course, it wasn’t – there was no shallow area – and in fact my mother attempted an old German trick that some had used to teach their children to swim: drop them in the water – they’ll either sink or learn to swim. I don’t know what prompted her to experiment with me that afternoon, but it didn’t work; I immediately recognized the muffled sounds from outside the water covering my head, and the feeling of steadily sinking and choking at the same time, along with the rush of stark panic and even terror. My screams no doubt caused fellow neighbors to take attention and the ridicule of mom calling me a sissy and little baby brought about a sense of shame and derision – I wasn’t getting any comfort from any source for foiling their experiment. I wasn’t sure if I should have stayed under the water or not screamed to protect my mother’s dignity. All in all, those moments stand in my memory of the Compton Hill Reservoir Park.

The fear of being in the water emerged immediately after this incident, even to the point that I could not be in the bathtub water by myself.  My grandmother or mom tried to put me in the upstairs bathtub on Castleman, and I immediately threw a panic with screaming and yelling.  Grandfather and grandmother Bork were visiting my mom at the time, and they became involved in the mystery of my fear of water – to the extent that my grandfather stripped down naked and was willing to share the bath water with me to show that even ‘he’ was not afraid of the water and would protect me (I believe this was another old German teaching method).  I don’t recall if ‘this’ experiment was successful or not; possibly not, because I may have aborted the experiment early, persons dispersing quickly in laughter, when I exclaimed at the small crowd of mom, grandmother and one naked grandfather: “Woo, grandpa, you got a big ‘one’!”

Eventually, gradually, especially through the efforts of Health and Gym Class instructor ‘Doc Singer’ in a Cleveland High School Swim Class, was I able to partially overcome my fear of water, clamor short distances in the water, though I never could swim proficiently.          

My grandfather seemed to be home less and less with growing attendance at area hospitals until his death due to illness. After my grandfather’s death, my grandmother moved to 3636 Tennessee Avenue further south, a few blocks from Gravois and Grand Avenues and a short distance from Miami Street. I came to live with grandma and cousin Betty (Betty’s mother, my mom’s sister, Erna, died of throat cancer; my memories of Erna seem foggy, except when I look at old family photos of her, memories come flooding back. It is then that I realize how much Betty looked like her mother). I stayed with Grandma Bork and Betty for a short period, once family relations seemed more stable. As mentioned, the grandparent Erdmann’s lived on, what my Halfbrother referred to as, “the farm”, near Reavis Barracks Road, not far from Kingston and Telegraph Roads. That area was much more rural in the 40s – 50s. My mom had bought a duplex at 7910 Michigan Avenue, Carondelet, but she still spent many hours away from me working mid-town at the Forum Restaurant. I always seemed in “transit” between one location, one person, and another. Mom would come home late at night, often displaying bloody wounds from the grease spraying out of the deep-fry stoves in the Forum kitchen. Her arms and legs carried permanent burn scars.

There always seemed family tensions and feuding on the Erdmann side; and sometimes on the Bork side, but it all seemed beyond me. Grandmas were grandmas, granddads were granddads; Cousins, cousins, uncles, uncles. Brothers were brothers, divorce involved or no. They were mine and they were all I had; and I loved them.

I never knew my dad, Steve. He was removed from me when I was 10-months-old. It is my understanding he died from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage – he had been said to complain of a gastric ulcer. I will never know for sure.  There is a news clipping floating around in the family achieves (my nephew stands guard on that) headlined about a suspected Black Widow death suspect (my mom). I do recall her sitting at the kitchen table on Castleman Avenue speaking to one of her girlfriends, talking in low monotones and mysterious whispers on the topic.

I heard her say: “And then the detective took me aside and in a serious whisper asked me: ‘What did you do to him?,’” I heard my mom speaking to Emily Lux, Henrietta, next-door neighbor Mrs. Chalmers or some other girlfriend one day, sitting at the kitchen table on Castleman Avenue, “I was shocked! I said ‘whaaat?’”

Apparently, she was cleared of that suspicion. But that news item was prevented from my vision and jealously guarded. But it does not matter: I undoubtedly felt love by my father, who, by most standards, was a dashing, good-looking, photogenic German. Maybe it was the imagination of a child’s wishful thinking, but I vaguely remember being cuddled and wooed by some male presence back in my first months of life.

Like a lot of Germans in the 1930s – 1940s, Steve went to work at the An Hauser Busch Brewery as a Brew Master.  His brother, Louis Erdmann, also worked at An Hauser Brewery. Brother Max Erdmann worked at the Griesedieck Brothers Brewery. Grandpa John Bork also worked at An Hauser, after a brief stint as a carpenter (he helped repair one of the floors for a Victorian bedroom display at the St. Louis Municipal Art Museum). We were all part of the South St. Louis Germans.

In the Shaw neighborhood (extremely rich in Victorian and Gilded Age artifacts), we attended several Lutheran churches in the area; Messiah Lutheran on Grand Boulevard, directly across from the Tower Grove Park; the Mount of Olive Lutheran Church on Shaw Avenue (I recall seeing a Laurel and Hardy Christmas movie there, the March Of The Wooden Soldiers, Babes In Toyland, Hal Roach, 1934). The church was near the Shaw’s Botanical Gardens near Tower Grove Avenue and across the street from Bryan Mullanphy School at 4221 Shaw Boulevard (I began kindergarten at Bryan Mullanphy, passed through Messiah Lutheran, but finished at the Lutheran orphanage in Des Peres). The Byran Mullanphy School (named after a wealthy Mayor and Judge) was one of the many picturesque and Glided Age relics in St. Louis, designed by William B. Ittner and completed in 1941.

One of the biggest difficulties my mom had was juggling time and responsibility. If I am not mistaken, she had to work evenings at a delicate time that clashed with the schedules of school, jobs, and available caretakers. With grandparents who would speak and not feud and, again, when they wouldn’t, two brothers going to school, and then going directly to work, a niece working and living elsewhere at times, and with no day care agencies in play as they are today, my mom tried to be ‘inventive.’  These inventions eventually led to my being placed in the orphanage as some kind of official “day care.”

One system she would use was the one that got me into trouble: leaving me home alone. It was hoped that I could sleep or survive in my crib—I remember the crib railings raised as a prevention for me to roam the house—but apparently I was getting too old to be kept in the bed, I’d always climb out.  I had various ways of entertaining myself, outside of sleeping, for what seemed like hours. I’d image a tiny little chicken in a basket on a line somehow strung above my head, and an imaginary someone would pull it across the room on this line and I would study it for what seemed like forever. I probably had other daydreams to keep me busy, outside of just sleeping.

Amidst panic, loneliness, and boredom, I’d climb out and roam the house, and eventually try to escape.  One time, I was able to climb on the sink in the kitchen and reach the small window on the south wall. After pushing and playing around on the pane and frame, I noticed the window would move slightly and I could raise it up – further – further – until it was open enough for me to squeeze through and go out.  And that I did; I recall a large lump in my throat on the verge of crying and panic, and I headed out the back gate and west up the alley and into the next block alleyway – and looking ahead, I noted the backside of a lady with a long grey coat that I was sure was my mother because my mom had a coat just like that.

“Mommy!” I screamed and started running for her.  “Mommy!”

She apparently didn’t associate my screams with herself, and when I was just about up to her, she turned to see who was crying. It was not my mother; some other lady. But she turned back around quickly, momentarily pausing to contemplate the situation, and busied herself in her journey and further ignoring me. I stood there for a moment wondering what to do next. I guess I decided to continue my searching for my mom instead of going back home, and I continued on down the street – sometimes running, sometimes walking in a fervid pace, sobbing and whimpering all the while. I probably headed north on Lawrence Avenue. I don’t recall what I was wearing, or if I was in underwear or night clothes. I recall crossing a trestle many blocks from home. That might have been near Tower Grove and Park Avenues, I can’t be sure.

A family, mother, father and child, were sitting on their front porch and I could hear them murmuring amongst themselves and pointing at me as if they were gathering suspicion and puzzlement. I believe I heard the father say something like “I bet he is lost!” The father called out to me: “Son, come over here.”  They could see that I was reluctant. “You can play with my boy,” he informed me, and he motioned the boy go Inside the house and bring out some toys. They must have won my confidence as I began to play with the toys and talk with the family, answering their friendly but pointed questions: where did I live, what was my name, where was I going — why?  I don’t know how intelligently I answered their questions, but eventually a police squad car pulled up to the curb and some more of the questions continued. The officer obviously won my friendship with promises of ice cream and other things, and we headed, along, perhaps, with some of the family that rescued me (I can’t be sure if they accompanied us then or drove there later), to the police station on the corner of Magnolia and Grand Avenues.

I don’t know what kind of detective work was used, or if other information was retrieved, but eventually, after a fairly long while, through a window facing Grand Avenue, I saw my step-brother Ed (“Eddie-brother”) park his bicycle and peer into the station. I believe it was a mixed expression of amazement, disgust and a smidgen of humor that I recall on his face. I recall munching on the ice cream cone the policeman promised me.

Straddling the bicycle bar and clinging to my brother, we ventured back home going down Grand Avenue. “Boy, Stevie, wait till mom hears about this,” my brother commented. “She won’t be mad at me, will she?” I asked. The fearful comprehensions began to formulate before me.  “Well, I would imagine she would, don’t you?” he replied. My heart sunk in interposed trepidation.

I believe there was an air of mystery, somber consternation, but it seemed so polite – so introspective – as if someone had authoritatively mentioned not to scold me or discuss the subject at length in front of me – and the family was pressed to follow. Still I felt the suspicions hanging in the air as if some ghost standing about.

Therefore, the events, surrounding the matter of escaping out of the house, that followed are not clear at all.  Undoubtedly, there were big family conversations on the incident—but I don’t recall any great discipline from my mother (then, again, maybe there was, only fogged in some kind of memory avoidance; I recalled being put in the hallway closet—but this may have been a playful prank by my brothers who often teased me like this). There appeared to have been several other incidents related to and about several escape attempts from the house; enough times as to cause some grand decision-making. This eventually led to my residency at the Lutherans orphanage on Manchester Road in De Peres, Missouri.     

In the post-orphanage days, arrangements had been made for me to stay awhile with my grandmother Bork at 4646 Tennessee Avenue, a duplex she had purchased. She was renting the upstairs to help pay on her mortgage. Outside of my usual childhood tantrums, I loved living with my grandmother. Cousin Betty had come to live with her during her nursing-school days.  My mom came to visit as if a guest, much like they did on weekends when I was out at the ‘home’ on Manchester Road.  But it was definitely not the same; thiswas‘my’ home. The biggest highpoint to my staying at my grandmother Bork were the family visits and dinners for the holidays or whatever celebration the Germans deemed appropriate to be festive. German dinners were always big events, done with all the trimmings, and the ladies of the family dropping in and out in the prior week, putting on their aprons and dedicating their particular talent. But the evening before and the morning of the event was boiler-room hectic. Skippy, grandma’s dog, had been psychically alerted to the up-coming event days prior to the Big Day, and was adequately ‘on guard’, as if in some dog infantry, and attuned as the unofficial butler, madly scampering at each doorbell ring to bark and scratch at the door when guests arrived, and then pouncing on them in excited and abounding puppy love.

My grandmother Bork attended the Holy Cross Lutheran church on Miami Avenue not far from the Concordia Lutheran Publishing Concern (another German creation originating in Perry County, Missouri in 1839 and moved to St. Louis in 1849) near the late Lutheran Hospital (also an area vibrantly wealthy with turn-of-the-century relics and history) not far from the Cherokee Street shopping complex on Cherokee Street, partially running from California and Jefferson Avenues (which is now a decayed ghost town of bleak, inglorious almost desolate buildings, but was a shopping mecca back in the 40s – 60s, celebrating handsome structures such as the Casa Loma ballroom and the Cinderella Theatre as well as other bright and shinning architectural creations). Holy Cross Church was within walking distance from grandma’s Tennessee Avenue duplex. Some described it as an old German and Irish neighborhood, as evidenced by the creation of the St. Louis chapter of the American Aid Society in 1945 – later to become known as the German Cultural Society in 1969 – part of the Cherokee Street ethos at its 3652 South Jefferson address.

Grandma Bork had been complaining about an ulcer she had about her ankle; at least, during the period that I had come to live with her. She would wince in pain every so often and left her leg up to relieve the pressure on her ailment. There was a constant battle to keep our beloved pet dog, Skippy, from innocently but clumsily pawing her ankle. Grandmother had invented and would apply her own herbal concoction of a medicine on her sore: it smelled similar to turpentine, and I believe it had cloves, liniment, and other evil sounding names. Gradually, her health decreased steadily after my stay with her.

Her best friend, of course, was Skippy, her pet dog. Skippy and I came to know each other quite well. And he’d let me know I was too much of a tease with a friendly little growl, but we were best of buddies.  When she started to spend a lot of time in the hospital, grandma decided to put Skippy to sleep; she claimed it was a domestic decision and she could find no one to adopt Skippy.  I recall many a time I’d curl up to him and we would both fall sound asleep nestled to each other. When grandma had a big festive dinner with all the trimmings, and the visitors, aunts, uncles, brothers, friends, family – started coming one after the other, Skippy was wildly crazy to see them at the door, and broke all butler rules to get to the door and escort them in.   

Grandma Bork taught me many of the old ways: like keeping her front and back yard clean of weeds and “edged” with a trowel and making a bucket of bleach and  detergent, with a scrub brush, scrub  the front steps and – and – the sidewalk. Another job that grandmother gave me was cleaning her basement – I was paid a few dollars for this – but when  I say “cleaned” – it pushed the limits of the meaning of the word – amidst frequent inspections by her –  hosing down the basement, piling old wood, cleaning rafters, putting bug and mouse traps – use your imagination.

One hot afternoon, while doing the gardening on the front lawn, two young teenage girls that lived next door, several years older than me, came out to sit on their front steps and watch me.

“What’s your name?” they asked.

“Stevie,” I replied.

“Stevie; you mean Steve,” they were barely able to hide their grins and keep from laughing.

”Well, ya.” I retorted. They were about to have a lot of fun with me.

“You live there with your grandmother?”

“Yes.”

“And the Brown Cow?”

“Brown Cow?” I questioned. They stood up and pointed to Skippy in the backyard. Skippy was truly a large brown mongrel dog but nothing bovine.

“That’s Skippy!”

“Oh, he’s not a cow? We thought he was a cow.” This was said with frequent giggles. “Stevie, come up here and sit by me,”  the one girl asked me.  I marched up to her and sat next to her.

“You want a girlfriend?” she asked with a haunting pause to follow.  “You want me to be your girlfriend?”  I was at a loss for words, already noting the substantially difference in ages.

“Come on in, we’ll show you our house,” and I was escorted into their darkened apartment living room. “Do you know how to kiss, Steve?” the one girl asked. I became really embarrassed; began to fidget and blush. “I don’t know. I guess,” I replied. I believe we deliberately changed the subject because of the tension, turning to topics of what I do at home and how I keep my time, until my grandmother came out the door to see what I was doing. “It’s my grandma!” I exclaimed and quickly made way to exit. The girls said goodbye – and I don’t recall ever seeing them after that visit.

Betty was studying to be a nurse at the time and I believe she was working part-time for a hospital. She’d often come home tired and exhausted from her training. One satisfaction was grandma’s air conditioning that warded off the 50s heat waves. I recall seeing an egg being fried on the sidewalk outside the Fox Theater on the news on one of the three channels the networks had then.  She was a wonderful guardian: we visited many places about the city, she even taught me how to use a shammy cloth to shine the auto wax on her new 50s Chevy, and visits to Cherokee Street (we would drop in on her fellow nurse friends living in an upstairs apartment near Cherokee and California Streets); we’ve seemed to go everywhere. I don’t think Betty realizes how much of a parental influence I perceived her as a child; it would have been a lonely life without her and her fiancé George Banjak in my life. She helped sew up some of the tattered edges and give an air of normalcy to the choppy waves happening then. But to this date, I always suspected Betty carried an aura of ‘hurt’ – maybe even ‘resentment’ – about her, and I never could be sure why.  I only hoped it was not because of me for I loved her very much as I did so many members in my family. We both lost a parent at an early age: that much we had in common. And we both probably felt shuffled about, as well.  I recall several nights falling asleep holding Betty’s hand and the comfort and sense of security it gave me.

I remember Betty  and George’s wedding.  We spent several afternoons at Holy Cross Church rehearsing for that day. I practiced walking down the aisle. The major problem I had at the rehearsals were the shoes: they were too small, even for my youngster feet. They hurt like the bones were crunching.  Grandma found a ‘shoe spreader’ and proceeded to stretch them babies as far as she could.  But they still hurt.

On the day of the wedding, we strapped up in our rented tuxedoes. George’s Best Man was one of Betty’s old boy friends – which I believe is a tradition when possible – and we had finished the project of dressing and were standing in Grandma’s back sunroom. The Best Man, I believe his first name was Roger, turned to George and said ¨Doesn’t Stevie look like a little angel, George?”  George, under the unusual pressure and weighty solemnness of a person about to cast himself into the lake of ‘for better or worse’, thought pensively for a moment and said: “ya. He looks more like a little devil.’  Roger stopped, glanced around at me and then George, “Oh George, how can you say that?  He’s a little angel!”   George, mustered a smile, reconsidered his anxiety, “No. Stevie, you’re a real doll.”  And I was; seeing the wedding photographs later, I was a real knock-out. I often wondered how such a cute child could have turned out to be such a monster.

Later, I recall one heck of a wedding reception celebration at a basement hall near the corner of Cherokee and California streets. A lot of polka and Big Band type music.

(George Banjak was a hero of my mine all my life.  A college graduate in Business Administration, and an Army veteran, he became a Director of Hospital Administration at a major hospital in Kokomo, Indiana and later several hospitals, ending up in retirement in Asheville, North Carolina.  Betty and George have been married for over 50 years.  Later, in 2017, George confided to me on the telephone that Betty was getting symptoms of Depression.  Betty Banjak passed away in November 2018 from dementia and general conditions.  She is greatly missed.)

Cousin Betty commented at my grandmother’s funeral as we stood next to each other by the casket viewing: “Like a little duchess.” Indeed, my remembrances of grandma Bork were that she indeed was nobility. My last memory of my grandmother was in her bed at Lutheran Hospital, we had circled the room about her in complete silence. She lay very peacefully with her hands folded on her stomach; “Go say goodbye to your grandmother,” my mom whispered to me.  I crept up to the edge of the bed within viewing distance: “Grandma, goodbye,” I shyly and softly said. Her lips moved as if she was barely attempting to say something. I glanced back to my mom for approval and she nodded that I did okay. Grandma Bork died that night on August 28, 1959, a Friday, at the age of 71.

(I recall the tales my mother would tell her friends about her teenage years in American once she and the Erdmanns were established as citizens.  She described herself as quite a “flapper” – going to dance clubs and night spots with girlfriends — dressing in the latest 1920-1930 styles [including sheer, sexy nylons which my grandfather, her father, John, strictly forbade].

[Lucy Moore described a ‘flapper’ of that period in her book Anything Goes {The Overlook Press, 2010}: “Jazz was a musical revolution and the people moving to its rhythms were an entirely new breed. The girl who jumped on to a table at a Harlem nightclub and started swinging her arms wildly above her head as the Charleston played was a type of woman America had never seen before. The word ‘flapper’ described a chick desperately flapping her wings as she tried to fly, although she had not yet grown adult feathers; it had come to mean a precocious young woman whose modern appearance, attitudes, values and behavior utterly mystified her parents’ generation.”]  

“veer ver you tonight?”, his German voice boomedwith authority, “Out meit dos wide adenteuer kelinerin? Wilbelig maedchen! Ungezogen schlampe!” he thundered. “Ya? uoo gat nylon strumpfhosen, aufreizend linguee on?! Nylonstrumpfe?!”

She had been warned not to wear sexy nylons.

‘‘You want to see?!” screamed my Mom back, ‘hiking’ her leg up on a chair and raising her skirt to her waist.

It was an action she would regret deeply and emotionally for a long time: John Bork launched into a furious retaliation of discipline in which my mother barely survived!

Clara Bork (her maiden name), was a feisty, hot-tempered, seductive teenager, who immigrated with her Sister Erna and her mom and dad, John and Marie, just before Adolf Hitler took complete power of state in Germany, leading to World War II.  It was the 1930s: The Borks had seen the political warning signs in Germany and they left a bakery business and the city of Kiel to be safe from the growing threat. Grandma Bork told of proud and stately times they lived in Germany, and on her wall of the front room at her duplex on Tennessee was a photo of John Bork in what appeared to be a naval uniform; John was said to have worked aboard a German submarine in the military.

Clara, a virulently pretty German teenager with light blonde hair, and sassy beauty, was attractive to men [photos of her parents, John and Marie Bork, also show them to both be good-looking people in their early years].  Clara Erdmann often referred to herself as a Bette Davis-type personality and likened her feisty temperament to that portrayed by that actress. The late Ed Harris, a young Jewish journalist, noticed Clara scrubbing the front steps one day [a tradition for the “scrubby Dutch”] and struck up a friendship by calling her “toots”.  My mom is mentioned in Ed Harris’ autobiography Love They Neighbor [a tome which Harris had hoped to and was trying to have made into atelevision series]. Writer and columnistHarris eventually went through the trouble of locating my mom in the 50s and inviting her, me, and my step-dad out to his large West Virginia farm to visit him, his wifeand family.  I was staying with grandma Bork on Tennessee Avenue at that time and I recall that day a mysterious man telephoned making inquiries. Grandma Bork seemed genuinely afraid and suspicious of this ‘mystery call’ of a stranger trying to locate my mom.  As it turned out, all in all, it was quite a memorable event for my mom. And, as I learned as years went on, she certainly left quite an impression where ever she went; it would not be unheard of for an old boy-friend to show some longing.

I was constantly reminded of my German heritage in so many ways, not just in the artifacts that the Germans had built about St. Louis, but the odds and ends that immigrant Germans brought with them from the Old Country.  As a tot on Castleman, I’d listen to the old records my mom brought from Kiel, sandwiched in with and amongst the more modern and current 78 LP records of the 40s and 50s (some had red, some had green, and some had black labels).  Some of them I’d like to play over and over – their yearnings and searchings’ – mixed with visions of World War II, portraits of Army Air Force fighter planes, sea battlers of bellowing gun turrets – exuberant soldiers and sailors on leave – Jo Stafford’s rendition of You Belong To Me (Columbia Records, 1952: I could almost feel  the soldier’s thoughts, as he flew over a jungle, thinking of his girlfriend), Margaret Whiting’s Far Away Places, 1948, etched a compulsion within me to search exotic lands and places, “They call me a dreamer, well maybe I am…But I know that I’m burning to see…Those faraway places with strange sounding names callin’, callin’ me” (the team of Alex Kramer and soon to be wife Joan Witney wrote 180 songs and entered the U.S. Songwriters Hall Of Fame in 1982), Sentimental Journey by Doris Day (Les Brown orchestra, 1944) likewise gripped my heart and told of the era of World War II with visions of thousands of soldiers and sailors boarding trains and ships coming home), Vaughn Monroe’s Racing With The Moon (1941),there was the growingly popular Gene Autry’s Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer.  

Many of those songs seemed to have become part of my DNA and imprinted on my soul tothis day. On A Slow Boat To China, Eddy Howard. Open The Door Richard, Louis Jordan. When I think of my cousin Betty as a teenager, these songs come to mind; or even when I remember that little gold Buddha image our next-door neighborhood, Mrs. Chalmers, had on her dresser, these songs would come to mind. But this particular summer, I discovered in that stack of records and began playing over and over and over one soul-stirring, thundering, gut–wrenching march that could even could swell the chest of a toddler with passion and pride, even though I did not understand the historic nature of the anthem. It was in German, but in reality, it sang:

…….Germany, Germany above everything, about everything in the world……

When it is always for protection and defense….brother sticks together……

From the Mense to the Neman…..from the Adige to the Belt……Germany, Germany Above everything, above everything in the world…..”

It was the German National Anthem used by Nazi Germany (but originating much earlier in 1797 and 1931, before the Nazis), the Duetschland Uber Allies, also known as Deutschlandlied der Deutschen and sometimes called Horst Wessel-lied.

“Stevie!” My mother whipped around the corner from the kitchen into the front room area where I was laying belly-down listening to the anthem. “Stop playing that! Stop that now!” she shouted.  My brother John raced down from his room on the second floor:

“What’s wrong, mom?  What’s going on?” he was genuinely puzzled. I remember him standing there in his blue jeans in the short space between the kitchen and the front room.

“I’m afraid we would get into trouble if the neighbors heard us playing that!” she informed my brother, “Hitler’s Army use to play that in the war.” Despite all the war comic books and war souvenirs and paraphernalia floating around at that time, it was not apparent to me of how recent was the year 1945.  John just glanced down at me with that typical amused David and Ricky Nelson grin and smiled and said my nick-name: “Don’t be getting us into trouble now, would ja, sink-cheese?” and went back upstairs giggling. That was my beloved ‘Johnnie-brother’, as I often referred to him.

The episode ended with my whining and whimpering, leveling a salvo of questions at my Mom busying herself in the kitchen, trying to avoid me.  “Why was the song bad, mom? Mom? Mom?.”  And she tried to end the conversation with lame and edgy explanations, “It just was, Stevie”, or, “I don’t know, maybe some bad people sang it”.

Enjoyable memories visit me (especially when I presently listen to When Radio Was on local KMOK radio) of my laying before our front room radio console (which resembled or may have been a RCA k-60 console), sometimes on my stomach, sometimes on my back, and listened to the mystery and drama radio programs such as FBI In Peace And War,  starring Frederick l. Collins; The Cisco Kid (1942-1954); Inner Sanctum Mysteries (1941-1952); Gun Smoke (1952-1961); The Shadow (1931-1954); Suspense (1942-1962); not to mention many local voices such as announcer and radio personality Rex Davis on KMOK in St, Louis, or the famous voice of baseball, sportscaster Harry Carey (Harry Christopher Carabina: “Holy Cow!”). There was no better way to train a young child’s imagination than radio entertainment.  I can smell the dust of the living room rug that tweaked my nostrils as I hugged my face close to the floor, my mind in another world shelled in rabid imagination of solemn words and often dark intrigue.  

(Dr. Clay Routledge of the North Dakota State University says of nostalgia: “Nostalgia is a way for us to tap into the past experiences that we have that are quite meaningful – to remind us that our lives are worthwhile, that we are people of value, that we have good relationships, that we are happy and that life has some sense of purpose or meaning.”  Dr. Tim Wildschut of the University of South Hampton said that nostalgia is a “fundamentally humane emotion”. Linda Kennedy, director of a play based on Lynn Nottage’s Crumbs from the Table of Joy, said “we all romanticize about certain periods in our lives.”  Even Benjamin Kyle, who suffered from retro – grade or dis-associative amnesia, had this to say: “Where we came from always carries more emotional weight than where we are at now.”)

It was a first-time trip that I had prepared, somewhat slovenly, haphazardly, and far too simplistically, for some of the remaining members of my childhood German Lutheran church in Carondelet, Missouri. The trip was to the Des Peres City Hall.  But that building was at one time my home: it was at one time the German Evangelical Lutheran Orphanage at 12325 Manchester Road were I resided for 2 to 3 years in the early 1950s, when my mother was forced to place me as a half-orphan as she struggled to cope with widowhood and employment after my father died when I was 10-months-of-age.  She coped with life’s problems till I was about eight-years-of-age, when lifestyles of my teenage brothers and feuds between my grandparents and daughter and daughter-in-law made it the shortest distance between two points. To me, it was the end of the world. To me, it was abandonment. To me, it was being left on a desert island – my father left long time ago – now my mother.  No explanation to the contrary would convince me otherwise. It was the new and strange Land of Oz (and the televising of the movie The Wizard of Oz was a yearly ritual for orphans).

I still feel and recall that tight knot in my stomach – that foreboding – that small voice in my head telling me “somebody is lying to me” – as my mom and I rode on the Manchester bus out to 12325 Manchester in the 1950s – setting foot off the bus, suitcases at my side – looking down what appeared to my small mind as a long, long  driveway into the ——— unknown. Every step towards that majestic edifice of the orphanage administration and boarding rooms on the other end was as if it was unreal, a dream, and I should wake up any minute. I would keep looking at the expression on my mom’s face: was she sad, happy, or uninterested? Her expression almost seemed blank and without reality, and even more, frighteningly ‘calm’. And then, once we met the House Mother, Momma Casper, the stark truth of my fate hit me like a stone wall: I was going to be left behind, left here, alone, and I began to scream in panic. Many years later, as an elderly man, I will recall the scene from Steven Spielberg’s movie A.I. (the end product ofStanley Kubrick’s rendition of the science-fiction story by Brian Aldiss, Super-toys Last All Summer Long) where the adopted robotic, synthetic child, David, was taken by his mother, Monica Swinton, into the woods to be deserted: It was almost De’Ja’ Vue; I’ve somehow been there before straight out of Spielberg’s fiction. But this time I had captors; the House Mother, Lottie Kasper, picked me up and crashed me to the floor; “you crashed me like an airplane!” I made the strange, bizarre, awkward metaphor and exclamation, but I heard my mother, and Momma Kasper, both, laughing as if they could not see the seriousness, the gut-wrenching fear of being given into a wilderness to be abandoned. Then, in a matter of a few minutes, she was gone I don’t remember if i was even allowed to watch her walk up that long, straight driveway back to the bus stop. I just can’t remember.

A FAR AND DISTANT SHORE

“Somewhere beyond the sea, somewhere, waiting for me, my lover stands on golden sands…and watches the ships that go sailing…it’s far beyond a star, it’s near beyond the moon….I know beyond a doubt…my heart will lead me there soon…” Somewhere Beyond The Sea, Bobby Darin, 1959. ‘La Mer’, Charles Trenet and Jack Lawrence, 1946. 

Life at the “children’s home”, as it was also known, soon fell into an unwelcomed, to a broken-hearted child, routine; but, then again, oft times exciting, adventure-filled extravaganzas. It was almost like an induction in a military service, assigned a dormitory room with each child his own locker for his Sunday-to-Church clothes and other personal items. I often imagine the administrators and care-takers’ hearts would break to see the lonesomeness of their children; others were very happy to have shelter, good schooling, and someplace to call home; our dormitory parents were known as Momma and Paper Kasper (Lottie and Charley, both members of St. Paul’s Lutheran parish until the time of their deaths).

Most of the children were then, and still are, just faces.  Not because I had any animosity towards them.  Several became close friends; just that at that age, one usually retains first names much easier. There was Victor Kruger, the stutterer, was mentally-challenged, more than others, probably stigmatized because his mother had been in a mental institution (Dean told me that Victor had been misdiagnosed and through the efforts of the staff, Victor graduated from High School as any other kid), Bobby, Willie Rohs, and Ronnie Schlitter (who turned up in several of the photos my visiting family took; we could have been called the suspender kids because we always werephotographed wearing our suspenders; some of us were, steeped in insecurity, also all a bunch of bed-wetter’s). But through the records of Anthony Dean, fellow orphan, names took on more imagery. Tommy Cagle (which also was photographed with me playing or posing about the ‘farm [yes, the ‘home’ was also a ’farm’ with fresh milk, cows, rows upon rows of produce from tomatoes to rhubarb, a barn, a tractor, apple trees and even a onion storage mound back in the woods beyond the small pond in the back acres). Willie Rohs came straight from Germany (wearing authentic wooden shoes and ethic attire) and could not speak English; house-mother Kathren Paul taught Willie English.  I had a photo of Willie and I standing side by side (with suspenders) out on the front lawn. Little Ronnie Schlitter (Dean told me that Ronnie was a veteran of the Viet Nam war and had received the Silver Star for heroism; a hand grenade was thrown into the midst of his buddies and Schlitter single-handedly pounced on the grenade and threw it away from the group, saving them) and I would take turns flirting with visiting High School girls who’d come to spend the afternoon with us. Little Henry Freitz and his sister Lois and brother Johnnie; a troop of orphans were taken to a fully displayed Barnum and Bailey Circus in the country [transported in an old Army truck with the benches circling the inside perimeter {that truck drove us everywhere, it seemed} on a rather slow day and a somewhat empty Main Tent, but Henry was enjoying the clown stunts that allowed him to laugh his little heart out; that day was a great success for him). I recall John Van Norman, one of my best playmates. Looking back to those orphanage days, it appeared to be one adventure after another and excitement, and the best care that a lonely child could wish for. But in the end, how do you erase any mental effect that it could possibly have had to a child that sat by his clear or open dormitory window next to his bed at night (make-believing the electric lights on the horizon were the Shaw neighborhood or Carondelet) and sadly and despondently pray to be with his mother and brothers and friends and wonder why this all came about?

I had much time to myself and roaming the park and fields about the orphanage.  One afternoon, playing adjacent to the radishes and rhubarb, one of the teenage girls who lived in their private room on the upper floors (my psychic sense tells me it may have been Betty Petty) was playing her records (and Hank Williams, Hey Good Looking […what ya got cookin?…how about cookin something up with me?…], and other country songs seemed to be her favorite style).  One song either was her favorite – or she was playing it loudly to tease other orphans – but its forlorn and haunting melody and words came floating out into the yards, bringing me to tears and sad thoughts (William Orville “Lefty” Fruzzel having a somewhat tumultuous life, became popular in the strain of Jimmy Rogers and Roy Orison; coming to live in Big Spring, Texas in the 1950s, Fruzzel wrote the Mom And Dad waltz in 1951, toured with Hank Williams in October, 1951 and in July of that year became a member of the Grand Ole’ Opry, died on July 19, 1975 from a stroke, and was elected to the Country Musical hall of Fame in 1982):

“I’d walk for miles – cry or smile – for momma and daddy –  I want them –  to know –  I love them so….I’d walk for miles – cry or smile – for my momma and daddy –  I want them –  to know –  how I feel –  my love is real –  for my momma and daddy –  I want them  –  to know – I love them so….”

“I’d fight in wars – do all the chores – for my momma and daddy – I want  them – to live on – till they’re called….I’d work and slave – and never rave – for momma and daddy – because I know I owe them my all….”       

Suddenly, many years later, in 2008, that lack of preparation for an outing was an insult and, apparently, a threat to the psyche of Moriarty Wild.  It was Wild’s second visit to the Des Peres site, this time in a group, and he expected everyone to measure-up to his private standards, unbeknownst to everyone else on the trip. And, perhaps, it was a disappointment to him or anyone else – and what was I trying to display anyway?  How can someone reveal, portray what is deep within his soul or his nightmares and dreams; and should it be done at all?

Manchester Road was the original Route 66; Des Peres, Missouri came into being in 1901; in 1834, the Des Peres Presbyterian Church on Moddy Road, later Ballas Road, marked the future site of the orphanage.

The Lutheran Orphanage was originally opened in 1868, and was joined by a second building in 1873; these constructions were essentially replaced in 1893. A fire in 1935 forced the orphanage to be rebuilt in 1936. And to better accommodate the children, the Andrew Cremer Memorial School was built in 1947. I recall spending several grades on the lower level: Ester Bester, an older lady, taught us in the east classroom and a very young and a very pretty young lady, Irene Scharrer (now, Mrs. Hartmann), taught on the west class room.  Irene did not realize I had a deep childhood crush on her, and I spent an unusual amount of time starring at her; she seemed so different and alluring to me, even at that age.  No one taught me that it was improper to stare excessively at people, and she did such heart-pounding things (even at my young age it was apparent I was a sprouting male) like walk about with no shoes on. After several flirtatious glances given her, Irene became very insulted and she would let me know that in no uncertain terms. It broke my heart. But she let me know we definitely were not friends. I spoke to Irene on the phone in September 2011 and she remembers no animosity at all; she recalls me as “that little blond” that was fairly quiet.  She was quite flattered that I had a crush on her and we spoke of the many memories we both had. Ester spent most of her time, as I recall, reading stories to us and allowing us to draw art and pictures. Even back then, Steve Erdmann’s psyche was perceiving futuristic problems; most of my art were drawings of volcanoes and explorers going down into their depths, of atomic bomb explosion cloud-plumbs; and the ‘swinging pole’ act from the Barney and Bailey Circus Big Tent routine. We had a wood-working shop in the basement, but I never became a carpenter craftsman.

The first level of the main building had a long hallway running from the “boys’” side to the “girls’’’ side. The hallway looked so much longer then, as more recently viewed; so did lawns, roads, and other childhood scenes.  Along the hallway were the administration offices, a pay phone, a ‘playroom’ on the west end, stairways on each end section, and my dormitory on the north end, adjacent to Mom and Pop Kasper’s private living quarters. The hallway was also the entrance to the large dining room on the West side through two doors; and west of the dining room was a fairly large kitchen were all that farm produce and fresh milk and real butchered hogs and cows might be served (we had a little brick slaughter house in the back, just outside the rear entrances; the kids were welcomed to watch the killing and slaughter, though most couldn’t stomach it. The kitchen was torn down when the building became Des Peres City).

One of the most memorable items was a “news cabinet” towards the East end on the wall near the offices: each week a rectangular news photo was placed in the glass cabinet, possibly from Reuters. I recall seeing the explosion plumb-cloud from one of the atomic tests; the body of the shooting of some famous Mafioso  laying on the sidewalk (I have not been able to locate what killing it might be, other than a 1951 murder of mobster Willie Moretti – it was a body stretched outside a car on the sidewalk, reminded me of the photo of the 1983 murder photo of Paul Castellano); military fire-fights from the Korean War such as the big cannons being fired; the photos of the atomic spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg at the time of their death sentencing (their Supreme Court appeals ran out on July 19, 1953).

In 1995, the National Security Agency publicly released documents from the VENONA project, an effort to decrypt intercepted messages between Soviet agents and the NKVD/KGB. A spy with the code name of ANTENNA and LIBERAL was confirmed, leading to Julius Rosenberg. A November 27, 1944 document indicated that Ethel Rosenberg was complacent, though not evident, in the spying.  KGB handler Alexandre Keklisov, Julius was originally recruited by the KGB in Labor Day 1942, by former spymaster Semyon Semenov. According to Feklisov, Julius secreted thousands of classified reports from Emerson Radio, along with complete schematics for a proximity fuse, the same design that was used to shoot down Gary Powers’ U-2 in 1960.  Rosenberg recruited individuals to the KGB’s service, including brother-in-law. David Greenglass, who was a machinist on the super-secret atomic Manhattan Project.     

The atomic tests were significant events in the Early 50s. The tests would be announced in advanced so orphans would gather to watch the televised explosion on the dining room television set. There never was a big crowd. I recall sitting by myself one time, a fellow orphan came in and asked what I was doing. “They are counting down to the atomic bomb!” I exclaimed, “be quiet!”  3 – 2 – 1– 0 – a pregnant moment of silence – the whole television screen would go white for a second – and then as the brilliance faded away – that twisting, swirling mass of black, grey bellowing cloud rose up in to the air, amidst the announcer’s fervid telecast and static, brooding speech.

One of the first bomb tests was on January 27, 1951 – ‘Big Shot’, ‘Charlie’, ‘Buster’, ‘Jangle’, ten-kiloton; after April 22, 1952, televised broadcasts of the bomb explosions – called Atomic Parties – Dawn Bomb Parties –  swept the nation – ‘Tumbler’, ‘Charlie’, ‘Snapper’, ‘Upshot’, ‘Knothole’, Operation Ranger: One bomb every three weeks for twelve years until the Test Ban limitation in 1963. That was 235 bombs and $176 million in 50s dollars in Federal Funds.

Operation Sugar was the first bomb in early 1951 exploded on the surface of the desert rather than dropped from the air by plane.  Operation Upshot-Knothole-Badger on May 8, 1953, exposed 145 ponderosa pines brought in from Kyle Canyon to the force of the 23-kiloton bomb.  On May 25, 1953, a cannon nicknames ‘Atomic Annie’ fired a 15-kiloton atomic bomb.  The Operation Hamlet 26 kiloton Dirty Harry bomb of May 8, 1953, in Frenchman Flat caused an unusual large amounts of radiation which concentrated in St. George, Utah.  

The bomb tests became so common place that watching mushroom clouds turned into a Las Vegas tourist attraction.  Now, the entire nation could witness an atomic blast in the 50s from the comfort of their homes as the media provided live television coverage.  As one news reporter exclaimed; “Hell bust from the skies over Yucca Flat this morning as America’s latest model atom bomb exploded with enough force to devastate much of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles or any other big city.” (Hugh Baillie, UPI, Tuesday, April 22, 1952, 6 a.m.)

“Building the bomb was the single most expensive engineering project in the history of the United States,” said Annie Jacobson in Area 51: An Uncensored History Of America’s Top Secret Military Base, “It began in 1942, and by the time the bomb was tested inside the White Sands Proving Ground in the New Mexico high desert on July 16, 1945, the bomb’s price tag, adjusted for inflation, was $28,000,000,000. The degree of secrecy maintained while building the bomb is almost inconceivable. When the world learned that America had dropped an atomic weapon on Hiroshima, no one was more surprised than the U.S. Congress, none of whose members had any idea it was being developed.” 

The Atomic Age was upon us and I was a part of it. My father, Steve Erdmann, passed away in April 1945.  During that same month a Target Committee met to discuss which Japanese cities to target with the atomic bomb; and shortly following the Joint Intelligence Committee informed the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the “inevitability of absolute defeat” of Japan.

When the first July 15, 1945 atomic bomb exploded, William L. Laurence wrote in the New York Times: “The atomic age began at exactly 5;30 Mountain War Time on the morning of July 15,1945, on a stretch of semi-desert land about 50 airline miles from Alamogordo, New Mexico and just at that instance there rose from the bowels of the earth a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one……”

Co-inventor of the bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, was solemn, pensive and macabre; he quoted the 2,000-year-old Bhagavad Gita of India: “I am become death, the Shatterer of worlds.”

Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge turned to Oppenheimer and said pointedly, succinctly: “Now we’re all sons-of-bitches.”

“The 509 Composite Group, 20^th Air Force will deliver its first special bombers as soon as the weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August, 1945 on one of the targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki” read the orders devised near July 24, 1945 and which came down from Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Carl Spatz, Commander of the U.S Army Strategic Air Forces, and Chief Of Staff General Thomas Handy.

The Tube

Television was a comparatively new invention. The first time I recall seeing it was at childhood playmate’s next-door apartment on Castleman, the Snido family.  The Arthur Godfrey program sticks in my mind, as well as Les Paul and Mary Ford singing How High The Moon, whileKate Smith sang patriotic anthems at the end of the televising day.

But there was a plethora of sets at the orphanage, placed strategically throughout building (I recall one television in the dinning room, one in the first-floor west playroom, one in the basement West lounge, there were several placed strategically throughout the orphanage). And it was through these magic lenses that the “dawn of the space age” began its assent in its prophetic sirens call: SPACE PATROL, which had begun on March 9, 1950 in Los Angeles, went from ½ hour segments to 30-minute segments on April 29, 1953.  Commander Buzz Corry (Ed Kemmer) of the United Planets Space Patrol, along with his comedic and jovial sidekick Cadet Happy (Lyn Osborn). And the orphans had these magic heroes, jetting about in the Terra V Spacecraft, utilizing their miniature space-o-phones and Atomolights, fighting nefarious interplanetary villains on diabolical ventures each Saturday.  “Revolt of the Space Rats”.  “The menace of Planet X”. “Escape of Mr. Proteus”.  

These childhood space adventure sceneries became second nature to me – as well as to actual scientists who later confessed that they were inspired by the series – as were so many 1950s TV programs inspiration – such as THE HOWDY-DOODY program starring many string puppets and the master of ceremonies Buffalo Bob (Robert Schmidt). The popular program started with Buffalo Bob asking jovially: “Hey kids, what time is it!?”  And the 40 or so kids in the Peanut Gallery shouting back: “It’s Howdy Doody time!” The program consisted of a menagerie of Chief Thunderthud, Clarabell-the-Clown, Zippy the Chimp, Princess Summer-Fall-Winter-Spring, and many other iconic characters.

Perhaps the biggest political campaign in my life took place at the orphanage; the year that Howdy Doody ran against puppet Mayor Phineas T. Bluster in 1952.  It was also the year of the American Presidential campaign: Governor Adlai Stevenson versus Dwight D. Eisenhower. Surprisingly, Mayor Bluster stirred the passions of a few orphans, and garnered some votes; probably because some of the older kids knew the political system and how to create opposing politics.  It certainly did in me: and no one was going to oust the beloved Doody.  I looked about the premises and found one broken and splintered inch by inch stick.  Then I looked about the premises and found a torn, white tee-shirt.  Using one of the abundant crayons on site, I wrote the words in bold black crayon on both sides of the shirt: VOTE FOR HOWDY DOODY.  With a tight grip on the stick, I proceeded to run around the periphery, trying to stay to the driveways and walkways, shouting at the top of my voice “Vote for Howdy Doody!  Vote for Howdy Doody!”, incessantly, relentlessly. Not just on a single day, but day after day after day.  Such passion had never been seen in a political campaign before – or ever since.  And it did not go unnoticed.

One of the program’s sponsors, Wonder Bread, had mailings and placings of voting ballets.  Apparently a decision had been made and a few telephone calls created, unbeknownst to me, to certain parties concerning the fervid activity at the orphanage.  While doing my regular marathon race one day, my attention was drawn to the whirring engine of a small plane – Piper Cub or something – that was dropping low over me in the front lawn. I watched intrigued as suddenly paper was discharged and strewn from the plane, descending all over the front patio and grass.  When retrieved it was discovered to be waxed Doodyville voting ballots.  Somewhat shocked and surprised, I suddenly realized that my promoters

were behind me all the time; and, now, I had to get to work……

It must have been to my additional efforts, as I had no idea how close a race it was, but Howdy may have just squeaked through the election to become Mayor; thank God I had hung in there.

Daily life at the “home” was capped time and again by idiosyncratic happenings in the life of orphans, right out of the pages of children themes such as Oliver Twist, Little Orphan Annie, or The Hardy Boys, lavishly encrusted in a sequence of daily episodes over those years.

Saturdays were our weekly bathing times, the girls lined up single file on the west end of the building starting in the basement, and the boys on the east end in likewise fashion, spiraling one floor at a time up the staircases till they reach the inclined corridor leading to the bathing area near the infirmary. The heralding effort by Momma Kasper entailed each boy to strip naked as she diligently knelt by the bathtub, scrubbed their body down, suds the hair and thrust their head under the facet to rinse the soap and go on to the next child in military fashion.  But there’s the rub:  I was deathly afraid to have my head thrust under the facet in that fashion – sacred to death actually – a phobia that took me many years to overcome.

Consequently, when bathing time came, and the announcement was made to form the lines up the staircase – I ran; I tried to escape – out into the farming fields – out beyond the north ponds – into the wooded areas – anywhere.  “Stevie Erdmann! Come on in and get your bath!” boomed the voice from the Administrator’s office building-speakers. I crouched and shivered in fear, contemplating the teenage vigilante squad that was always sent out to look for me; and they either found me, or I gave up in desperation from receiving some punishment.  Going under the facet was a deep, dark entrance into a symbolic  grave, and often journeyed with screams and crying until it was over.

Amongst other childhood wonders of that period was the fantastic experience of “‘drive-in (out-door) motion picture theaters”.  We had, at our disposal, so-to-speak, the “first” created drive-in in the metropolitan area: the Manchester drive-in opened in Des Peres on May 24, 1940. It was a short distance west of the orphanage at 12500 Manchester; we could walk there and did several times like little “troopers” with Army back-packs, except it was our pillows tucked under our arms, and in single file fashion, marching down the long driveway, accompanied by our House Parents, making an abject right-turn and marching straight down Manchester into the drive-in and assembling in the “Kiddie Area” towards the playground at the front of the movie screen. Today, all the drive-ins in the immediate area are gone.  Wow! One of the movies I recalled watching with other orphans was the 1952 movie The Great Show On Earth, the circus film, starring Charlton Heston, Betty Hutton, Cornel Wide and Jimmy Stewart. The movie parroted the actual trials and tribulations of the Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bailey Circus in route with their 1400 people and 60 Carloads of animals and actors (plus a make-shift train wreck).

The Manchester drive-in was part of the Philip Smith movie chain held by the National Theatre in Boston; It held 500 cars, The chain began as Midwest Drive in 1937 with theaters in Cleveland and Detroit. In 1951 it became the Smith Management Company and later General Drive, General Cinema Corporation, and finally Harcourt and General Cinema.

Wehrenberg Des Peres 14 Cine is presently across Manchester/I-270 from the old drive-in site. The drive-in closed on June 18, 1967 to make way for the shopping The West County Shopping Centre.  

The Manchester drive-in was also the Lutheran church’s choice for Easter Sunrise services, and, as the title suggests, bright and early before sunrise, automobiles and crowds of people arrived – orphans in tow – to a special celebration at the drive-in every Easter holiday.  

Chapter Two – The Spirits Move

ANYTHING YOU CAN DO I CAN DO BETTER

(Annie: “Anything you can do I can do better….I can do anything better than you.”  Frank: “No, you can’t” Annie: “Yes, I can.”  Frank: “No you can’t.”  Annie: “Yes, I can.”  Frank: “No, you can’t.”  Annie: “Yes, I can, yes I can!”   Frank: “Anything you can be I can be greater; sooner or later I’m greater than you….I can drink my liquor faster than a flicker….”  Annie: “I can do it quicker and get even sicker….” Irvin Berlin’s musical, 1946, Annie Get Your Gun.)     

John Moeller and I go way back to grade school days and juvenile tufts and tangles: such as the Army-Navy club.  John’s dad had been in the Army and my step-brother had been in the Navy, and so ensuing conversations over which branch of service had best evolved militarily over the years turned into documenting facts about why the one branch of service was better than the other, usually in fighting capabilities. This involved which branch had better weaponry. Since this was the dawning (not just the Age of Aquarius, as they later sang in the musical Hair, but..…) of the age of the military ballistic- missile, it was also the rise of the Space Age, and I recall the debate over which branch of military service was to mandate the launching of our first outer space satellite.  As it turned out, the Navy lost with the explosion of the Vanguard rocket and the Army won with the launch of the Explorer satellite.  John  and  I had our battles too; I had invented the Navy aircraft carrier launching system with a Monel  alloy metal slab (my step-father and foundry-worker, Walter Moser, recommended this alloy) off which a three-stage Disney Tomorrow World-type rocket would blast-off (in my imagination, of course) into space while out at sea. And I had a whole raft of drawings and sketches in secret files (some right in the school room, attended by some of fellow female students – which we had somehow enlisted into the secretarial ranks of our competition).

One of my “notebook inventions” was a rocket run on very micro-granulated pulp (paper) mixed with liquid oxygen and ignited in a specially designed “nozzle”. Technically, theoretically, it could work.

Another “notebook invention” was basically, what we would call in 2010, “photon synchronization” (I am not sure what I called it then) or a synchrotron in gravity-free outer space where large masses could be eventually accelerated to the speed-of-light, or seemingly so. I recall inventing some kind of filament focusing cap or chamber, or some such idea. I’ll never really know what my notes said about this until they are discovered in the cave of my garage storage. 

I recall studiously watching for “rocket news” in the papers, and upon spying a column or topic (especially with photos of ballistic missiles, Redstone rockets, or news on the “space race”); I’d add it to my collection of clippings and put them in my shoe box of news.

The era became traditionally and vernacularly known as the “Space Age”.

We even had secret meetings: some which were about a makeshift aircraft carrier in my parents’ basement – to which John sent spies over to try and look through the basement windows.  Sometimes John spied on his own special mission.  Contests and debates ensured, and I had not seen the heat, fervor, and political determination since the Great Howdy Doody campaign for Major of Woodville against Mr. Finiaus T. Bluster in the 50s television show ( as previously  disclosed in my short two to three year sojourn at the Lutherans’ Orphanage in Des Peres, Missouri in the early 1950s) in which I was witness and in charge of campaigning for Howdy….but I digress.  Such debates and contests were typical for John and I and I suppose the tradition carries on to this day. But it was usually all part of growing up and added to the color and nostalgia of “yesterday”.  As much as some things change, they stay the same.

John’s competitive nature was divulged in his passion for basketball. John joined the Saint Trinity basket team. Youth Night, which the school designated as Thursday evenings, and the grade school kids and friends could come to activities such as pin-pong or basketball.  John and the other guys were eager to hone their basketball skills and I recall John being one of the more vibrant and earnest players on the court…..often set in my memory as a big ball of sweat racing up and down the court, waving his hand in the air, asking his team-mates to ‘past the ball’ to him.  Not that basketball was totally foreign to me.  I attempted to play on the Team for a semester, I believe.  I played left forward; and my sole talent was standing there in that one spot and having the ball thrown to me while the opposing team was kept busy on the opposite side of the court, proceeding to allow me to “swish” the ball into the basket. I recall the eighth-grade girls screaming when I did that — which didn’t happen as often as I’d wish. But my biggest problem with my basketball was simple things like “dribbling,” “fouls,”  “travelling,” and having the ball “constantly stolen” from me. Fellow classmate, Craig Behrens, also made attempts to try out the sport.  But Craig’s true love was going deer hunting with his father: one weekend the hunting clashed to his requested attendance at a basketball game.  John’s reaction was livid: they had lost the game – Craig had not been there.  Craig was going to “hear” about this!  The “showdown” had been announced.  Craig, who was never a dull or unintelligible person, answered John’s protest: “let me ask you something: if you were me, knowing my passion for deer hunting with my father, and you had the opportunity to get out in the wilds and do what you love, what would you do?” john thought about it for a moment – and the conversation ended with no one worse for the wear; and Craig still a happy “camper”.

We also had an innate grade-school crush on this girl or that girl, and we had some real sweethearts – highly unappreciative the boys were in those days —– looking back in time. We always took for granted those wonderful little moments and the flowering vibrancy of female charm and adolescent allure.  But competition set in those moments as well. However, in a few instances I won those bouts as Youth Night basketball became the other lady, but I often won the real girl instead.                      

(Anna Nadir had a good perspective: “Past is meant to be in the past.  If you dwell with it too much, you’ll never be able to move on. If I had kept tight to all the small lil misunderstandings I had with all my friends, I’ll never be good friends with anyone right now. You forgive and forget, but at the same time, learn from it and escape from repeating the same mistake again….Running away from viewing the bad/ugly side of our self is not that healthy either….None of us are perfect, so if you can know you have weaknesses, work on improving it, not ‘run away’ from it, that is ‘never’ a solution….” http://www.siraplimau.blogspot.com.)

I recall that in my ‘single’ years, later when struggling to adapt to and survive in being “alone” after 12 years of marriage, I did my share of socializing at “dance clubs”; and I did my share of visiting “pubs” trying to  acclimate  to what might be a typical modern life style  (never could achieve the money part, though I was a reader of Playboy  – – – I  suspect, like so many divorced or single men, my main concern was being lonely, afraid, disenfranchised, and somehow fending the “wolves” that were then snarling at the “target” on my back. Those years, however, seemed a combination of good and bad experiences. And, much like my childhood, I tried to “invent” adventure – – – be out and about “people”, places, and things (like Barbra Streisand says her song People: “people who need people….”) – – – to negate the harsh realities that pounced upon me.

MORIARTY WILD AND THE SCHOOL OF LUDDITE, HUMAN CYNICISM

“Some of my childhood experiences I’ve told Moriarty Wild about. Some of the more-darker experiences, I just couldn’t speak of (as Uncle Tonoose [Hans Conried] use to say on the Danny Thomas Show – Make Room For Daddy – “Never allow the camel to stick his nose under the tent, before too long, you will have the whole camel inside the tent”,” I wrote Wild. “Those experiences have probably, much like you, entrenched the schizoid- feelings that have grown within me.”

“But would I give up the “good” memories just because they don’t fit in or satisfy some Luddite-separatist philosophy? It is not clear what you are asking; and, again, I am not sure anyone should care. Why would you ask that I become a self-abolitionist of everything in my past to suit Mr. Wild?”

“People are like animals – savages – most minorities bring their third-world leanings into what once was a fairly clean and growing nation. Gradually, they have destroyed it!” Wild exclaimed as we walked in the Spring scent of blossoms and fresh foliage in the historic Tower Grove park off Grand. “That’s the secret part of history the blacks and minorities won’t tell you. They are afraid of telling you, because they have not earned it and want to destroy it.  I don’t feel like arguing about it now – but I’ll prove it to you one day.” I sympathized with Wild’s basic fears of seeing a country that  so many felt had the strings of opportunity for a better way of life, and was now being destroyed from carelessness and unintentional and even willful ignorance……yet I could not help but  feel that Wild was desperately lacking in insight.

The Tower Grove park symbolized, perhaps, everything that  Wild was inferring. The park was originally part of Henry Shaw’s original purchase of 1,293 acres; 270 acres designated as Tower Grove Park (an intricate part of the 1904 World’s Fair), and the remainder to his Botanical garden, in 1849, known as Shaw’s Garden.  Shaw was often referred to by friends as “Hank” and they frequently called the garden “Hank’s Garden”.  It later became known after his death as the Missouri Botanical Garden – a research and tourist center – the park was a designed landscape of gazebos and trees, some of which Shaw selected and planted himself; one of several Victorian strolling parks that contained jewels of architectural design. In 1868, Shaw gave Tower Grove Park to the city and retained Shaw’s Garden to grow into a modern botanical research center of delicate but enormous style which eventually constructed the Climatron (the first geodesic dome green house).  With the help of colleagues and botanists, Dr. George Engelmann and Jakob Bernhardt, and 60,000 specimen herbarium for $600 dollars, ‘Hank’s Garden’ was created.  In the 1880s, the Linnean House (named after Karl Linneaus; the father of the science of plant classification) came into being, housing palms, citrus and other tender plants. The property was decorated with busts of botanists Asa Gray and Thomas Nuttal.

Hank Shaw came to St. Louis in America on the New Orleans first steamer powered paddlewheel the Maid Of Orleans in the Spring of 1817; St. Louis  was only 50 years old.  Shaw built a hardware store on the west side of 4^th North Main and the business flourished and Hank became very wealthy – so wealthy that  at 40 years-of-age he became the largest landholder in that area and he decided to retire and pursue travel and expand his love of botany.

Shaw saw botany as the “victory of science over ignorance” (the slogan at the marble statue by artist Carlo Nicolle in the Park, a replica of an 1859 Vincento Consani statue). The garden gave an annual ‘Flower Sermon’ since 1890, part of the sermon says: “On the wisdom and goodness of God as shown in  the growth of flowers, fruits, and other products of the vegetable kingdom.”  Henry Shaw more than beauty  to flowers and plants, there was also practical scientific knowledge in medicine and healing.  His garden was only a beginning of a dream.  Shaw had an exotic orchid collection, and every year 1000,000 new specimens arrive at the gardens. Shaw said: “Plants and flowers provide the air quality we breath, provide medications, keep our soil from eroding.  They maintain us in so many ways.”  

Wearing his typical cap with frayed bill and worn spot on top, dilapidated wool sweater with torn sown-in elbow pads, yet in much better physical shape than I despite his thin and molted appearance, Wild turned to me after an afternoon of strolling in Shaw’s creation: “This purity!  This natural goodness!  They will all be destroyed by baser human savagery and terrorism!  I see it all through the city of St. Louis – America – I fear for it; the dumbing-down of America – the Communist takeover!”’ I’ve heard it before from Wild, and even had seen some of the documents and books that Moriarty gave me to review –  Charlotte Iserbyt, , The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, John A. Stormer, None Dare Call It Treason, David Joel Horowitz, The Professors, and several others.  And he was dead on the mark, with laser precision – too dead on and too precise – to a fault.  “Shaw owned slaves, did he not?” Wild’s voiced strained in anger with veins protruding in his neck, “he believed in purity!”

Like so many things that Wild talked about, it had to be black or white, no middle ground. That’s the way Wild lived life In its political and philosophical extremes, like the unseen dark matter of the universe, holding him together. Shaw deplored slavery early in his life, but, it is true, he came to own slaves.  Shaw would not exist very well in Wild‘s extreme world, he was neither black nor white in his style.  In the 1870s, a young African American man named John Freugh came to Shaw to find work; he was hired and eventually became Shaw’s personal assistant and unofficial guide to Tower Grove House. Asked why he employed so many ‘bohemians.’ Shaw replied: “The bohemians do not seem to very popular with us, and I think I ought to help them all I can.” Shaw was not squeaky clean, as several episodes in his life portrayed: Hank was sued for Breach of Promise to a lady he was entertaining marriage; but it was decided against such action. Perhaps it was such incidents that helped him declare “wine was the secret of national progress.”

With the rag-tag background I came from, I wondered how my lack of purity condemned me to the hell he wished for others.         

NO CONSPIRACY

(“Cleminzo said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that fifty years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to the politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought…I can no longer sit and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids….Loss of essence. I can assure you that it has not recurred, Mandrake, women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence.” [Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper defending an Army base against attack in Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Learned To Love The Bomb, directed by Stanley Kubrick, United Artists Films, 1964].)

I sat with Wild by the Shaw’s Garden famous Nymphaea hybrid water lily pond that late Spring, and I wondered if Wild realized how divergent his belief about Shaw’s purity was from the reality of the world happening about him.  Shaw may have loved nature as one of God’s ‘purities’ but there were ironies and paradoxes. Impressionist artist Oscar Claude Monet (1840 – 1926) had a famous painting of nymphaea lilies called Monet’s Water Lilies – the same type lilies that Shaw had in his garden.  Monet saw these lilies at Giverny, France, as grown by botanist Joseph Latour-Marliac, and they became immortalized as an Impressionistic expression by Monet.  The problem is: Monet’s movement was not a testament to the “black-on-white” approach to reality, but, rather, was based on the latest trends in science of Darwin, Freud, quantum physics and other renaissance scientific views. Science was looking “behind the veil” and was saying there is much more to reality then “meets the eye”. Science had begun to question the age-old viewpoints of mankind, and artists began to portray and under-cut the certainties of the 19th century. This is why Impressionism, Expressionism, Fauvism and others were met with such hostility because they “recreated the sensation in the eye that views the subject, rather than recreating the subject” (en.wikipedia.org). In that coincidence, rather than just statues in a black-on-white-photograph of sorts, these lilies were quite radical.

2008 THE RESTURANT VISIT AND OUTING

“The Red Robin restaurant was a first time event for most of the people on that trip.  It was my first time”, I wrote to Wild in 2008.  “Did you feel there was a conspiracy to dragging you in there?  None that I know of. I know for a fact that church members have gone to some very nice restaurants in the past. It just happened that this was a very poor choice for you personally.”   (I think it was just an impulsive decision: do you remember the swimming pool scene in the movie It’s A Wonderful Life with James Stewart and Donna Reed [one of your “Oldie but Goodie” movies] where George Bailey and Alice Hatch fall into the pool at the high school graduation dance [while dancing the Charleston to a Swing-Band {OH MY GOSH!}, along with all the other Jitterbugging students?).  “What did you expect them to do: stand up in some kind of societal revolt – – – some kinds of frenzy of polyphobia – – – – acoustic phobia, deipnophobia, pan phobia – – – – walk out? I thought that group handled it very well, not knowing about your personal anthropophagic misanthropy; your black-on-white world view and recusantism. Besides, it’s not the first noisy restaurant we’ve been in: why did it really bother you to such a raw degree?”

My wife and I had gone to a, then recently opened, Golden Corral restaurant in 2010 as a first time event. The price seemed reasonable; the food fairly good. But it is a buffet and was a circus of all kinds of people and family chatter. My wife met some friends she had not seen for a while, and that made her happy. She was hungry and she really enjoyed the food. What did I expect? Not as quiet as some places, to be sure.  Did I feel the need to hand out pamphlets on how it may have offended my subjective sensitivities? Or go to the manager and start a harangue? No, and in light of many other social and political problems (like the enormous economic fiasco America is under; or my personal health), it wouldn’t be on my top-ten list of personal challenges; that is, unless I had a phobia about noise and people! More than likely I’d line-up my preferences of restaurants and make a selection next time from my private list, depending on my mood and other factors (we have to get our priorities straight sometimes, especially in this ‘survival’ climate [I prioritize my concern over my diabetes, kidney failure {July 1, 2010}, hip and back arthritis, etc., first and then I add on and go down my list of my other eccentricities that I have like my painting my toenails green and walking barefoot down Grand Avenue, or gathering up stones from the roadside and carrying them on my head, or wearing shoes just one time and then discarding them: these, while interesting, are not high priority things to do right now – – – –  It is that simple].)

2008 ALSO

CONFESSIONS FOR THE SOUL

“In looking back to that day, it would be unfair to you, and even I, to deny things could have been conducted more properly. Life is like that,” I wrote him. ”I just don’t know if I had the expertise socially. I just don’t have that much aristocratic training; I just rely on the good faith and trust of people to over-look my shortcomings.” In so many ways, despite basic differences, Wild was still a “hero” of sorts to me. That may be hard to understand – perhaps I might explain it someday to Wild.

I don’t believe that crowd expected anything exceptional or phenomenal (I’ve talked to some of them and asked if they felt anything ‘bad’ happened and no one that I’ve talked to felt that way. Of course, they could be lying; and how often had I heard that assessment about mankind from the lips and letters of Moriarty Wild?). I do feel the debate between John Moeller and myself, though not in genuine animosity, was foolish and somewhat in poor taste. John has been a big debater from ‘way back when’ and like Herb Mueller (“Herb? Who is Herb?” you asked me one day in an air of suspicion while on an outing [herb is an elderly usher at the church; he is a kind and an older chatty guy who helps with chores about the church, an usher at church services and he indicated he may want to come along on some of our site-seeing ventures: I don’t think you had anything to fear about him, he was not out to “get” you —— didn’t know anything about you —— just a kindly old fella}) told me, “When John and his buddy from work get together to discuss politics: oh boy!” It probably was not that well-planned and executed – but I’m not a professional Wedding Planner either (or Funeral Director) – I tend to be spontaneous, somewhat incongruous and exorbitantly informal. “Sometimes I can be an extrovert. It really wasn’t a suit and tie affair. But I should, somehow, someway have taken your feelings into account in the matter; I’m just not sure how that could have been done so intricately and in a short notice,” I said to you. “In hindsight, I regret it affected you so personally. I am asking for your forgiveness”.

Our episode with the “noise” controversy and Wild’s sojourn with a church group to Red Robin, Wild protested the restaurant and the manners of the church group; we have begun to question if Wild was ‘for real”  in his protest against all that is currently modern, of if this was really a ‘show’ on his part:

“Maybe you just wanted to vent your usual cynicism (your misanthropic anti-social, antithetical feelings) at the moment. And that is fine. I just don’t know why you aimed your diatribe of society at that group of people?  I don’t believe they have any great love for Red Robin restaurants or were even practitioners of Red Robin (I suspect that if you would have attacked the issues in a different way [not make it a specific attack on those people] you would not have appeared so unkind).” Poor Fred was trying to help make the day enjoyable with his occasional ventures into weak humor [the Balsams are fairly financially comfortable and own a farm and know a lot about crops, seeds, weather and things like that; not necessarily being a “suave” interpreter of restaurant styles]. “They all were trying to socialize the best they could (if they had only slid their cars a few doors east, they would have selected The Bread Company restaurant – now, you and I had been there before on Watson Boulevard): Kenny Herman’s widow paid our way into the Butterfly House. I honestly don’t believe they were involved in a secret world of some esoteric fantasy drama of elitist debunking,” I wrote Wild. They wouldn’t even know what the heck that means. Maybe, John would (and I could be wrong, but I don’t believe John is a full-fledged Communist even though he is a Democrat. I just think he got fed-up with politics as usual and the Bush administration [as have so many people; Obama was, likewise – again – a poor choice]). “The invite to see the remake film of The Day the Earth Stood Still wasno ploy to upset you; though it somehow did. I forgot all about wishing you to go upon reading your letter. It was only meant as a friendly gesture anyway (yes, I didn’t like the movie as much as the original: but that was no condemnation to any good qualities it genuinely may have had). It was that nostalgia thing.”

(A Sad Side Bar:  Monday, November 29, 2010, Fred’s wife, Marilyn Balsam passed away from complications during an operation of her legs and feet due to diabetes.)

“Years ago when, I worked at Pisa Group on Watson Road, I had the choice of going down the street to a number of nearby restaurants (including White Castle, Jack in the Box, and MacDonald’s). But I chose Happy Joe’s Pizza because [1} it was close, {2} it had a good selection on their salad bar, {3} and was cheap.  “Now, Happy Joe’s is known for catering to families that make arrangements (appointments) to celebrate their child’s birthday and it gets quite loud with singing, laughter, etc. Have you ever had your birthday celebrated when you were little, Moriarty?  If so, shame on you!  Did they sing and celebrate?  Well, shame on you!  At any rate, I still drop in on Happy Joe – – – just for their salad bar (they did away with the pepperoni) – – – – and do you know what? It actually gets “quiet” at times at the restaurant:  no noise!  DO I GET A FEW EXTRA STARS?”

The Moriarty Wild Noise Complex

We are going into a greater depth here on Wild’s personality and background to lay a foundation of its complexity and how things are always what they seem with Skeptics and critics. We’ll also get into the real history of jazz, rock n’ Roll and music as contrasted to Wild’s pretense of ‘purity’ and ‘perfectionism’ which casts, in his opinion, a shroud over it called “modernism” and “uncontaminated noise,“  later, the same Skeptic perception on things such as life-styles, social-security, and “the good ole’ days.”

“Which leads me to some other thoughts on this matter: hymns and singing in church – – – – – maybe they should just hum or meditate for fear of being uncivilized and not Wildian if they become too melodious?” (I mentioned casually and unpretentiously to Wild one day in a letter the Biblical injection to “make a joyous noise unto the Lord…” [Ps. 66;1, Ps.90:1, etc.], a casual mention I thought, and Wild set out on a philosophical tirade and binge about the evils of unnecessary sounds and noise, whether it is a part of religious worship or not! Papers from Wild in the past demonstrate his battle with “noise” to be almost equal to and a little lower than society’s preoccupation with the War on Cancer). Scriptures never speak of indiscriminate noise, and there was no electronic equipment amplification in those days, but is based on the Hebrew word ruwa, which alludes to “delight” or “joyful melodies”.  Said Samuele  Bacchicchi, PhD., “This means what was loud in Biblical times, would be normal today….singing jubilantly with the full volume of the human voice, is not noise-making but an enthusiastic expression of praise” (The Importance Of Music In The Bible, “End Time Issues Newsletter, No. 305”, AndrewsUniversity);Which  presents some more other thoughts – but at another time: like Steve Allen’s ‘‘liberal” politics, slap-stick comedy, and his promotion of negro entertainment on his show.  Hmmmmmm………………….

It may be necessary to interject Wild’s preoccupation with ‘noise’ at this point (much like his preoccupation with ‘no perfect’ language, mannerisms, styles, theories, and “thinking”), which, I have learned over a period of time in my associating with him, was more than just a casual annoyance, but would go the extra mile as to what music one would play on the radio, on the phonograph, or even preferred, what trinkets were dangling on your auto mirror, or even discussions of dance clubs one belonged to, all the way  to the necessity of campaigning and avoiding even associating with ‘noises’ in the general public.  We all have our occasions of dealing with ‘noise,’ but with Wild this was much more than average as he felt the ‘impure’ use of “sound” was becoming “vulgar” (even going to his natural culmination of associating it with the imbedded Fabian Communist conspiracy). As was typical of Wild, much contradiction in philosophical approach will be found, such as is illustrated in the following topic of the late Steve Allen and his campaigns on “vulgarity.”

(At a later time)

STEVE ALLEN AS OUR HERO

We often cite Steve Allen as a leader, a bulwark, against uncritical thinking (Debunker? Or was he a rationalist of sorts: but couldn’t have been a diehard debunker, based on his actions and politics, etc.). But Steve Allen was a “Liberal” for that period and time.  He was at one time a practicing Roman Catholic and so was religious (in Vulgarians At The Gate, he alluded to his belief in God: “…If there is a God – which I assume to be the case….,” He promoted many Negro acts on his television show, breaking down race barriers. Allen said in his book,  Vulgarians  At The Gate, that movies such as The Mask (which was toned down to receive the Dover Seal), Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and The God-father Trilogy (pages 357-358) seemed acceptable to people 12-years on up…..aahhhh……….

(This only shows how “creeping” degeneracy became even acceptable to SteveAllen: I saw those movies and, to a puritan-train-of-thought, they contained some of the most horrid scenes imaginable: parents and grownups were very skeptical of those movies and the Godfather Trilogy.)…….

Allen was the creator to some of the silliest, zany, cock-eyed, slap-stick comedy on his television show; comedy that would appear far from the aristocratic snobbishness of the upper-class “au courant”. He featured radical guests such as Lenny Bruce. He featured a MAD Magazine caricaturist and parody artist on his March 16, 1958 show (demonstrating his affinity to this style of comedy – – – – many parents were in askance over MAD Magazine {we couldn’t get enough: brought it to school all the time}). If there was one thing that seemed to typify Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen:  It was “contradiction.” 

Steve Allen was a supporter of One World Government (he was a member of the World Federalist Association [David Icke would have undoubtedly added Allen to his list of Reptilian Merovingian’s]). He considered himself a Secular Humanist yet also considered himself an “involved Presbyterian”. He was accused of being a Communist (by aka Harry Goren). Steve Allen was a longtime activist who championed migrant worker rights. He idolized and hailed fellow comedians Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Phil Silver, Jimmy Durante, Buster Keaton, Jonathan Winters, Edie Adams, Dick Shawn, Peter Falk, Dorothy Provine, Arnold Stang, Jack Benny, Carl Reiner, Jerry Lewis, Don Knotts, Andy Devine, Terry-Thomas, and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson:  All these appeared in the Stanley Kramer 1962 movie production of It’s a Mad, Mad World,  a production  that typified the slap-stick, zany 50s-60s style of comedy that was close to  Allen’s heart.

“Now I know all kinds of alibis and rationalizations have been made about Allen’s professed ‘PURITY OF THINKING’ academic statements and the seeming contradictory teenage and juvenile ‘silliness’ his alter-ego presented,” I told Wild one sad rainy morning as we ate breakfast at a Steak N’ Shake restaurant meeting; the down-pour was so strong you could hardly see the traffic outside. “His explanations seemed equally bizarre: Allen said: ‘we laugh at our tragedies to prevent our suffering…if we think about the tragedies on our planet, we could spend all day in bed crying, so we laugh to survive, to continue our lives.’  Allen also said: ‘humor is a social lubricant that helps us get over some of the bad spots ….why do we do it? Because we’re crazy.’  When pressed further, Allen said (mimicking the cartoon character Popeye): ‘All I can say is what Popeye says:  ’I am what I am…….’”

“I don’t think thatAllen was all that ‘uptight’ about things as Wild and some people say he was.  At least, he did not go to the black-on-white schizoid extremes that you and I go to”, I tried to tell him on a venture in the visit to the Shaw neighborhood.  (Wild “took off” at Fred’s attempt at poor humor at the Butterfly House as he jokingly referring to swans by a pond as butterflies: I KNOW – come on Fred! But trying to be humorous is far better than Wild’s sardonic swipes at his juvenility). Richard Zogline said of Allen: “Though a lifelong liberal…in recent years he embarked on a vocal crusade to restore ‘family values’ in television.  This was a little uncomfortable for those of us who remember Allen as the irreverent kid who like to turn the studio upside down.” The Playboy  Magazine  article written  back  in 1988, I believe, on the evangelist Jimmy Swagger  scandal, warned about (what Playboy Magazine terms as the puritanical pitfalls as well as…..) the darker and inevitable reaction to human sexual repression.

“Similarly, it is the ‘extremes’ that we appear to go to; the doctrinaire, the ideological, demagoguery we pathologically speak from. Allen always added his humor: his serious side was only an after-thought,” I tried to explain to Wild one summer day was we took a stroll through Tower Grove Park in the old Shaw neighborhood. Wild also had many childhood memories from this area of St. Louis, there was a neighbor ‘Betty’ that had lived a short distance from him as a very young child, a ‘guardian’ of sorts.  Wild was never able to consummate all the intimate details to me; nothing that complexes and never in one setting.

Wild revealed his virulent hatred of mankind, almost as a knife swung out from Jack the Ripper’s cape:  “mankind is crap!  They have basic instincts of swine!  They are no good!” He stopped strolling and stood to look at me, his shoulders hanging limp, almost as if in a finished shrug; but his hate-filled eyes were in control, grabbing my attention:

“Allen knew things were getting sad, very sad.  That’s why he began to speak out – protest about the public decline in taste and propriety,” Wild emphasized, “He thought Rock N’ Roll stunk  — look at his protest on his show when Elvis made a premier appearance: forced him to sing to a hound dog wearing a tuxedo!”   

Enter Steve Valentine Patrick William Allen meets Elvis Aaron Presley.

ONE FOR THE MONEY, TWO FOR THE SHOW…..

(“The first time I appeared on stage, it scared me to death. I really didn‘t know what all the yelling was about. I didn’t realize that my body was moving.  It’s a natural thing to me. So to the manager backstage I said, ‘What’d I do? What’d I do?’ And he said, ‘Whatever it is, go back and do it again’”. [March/April interview, 1972, Elvis Presley]) 

Beatle musician John Lennon said: “Before Elvis, there was nothing….” Elvis Aaron Presley, that “back-slid den Pentecostal pup”, now commonly referred to as The King Of Rock N’ Roll, created his own unique style of music that was based on Gospel music and his listening to “all-night sings” at his Church – and his listening to R & B on the historic Memphis Beale Street as a teenager, and the Pop and Country songs of the time. Somewhat unsuccessful at singing ballads for Sun Records, Elvis unexpectedly sang an unrehearsed version of Blues man Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s That’s All Right and a hit career was born (www.elvisthemusic.com). Said Chris Holland of Elvis “the Pelvis” Presley: “mixing ‘black’ and ‘white’ sounds made him popular – and controversial — as did his uninhibited stage and television performances. He is the only performer to have been inducted into three separate music ‘Halls of Fame’….He did much to establish early Rock and Roll music: bring ‘black’ blues singing into ‘white’, teenage mainstream. Teenage girls became hysterical over his blatantly sexual gyrations…TV cameras were oft times not permitted to film below his waist.” “I’m not trying to be sexy,” said Presley, “It’s just my way of expressing myself when I move around.”

Said Lucy Moore in Anything Goes (Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publications, Inc.2010): “Music was one area where black artists effortlessly outshone their white counter parts on their own terms. Negro spirituals were recognized as containing not just the self-pity of a craven people, but glimpses of salvation and eternity.”  Black pride was willfully shown in jazz, blues and popular music. White musicians were always trying to replicate it – but they just could not capture it in spirit.   

At the time of his death, Presley had sold more than 600-million singles and albums. He won three Grammy Awards, all for his Gospel Music. Globally, Presley has sold over one billion records, more than any other artist.  After Presley’s acceptance among main audiences of white American teenagers, African-American performances like Big Joe Turner, Wyonie Harris, Fats Domino, Little Richard, and white performers such as Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison,  Jerry Lee Lewis, and the Everly Brothers gained entrance to the music arena. Professor Michael T. Berbrand said in Race, Rock, And Elvis: “However much Elvis may have ‘barrowed’ from black blues performances, he barrowed none the less from white country stars and white pop singers….much of his borrowings came from the Church, its Gospel music was his primary musical influence and formulation.”

“I’ve tried to live a straight, clean life and not set any kind of a bad example,” said Presley, adding a phrase that may have been later used unwittingly by Ricky Nelson in his song Garden Party, “You cannot please everyone.”

“I’d like to thank the Jaycees for electing me as one of the outstanding young men.” Said Presley at his January 16, 1971 acceptance speech of his 1970 Ten Outstanding Young Men Of The Nation Award, ”When I was a child, ladies and gentlemen, I was a dreamer. I read comic books, and I was the hero of the comic book.  I saw movies, and I was the hero in the movie.  So every dream I ever dreamed, has come true a hundred times….and these gentlemen over here {referring to other Jaycees named that year], these are the type of people building the Kingdom of Heaven, it’s not too far- fetched, from reality.  I’d like to say that I learned very early in life that ‘without a song, the day would never end; without a song, a man ain‘t got a friend; without a song, the road would never bend – without a song’.  So I keep singing a song…..”

ELVIS AIN’T NOTHING BUT A HOUND DOG

“So much of life is an interpretation”, said Liz Murray, author of Breaking Night. It has to be this way for Allen, because if he was so whacked-out (fanatical) on such things as Rock N’ Roll, there are hard questions raised…..

(Allen’s sarcastic July 1, 1956 rendition of Elvis Presley singing Hound Dog on his television show in a tuxedo…..“The house singers on the early Tonight Show   were subjectedto many such stunts,” said en.wikipedia.org, “In addition, Allen’s skit with Presley was actually less a put down of Presley and mainly a satire of country music stage shows.”  Allen thought the controversy  was all “nonsense” and he had no objections to Elvis or his sensual body movements, Allen just wanted to use Elvis in his show’s comedy style “and fabric of our program”.  [Allen‘s show beat competitor and TV host Ed Sullivan in the ratings for the first time:  Ed Sullivan, however, invited Elvis on his show several times hence!] On July 31, 1956, a little more than two weeks after its release, Hound Dog sold a million copies. [Illustratively, Allen also lampooned I Left My Heart In San Francisco  as  I Left My Nose In San Francisco: does that mean  he hated that song too?]  Blog reader Smithdsmit summed it up nicely in September, 2007:  “That this was done just to be funny. It was comedies show….It just seems like this was done all in good fun to me….I do know the media at first hated Elvis.  But he was such a nice guy and so talented: He won them over. They couldn’t help like him after meeting him.”)…..

Why did Allen play the part of Benny Goodman in the movie The Benny Goodman Story? As is with so many things that Allen espoused: there is a direct contradiction (and error {he wasn’t infallible}). Surely he was aware that Goodman’s style was a growth of a very lively and radical “background” which included Rock N’ Roll.

THE PARTNERSHIP IN RYHTHMS

Benny Goodman was a direct child of jazz and swing! Many parents were very suspicious of the new “jazz movement”. It was the younger generation that carried it through (and many oldsters joined in later. Arthur Murray Dance Studios billed itself as The King of Swing and taught the Charleston and the Lindy Hop). And like so many ‘movements’, the youngsters carried the wave.  It had been a vibrant force (the Nazis censored the Swing Kids for fear of revolt- – – – -Russia did the same thing at one time: “…listening to smuggled jazz records was tantamount to political rebellion.…artistic freedom was strictly underground, considered by the authorities to be either dangerous subversives or misguided fools…”, ‘Guitars Of The Cold War’, Jan. and May, 2002, Vintage Guitar Magazine). Larry Schweikart in his Seven Events That Made America, America  said  that Rock N’ Roll, as a musical device of the 20^th Century, helped bring the Berlin Wall down.  It was so American; so Jazz – and – Country.  Its very structure speaks to freedom: The individualism of the 1960s. The same phenomena happened with the Beatles: young people all over the world used this music as their Marching Orders and their inspiration to challenge tyranny and bad government. (www.patriothistoryusa.com.).

It was J.A. Rogers that said in Alain Locke’s 1925 anthology, The New Negro  (new York, N.Y 1925): The true spirit of Jazz is a joyous revolt from convention, custom, authority, boredom, even sorrow – from everything that would confine the soul of man and hinder its riding free on the air…it is the revolt of the emotions against repression.”

Lucy Moore said in Anything Goes: “More importantly, jazz served a vital function as a social leveler.  It made people more natural with each other, less artificial, and gave hope to those who believed that old restrictions upon society might one day fade away entirely.”    

WE BEGIN TO ‘DIG IT’

Len Weinstock said jazz originated somewhere about 1895-1917 by Creole musicians that had trained in  conservatories in Europe; European music that was blended with Blues, Ragtime, Brass Band Music, hymns, spirituals, minstrel music,  and Work Songs, mixed with African polyrhythm and European dance rhythms.   Kansas City’s jazz roots began in the 1900s when marching band music, Ragtime music, and Blues music started to merge.  Piero Scaruffi tells  us that when  jazz moved to Chicago, jazz musicians were often employed by gangsters.  Their first audiences were the “mob”. New York’s jazz pianists began blending Blues and Ragtime. The Stride Piano appeared on the scene. In Atlantic City jazz was supported in the red-light district and in many cities Rent Parties were thrown where predominantly white tourists paid to listen to black bands and the money was used to “pay the rent”.

There was Eubie Black from Baltimore (1906), Lucky Roberts from Philadelphia, Willie ’the lion’ Smith and James Johnson (1914) from New York. In the 1920s, Harlem was home to Blues music and white tourists visited The Savoy and the Harlem Cotton Club. Charles “lucky” Roberts reworked Ripples of the Nile (1912) into the classic Moonlight Cocktail (1942) for the Glenn Miller band. He also wrote Miniature Syncopated rhapsody. The Big Band sound was gaining momentum. Fletcher Henderson (1920) and Benny Carter were two progenitors. Keep A Song In Your Soul (1930). Jean Schwartz: Chinatown My Chinatown (1930). And then, guess who?….Benny Goodman – – – – New York, 1928. Benny employed Fletcher Henderson to arrange Jelly Roll Martin’s King Porter’s Stomp.

A cavalcade of music: Moon Glow, Juke Box Saturday Night, Satin Doll, Tuxedo Junction, In The Mood, Mood Indigo, Woodchopper’s Ball, Cherokee, Take The ‘a’  Train, Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree, Sky liner,  Green Eyes  and many, many more.   

Said www.nfo.net/Jazz  in “jazz”: “The 1920s are still called the ‘jazz-age’. Ladies shortened their tresses and bobbed their hair, they hiked up their skirts, rolled down their stockings, and rouged their lips.”

“In 1920 there were only 750 beauty salons in New York; that number had risen to 3,000 in 1925, and by 1930 there were 40,000 nationwide,” said Lucy Moore in Anything Goes, “….launching flourishing business empires capitalizing on the Flapper’s obsession with her looks. Far from liberating women, bobbed and bleached hair necessitated frequent visits to the coiffeur; nail varnish was considered delightfully daring; lipstick, rouge and powder had become everyday essentials.”

Welcome! Louie Jordan and his hipster slang and saucy double entendre (Caldonia, Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby?), Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, Raymond Scott (Harry Warnow)……Kansas City Jazz, Boogie Woogie, The Shouters, and the Crooners. “During the 1940s“, said Scaruffi, “The Big Swing Band had become the voice of America abroad.” Benny Goodman played at the Palomar Ballroom in August, 1935. 

There was Fletcher Henderson and an audience of young white dancers were moving to “hot” rhythms” and daring “hot swing” arrangements. Soldiers and sailors in the 1940s: Swing becomes our patriotic syncopation. We all remember Glenn Miller’s rendition of ST. Louis Blues March.  Dance styles ran the gamut: the Short George, Hip Cat, the Jitter Bug, Cats, Brook Position Jitter Bug, The Boogie-Woogie, Hit That Jive, The Black Bottom Rag (The Benny Goodman movie also highlighted the Lindy Hop, Baboa, West Coast Swing and musicals such as Let’s Dance, California Here I Come, You Turned The Talles On Me, Sing-Sing-Sing, Bugle Call, Tiger Rag, Roll‘em, Hot House, Gotta Be This Or That, featuring Dizzy Gillespie, Gene Krupa, Harry James).

“Tain’t no sin to step out of your skin and dance in your bones”- The Big Band Era: “Swing was ‘the’ thing, and ‘jump-jivin’ ‘kats’ and ‘kittens’ were Lindy hopping in every ballroom and dancehall in the land……” (Big Bands Database, www.nfo.net.)

Clara Bork, my mother, oft times spoke of going to Dance Clubs and “cutting a rug” as a teenager and a young woman. “A powder compact hidden in a shoe-buckle was aimed at the modern party girl, dancing too uninhibitedly to carry a handbag,” said Lucy Moore in Anything Goes, “Movie stars and society beauties appeared in aspirational advertisements promoting face creams, soap and make-up. The message was that women were constantly on display – and it was their responsibility to make the best of themselves by using the best products they could afford.”

The beauty industry was a $1.5 million a year advertising investment in 1915.  In 1930, it was spending over 10 times that amount.  

(And as far as Allen and Swing: If Steve Allen couldn’t “Rock’’, he certainly could “Roll” into swing:  Whydid he write the 1963 Grammy award-winning jazz  piece, The Gravy Waltz?)

JAZZ UNTO ROCK

Rock music was born out of a hybrid of Rhythm and Blues music and Country music, originated in the Appalachian-mountains, part Irish fiddle, part German derived dulcimer, and African-American banjo. Anglo-Celtic ballads and dance tunes, immigrants brought to America were come to be known as “old time” music that ranged from 1900 to the 1930s: A mixture of vaudeville music, African-American minstrel show tunes, the 1930s brought Hank Williams and Brother Groups like the Delmones, the Stanleys, and the Louvins. Jimmy Rogers. There was Okie Boogie; Cowboy Boogie; Honky Tonk. There was Eddy Arnold. There was the introduction of Swing, horns, electricity, and Bluegrass. Songs like Blue Moon Of Kentucky (Carl Perkins recalls his early battered acoustic guitar lessons with fellow field worker John Westbrook, “uncle John”. who told him: “Get down close to it! You can feel it travel down the strangs, come through your head and down to your soul where you live. You can feel it. Let it vib-a-rate!”)  In 1955, Perkins made the original version of Blue Suede Shoes. The old traditional music of the mountains gave way to the beginnings of modern commercial country, or, as Syd Masters (The Swing Riders) would say, “Vintage western cowboy swing.”

About the time that Ethel Waters and Trixie Smith were singing tunes like My Man Rocks Me, Bill Haley was listening to Jimmy Preston and Haley would travel to the Marcus Hook Theater to see his idol, Gene Autry.  It was the “Hillbilly” era. Ralph Peer (1926) typified the Antebellum Folk Songs of string bands and Appalachian fiddles. Marion-Troy-Slaughter. There were “okehs”. Henry Whittler, Emmett Miller. There was the group called the Georgia Crackers (which included bandleaders Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey on trombone and saxophone). Ralph Peers discovered Jimmy Rodgers in 1927. John Clifton said: “Like Roy Rodgers and other hayseed Hollywood harmoniums, Autry dipped liberally into jazz and swing, giving his music a nice little bounce.” This became the hallmark of legendary figures such as Bob Wells and Roy Acuff, as well as Roy Rodgers and Gene Autry, through the 1930s – 1950s. Country Pop typified by Lloyd Perryman and The Gold Star Rangers (1937) was also seen in movies such as Outlaws Of The Prairie and Spoilers Of the Range. It became to be known as the “Swinging Hollywood- Hillbilly-Cowboys”.

Bill Haley tried to imitate his idol Gene Autry and could be found “singing like Autry” at the Booth’s Corner Auction Mart (1946).  Haley went on to join groups as Shorty Cook’s Down Homers and The Range Drifters.  But…“G.I’s returning from World War II were looking for something different, something more upbeat and exhilarating,” says Jim Dawson and Ian Whitcomb, “and they were finding it in California’s hillbilly boogie, Texas’s Western Swing, New Orleans’ Rumba.” It was flavored by piano R and B, Chicago’s electrified Mississippi guitar blues and St. Louis’s Swing Jazz. (for Steve Erdmann this all came together at Mary’s Confectionary on South Broadway in St. Louis where he and the “gang” listened to the best of all worlds on Mary’s juke box  ). Haley found employment at WPWA radio where many young whites continually requested rhythm and blues records. The Jimmy Preston radio program as heralded by the noisy theme song Rock The Joint. It was a time of Pee Wee King’s Golden West Cowboys (“The Tennessee Waltz”), James “Slim” Allsman, and the premier of the electric Gibson: all made popular with the help of the Philadelphia crime syndicate and their mafia-owned juke boxes. Rock was a money-maker and the mob knew money: Roulette Records was mob owned and had Rock singer Tommy James in their palm (Me, The Mob And The Music, Simon & Schuster, 2010).

About this time, media producer Dick Clark – American Bandstand – came upon the television scene with groups like Danny and the Juniors and their Rock And Roll Will Never Die and At The Hop.  Started in 1957 – the show eventually moved from Philadelphia to Hollywood in 1964. Elvis Presley appeared on January 8, 1960. During its run, one had the opportunity to have seen Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Chuck Berry, Annette Funicelo, Frankie Avalon, James Brown, Fabian, Bobby Darin, and Paul Anka and many other stars.  Rock steps such as The Slop, Bop, Hand Jive, The Stroll, The Twist and several others became popular and featured dance routines.

Every pub, every tavern, from open windows, through-out Carondelet came the plaintive soul-jerking voice of Hank Williams.  The juke boxes were a blend of the best of all worlds but Hank seemed to hover about the rural town migrants that settled in many homes in Carondelet.  Williams spoke to them with strains of back-home hands in the soil music. It broke my heart to hear his pleading twang and I often wondered if the teenage girl or boy or rural-minded adult that played that record did so to tease an orphan like me.

But the Williams music was no respecter of families: It was the blood of the rural working poor.  He was born in utter poverty and suffered pain all his life from an undiagnosed case of spina bibida and died from the effects of alcohol and pills at the age of twenty-nine. “Country music has often ignored fashion and the delicate feelings of the bourgeoisie in order to portray the real world,” said Donald Clarke, The Rise And Fall Of Popular Music, “The fact is that a great many Americans lived from paycheck to paycheck and spent much time drowning their sorrows or trying to enjoy themselves in the sort of taverns where Williams had served his apprenticeship.  He knew these persons’ hopes, dreams, and fears, and wrote their songs for them; he was among the greatest of folk poets.”

Lonnie Rulo, Louie Bach (and sister Carol), Bob Hanger (and sister Darlene), Rick and Dave Rappults, Ray Carter, Donald Spese, Barbara Novy and so many others, spoke with a country twang and roamed the streets of Carondelet, looking for adventure. Some were kind, some were cruel and some were as wild as the Appalachian country side their descendants reigned from. Some were just hard-core Southern Missouri Country but they seemed every bit as wild as if they walked directly out of the rugged northern part of Georgia out of James Dickey’s novel Deliverance. These were The Broadway Gang that I, as the expression goes, “hung out with”. These songs were on their lips, amongst the rock favorites at that time.

I Go Out Walking After Midnight – Patsy Cline,,,,    Young Love – Sonny James

What’d I Say – Georgia – Ruby – I’m Movin’ On –     Hound Dog — Elvis Presley

 (Ray Charles)….                                                                Gotta Travel On – Billy  Gra-   

Johnny B. Goode – Chuck Berry….                               mer                                                      

I Walk The Line – Johnny Cash….                                  Oh lonesome Me – Don Gibson

Great Balls Of Fire – Jerry Lee Lewis….                   City Lights – Ray Price

Hey Good Lookin – Hank Williams….                           Crying Over You….Webb Pierce

Dream Lovers – Bobby Darin…..                                    Country Girl – Faron Young 

Nagel Street ran all the way down to the Sand Bar Club, a tavern that stood cozily and somewhat forlornly at the foot of Nagel Street and faced the Mississippi river. Nestled near-by where three or four “stilt-legged” homes – usually little three-room shanties propped up in case the river rose and tried to flood them. Margaret Martin and her mom lived in one shanty (although distanced by a rather large vacant lot they still were a short distance from Mary’s Confectionery on Broadway): it became a regular meeting place the gang could gather. banter and flirt with their girlfriends and swagger their cigarettes, usually Lucky Strikes, Camels or Marlboros, to prove their toughness. In the sweltering summer air (or in the bone chilling cold of winter), surrounding the allure of teenage excitement and romance, vibrant juke-box music of 1960 would come floating into our gathering:


El Paso – Marty Robbins       

Beyond The Sea –Bobby Darin

Time After Time – Frankie Ford

Let It Be Me – Everly Brothers

Mack The Knife – Bobby Darin

Mediterranean Moon – The Rays

Good Timing – Jimmy Jones

What In The World’s Come Over You –

Kathy’s Clown – Everly Brothers

What In The World’s Come Over You –

Jack Scott

Ring Of Fire – Johnny Cash

Lonely Blue Boy – Conway Twitty

Problems – Everly Brothers

Stuck On You – Elvis Presley

Wild One – Bobby Rydell

Chantilly Lace – The Big Bopper

I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry – Hank Williams

Cold, Cold Heart – Hank Williams

China Doll —- The Ames Brothers

Oh Carol —- Neil Sedaka

“The more I learn to care for you, the more we drift apart….Why can’t I free your doubtful mind….And melt your cold, cold heart?”  (Hank Williams)

The Ames Brother’s rendition of China Doll proved prophetic in as much as I become attracted to Asian and oriental ladies in the latter part of my single years and that song would often drift into my memory. I bought into and tried to adapt to the “humble and faithful Asian women syndrome” 20 years later after being tempest-thrown and shipwrecked by social, political and legal realities.  

For myself, I loved girls, but was painfully shy due to an increasing case of teenage acne. It seemed to run in the family.  About the time my brother John was outgrowing a rather severe episode, it was an increasing problem for me….and I was quit embarrassed by it. Not just that problem: but the “living under the shadow” of the whole family fiasco of fights, drinking and the beatings, had me feeling somewhat subhuman, ashamed, worried and standoffish. A young girl down the street, Barbara Desmondi, had a girlfriend, Sharon Rooney who was the epitome, the very image and essence, the soul of the sweet. charming, swank, pretty girlish idol that the best of the teenage girls exemplified in the 1950s-1960s. Sharon had a long dark auburn ponytail that would swish and swing along her back and up to her shoulders that was typical of those Chantilly Lace (The Big Bopper) girls at the time.  All of her sisters and she had that characteristic Celtic magic, that Irish air of the pixie will-of-the-wisp enchantment. She was every bit of a petite teenage doll so many songs portrayed in the Rock N’ Roll century. She was too good to be true.

Ray Carter heard by the grapevine, primarily, Barbara Desmondi that Sharon wanted to meet me and get acquainted.  I refused to commit myself.  Frankly, I was scared out of my wits.  But carter and Barbara were expert match-makers, and in a subsequent visit to Margaret Martin’s riverside shanty, I noted Desmondi approaching with another girl. 

“Steve, here is that girl that wants to meet you, Sharon!” Ray threw up into the air in his usual brazen and bold manner.

I panicked and began to run across the vast expanse of a vacant lot that was next to the Sand Bar Club, actually, in a vain attempt to run to Mary’s Confectionary. After about a hundred feet I stumbled and fell. Realizing the  hopelessness and embarrassment of being cornered and trying to escape, I sheepishly walked back to the visitors. My heart was beating like a drum. The conversation probably was awkward and strained. Hopefully, Sharon denoted my peculiar behavior, in addition to being unskilled in girls, as being completely stunned and amazed by her attractiveness.

But somehow groping and testing and walking about the neighborhood for a while, the match was made. It was understood I would see Sharon that weekend at the other favorite teenage hangout – the Michigan Theater. Though some said that, at least at the time, with the typical hairstyle, I had a nodding resemblance to the late Ricky Nelson (everyone tried to replicate Ricky or Elvis in 1960), but for the world-of-me, I couldn’t understand what I had done to deserve such a beauty as Sharon. She was above me; I was totally out of her league: The attraction was like a “bolt out of the blue,” might say angelic.  I needed someone to care for me then – I was feeling completely out of the ranks of normal society. School was sinking rapidly as an ambition. And, although I sought out adventure to take my mind off the debasements of life, I was totally unworthy of a “teen angel” like Sharon. She was never arrogant, crude, or unforgiving. In looking back, I recall the time he fought a girl in defense of me, jealous perhaps, but this was no switchblade brawl, but one very concerned, caring girl charging out to protect her ‘man.’

But here she was; and I agreed to not argue – I’d soak up all the affection and love I could get. I felt she somehow sensed the hurt, the fear, the shame, the torment I was going through (and she as well?).  To this day, I regret that I chased her away – pushed her apart from me – partly because I felt too far below her – partly because I was a hurt, selfish kid – partly because I felt she could do better than what my family had to offer her (worse yet, I somehow got the sneaking feeling that my mother had talked to Geneva and discussed me as a real problem, a very bad penny for Sharon! {way to go mom}. If some measure of manly bravado had been instilled in me long before that point, I would have done everything that a man should have done. But it was then; I was no man; and events slipped into the Never-Everland of ‘should- have- did’s.’ I regret that she may have mistook my mysterious behavior as a rebuff of her personally.  She was — and still is – an eternal doll.  I wanted her and needed her very badly. And still do.

I tried to contact Sharon one time – it was a successful.  I sent a letter to an old address at which the Rooney family had lived at one time at 6706 Michigan. I asked them to deliver the letter or pass it along. A few weeks later, while driving to work down Michigan Avenue. I saw Sharon coming out of that very house (presumably to carry parcels to a white van; apparently my letter had made contact through interceding parties) – still as pretty and sweet looking as ever (she would have had to have been about 53-years-of-age at the time I mailed the letter). If it was not her; it was her spitting-image of a daughter.

I put on my brakes to stop the car. I heard myself exclaim “Sharon!” –   But I couldn’t stop and run out; I guess I had said everything in the letter:  how sorry I was if she felt I never cared for her, how I thought see was and is a living doll, and I hope she is having a happy life.  I wonder about her often.  I wonder what could have been – if …… if……

The family included three other sisters; all teenagers. I did meet her mother, Geneva, and only saw her father one time tending bar at a speak-easy-type bar on the corner of Mott and Michigan Avenues (apparently they had lived up the street at one time at 6601 Minnesota, then lived at 3807 a Potomac Avenue till they moved to the apartment on Vermont). The family was regular members of the Carondelet Sunday Morning Athletic Club on Loughborough Avenue. I believe the father tended bar there, along with other activities. Their upstairs apartment on Vermont Avenue was typical upper-lower income family with modest trappings and furnishings.  This allowed a certain amount of kinship to Sharon with me, as being of similar background.  I gathered that the family was struggling like everyone else in that area.

Was that the year of the backyard apparition? Was a prayer answered?

ROCKABILLY

Rockabilly partly came out of Haley with his “cowboy yodeling.” But there was also Jimmy Rodgers who fused Hillbilly Cowboy, gospel, jazz, blues, Pop, and Folk. “And then, out of nowhere, came Bill Haley…..Crazy Man Crazy…..an exuberant, pulsating blend of guitar, sax, and piano, riding the best of a slap-back bass and a whip-crack snare,” said Michael Satchell, “It was utterly different from any music we ever heard….now, we had music we could dance to. It was exciting.  It was cool.  It was ours……(he was) a cowboy poet.” Haley had tired of country yodeling – western swing: he changed his band’s name from the Saddlemen to The Comets (based on the tales of Mark Twain and Hailey’s Comet): became one of the most successful of the early “blue-eyed” Rockers.

Later, Ray Charles expanded on the tradition of Country Swing with songs like Hit The Road Jack, I Got A Woman, Georgia, Born To Lose. (“I was born with music inside of me…music was one of my parts, like blood. It was a force already with me when I arrived on the scene”, said Charles.) Billie Barnette. Mama Thornton (Hound Dog). Fats Domino (made the Top Ten with Aint That A Shame, 1955). Jackie Deshannon. Buddy Holly – The Big Bopper – Richie Valens (“We sang dirges in the dark the day the music died…..”, Don Mclean’s American Pie.). Chuck Berry (which I saw often passing through Lambert Airport). Jerry Lee Lewis. Ricky Nelson (I’m walkin, Stood Up, It’s Late, Lonesome Town, Poor Little Fool, Hello Marylou: “His artistry in using his ‘smooth’ monotone tenor to subtly and feelingly convey a wide range of teen angst emotions”) {Wikipedia}. Eric Hilliard Nelson (Ricky) preferred Rockabilly and up-tempo Rock songs like Believe What You Say and I Got A Feeling.  Little “Ricky” was a prophet:  he would say on The Adventures Of Ozzie and Harriet television program: “I don’t mess around, boy!”

(His father, Ozzie Nelson, had the number one hit And Then Some in 1934 and his rendition of Ain’t That A Shame made the top ten in 1955; Nelson made the 1957 Rutgers University “Doctor of Humane Letters”, and ranked number 21 in the TV Guide’s list of the 50 greatest TV dads of all time)

About this time, media producer Dick Clark – American Bandstand – came upon the television scene with groups like Danny and the Juniors and their Rock And Roll Will Never Die and At The Hop. Started in 1957 – the show eventually moved from Philadelphia to Hollywood in 1964. Elvis Presley appeared on January 8, 1960. During its run, one had the opportunity to have seen Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Chuck Berry, Annette Funicelo, Frankie Avalon, James Brown, Fabian, Bobby Darin, and Paul Anka and many other stars.  Rock steps such as The Slop, Bop, Hand Jive, The Stroll, The Twist and several others became popular and featured dance routines.

CHARLES HARDIN HOLLY

Charles Holly’s, better known as Buddy Holly, success lasted only a year and a half, but, as critic Bruce Elder said, Holly was “the single most influential creative force in early rock n’ roll…” His early version of his hit song That’ll Be The Day took its title from a line that John Wayne’s character says repeatedly in the 1956 film The Searchers. That song topped the U.S ‘Best Sellers’ chart in stores September, 1957. By coincidence, Sputnik took off that year as well. On October 21, 1958, Holly recorded a ballad for his wife, True Love Ways. On February 3, 1959, due to a tight tour schedule, during very inclement weather, Holly traded a bus seat with artist Waylon Jennings for a seat aboard a small chartered airplane – along with recording artists Richie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson —- which crashed ending the lives of all three artists.  Holly and singer Waylon Jennings had jokingly traded friendly bards before the flight; Holly said to Jennings, “I hope your ol’ bus freezes up!”  Jennings replied: “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes!”  It was a statement that would haunt Jennings for years to come. This incident made its way into Don Mclean’s American Pie…..”…..the day the music died…..”     

MISSISSIPPI RIVER DIXIE AND RAG

(“Through my singing and acting and speaking, I want to make freedom ring. Maybe I can touch people’s hearts better than I can their minds, with the common struggle of the common man.” Paul Robeson)   

Ronnie Smith and I would venture about Carondelet, St. Louis and often travel to the Vulcan Street bridge in the “patch”, and there listen to the Dixie and Rag rhythms that came floating through the summertime breeze as we faced the Showboats catering to tourists traveling on the Mississippi River; In the air was that special primal and primitive smell of mud and waste from the river,

Says www.hoover.archives.gov: “The Mississippi River has been host to a musical heritage ranging from Native American drumbeats to Anglo-Celtic ballads, French folksongs to African-field-hollers. Emerging in the late 1800s, an original American sound drifted up from the southern cotton fields, choir lofts, juke joints, and river barges….Distinctive songs of suffering were sung by the poorest, mostly illiterate blacks, a reaction to the demeaning existence lived by sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta. Accompanied by acoustic guitar or harmonica, these earthy songs were primitive and gritty.

The Delta blues became the cornerstone of modern music. It became the basis for Gospel, Jazz, Dixieland. Ragtime, Bluegrass, Country, Rock and Roll, Rhythm And Blues, Soul Music….A gumbo mix of blues, ragtime, Spirituals, and Caribbean Music erupted….Musicians worked the riverboats and spread their hypnotic rhythms and brassy tones up the Mississippi, and by the 1920s and 1930s, Dixieland brass ensembles were all the rage.” I am reminded of Paul Robeson’s rendition of Ole’ Man River (he sang it in the “oldie but goodie” movie Show Boat, 1936; baritone William Warfield sang that song in the 1951 Show Boat version ). Robeson owed much to his pianist, arranger and accompanist-manager, Lawrence Brown, who helped organize the  Songs Of Free Men.

Though an avowed and active Communist, many say that Robeson was deluded and unaware of Stalin’s Death Camps and murdering atrocities, and he was blinded by the Russian propaganda of a better world for Negro people, void of racial bias and hatred. They say he could not be convinced otherwise; devoting himself to the love of the poor and down trodden citizens; particularly that of the negro people.

In the 1890s, a group of musicians, including Scott Joplin, were living in and around Sedalia, Missouri (1894) writing rags. “Ragging” of songs were especially popular with dance music and some dances were called “rags”. Joplin studied music at the George R. Smith College in Sedalia, and eventually taught musicians Scott Hayden and Arthur Marshall. Joplin moved to St. Louis in 1900 where he wrote the popular The Entertainer, Elite Syncopation, March Majestic, and Ragtime Dance.  In 1903, he wrote his opera A Guest of Honor.  Joplin had severalmarriages; his first wife, Freddie Alexander, died at age 20. Two months After their wedding, Joplin wrote Bethena (1905). Joplin’s belief was that “Ragtime should never be played fast”, according to biographer Rudi Blesh (1909).  In 1914. Jelly Roll Morton popularized Joplin’s Silver Swan Rag.

“River traffic increased so rapidly that by the 1830s, it was common to see more than 150 steamboats on the St. Louis levee,” said en.wikipedia.org, “and the wharves were filled with workers shifting goods on and off the boats.”  Historian William B. Faherty said that in 1841 St. Louis had 186 steamboats to have landed 1,976 times discharging 263,681 tons of goods. A popular riverboat tune of that period was Steamboat Bill (www.usdgennet.org, “Steam boating On The Mississippi”). In 1810, there were 20 steamboats on the rivers; in the 1830s, there were 1200 ‘hulls’.

“By the 1820s, with the southern states joining the Union and the land converted to cotton plantations so indicative of the Antebellum south, methods were needed to move the bales of cotton, rice, timber, tobacco and molasses. The steamboat was perfect,” said en.wikipedia.org, Steamboats Of The Mississippi, “America boomed in the age of Jackson. Population moved west and more farms (and more slaves) were fueled first by wood, then coal, which pushed barges of coal from Pittsburg to New Orleans. Regular steamboat commerce begun between Pittsburgh and Louisville.”

“Early jazz and blues influences flowed north on riverboats that plotted a course into town from New Orleans, the Mississippi Delta and Memphis, while ragtime, blues and R&B flowed down from St. Louis.  That was a common migration path from  the 1880s to World War II,” said www.soulofamerica.org, “The up-tempo beat of ragtime, coupled with the frequent arrival of the riverboats with their musicians, hustlers, drifters, pimps and  prostitutes, created a perpetual transient energy that pushed social mores and interaction  between the races….Joplin resided here for several years and became one of the city’s favorite sons, particularly after he composed The Cascades for the 1904 World’s Fair….”

Joplin performed at the Columbia Expedition in Chicago in 1893. John Philip Sousa played ragtime and also introduced it and the Cakewalk to Europe. He advertised for such compositions. Gershwin, Romberg, Kern, Berlin and Porter wrote ragtime during their early years. Classical composers such as Ives, Dvorak, Hindemit and Debussy used Ragtime themes in their works. (Rachel Sahlman. www.incwell.com.  Warren Trachtman. http://www.nvrs.org)  

“The Zebulon Pike and her sisters soon transformed St. Louis into a bustling boomtown, commercial center, and inland port”. By the 1830s more than 150 steamboats landed at the St. Louis levee at one time.  Immigrants flooded into St. Louis after 1840, particularly from Germany; during reconstruction, rural southern blacks flooded into St. Louis as well, seeking better opportunity. “By the 1800s, St. Louis had become the largest U.S. city west of Pittsburgh, and the second largest port in the country, with a commercial tonnage exceeded only by New York.”  

The panopy of river steamboats are endless: The City Of Baton  Rouge  – 1870s. City Of Cairo – 1856.  City Of Chattanooga – 1892.  Streamer City – June 24, 1861.  City of Keithsburg – 1864.  Sawmill Clipper – 1880.  Clara – 1856.  Clara Hine – 1850s. Comet – 1813.  City of Gadsden – 1899.  City Of Jeffersonville – 1891. Natchez I, II, III -1823-1848, New Orleans – 1811, Floating Theatre – 1831, Robert E. Lee – 1836, White Cloud – 1823, Hannibal, Mississippi King, American King, Proud Mary, River Queen, New Sensation, New Era, Water Queen, Princess, Golden Rod, Sunny South, Cotton Blossom, New Showboat, King Of Mississippi, Southern Belles, The American Queen, Sultana, the Sprague, the largest stern-wheel towboat ever built, launched in 1901, eventually became a showboat and museum in 1948, ending in a fire in 1974, S.S. St. Paul, S.S. Sidney, S.S. Captiol – with showmen such as Zutty Singleton, Norman Mason, Sidney Desuignes, Amos White, Henry Kimball, and so many more.

“The New Orleans bands, like the riverboats themselves, wintered in New Orleans and came north into dock and operate from St. Louis all summer,” said John Szived. So What; The Life Of Miles Davis, www.books.google.com, “St. Louis regularly got to hear New Orleans musicians like Fate Marable, Louis Armstrong, and Red Allen on those boats and off them. New Orleanians like drummer Zutly Singleton and Jelly Roll Morton recorded with local St. Louis bands, and area musicians such as Charles Creath, Dewey Jackson, and Elwood C. Buchanan, Sr., were heard on the boats when they reached New Orleans.”  These riverboat musicians played simple dance music, gracefully and easily – laying the basis for the jazz music to come in the years ahead.  “By the early 1900s, St. Louis may have been the center of ragtime, but it was also primed for the development of jazz.”

JAZZ

The legend of the origin of the word ‘jazz’ could be traced to multiple origins; one popular legend if that the word was derived from the rhythm and blues played on the J.S. Deluxe Showboat – commonly referred to as the “J.S.” and repeatedly pronounced “jezz” or “the jezz” – eventually become the byword for the particular River Boat swing, Dixie and Blues.  The boat actually belong to the John Streckfus boat line – hence the JS. It was launched in 1901 for excursion traffic from New Orleans to St. Paul, Minnesota with the theme “rolling on the river”.  The JS had a large dance floor and bandstand. The boat burned on June 25, 1910.

Another legend was Jess Stacy – August 11, 1904 to January 1, 1995 – an American jazz pianist during the Swing Era; Jesse Alexander Stacy, lived in Bird’s Point, Missouri , and by 1920 he was playing piano in saxophonist Reg Meyer’s jazz ensemble at Cape Girardeau High School and at the Bluebird confectionary at Broadway and Fountain, as well as at the Sweet Shop on Main street. Jesse played for Reg Meyer’s Melody Kings and played on the Majestic and other riverboats.  He eventually worked for Paul Mares and lived in Chicago, Illinois.   

THE ‘SATCHMO’

Louis Daniel Armstrong played a “particularly influential and controversial role in the riverboat experience,” said William Kenny.  In 1919, 1920, and 1921, his unusually rapid improvisational program accelerated on the Streckfus Line excursion boats. 

“Jazz skills, jazz ideals, and jazz’s alienation from mainstream middle class culture functioned as a body of knowledge with which one could live and work while on the move, particularly on the water”, said William Howland Kenny, author of Jazz On The River, “Armstrong owed much to his musical experiences in New Orleans. But from 1919 to the end of the summer of 1921, he tramped the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio Rivers….his music expressed the special kinds of movement characterized by migration, diaspora, and steamship voyages.”    

Louis Daniel Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901 in the Storyville district of New Orleans, the famed red-light district called the “Back of the Town”. It was often referred to as “the battlefield” because of the gambling, drunkenness, fighting and shooting. His father was a laborer that abandoned Louis, his mother and family right after Louis’ birth. Louis’ mother was a part-time prostitute: William Armstrong and Maryann Albert. There was Sister Beatrice Armstrong Collins and Uncle Isaac. His very early life in New Orleans was grim, rough and tumbles.  Louis hauled coal by day and played his cornet by night.

In 1907, Louis stayed with a Jewish family in New Orleans, Louisiana, which taught him racial equality,” how to live –  real life and determination” – and eventually lead to the Karnofskys Project. Louis wore a Star Of David most of his life.  Armstrong tells about the Karnofskys in his book Louis Armstrong And The Jewish  Family In New Orleans, La., The Year Of 1907.

He was sent to the Fisk School for Boys and the Colored Waifs Home because he shot off his stepfather’s pistol in a New Year’s celebration; he was oft times considered a juvenile delinquent. Professor Peter Davis took note of Louis and the Home Administrator Captain Joseph Jones asked that Louis be tutored. Cornet Bunk Johnson taught the 11-year-old to play by ear at Pago Tony’s Tonk in New Orleans. He stayed in the school till 14-years-of-age. Louis later gained the nick name “satchmo” because of his broad, wide, joyous grin he often displayed to the public. He became entranced with music and played for passing pedestrians on street corners. One of his haunts was the ‘quabrille’ where they did licentious dancing, such as the Funky Butt and “ragtime” (Jazz was very new and embryonic then). There was also Joe Oliver’s Pete LaLa’s Club. His first dance hall job was at Henry Ponce’s club. Black Benny became one of the first of a line of protectors, handlers and guides. He was a student of Burk Johnson and Buddy Petit Kiory; Joe ‘King’ Oliver, however, became his primary mentor and father figure.

Despite his tenacious and mean rearing, Armstrong often spoke of his youth with fondness; well-liked (and made himself so) by the prostitutes, pimps, gamblers and toughs of that neighborhood. Satchmo Armstrong “Apparently felt relatively secure in this rather vicious environment.” (www.lewis-armstrong.com)

He sang in a boys’ quartet in 1913; studied with the Joe ‘King’ Oliver Band and later joined the Kid Ory Band in 1919.  For two years he also played on the St. Louis river boat that housed Fate Marable’s Band (he referred to Fate Marable as “going to the university”), where upon he was introduced to the Streckfus Mississippi Boat Lines and became a river boat musician. One of his bands he called the Tuxedo Brass Band. He later formed the Hot Five and Hot Seven Bands.

Armstrong’s first wife, Daisey Parker, died on March 19, 1918, shortly after their divorce. They had adopted a 3-year-old boy, Clarence Armstrong, who sustained a head injury and needed special care there-after.

Armstrong played on the S.S. Sidney and S.S. St. Paul riverboats and he wrote glowingly about “going back to his Storyville haunts with a wad of riverboat dollars in his jeans”. His major themes were of the black Mississippian and his great migration revealed in his own hot, stomping, swinging manner, sometimes in a tempo much faster than riverboat captains had allowed.  His lyrics spoke of the sadness of the black south, but Armstrong frames those moments in his own “sunny optimism”. Said Kenny: “He’s a son of the south very much on the move, dressed even better than Fate Marable, and moreover, stepping to some really hot jazz, much too searing for old wooden paddle wheelers.”

In Billy Baskette’s Mighty River, the lyrics actually herald the sound of a departing steamer’s whistle and bell, announcing a slow voyage back home “to a girl (like Daisy Parker)”.

A Victor Records recording session in 1933 produced Mississippi Basin, Dusty Stevedore, St. Louis Blues, There’s A Cabin In The Pines, Mighty River, He’s A Son Of The South. Decca Records recorded in 1939 and 1940 bannered his lively Shanty Boat On The Mississippi and Lazy Sippy Steamer.

Shanty Boat evokes the jerry-rigged houseboats of poor black people along the Mississippi and tell about the feelings of an exhausted laboring man who looks forward to the day that he and his wife can “kick back” and release daily burdens on his own shanty riverboat.

Louis invented ‘scat singing’, a form of bebop rhythm in lyrics, and the “uniquely gritty correlation of his voice became a musical archetype that was much imitated and endlessly impersonated.” In 1923 Louis correlated and arranged music with Hoagy Carmichael and Bix Beiderbecke. Rockin Chair was one of Carmichael’s best renditions. Armstrong recoded Lazy River in 1931 and in 1945 he formed a six piece band called the All Stars. In 1968 Armstrong recorded What A Wonderful World: a lyrical, musical travel log of life’s best moments And memories. In 1990 Louis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.

Louis ‘Satchmo’ Daniel Armstrong died on July 6, 1971 at 69 years-of-age. “Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine”, Armstrong had said, “I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans. It has given me something to live for.”    

Louis Armstrong became one of the greatest riverboat celebrities of the 20^th century with his “hot” jazz tempos.  Said Armstrong: “What we play is life!”   

CREATIVITY OR  DESTRUCTIVITY?

(Otherwise known as ’Smock! Smock!’)

Steve Allen would be the last to stifle creativity (he personally used it in the creation of his brash and upbeat theme song This Could Be the Start of Something Big). He often extolled creativity. In the 1995 No. 61 General Semantics Bulletin , Allen said of himself: “I’m just a musical illiterate…I cannot read music….I’m just versatile….some little tiny little thing is  where that talent comes from….that’s way in the Twilight Zone….(but) so is the whole universe…..you cannot make scientific statements so ephemeral as humor….eye of the beholder….there being no further testimony in this case, the jury will now retire to render a verdict….”

Steve Allen would outline the lives of people like automotive tycoon Charles Kettering as a gifted child who worked his way out of extreme poverty, and used those gifts to obtain grand success. But I also agree that those people could have easily been overlooked if they did not get help and support along the way.  Sometimes talent and support don’t always mesh in life.

Or as Steve Allen would tell his television audience from time to time: “Smock!  Smock!”

SOFT  AND CLASSICAL MUSIC

It was at one of usual cold winter Steak N’ Shake meetings that Wild grimaced in his steely voice about the creeping menace of Communism.  The meeting, decorated by ice-filled streets and drifts and banks of dirty white snow in a harsh zero-degreed St. Louis weather, was one of several terse scenarios with Wild.

“We have nothing against what has been called soft music, crooning, classical or light sounds: not at all,’ I told him, “These are all interesting and sometimes greatly entertaining. We have no special fight here other than some music and songs we like much better than others. We have no special agenda other than popular criticisms or opinions. I like Bobby Darin ballads (Somewhere Beyond The Sea – 1959 – also sung by Gisele Mackenzie and played by Benny Goodman – 1948 – and also Annuncio Paolo Mantovany) and Frank Sinatra ballads (Laura, Young At Heart, Without A Song), Nat King Cole (Ramblin Rose, Mona Lisa, Autumn Leaves), and especially Perry Como (Shadows Follow Me and his 1955 hit It’s Impossible), Jo Stafford (You Belong To Me) – – – – and pass over the usual ironies and conflicts in their backgrounds.”  The list of such music could go on and on: Enoch Light And The Light Brigade renditions of 30’s and 40’s: Marie, April In Paris, I Can’t Get Started With You  (but his jazz renditions as well: Sing, Sing, Sing and Tuxedo Junction). Eddie Fisher recently passed away in September, 2010: you may remember his ever popular tune Oh My Papa.

THE FIRST ROCK STAR?

“I even like Ludwig Von Beethoven, and his Choral Symphony No. 9  really “Rocks” — – – – it picks you up and shakes you down to the core of your being!”  I explained to Wild. And again there are his symphonies No. 5, 3 and 7! Wikianswers says: “Beethoven bridged the classical and romantic periods of music. The latter period involved less emphasis on strict rules and more on pure emotion.  Beethoven’s style, particularly later in his life, reflects this period well.  His works involve strong emotion and broke several of the musical rules that existed in the Barogue and Classical periods…late classical and early romantic styles….” His music searched out vibrations that where so dynamic that some people believed he must had an African heritage.  Ira F. Brillant says: “He was the first composer to invigorate European Classical music with prodigious use of this decidedly inherent African rhythmic trait….one of the first composers to deviate from the musical template of eighteenth-century rules and regulations……” Max Chandler says that many musicians and writers today were heavily influenced by Beethoven: Bud Powell, Dave Brubeck, Charlie “bird” Parker, Duke Ellington, Charles  Mingue, Orenette Coleman and others (and writer Anthony Burgess and movie producer Stanley Kubrick on their respective works on A Clockwork Orange  depicting a futurist society chuck-full of Beethoven). Wagner said of him that Beethoven faced the world with a defiant temperment and kept an almost “savage” independence. He rejected sham, humbug, conventionality above all things: Beethoven may have been our First Rock Star!

“In part, the problem is that we don’t live in a black-on-white reality and we are wanderers with eccentric philosophies trying to force ourselves into round holes when we are square pegs. Schizotypal personalities, such as ourselves, often have difficulty,” I went on to explain the Wild, “We tend to relinquish to our obsessive-compulsive square pegs and see our views as the best of everyday, real-world “holes”. We are playing “Connect – The – Dots”- – – – drawing lines between dots all over the page of life (dots that are topics or subjects that strictly support our deep prejudices, biases, idiosyncrasies) and then we pull a magic little string at the bottom of the page that draws all those ideas and topics into a stiff, straight line of “dots” and we call these eccentricities: The real factual world. We all do it – some worse than others. Even so-called professionals: they are not getting it right.  Like Tim Zell use to quote someone (Carl Sagan?): ‘the universes are a lot bigger than our head.’”

NOT  KOOL

No one was deliberately performing for Wild personally so that they could be gauged by Wild’s private obsessive-compulsive and pensive review of their every action. This reminds me of the Jack Nicholson’s performance of Marvin Udall in the movie As Good As It Gets.  Marvin was surrounded by everyday people doing everyday things on a regular outing and being their everyday selves.  Udall, in the movie, as a misanthrope and masochist, hated everything and everybody (I hate that when it happens to me).  I don’t believe we were worried about matching up to someone’s esoteric-philosophical library in someone’s head that day of the outing. Myself, my diabetes was acting up (since 2008 – I’ve gone from pills to insulin: in July, 2010 my kidney stopped functioning for a few days) and I was feeling “out of sorts” that day in 2008 — and I had my broken toe and joint arthritis to contend with; my hips are painful, even when I walk a short distance; the family doctor says it may be also due to diabetic neuropathy). As Carol Connelly said to Marvin in the movie (Udall was both a brilliant writer and a literary artist): “Do you have any control over how creepy you allow yourself to get?” (Udall had allowed everything to be viewed through the prism of his sickness).

On a “picnic” (do you remember the movie Picnic?Steve Allen wrote some of the music for that movie) people don’t usually approach it as if were involved in a political dissertation a professional symposium, inquisition, or a trial…..They just want to be “cool” and relaxed and “let their hair down” so-to-speak: But it still is a matter of give and take. Without some leeway, it could turn out to be a “political dissection” and a clash of our base philosophical and  emotional (maybe puritanical) rigidities.

But beware – – – – beware of the world of contradiction – – – – (and more on that next time) – – – – our recusant separatist has such a tight noose around his neck, that even when “he” claims his pristine black-on-white world as the only correct world, out of his library world of books and paper, through the corner of his eye, he sees other people somewhere watching, causing him to think there just might be much more to life out there, and the noose is not really a halo of glory.

PART II

DECEMBER 22, 2008

(THERE WILL NOT BE A LOT RESEMBLING THE ORIGINAL LETTER IN THIS DOCUMENT AS THERE HAS BEEN HEAVY REVISIONS THROUGHOUT)

The preceding was held off from mailing and probably would have been regulated to the waste basket or some far distant revision, for fear of not being “purist” enough to match Moriarty Wild’s atelophobia, tropophobia. allodoxaphobia, polyphobia, or whatever combination of social phobia or philosophical derivatives he evolved from. Claiming a personal philosophical psyche is Wild’s inherent personal right. It is mine too. I enjoy many of the things in my life, and I do not feel that I need to be a “pure scientist” (there is no such thing!)  or stand “aloof” from “humans” because I want to match what various “ideologues” say in books and papers that assuage my psychological world: I much prefer “real life”.

Says Humanistic Theories Of Psychology: “Alfred Adler….in applying holistic principals to psychology, Adler argued that if we want to understand humans, we need to view them as whole (or individuals) rather than bits and pieces (i.e., Freud’s ‘id’, ‘ego’ and  ‘super ego’). Holism also emphasizes the need to take human’s physical and social environments into account when trying to understand them, therefor the concept of ‘gemeinschaftsgefuhl’ (Boeree, 1997).”   

While I did not have debunkers like Phil Klass as a personal mentor, I did have what could be called mentors of sorts (Keyhoe, Ruppelt [the early version], Ray Palmer, H.G. Wells, others; but also Space Patrol, Space Cadets, Sky King, Howdy Doody, Mr. Wizard, Jules Verne’s From The Earth To The Moon, Walt Disney, Sputnik, Wernher von Braun, Herb Philbrick: I led Three Lives, Alfred Hitchcock, Dave Garroway, Science-fiction Theatre, The Twilight Zone, The Loretta Young Show, the movie The Wizard Of Oz, and so on), none of those could compete with my ‘fulltime’ occupation of staying alive physically, psychiatrically and psychologically, and fitting in and creating my own Wonderland of Adventure amid the harsh reality of my life in the 50s and 60s (most of which only a few people around me could have been aware of).

It was a Dark verses a Happy Sunshine world I lived in. And I had hoped that the Sunshine adventures I got into would cast over the Dark Side- – – -that was before Star Wars movies– – – – but like Luke Skywalker, I hoped my happy-go-lucky Huckleberry Finn/Tom Sawyer adventures would save me from  going “over to the Dark Side”. My life in Carondelet was a symphony of tragedy, happiness, adventure and mysticism, stark, raw life and naked brutality, the life or a boy and, soon, teenager in the 50s – 60s with all the panorama of A Rebel With out A Cause and other traits of that era. My life was several movie and television scripts come to life. My mom would often compare me to Timmy in the television program Lassie or Ricky from Ozzie And Harriet. Said of “little” Nelson:  “…he was ’an odd little kid’….likeable, shy, introspective, mysterious and inscrutable……” Later, I guess, I could be compared to teenage movie parts that the late actor Vic Morrow played. Parts like Artie West in The Blackboard Jungle, Richard Brooks’ 1955 drama: “A scary and unfamiliar fringe of the youth movement.”

When did you graduate from that upper-class, high-style “finishing school”? Was there one in Carondelet? And how did you get “protected” from being a real life scene out of The Black Board Jungle movie?  I did attend that school! I didn’t get a chance to attend the Finishing School. Not many people were envisioning great and wonderful things for me: other than myself.  But I lost track or got “sucked under” (as one might say) by the muck of blue-collar workaday fiasco and drama of lower middle-class lifestyle and teenage depression and psycho angst. Let’s see: you lived on Pennsylvania Avenue which was not far from where I lived on Michigan Avenue and that was not too much distance from where John Moeller lived on Field Avenue. Are you saying those “books” you were reading at 16-17 years of age “thrust” you into that more elite and magnanimous lifestyle? And when did you receive a degree or post-graduate degree? That always makes you a better human and good-hearted-person, doesn’t it? If not that, at least “superior”!

The closest I was able to get near that ‘high style’ was when I watched the late Louis Rukeyser (that “rakish raconteur” and the “most sartorially elegant host in America” on Wall Street Week  television) speaking in an “inimitable and always delightful style” of the wealthy, walking into a “fustily elegant” Baltimore hotel, ”unhip, unabashed, unbeaten”, “exquisitely tailored” and ”pun-loving”,  “light-hearted, free-market oriented” (at a time when American mutual funds numbered a scant 323), looking shockingly similar to an aristocratic George Washington. On many days, withdrawing from the hot-steaming metal of the boiler fabrication shop, and escaping from the painful stabs of a cold wife unbeknownst to me as planning a divorce conspiracy, I’d recline on the floor in front of the TV, Allowing Rukeyser’s tranquil and soothingly firm Mr. Fred Rodgers – Mr. Rodger’s Neighborhood-type-children’s’ show voice to become “talk therapy”; God bless you, Mr. Rukeyser!

However, I did have the opportunity to hypocritically refer to myself as a somewhat of a journalist (“maybe”).  But it would be a journalist that has no firm, innate, rigid, convictions. I don’t think I claim to be one of those arm chair pseudo-scientists of some fundamentalist “Rationalist” Cult (you’ll soon notice that I stopped using “skeptic” as a title description in as much as skeptics are not “debunkers” at all: in fact the term has been greatly misused…..

Said Celeste Adams: “Dr. (Raymond) Moody explains that the so-called ‘skeptics’ are not skeptics at all: ‘the skeptic tradition goes back to ancient Greece, and it’s a spiritual tradition about not drawing conclusions. So when someone says, ‘I’m a skeptic…I think it’s just (this or that),’ they have contradicted themselves.  They have said, ‘I am a person that doesn’t draw conclusions,’ then they draw a conclusion….to be a genuine investigator….belief or disbelief is irrelevant. We only need to ask ‘What’ is the ‘Nature’ of what we’re dealing with.’” Scientist Dr. Bill Bankston concurred: “The ego needs to get out of the way. Not a lot to do with trying. Let nature take its course. Be a Lightening rod. Let it happen…..inside and outside the box. Thinking in a different box, but we ignore the anomalies to keep the box we are in: it’s the way we frame the world….a good scientist is a skeptic: cautious but in a fluid state. A Believer already says he knows the answer, he is not “open.”  It is scary both ways; to be open, fluid, and willing to be wrong”…..).

I am not a scientist (obviously) and I don’t believe I have pawned myself off as one. Maybe I am a true Skeptic, the average “Joe Citizen” kind as a work-a-day-world-kind-of-a-Skeptic. I see you as more of a religious quest on behalf of the Debunkers Over All Church, much like John Schroeder is spreading the UFO Spaceship Religion. It’s all religion; just at the opposite ends of a scale. Could be that this is caused by the pontifical ideology of the various political and Cultist religions and feelings involved? There is a world of scientists out there interested in UFOs and psychic phenomena, such as Robert Bigelow and Jacques Vallee, thousands of others.

There is The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, Society for Scientific Exploration. Others; consisting of legitimate scientists. I’m not about to call them idiots as Moriarty would. He’d call Einstein an idiot, if it served his Religion. And you might include Brian Greene, Michio Kakui, Charles Seife, Martin Rees, Marcelo Gleiser, Ralph Alpher, John Wheeler, David Bohm, M. Talbot, Alan Guth, David Gross, Paul J. Steinhardt, Burt Ovrut, Kip Thorne, David Deutsch, Lawrence Kraus, Phil Marshall, Andrea Ghez, Phil Plait, Max Tegmark, Andrea Ghez, Joe Silk, Joan Swartz, Amanda Peet, Edward Whitten, Joseph Linken, Frank Tippler, Andrew Cleland, Nick Poplawski, Andre Linde, Frank Wilczek, Peter Higgs, Stephen Hawkings, Phil Rivera, John Jackson, Ray Downing and a whole host of others like them.  Might as well, they are pushing the Outer Limits of science. I’m just not prepared to castigate them. Moriarty can do that. Neither am I able to adjudicate and ostensibly expatriate the fate of Carl Jung or many other scientists. Maybe after I get to attend that Finishing School Moriarty attended. However, maybe I can hope and see Magic still going on in the universe.  Maybe………….

SHAVERIAN-DERO-HOBBIT?

I recall you going about social and public circles back through years 1967 (circa 60s to the near present), smirking, like some little Shaverian-Dero-hobbit, cackling, “idiots!,” “you’re a liar!,” “trash!,” “crazy!,” “junk!,”  and other symptoms of seeming schizoid tourettes-like coprolalia (normal acid drollery or stereotypic movement disorder? You said you didn’t remember going about making such remarks). Michael Guillen, PH.D., Senior Science editor for ABC-TV had a much more refreshing use of the language (1998): “my goal is to report accurately and open-mindedly any interesting and credible goings-on within science, be they orthodox or iconoclastic….apply the scientific method…only through rigorous studies…can we get beyond the endless and largely emotional- philosophical arguments between ’skeptics’ and ’believers’….they’re open as evidenced by the continuing disagreement among intelligent, well-educated people….many of today’s research results….are routinely contradicted by some subsequent study….it’s not the nature of science ever to know anything with absolute certainty.  Which is why Mr. Park’s remarkable ability to know exactly what is and isn’t possible, to distinguish between ‘good’ and ’bad’ science with such complete confidence strike me, well, as just so much voodoo….”

I recall you were castigating people for their opinions way back in 1967. I was a “liar” when I published Thomas Fairbanks’ letters as MR. X in Dissenter/Disinter Magazine (which claimed he knew David Ferrie in New Orleans and some of the other people who were interconnected in the Kennedy assassination). I was not supporting his comments at that time; just reporting them without any absolute judgment. Subsequently, apparently, Fairbanks’ comments had some merit. I didn’t deserve Wild’s attack: Fairbanks ran into some of those characters while living in New Orleans.

But furthermore: when the public and Forteans went to listen to Dr. Allen J. Hynek’s 1967 lecture on his investigations into the UFO phenomenon in the St. Louis Washington University Graham Chapel, I had taken note of and later presented his comments in my magazine Dissenter/Disinter, also marking his comments that he was beginning to suspect that the oddities in that phenomena indicated a metaphysical or psychic aspect in its nature.  I later pointed out this revelation to Wild, where upon Wild again surprised and shocked me by saying I was a “liar” or a “god-damned liar” (I can’t remember which of the two phrases he spurted out to me). Of course, these were not my words I reviewed, recorded and  presented, but Dr. Hynek’s; I don’t, however, recall Hynek getting into some lengthy discourse on thesupernatural nature of the UFO, but he did indicate something paranormal wasgoing on(apparently Wild felt just the mere mention of anyone’s viewpoint opened the commenter to Wild’s censure in some kind of religious inquisition and verbalcastration [caused partially by Wild’s scholastic academics]); and – again – as events in the subject developed and further lectures and papers by  Hynek came out, the doctor , indeed, had said something paranormal seemed to be going on in that phenomenon). This I did pick up from his lecture and wrote about it in my magazine.

Thoughts on the nature of UFOs as “space machines” piloted by almost unrecorded pilots – had been framed by pulp fiction writers in the 1930s and earlier fiction writers such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, and the ‘contactee’ stories of George Adamski, Howard Menger, Daniel Fry, Truman Bethurum, George Van Tassel and others, following closely the story line of pulp writers of the 1930s – 1940s such as Frank R. Paul, Raymond A. Palmer, Richard S. Shaver and others. Only a few writers suggested more than one cause for the sightings.

It is amazing that two listeners’ notes I discovered on that lecture (one set of notes written on 12/21/67 by Moriarty Wild) did not record or pick-up on Hynek’s reference to the ‘paranormal’ as I did: so strong was the willingness to “cleanse” any thought or perception in Hynek’s words that a new and strange phenomena may be involved including the metaphysical. Major Donald Keyhoe of NICAP fought vigorously against any such notion, even to the extent that he avoided that bizarre and strange humanoids were sometimes reported. The following reveals the growing tendency – even before 1967 —- of Dr. Hynek to suspect an origin other than just ‘classical’ machines from the far distances and regular worlds in space:

Dr. Hynek spoke on this point in a June, 1975 Fate Magazine interview: “I always start with the incontrovertible facts that UFO reports exist and humanoid reports exist. I don’t like it ___ I’d much rather talk about nocturnal lights and daylight discs but no scientist throws out data just because he doesn’t like it.  If he does he’s not a scientist. The data of the reports are there.  If you go through the files of the Flying Saucer Review you have case after case. NICAP threw them out for years. They just refused to think there could be anything like that; therefore they weren’t going to touch it.  But that’s not science.” (Page 51)   

It is odd that Dr. Hynek – on the same weekend he gave his Graham Chapel lecture – also was interviewed on WIL radio on November 25, 1967 and made similar allusions on UFOS: “….that’s a terribly loaded question….Do we really have an unexplained phenomenon? I think so. But it’s only after I have, or somebody has, the data really in form to study, in appropriate form to study, then one is ready for theorizing….The problem is, within the framework of our present-day science, we have no conceivable means or ideas of how that civilization could communicate with us because the distances are so utterly, utterly vast….it may also turn out to be something that we just don’t know about at all, in the same sense that a hundred years ago, the whole concept of nuclear energy would have been totally foreign to our way of life…I rather use the term ‘UFO’ than ‘flying saucer’ because ‘flying saucer’ is a loaded word, it..…already carries with it an answer…UFOs….do not seem to be explainable in the present scientific framework.…reports of extremely strange sightings made by reputable people in many cases….”  It was apparent that on November 25, 1967 that Hynek was disenchanted with flying saucer machines from normally envisioned interplanetary worlds. 

One can see Dr. Hynek’s growing suspicions and his increasing evolution about the true nature of the UFO reality even before 1967; having lived with the UFO phenomena “up close and personal”. In 1953, his suspicions leaked out into a April, 1953 article in the Journal Of The Optical Society Of America wherein he says true UFOs may be an unknown terrestrial phenomena: “But, do we have an natural phenomenon?”

The September-October,1966 issue of the now-defunct APRO Bulletin, chastised Hynek for hiding a more liberal viewpoint on UFOs before that time, when, in fact, he had suspicions that a really unusual phenomenon existed: “(Hynek would) ….bide his time until an opportunity came to arouse the interest of other scientists….a psychic revolution….” 

Another case in point (apparently circa 1967-1968): in Leslie Kearn’s 2010 book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, Government Officials Go On The Record  (Harmony Books, New York, 2010) speaking about the Condon UFO Project and the subsequent July, 1968 Hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, Kearn reminds us on page 113 of her book quoting Hynek’s early belief: “As hynek pointed out at the time (emphasis, mine….SE), Condon and his supporters mistakenly equated the notion ofUFOs with something extraterrestrial…..”  Again, this appears to be about 1967-1968.   

On December 27, 1969 (just two years after his speech at Graham Chapel) at a General Symposium of the American Association For The Advancement Of Science, 134^th meeting, Hynek, conjoining and speaking of Canadian Philosopher of Science, Thomas Goudge, indicated that a genuinely new-empirical observation and new explanation scheme including new, basic concepts and new scientific laws, needed to be established, and that the reported occurrences violate the “methodological criteria governing the advancement of science”: new observational data must occur, allowing new concepts, explaining new observational data. Hynek quoted Schreedinger: “….be curious, capable of being astonished, and eager to find out……”

Dr. Hynek spoke on February 23, 1973 at the Marriott Motor Hotel in St. Louis for the Northwestern University Alumni Club of St. Louis: “….the problem of the Northern Lights….nobody knew what caused it, because, simply, we didn’t know enough physics yet. And we may be in a sort of a similar situation with the UFO phenomenon; it may be opening a totally new domain of nature that we are, as yet – after all, just because it’s 1973 doesn’t mean that we know the things that we’re going to know about the universe in the year 4000….There remains no doubt in my mind that a real UFO phenomenon, of some sort, exists, which may, or may not, have extraterrestrial origin. Indeed that is the problem….these persons, adjudged responsible by all ordinary standards….to hold that they furnish as data that may be of decided, potential, scientific value…..”  These notes were recorded by Moriarty Wild in March, 1973.

At a 1973 MUFON Annual Symposium in Akron, Ohio, Hynek said in a piece called “The Embarrassment Of The Riches”: “……but many thousands every year? From remote regions of space? And to what purpose? To scare us by stopping cars and disturbing animals and puzzling us with their seemingly pointless antics?”  

In the Spring, 1974 issue of Probe The Unknown Magazine, Dennis V. Waitecomments on and quotes Hynek on these matters: “To say that life (as extraterrestrial-alien-visitors…S.E) has visited us — that’s another question.…ships from outer space” ‘explanation may just be too pat. Something is happening, Hynek says, something very real and frightening to many people’…”We have to take this phenomenon seriously whatever it is”….’There’s no conclusive evidence, he points out, that UFOs are ”nuts-and-bolts hardware”..…not with a predetermined judgement that they do not exist or that they are alien spacecraft, but with an open, constantly probing and thorough scientific sleuthing.’

In the January 20-22, 1975 AIAA 13^th Aerospace Sciences meeting in Pasadena, California, Hynek said in “The Emerging Picture Of The UFO Problem”: “Eyewitness reports of actual space ships and actual extraterrestrials are, in themselves, totally unreliable. There have been numerous eyewitness reports of almost everything that most rational people do not care to accept….formulation of an hypothesis – or hypotheses – that encompass the established parameters of the UFO phenomenon – no matter how far beyond the boundaries of present-day science it may have to be….the trouble is, that whatever the UFO phenomenon is, it comes and goes unexpectedly.

There is no way of examining it systematically. It appears suddenly and accidentally, is partially seen, and then it’s more or less inaccurately reported….the signal-to-noise aspect of the UFO problems aggravated to a high degree because the signal is a totally unexpected signal, and represents an entirely new set of empirical observations which do not fit into any existing framework in any of the accepted scientific disciplines….the signal itself signals the birth of a new scientific discipline…It is indeed sobering, yet challenging, to consider that the entire UFO phenomenon may only be the tip of the proverbial iceberg in a signaling an entirely new domain of the knowledge of nature as yet totally unexplored, an un explored and as unimagined as nuclear processes would have been a century ago… .”

Likewise, speaking at a January 23, 1975 Annual Meeting and Banquet of about 900 assembled Council of the Boy Scouts of America, Hynek said: “We have an  unidentified phenomena which we are trying to study….The UFO phenomenon poses a research problem, and the hypothesis of visitation by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization is only one of several possibilities.”  (these quotes were transcribed by Moriarty Wild ).

The September 27, 1975 Joint Symposium of the American Institute Of Aeronautics And Astronautics and the Los Angeles chapter of the World Futures Society proceedings record Hynek in saying: “ But what is by far the most appealing things about UFO facts is that they are not acceptable pieces in the scientific jig-saw puzzle. They are pieces that seem to belong to an entire different jig-saw puzzle….Bridge and tennis are just two different games and are played by different rules. And it seems clear to most of us that UFO’s don’t obey the rules of the present day scientific game….All these things seem to call for a Paraphysics, a metaphysics, of a transcendental physics…” 

Hynek said in the Cincinnati Horizons Magazine of October 1975: “We might condition them slowly, make appearances, and do strange things…But we surely wouldn’t travel the great distance involved to do prankish things like stopping cars and frightening animals.  It would make no sense.”

Hynek was quoted in the June 26, 1976 Daily News of Chicago: “(Are UFOs interplanetary?) Not likely. It’s just too far a distance to travel….We couldn’t possibly do it with our technology. Of course, there might be a more technologically advanced civilization out there. Maybe they could travel here, but it probably wouldn’t be in anything like a flying saucer…We just don’t have enough information to answer that. Whether they are from outer space, or something even more bizarre than that, like visitors from a parallel reality….”

In a June, 1976 published interview in FATE Magazine No. 315, Hynek had a lot to say: “…(Life in the universe) it does not follow that this explains UFOS in the sense of nuts-and-bolts hardware which is as far as most scientists are willing to go….(why) done entirely on the physical plane?….communication and exploration …not in the ordinary sense….There are other planes of existence ___ the astral plane, the etheric plane and so forth….that space and time are essentially interchangeable. Suppose it was possible to travel in time rather than in space…The new puzzle pieces are being given to us by the whole parapsychological scene ___ ESP, telepathy, the Uri Geiler phenomena, psychic healing and particularly psychic surgery….They clearly are parts of another jigsaw puzzle…there’s going to have to be an interface between these two pictures and this is part of that psychic revolution….This relates to the whole UFO picture; I have come to believe UFOs are part of the larger paranormal picture which has two aspects…physical effects occur apparently without physical causes….’psychic construct’ is a loaded term….modern UFO investigators tend to slough it off…doesn’t belong in our UFO wave. But it does…related to other paranormal phenomena and possibly is part of a slow conditioning process…this psychic construct has the ability to imitate, camouflage or mimic…if you once talk about consciousness and intelligence existing  apart from protoplasm….it has paranormal aspects but certainly but certainly it has very real physical aspects…We haven’t come up with an  answer. People always seem to want answers and I keep telling them, look, it’s a research problem.  In research you don’t know the answers.”

In an August 16, 1976 People Magazine interview, Hynek had this to say (page 53): “(Do UFOs come from outer space?) It doesn’t seem possible, but who knows?…People get excited at the thought UFOs might be from outer space. But it would be just as exciting if UFOS were from inner space, from an alternate or parallel reality…through expanded consciousness we were able to come into contact with a parallel reality?…that an entire parallel universe exists in these spaces between the parts of an atom…if the sheer weight of evidence finally forces us…a mighty and unexpected quantum jump.”  

In an interview with Hynek published in the April,1977 OUI Magazine (Jerome Clark, Carl Macki), Hynek made his theories much clearer: “One might even begin to speculate that the UFO itself, even though it manifests physical effects, may not be completely physical.  We don’t know.  We don’t really know, when a UFO is ‘seen,’ if there is an  actual image on the retina…a relationship might be discovered eventually, but in the poltergeist phenomenon we have something that has physical effects without being physical itself….the subject is much more complex than any of us imagined when we first got started in it.  It’s naïve to expect a simple solution…something that is far more complex than mere hallucinations or apparitions. 

UFOs, although they may have no physical reality, can and do affect matter….the universe is not all that simple. Mystics, for example, have always talked about how matter vibrates at different rates of speed, but the scientist doesn’t know what the mystic is talking about…there is a lot that the spaceship concept doesn‘t explain about UFO phenomena.  You have to disallow or neglect overlook all sorts of things if you accept the idea that nuts-and-bolts craft are coming here from outer space —– the so-called extraterrestrial hypothesis….We’re going to have to broaden our scope and admit other things into our playing field of science….But it would be wrong if we pursued that path to the exclusion of everything else.  If the evidence suggests that there is a paranormal dimension to the phenomenon, we’re going to have to pursue that.”  

At a 1977 International UFO Congress in Chicago, Hynek said: “I hold it entirely possible that a technology exists which encompasses both the physical and the psychic, the material and the mental….there may a civilization that is millions of years more advanced than man….million-year-old civilization may know something that we don’t….I hypothesize an ‘m and m’ technology encompassing the mental and material realms.  The psychic realms, so mysterious to us today, may be an ordinary part of an advanced technology.”

In the November 21, 1977 (page 97) edition of Newsweek (“The UFO’s Are Coming”) by Peter Gwynne and Katrine Ames, Hynek is quoted as saying: “We have the questions, not the answers”. The authors say: “But he emphasizes that speculation should not be limited to flying saucers.  UFO’S, he says, may be psychic phenomena and the ‘aliens’ may not come from outer space but from a ‘parallel reality’: (Hynek) ”….I will speculate that a very advanced civilization might know something about the connection between mind and matter that we don’t.”   

In the December, 1998 Saturday Evening Post Hynek was quoted: “The fourth possible explanation of UFOs is that we are dealing with some kind of natural phenomena that we as yet cannot explain or conceive of.”  http://www.ufomind.com.                       

Sadly, no apology came from Wild; Wild apparently felt it was his imagined “academic” duty to psychologically assassinate his friends ( and I did consider him my friend at those moments, somehow; even though I was suspecting his personal life had its own peculiarities). But he shouldn’t have been “wrong” — he was not permitted that in what could be called the schizoid “PERFECT WORLD” – – – – – was that the ‘world’ taught to people in that Secret-Carondelet-Finishing-School?

Alfred Lord Tennyson saw this too:

“It is well within the range of science, glorying in the time, city children soak and blacken soul and sense in the city slime. There among the gloomy alleys progress halts on palsied feet; crime and hunger cast out maidens by the thousands on the street….”  

Robert E. Haggard speaks of it in The Persistence Of Victorian Liberalism “….by definition dreary, squalid and filthy…fetid…..poisonous…gangs of burglars, garrotters, and pickpockets operate almost without check…”

THE FIVE POINTS

In America, similarly, horrid conditions were found in the Five Points district of New York circa 1842-1863. Says Gregory Christiano:  “The name Five Points evokes images of poverty, rampant crime, decadence and despair, that’s true. The Five Points was a lurid geographical cancer filled with dilapidated and unbelievable tenement houses, gang extortion, corrupt politicians, houses of ill-repute and drunkenness and gambling. This was a place where all manner of crime flourished, the residents terrorized and squalor prevailed….Among the places the most crowded in proportion to their actual size, the worst ventilated and whose mortality is the greatest at all times….the term ‘cellar’ are not conveying a proper idea of the place when used as a residence….these dens, or artificial caves of the earth….often send bands JUST WHAT DO YOU ‘MEAN’ : SHAVERIAN HOBBIT!?

(A little “sidebar” on the Richard Shaver Mystery and why it is such a continued motif of legendary significance to me; I guess like Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer and other mystery noir (Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe; others?), that are inspirational to detective and mystery fans, the time was “right” for many science-fiction and prophetic stories of controversial reputation.

For Morgan Robertson in 1898 it was writing his novel Futility—-The Wreck Of The Titan which seemed to foreshadow [14 years ahead of time] the real sinking of the Titanic. Jules Verne prophetic fiction that heralded nuclear submarines, trips to the moon, and H.G. Wells spoke of time travel and a future World Pax where science reigned supreme. Richard S. Shaver, along with writers William Beebee, Dr. John Coleman, The Reverend Jim Slaw, Dr. Anthony Sutton, George A. Lehew, Jerry La-Prione, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and many other mystery noir writers spoke of our world being scrutinized by evil beings that have controlled us from time immemorial. A.J. Streichert said in 1958:  “…most dangerous because its nonsense seems to make sense.”

John Thine added more insight: “Shaver’s delusions are the dark and cloudy glass that which we see myths at the end of history; his obsessions mirror the concerns of us all, and as we look into his private abyss our fears and hopes as a species emerges out of the emptiness. Shaver’s work is not fact, it is not even true; it is real, in a way only the right myth at the right moment can be real…. ”)

(In Shaver’s particular mythos, noble and genetically pure Supermen — The Elder Race — lived out in the dark reaches of space away from the detrimental effects of the sun’s radiation…..

“……………..Princess Vanic……..sunless Nor…….Nortans…..dark space is filled of Titans, Atlans and Nor-tans..….it’s high time  we ran away from the Black Death. I’ve worried and waited  for it to strike me long enough. The Elder station on the cold  planets are the best natured men you can find in space:  Haven’t been near a sun in centuries, and don’t know the meaning of the word ‘evil’.”  (I Remember lemuria, 1948)………                                 

                               “……..you will go at once far beyond any influence from mother Mu’s rodite, under another space- group of planets, and there we will learn how to live where such things as the  black death does not exist…….”                          

…..to escape war and the “black death” of de-te-rio-ra-tion (Mantong: an incredibly ancient language: a type of cipher translating English letters into symbolic meanings) the Elder Race came to earth and placed a canopy of protective vapor around the planet: which eventually proved inadequate against the sun. The canopy collapsed and many raced into the interior of the earth were the Super Technology backfired and their machinery actually began to poison them — yet force them to stay alive for a span of time. They were “abandondero”, and they consisted of two camps, those who were progressively “evil” [Dero} and those who somehow had avoided the poison – Tero. The vast majority escaped into the far reaches of outer space…..

                          ……”Our sun has begun to throw out great

                           masses of these poisonous particles. They

                           fall upon Mu  in a continual flood, enter- 

                           ing into living tissue, and infecting it with

                           the radioactive disease we call age……”

                           The Teacher, I Remember lemuria, 1948…..)

(A large range of writers had an effect on Shaver and Shaver had a wide range effect on a lot of writers. H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, james  Churchword, Guy de Maupassant’s The Horla, others. Shaver said the Dero caused all kinds of havoc, terror and destruction on the “surface world”- – – – – and while most people slough off his story as the outcome of his stay in a Ypsilanti state hospital [Jim Pobst said it was only two weeks and only for disorderly conduct. His former wife Sophie said Shaver had gone on a binge and she asked that he be held on July 27, 1934 {July 27 is also Steve Erdmann’s birth date} for observation]- – – – –

Shaver’s “discoveries” were far more ebullient. Publisher Ray Palmer said: “On December 27, 1949, Albert Einstein came out with a new theory of gravitation and electromagnetic fields’’, taunted Palmer, “months before that, Mr. Shaver (minus the mathematical formula) told me the same thing! For the record I want to say that if any credit for a new and revolutionary theory of gravity goes to anybody it should go to Richard S. Shaver on the basis of prior publication.” Palmer went on to expound: “Shaver described the Flying Saucers and predicted their appearance. And all this he said came from the information he got from the caves.  So whether or not [the story] came from his own mental process of some kind, the information was correct and the information he’s given us has been correct so many times it’s impossible to discard it as fiction.” Website http://www.anti-state.com said: “Shaver claimed he owed all this astounding information to technologically advanced beings that, like it or not, communicated with him.”)

HIS OWN MENTAL PROCESS

(Later in 1971 in his Hidden World series, Palmer admitted that Shaver’s conduit to his Caves [though highly debated and resisted by Shaver] were by way of an Altered-state of consciousness similar to a hypnotic trance or what might have occurred when in psychic states such as that of John Ballou Newbrough [1828-1891], when he did inspired writing of the Oahspe Bible. Nandor Foder, psychoanalyst, author of On The Trail Of The Poltergeist and The Haunted Mind, asked: “Is there a possibility that the human psyche, in a parthenogenesis fashion similar to the division of the cells, may give birth to another junior self?  In the light of this query, are split or multiple personalities strictly morbid or are they evolutionary manifestations of an unsuspected human potential?”

Even “debunkers” such as Michael Shermer (who at one time denied that hypnotism existed), in reviewing Robin Waterfield’s Hidden Depths: The Story Of Hypnosis, had to admit the reality of altered-states: “….an altered state of consciousness explains little for a simple reason: we don’t know what consciousness is, making it difficult to explain what an altered state of it means..…in that borderland between reality and fantasy where the power and mystery of hypnosis lies..…It is with hypnosis in particular that I depart ways from many of my skeptical colleagues who argue that it is nothing more than fantasy role-playing, or worse, pure fakery”. [Shermer was hypnotized successfully on his own television show]).

SHAVER AS JUNGIAN RUMOR AND METAPHOR

(Some of this debate almost seems immaterial with topics such as Ted Phillips’ search for Tony Horak’s Slovakia [Project Moon Shaft] cave [in the Tatra Mountains in the north-central area; October 23, 1944] which housed an ancient artifact, perhaps millions of years old; not to even mention reports of our own government shoveling out huge underground facilities; there are said to be an estimated 100 secret exits in the Archuleta Mesa on a Dulce, New Mexico complex, as testified by John Anderson and Paul Bennewitz.

The Madigan Military Hospital complex near Fort Lewis in Washington state; the Jicarilla Apache Reservation; the complex under the New Denver International Airport, east of Denver, Colorado; China Lake Naval Weapons Centre in the California desert; the town of Ridgecrest near Death Valley; Page, Arizona; Taos, Carlsbad and Patil, New Mexico; as well as Springs, Creede, and Castello, Colorado. Chris Tinkler speaks of existing tunnels and nuclear Safe-havens below Canbeira near the Australian location of Melbourne and Townsville [not to mention historical reports such as the 1700s “hatch” reported by Dr. Plot at a Staffordshire. England entrance consisting of a large oval and ring {A History Of Staffordshire}.

There is the Bell Witch Cave found by William Mitchell Mott in the 1800s in Robertson County, Tennessee, or the Moon Pool found by Abraham Mott in 1919, or Norman Kinley’s find 90 miles southeast of Marthon, Texas at the foot of the Del Norte Mountains, or the cave with a smooth stone wall and staircase  found by Tal and Mary Levesque in Hell Canyon 62 miles north of Branton, California, or the talk about a huge network of underground caverns beneath the Caribbean island of Bonaire.])

But perhaps no better tribute can be made than that which Richard Toronto gave: “(my) one and only mentor as writer and artist was Richard S. Shaver, who had a good heart no matter what history says about him.” Science-fiction/fiction has a way of forecasting reality.

Maybe Shaver was just seeing , envisioning, feeling human nature for all its scope and grandeur — its breath and even horror; Shaver said: “The unseen world beneath our feet, malignant and horrible, is complete in its mastery of earth. And most horrible of all, it’s a world of Madmen.”

(As an even further aside topic [“big” sidebar], in Michael Greenberg’s telling of his daughter’s slide into insanity, the story reveals how little we know about mental illness in the more hardened cases [far more complex than I can go into here: Or even the panoramic descriptions of various states of consciousness]. In describing a moment of his daughter’s dementia: “….a wavelet of energy swelled through the center of being. She could see the hidden life in things, their detailed brilliance, the funneled genius that went into making them what they are.  Sharpest of all was the misery on the faces of the people she passed. She tried to explain her vision to them but they just kept rushing by…Spinoza spoke of vitality as the purest virtue, the only virtue. The drive to persist, to flourish, she said, is the absolute quality shared by all living beings…Spinoza’s virtue is inverted, and instead of flourishing, one is driven to eat oneself alive….” (Hurry Down Sunshine , 2008, Other Press, New York, N.Y. )

Comparatively, David Darling, Ph.D., (English Astronomer and Science Writer) speaks of these states in his Soul Search: “There will always be a gap between what science can measure and what human beings feel. Yet everything we know about the way the two brain hemispheres work, everything psychology has taught us about the constructed nature of the world, and everything that those who have had mystical experiences told us, point to the same direction….Hindus call it Samadhi, Buddhists…Nirvana…Rinzai school of Zen…Satori….Zen Masters and others are powerless to relate how it feels. Words and descriptions do not encompass it.” (Ken Wilber summed it up this way: “I believe that logic has its limits and needs to be transcended in order to gain deep knowledge and wisdom….”)

GOOD OLD DAYS AS MYTH

Shaver’s World View certainly punched holes in your “good ole’ days” peruse; that view  might  be said to be just as much  a “myth” as is your feelings on UFOs and psychic phenomena as myths: Otto Bettmann said so  in his The Good Old Days – They Were Terrible! Bettmann concentrated on the 1820s to 1890s period, and while it might be said to be not so bad for the very affluent in society, it was terrible for the average person. There was manure piled up high on sidewalks! There were no 40-hour work weeks but just unrelenting sweatshops. No osha. Constant disease and fly infestation. On and on, so forth.  This book explains why the “good old days” were only good for a preferred few and why they were unrelentingly harsh for most and very sobering.

LIFE ON THE SURFACE

Writer Jack London (1876-1916), a Capitalist (all his life….[read Wolf – The LivesOf Jack London, James L. Haley]), joined the Socialist Movement upon seeing and experiencing personally the harsh realities of man’s inhumanity to man…..

(London was born a working-class, fatherless Californian in 1876.  In his youth he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling West Coast…playing the role of hobo, sailor, prospector, and oyster pirate)….

He wrote about the lower-class often: “In his research, Jack discovered that these people who lived in the slums did so not by choice and not through laziness, but because of old age, disease, or accidents that had reduced their labor value.” (The People Of The Abyss, Macmillan, 1903).Speaking of the ghetto, London said: “a new race has sprung up, a street people.  They pass their lives at walls and in the streets.  They have dens and stairs into which to crawl for sleeping purposes, and that is all.”

“This was the most striking thing, the general heartlessness exhibited on every hand,” said Wolf, “It is a commonplace. The homeless on the benches, the poor miserable folk who may be teased and are harmless. Fifty thousand people must have passed the bench while I sat upon it, and not one, on such a jubilee occasion as the crowning of the king, felt his heart-strings touched sufficiently to come up and say to the woman: ‘Here’s a sixpence; go and get a bed.’ But the woman, especially the young women, made witty remarks upon this woman nodding, and invariably set their companions laughing….to use a Briticism, it was ‘cruel’; the corresponding Americanism was more appropriate—it was ‘fierce’….” (www.readprint.com)      

of murderers, who live by thieving alone….”

Charles Dickens likewise was astounded at what he saw in 1842: “This is the place – Five Points  —-  these narrow ways, diverging to the right and left.  Such lives as are led here, bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at doors have counterpart at home, and all the wide world over.  See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays.  Many of the pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright in lieu of going on all fours? And they talk instead of grunting?….All that is loathsome, drooping, and decayed is here.”

Martin Scorsese fashioned his film The Gangs Of New York on such a reality: “It was chaos, tribal chaos….claustrophobic, where everyone was crushed together…70,000  men and women…rampaged through the streets of New York, setting houses afire, battling police and lynching African-Americans. Federal troops had to be brought in to quell the disturbances….confronted one another in the streets of New York. Here competing groups vied for living space and economic survival in a cramped district near the tip of Manhatten….”

Police records indicate that nearly every building did house a brothel.  Gangs so vicious that they posted signs warning police to stay out of their neighborhoods. Saloon halls, gambling dens, and winding alleys; destitution and shocking violence – a turbulent era – rogues gallery of prostitutes, pimps, poisoners, pickpockets, murderers and thieves. Carol D. Bos.,J.B said: “Tammany Hall….degenerated into a power-hungry greed machine, its members  looked to local gangs as ‘enforcers’….”

Names denoted the reality: Slobbery Jim, Sow Madden, Piggy Noles, Eat’em Up Jack, McManus Hell-Cat Maggie, Bowery Boys, Dead Rabbits, Plug Uglies, Short Tails, Slaughter House, Swamp Ants, Billy The Butcher. Says historian Tyler Anbinder: “In ‘Five Points’ tenements, families and other groups lived crammed into one or two dark rooms. The outhouses were too few and often overflowing. Sewage and pigs ran in the streets….the whole neighborhood just stank….some holding camphor-soaked kerchiefs to their noses to ward off the stench….middle-class tourists would go ‘slumming’ in Five Points __ escorted by the police….Some of the hard-to-believe stereotypes are true.”

A Methodist reformer, of that period, said: “Five Points, the synonym for ignorance the most entire, for misery the most abject, for crime of the darkest dye, for degradation so deep that human nature cannot sink below it.”

THE WILD WEST

What could be said of Five Points could be said of many an untamed town stranded out in the western frontier: Dodge City, Deadwood, Tombstone….but there was also Las Vegas, New Mexico. So said Howard Bryan in Wildest of The Wild West….

“Without exception there was no town which harbored a more disreputable gang of desperadoes and outlaws that did Las Vegas,” said historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell, “before long, outlaws, bunko artists, murderers and thieves were becoming so common that the eastern part of the settlement had become utterly lawless…”

There was Handsome Harry, the Dance Hall Rustler, the Dodge City Gang, J.J. Webb, Mysterious Dave Mather, Joe Canary, Dirty Dave Rudelbaugh, Hoodoo Brown, Doc Holliday, Mike Gordon, Big Nose Kattie, Jesse James, Billy The Kid, Bob Ford, Web-fingered Billy, Rattlesnake Sam, Cock-eyed Frank, Hook-nosed Jim, Wyatt Earp, StutteringTom, Durango Kid, and Vicente Silva and his gang called the White Caps and the Forty Bandits.

Said the vigilantes of the town:

“The flow of blood must and shall be stopped in this community, and the good citizens of both the old and new towns have determined to stop it, if they have to hang by the strong arm of force every violator of the law in this County.”

REALISTIC DEPICTIONS

Wednesday, August 17, 2011: This Day in Wall Street History: 1877:  Billy the Kid kills his first man:

Though only a teenager at the time, Billy the Kid wounds an Arizona blacksmith who dies the next day. He was the famous outlaw’s first victim.

Just how many men Billy the Kid killed is uncertain. Billy himself reportedly once claimed he had killed 21 men – “one for every year of my life.” A reliable contemporary authority estimated the actual total was more like nine-four on his own and five with the aid of others. Other western outlaws of the day were far more deadly. John Wesley Hardin, for example, killed well over 20 men and perhaps as many as 40.

Yet, William Bonney (at various times he also used the surnames Antrim and McCarty) is better remembered today than Hardin and other killers, perhaps because he appeared to be such an unlikely killer. Blue-eyed, smooth-cheeked, and unusually friendly, Billy seems to have been a decent young man who was dragged into a life of crime by circumstances beyond his control.

Such seems to have been the case for his first murder. Having fled from his home in New Mexico after being jailed for a theft he may not have committed, Billy became an itinerant ranch hand and sheepherder in Arizona. In 1877, he was hired on as a teamster at the Camp Grant Army Post, where he attracted the enmity of a burly civilian blacksmith named Frank “Windy” Cahill. Perhaps because Billy was well liked by others in the camp, Cahill enjoyed demeaning the scrawny youngster.

On this day in 1877, Cahill apparently went too far when he called Billy a “pimp.” Billy responded by calling Cahill a “son of a bitch”  and the big blacksmith jumped him and easily threw him to the ground. Pinned to the floor by the stronger man, Billy apparently panicked. He pulled his pistol and shot Cahill, who died the next day. According to one witness, “[Billy] had no choice; he had to use his equalizer.” However, the rough laws of the West might have found Billy guilty of unjustified murder because Cahill had not pulled his own gun.

Fearing imprisonment, Billy returned to New Mexico where he soon became involved in the bloody Lincoln County War. In the next four years, he became a practiced and cold-blooded killer, increasingly infatuated with his own public image as an unstoppable outlaw. Sheriff Pat Garrett finally ended Billy’s bloody career by killing him on July 14, 1881.

Recent movie depictions granted more human character and portrayal of the real west such as the early years of Billy The Kid portrayed by Michael J. Pollard in Stan Dragoti’s 1972 movie Dirty Little Billy on the early years ofWilliam Bonney (aka William McCarty). The movie also depicted early western towns as they probably really were: barebones and often ramshackle.

Coffeyville, Kansas, which was depicted in the movie, as told by Frank W. Blackman and William G. Cutler and http://www.legendofkansas.com: “…much disorder prevailed in the small settlement, so much so that the main thoroughfare took the name ‘Red Hot Street’, and crime and murder were a common occurrence….1872….New Town site….earned Coffeyville the status of yet another lawless Kansas Cow Town….the town was wild with excitement and society was a chaos.  The reckless cowboy knew no restraint, gamblers plied their avocation openly, and saloons were quick to ply their customers with liquor…the streets resounded with the rattle of beer glasses and the clickings of the Keno and billiard rooms; quarrels were frequent, and the reports of the pistol, announcing that some unfortunate man had fallen victim to the well- aimed instrument, were common…..dance halls with lewd women lined the streets…..

                   ……(The Mayor)  instructed the police officers

                   to invade and arrest the offenders….before

              the judge…..wassurprisedto find before him,

              the majority of the City Council…..”

OLD CRIME IN AN OLD CITY

But much of the 19^th century crime was of course big city crime; as indeed it was in Chicago: the curious case of Dr. Herman mudgett, alias Henry H. Holmes (1896). After graduating from the University Of Michigan medical school, he embarked upon a life of swindling, torture and murder. The second floor of the lodge building he built at 63^rd and Wallace was designed expressly for the purpose of murder, being equipped with gas chambers, of incinerators and other horrible devices, chutes and a variety of inventions to dispose the bodies he killed. He Had about thirty known victims and was suspected of murdering hundreds of others using poison and gas.

In Erik Larson’s book Devil In The White City  (VintagePress, 2004), the events are described as taking place at Holmes’ World’s Fair Hotel west of the 1893 World’s Columbia Exposition. There they found a dissection table and a 3,000-degree crematorium. In the book, the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age comes alive as never before, forging questions as to the relationship between opulence and grandeur of the Fair and the poverty and the degradation that surrounded it. Larson Said: “The juxtaposition of pride and unfathomable evil struck me as offering powerful insights into the nature of men and their ambitions.” (page 393)

“Chicago in the 1890s was a time of great strikes, fierce nationalism, social activism and protest, an unpopular foreign invasion and building – of street car lines, factories, meat packing plants, businesses, libraries, and civic and art institutions,” says www.florencekelley.northwestern.edu, “The city’s political and legal culture was characterized by energy, corruption and ambition.  During the Pullmen strike more than n 5,000 federal troops were encamped along the lake, and the legacies of Haymarket were palpable.  The Vice District, the Levee, was as famous as the city’s skyscrapers and elevators….”

“As for most people, his initial sensory contact with Chicago had been the fantastic stink that lingered always in the vicinity of the Union Stock Yards, a Chinook of putrefaction and incinerated hair,” said Larson about Holmes’ initial probable entrance to Chicago. Larson quotes Sinclair Lewis: “…an elemental odor, raw and crude; it was rich, almost rancid, sensual and strong.” Larson said: “Most people found it repulsive.  The few who found it invigorating tended to be men who had waded in its ‘river of death’, Sinclair’s phrase, and panned from its great fortunes.” 

“A nineteenth-century Chicagoan looking for a prostitute could easily find one in any of the city’s wide-open vice districts,” says www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org, “Like gambling houses until they were dispersed by raids in 1894, brothels and street walkers clustered in those areas partly because they were convenient for customers, but mainly because of selective law enforcement. Public officials and many private citizens viewed prostitution as a necessary evil that should be segregated into a few poor neighborhoods to protect the rest of Chicago.” Prostitution thrived along the southern edge of the “Loop”, Near West Side and Near North Side. The brothels paid bribes to police, politicians, and politically connected crime bosses.

Holmes’ World Fair Hotel was constructed in ragged stages and slowed in winter at the end of the “building season”.  I t has been said to be odd that Holmes erected his building during the same period in which the London Jack The Ripper began his spree of killings in 1888; after November 9, 1888 they appeared to stop — or so it seemed. Holmes was intensely interested in the Ripper murders. Construction, coincidentally, was greatly finished on the hotel by May, 1890. 

“The Levee”, on the Southside, was one of the nation’s largest vice districts, controlled by imaginable late-century crime bosses and racketeers: There was alderman “Bathhouse John” Coughlin and Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna. “The residential slums began about a mile west and south of the loop.  The poor, many of them immigrants, lived in old wooden houses standing cheek by jowel with factories and bars or in once elegant apartments and mansions converted into rooming houses and mansions converted into rooming houses and then tenements,” says Alice Sinkevitch in AIA Guide To Chicago, “Some lots were filled front to back with ram shackled frame houses; others became refuse pits in front of houses that had not been elevated when the street grade was raised.  Many of the tiny units had no bathroom or kitchen. While other neighbors were adopting electricity and steam heat, the slums had yet to see gas lighting or coal stoves in every room.”

Then came the “vanishings” — perhaps unnoticed at first by the public at large — but like a creeping, macabre “fog” that seeped and intimidated the gutters and alleys of society, parents, a few detectives, some police began an increasing worrisome search. But since the mystery largely surrounded persons who had no “strings” – common people, ordinary children and women — and no great amounts of money were involved, the growing flood of disappearances seemed happenstance and haphazard. “Women and men vanished in equal proportion,” said Larson, “…the Tribune said, ‘as completely as though swallowed by the earth.’ The women were presumed to have been ravished, the men robbed, their corpses plunged into the turgid waters of the Chicago River or the alleys of Halsted and the Levee and that hard stretch of Clark between Polk and Taylor known to veteran officers as Cheyenne.”

Eventually a Mysterious Disappearances Department was set up and half the city’s detective force became involved. Like the Union Stock Yards, Chicago wasted nothing.     

The working conditions for the thousands employed at the Union Stock Yards were terrible. Laborers on the killing – floors had to work amidst the stench and piercing shrieks of animals being slaughtered while standing on blood-soaked floors. They worked long hours – usually ten to twelve a day – in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees in the summertime.  Employees could beg wages low and withhold benefits due to the ready supply immigrant workers desperate to earn a living. The situation is adequately described in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. 

Carl Sandburg chose the word “brawling” to describe Chicago of this period.

And the children? “But why would any kid want to be an orphan?” asked Peggy Thomson Greenwood.

“In St. Louis, orphanages, children’s homes, receiving homes, foundling homes, and asylums continued to increase and were filled to capacity,” said Greenwood.

MY KINDA TOWN, ST. LOUIS IS….

Peggy Thomson Greenwood said in St. Louis Orphanages, “Beyond The Orphanages”, Part II, (  www.genealogyinstlouis.accessgenealogy.com/greenwood.htm): “But meander through the mean streets of the late 19^th century.  The years 1870 to 1900 were years of chaos in America.  It was a century in the throes of an industrial revolution that would change America from a nation of small farms to a giant of technology in 50 short years. And the same forces that gave some Americans the highest standard of living in the world also created sweatshops and rabbit-hatch slums…..wealth and pauperism, side by side, were the result of industrialization, urbanization and immigration.”

Greenwood eludes to the opening act of the musical Annie, the 1977 stage version of the Sunday comicsserial,quoting the somewhat criminal matron of the orphanage, Mrs. Hadigan: “Why any kid would want to be an orphan is beyond me.”  Indeed, why would a child want to be an orphan in St. Louis or in any major metropolis in or near the turn of the century?  St. Louis did not escape the wounds of industrialization as it made its struggle from a commercial and mercantile center to a heavy-industrial producer and wholesaler marketing center. “As the impersonal gears of industrialization gained strength and momentum, the depersonalized laborer became a powerless cog in the wheel,” said Greenwood, “The sweat labor lubricated the vast new industrial machine twelve hours a day, seven days week a week, for eight cents an hour. Unorganized, abandoned by government, deprived of legal help, the American laborer was powerless when the industrial giant flexed its muscle, casting into living perdition the weak, the injured, the old, and the sick.”

People flowed into the cities from the prairies, the farms, the defunct mining towns, the war-ravaged South, and foreign countries, said Greenwood.  San Francisco had its Tenderloin District, New York had its Hell’s Kitchen. “St. Louis also had a nightmare in stone,” said Greenwood, “a district so filled with violent crime and human degradation that even police officers feared its cobblestones. Slum neighborhoods proliferated on the fringes of the new industrial centers. Slums were savage places. Although St, Louis had few tenements, 100% use of the lot space with buildings on the front, back, and down the middle of the lot created the same effect.”  The Carr Square had an area with as many as 1900 residents per acre. The average living space was 16.9 square feet per person with an average of one bathtub and four toilets for 2479 people. The Average rent was $1.00 a week. “Human waste and garbage accumulated in the few open spaces,” said Greenwood, “And in these ill-ventilated, foul-smelling shacks and cellars were found saloons, bakeries, grocetarias and laundries.”

A steady torrent of immigrants provided cheap, unskilled labor in St. Louis by 1880; largely German, many were Irish, Austria-Hungarian, Italian, Polish and Russian. “Bright-shawled, quaint-jacketed aliens….were visibly and volubly different…the new immigrants took their places in the industrialized machine in an aura of fear and suspicion….in ethnic neighborhoods where strangeness could be cushioned by clinging to old ways.” En.wikipedia.org also spoke of an earlier period: “Immigrants flooded into St. Louis in the 1840s, particularly from Ireland due to the potato famine, and German and Bohemians after the revolutions of 1848. The population grew from less than 29,000 in 1848 to 77,860  in 1850, to more than 160,000 by 1860….Omnibuses began to service St. Louis in 1843, and in 1859, St. Louis’ first streetcar tracks were laid.”              

WHY WOULD ANY KID WANT TO BE AN ORPHAN?

Greenwood outlines that some 1.75 million children across the U.S. helped feed the ”industrial monster”, barely seeing the light of day or the delight of play.  Wages were about 25 cents a day if at all: a small price to pay for a childhood.  Victims of the second industrial revolution, it was from this grey shadow-world that juvenile institutions were created to blunt unprotected child labor and the slavery of apprenticeship.

Most children of this period called utter poverty – death, disease, malnutrition, neglect, abuse, abandonment and delinquency — their “home”, as prevalent victims in a rabid urbanization. This infestation of neglect did not go unnoticed, giving rise to the growth of juvenile institutions. Trapped in this bizarre conflict of old and new worlds, children carried the deepest scars of social conflict and alienation: “Ravaged by poverty, neglected by necessity and buffeted by violence,” said Greenwood, “the children were the catalyst that spurred the rescue effort represented by the mushrooming juvenile institutions in the City and County St. Louis.”  Innocent victims of a colossal industrial revolution, over-rapid urbanization and flood-immigration, they were the New Orphans of the 19^th century in America’s Children Homes.

It is speculated that the classical writer Charles Dickens’ somber and somewhat forlorn tales of London’s dark side of the poor and destitute, ranging in his novels such as A Christmas Carol, Oliver, and Hard Times. was inspired from his January 22, 1842visit to St. Louis, and his learning of the child-labor and sweat shops, “Some of these ancient habitations, with high garret gable windows perking into the roofs, have a kind of French shrug about them; and, being lop-sided with age, appear to hold their heads askew besides, as if they were grimacing in astonishment at the American improvements”, Dickens said.  Two of St. Louis’s slums were the Cross Keys and Clabber Alley.      

These are just conditions of the 19^th century as existed in America and England; to get into similar or worse conditions in other countries (the disease, crime, poverty) are beyond the limits of my time. Nor have we really gotten into the mountain of facts about the matters of disease, plague, poverty, and destruction in 19^TH century America: Such as the Civil War (61,800 dead with direct costs of 3.3 billion dollars to the confederacy).

Others: World War 1 (20 million injured and dead with direct and indirect costs of 337 billion dollars); World War 2 (over 60 million injured and dead and total costs of 2,091.3 billion dollars); the influenza pandemic of 1918 (20 to 40 million dead): “The most devastating epidemic in recorded history”. So on. 

UFOS: TO BE OR NOT TO BE?

The argument as to whether UFOs exist as “space ships” from outside the earth or from Fourth Reich Nazi strongholds — or exist as myths or delusion or outright “lies,” is somewhat immaterial to me.  I tend to approach this subject as I do other subjects; as a writer   who tries to write a fairly interesting story. That can mean I can write or might write from a certain “point of view” and that can depend on multiple factors.  

I recall attending a speech or rally at a north St. Louis church in which Dick Gregory and fellow members spoke of the black man’s plight in society. I wrote a short piece from the speaker’s point – of – view as best I could. Does that mean I agree 100% with everything they said? Not necessarily. And that is the way I usually write; I keep a little part of me to myself and my own private feelings — that doesn’t always come out in my format. And, then again, it does at times; depending on what I write about, how I feel, and to whom I am targeting. Private “feelings” are still allowable in America: even yours, Moriarty Wild. Many writers love to “brain storm” or even listen to gossip:  such is life.

 And what ”if” you had been born black in the 19^th century?

PART III

WE WANT YOU, MR. X

Since you have directly involved me by referring to my private UFO sighting as a “Mr. X,” it behooves me to make a reply; although I don’t intend to get into a real lengthy debate. UFO debates are and can be a bottomless pit!

The sighting, which may have happened in either the summer of 1959 or 1960 – depending on which date and which showing of the Steve Reeves movie at the Fox Theatre in up-town St. Louis (Hercules – 1959 – Hercules Unchained – 1960 [I believe]) was happening. And the object which I saw was significantly different and bizarre as to its nature as to classify it as a UFO. You refer to the “moon”, “flares”, “floating hoax balloons”. Without getting into a lot of “action-packed” descriptions (which you probably expect of me), allow me to quickly go through your references:

I have noted, this last August, (2010)  in fact, that when the moon arises from the horizon, the altitude in the sky starts from zero at the horizon  at a certain time at night and can almost reach “high noon” (so-to-speak) azimuth and altitude. Now, the time at which I had my “sighting” (delusion, misconception, lie) was somewhere about 1200 a.m. or later – – – after midnight. The moon would be at a certain summertime azimuth and altitude at that time. Comparing the position at which the moon would be in the sky about 12:30 a.m. (give or take some minutes), and comparing how it really was being seen between the branches of a tree (at first) and where that would place it in the sky: It would have to have been in an approximate 9:00 p.m. or 9:30 p.m. position – – – approximately, an estimated, 30-degrees or so in its arc across the sky, as opposed to its almost 80 to 90-degree position it would have been after midnight. No, there could be no doubt it was near or after midnight — but since you feel we are all deluded liars — anything is possible.

THAT OLD DEVIL MOON

(“……it’s that old devil moon, that you stole from the skies…..”, Old Devil Moon, Frank Sinatra)

The length of the gangway is fairly short, just the length of the house; and the tree was at the very end of the gangway, it would be assumed that the object had to be not above the tree at a “high noon” position, but about 30 to 50-degrees above the horizon azimuth and altitude along the transit of the meridian, allowing it to be seen through the tree limbs and branches from a gangway position. When viewed in the “clear” portion of the sky —- which appeared to be on the other side of the tree —– it was as if I were viewing it directly north and somewhat ‘above.’ Since that was a “clear patch” of sky directly over my neighbors’ yards and my own, there were no good reference points to measure its size or distance. Even when it disappeared, it did so still in those clear patches of sky, arcing upward – to about the middle of my yard — and then moving away and up until it faded beyond my range of vision at about an 80-degree angle. These are all estimates.

Fifty-years ago are a long period to bring back crystal-clear memories, but I still believe I have one of two striking impressions. At the moment I first saw the object through the branches of the tree there may have been a slight “bounce” to it as if a ping-pong ball was gently placed on fluid water, but since I was not completely focused on it yet, I cannot be sure.

INSTITUTIONALIZED FLARES

You refer to this UFO as a “flare” in a “heavily industrialized” area. Well, first of all, it just didn’t act like a flare — even fancy fireworks: and, boy, I’ve seen my share of fireworks. But, yes, it is possible that somebody worked up a sophisticated “fireworks” that were designed to portray a mysterious event: I suppose that is possible. I mean, I just didn’t have my million-dollar instrumentation with me at the moment to catch this thing on film and graph! And whom might “they” be that did this time-consuming prank? You once mentioned a hologram: I’ve seen holograms and they look pretty real: I just don’t know how that would work in this instance, if the technology was possible in 1959-1960 to be contemporary with  what  I  saw.  And how would they hide the equipment?  I sat stunned on my back porch for a long time and did not hear a sound, not even dogs barking, if I recall correctly. But the incompetent boobs that we are, anything………

A heavily-industrialized-area? Yes, there are businesses in the area (there are businesses all over  St. Louis and Carondelet: there was a lumber-yard one block away near Tesson street: but that is south of my northward sighting!), but the major ones are southeast of my sighting: the grain silos on the river directly in line with the east view on Primm Street is about a mile or so away; the Titanium Smelting Facility, and the ship fabrication yards which are directly across the railroad tracks from the Titanium facility. That’s about as industrialized as you’ll get in that neighborhood. Those are all at the foot of Davis Street which is southeast of the slightly mid-north view I was having. The object did head over to that area, but went suddenly straight up into a clear patch of sky until it went out of my range-of-vision — ascending upward at a great rate of speed.

There are  barges  moving up and down the river, but in the many years of living in Carondelet, I’ve never seen flares being shot off barges in that fashion (unless it was the 4^th of July Famous and Barr display: which is quite a distance away and very different). The cardboard factory is west of my sighting, across Michigan Avenue. You don’t think those guys were playing with matches that night, do you? In the slightly northwest area at which I saw this UFO, it was a clear patch of sky. There are some Illinois and Missouri  facilities that are across and near the Mississippi river, such as the factories in Saguet….but that is up-river across from mid-town St. Louis (there was the Monstanto plant [which produced polychlorinated bipheryls into the Dead Creek: you don’t think it came ‘aflaming’ over to Primm Avenue, do ya?]; and there was the W.G. Krummich Plant, the Clayton Chemical property).

You don’t think the guys over at those factories were sending flares over to Primm and Michigan and Minnesota Avenues, do ya?  (Actually, this UFO would be slightly hanging to the northwest side of that open piece of sky over Primm Avenue; maybe more mid-Primm Avenue rather than Minnesota Avenue.) Railroad employees sending off a flare?  But why would the flare be an “in-coming” object from the north over mid – Primm and near-by Michigan and Minnesota Avenues and the railroad tracks are south of Primm by one block at Tesson? Which business or person do you want to ‘pin’ or blame this hoax on? There are thousands of possibilities, I guess, especially with us lying boobs looking on………..

WISH UPON A STAR

(“When you wish upon a star.….makes no difference who you are.….anything your heart desires.….will come to you…”, Leigh Harline, Ned Washington,1940, Cliff Edwards, as Jiminy Cricket, Pinoccio.)

When I first saw this object (or, what seemed to me to be an object) it appeared seemingly motionless beyond the tree at the foot of my gangway to the house. No real motion was noticed until I turned back to take a hard look at it.  At that point, as I approached my back steps and I stood to take a deliberately- strong look, it appeared to “quicken” into action – – – it now reminds me of the video technique used in some movies were they are showing a “still” frame of a photo (or scene) and then “suddenly” spring it “into action” as supposed real people walking or moving. In that split moment I saw it “hanging” in that clear patch of sky, I was electrified. I had a feeling of tremendum mysterium !  It was as if in a moment of time I had come face to face with some unexpected miraculum – keuthonymos!  Of course, that is quite personal and quite subjectively psychological, but, hay, you were not there!

“Plastic balloons with candles in them?” The summer of 1960 some pranksters were sitting up these balloons and were caught. If my UFO were in fact these balloons: boys, you are master pranksters! I would say “no”, but how can an incompetent boob be sure?  And that poses some other questions: Why 1960? Might it have been 1959? No mention of prank balloons then. But debunkers are so stringent in their rear-view mirror hindsight coaching, they have no leeway for “error”: They cannot be wrong: they “must” be absolutely correct! They have no excuses! They demand absolute perfection of their subjects and themselves (sadly that perfectionism is not possible, nor is it or was it shown in the life of Moriarty Wild).

(And the debunker  ‘The Amazing Randi’  confessed to being a homosexual?!  And the correct name for Peter Kor is ‘TomComella’. [true-skeptics, on the other-hand, do have excuses!]).

And, why “July” for my sighting; why not August, June, or September?

(The question has been asked me: Why have I been so sloppy in my investigation? You are talking about a 15-year-old boy from a lower middle-class family: One family which was hell-bent on destroying itself amidst my personal teenage angst and tragedy (of which you only have been told a small portion). I was more interested in “surviving” (we are dealing with real, physical danger; not a very protected and loving environment from which you operated); and I had several “personal- mechanisms” to do that. There was no UFO Study Group of Greater St. Louis then. I was much more l interested in girls and roaming the Carondelet neighborhoods with Ronnie Smith or John Moeller or the South Broadway “gang.” I believe at some point I became interested in Space Exploration and, later, model rocketry; but that may have been after age 15. From where should I have gotten this sudden “sophistication”?)

THE SOPHISTICATED INVESTIGATGOR

Why didn’t I go to the newspapers the next day – – – or, in fact, go down to the papers that night? Or call the police?! Or go banging on the neighbors’ doors?!  I mean, if I was sincere and not one of the lying boobs? You obviously are not aware, or had missed out, in part, of what are some of the daily activities, and the living, perilous times of a 1960s teenager! You ask: Why did I not mention it to someone immediately! Well, I did: my mother, the very next day. But the problem child that I was, I don’t think my mention carried a lot of weight. I did write it up in my diary — some loose pages tucked away in my desk. But my mother discovered them in one of her snooping ventures and destroyed the pages because it carried descriptions of family fights and horrors. In fact, sometime around 1967 (possibly), once my ‘space’ interest kicked off into a ‘UFO’ interest, I wrote a short piece for a UFO magazine which is now in the garage storage; so unsophisticated, ill-timed, ill-planned, and not according to script.

PART IV

STRUGGLE; NOT SOPHISTICATION

“Life” is not according to script. Not all teenagers in the 1960s were interested or capable of protesting the educational system, or taking trips to England to visit Summer Hill College as you were doing. However, I do believe there is a “NEXUS” here, because – – – – like so many children in the 1960s — – – – you and I (like others) were into the “protest” movement. It was the age of the JFK assassination, the Vietnam War, controlling, and oft-times “destructive” parents (at least, in my case; of course, my family had good times, how else could I have survived?). I know you were involved in personal, private struggles of your own (and still are), and though not identical to mine, we both seemed to carry burdens that were in some way very similar, though not strictly replicate. It led to varying degrees of “fear-flight syndrome” and schizoid behavior. Somewhat of an elongated “post-traumatic stress syndrome” (events compiled over and over in a life-time, in what could be said to be, in retrospect, ramified [divorce, controlling power or government structures, menacing and frequently unquestioned and often corrupt “professionals”, such as power-hungry, greedy lawyers, etc.]), unrelenting and leading into chronic conditions. I am reminded of the battle-in-life the Nick Nolte character, Wade Whitehouse, had in Paul Schrader’s 1997 film (based on the Russell Bank’s book) Affliction. [I understand: you’ve said you don’t believe there is such a thing as mental-illness.].

Persons with a lot of support groups and psychological and physical backing “snap out of it”; wealthy families or families or friends with great resources of love and various kinds of support (what I understand from your reports and photos, you had, relatively speaking, fairly loving and stable parents). Even wealthy-motion-picture-Stars can “come back.” I believe ‘our’ UFO movement came out of this syndrome and era: at least, the UFO movement as we know it: UFO researchers against evil governmental authority: that was attractive to many people. That may have been where we came in; as well as your interest in astronomy and mine in space exploration.)

What did I see? I don’t know!  I have some favorite theories; but I would not give them to you to “feed” off.  I will say, UFOs were not consciously on my mind at the moment, other than we had just seen a movie about an hour or more earlier on Greek legend. And, of course, 15-years-of-age is a typical age of teenage angst when poltergeist activity has been reported. And as far as UFO sightings go: Mine just isn’t that interesting —- not in a news headlines sense —- I’ve read far more interesting UFO cases.  But mine was personal!

(John Wheeler, professor emeritus, Princeton University, has said: “May the universe in some strange sense be ‘brought into being’ by the participation of those who participate?” [G. Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters {pg. 54}]. John Allero, M. Ed., MAPP, might add more insight, this way: “When we are not intentional in our thinking, life brings us things from our dark subconscious, whether we consciously want it or not. Jonathan Hardt would say that the elephant overtakes the rider, life brings its own stretch goals……).   

That I did not “parade” my UFO sighting at the time and since contradicts the theory that all UFO witnesses run amuck to get publicity; It would seem that you can’t have it both ways – – – – – unless you are fair-minded and objectively explorative.  

UFOS GALORE

(“Bond: ‘Who are you?’ Pussy: ‘My name is Pussy Galore’  Bond: (looks away and smiles) “I must be dreaming…..’”, aboard Auric Goldfinger’s jet, GOLDFINGER, 1964.)   

In your critique of the UFO situation, you mention and debunk past UFO Greats and their erroneous UFO sightings: Walt Andrus, Leo Wicklinski, and others.  I wish you could have confronted them while they  were living: these people are all dead and have no way to confront you or defend themselves.

I hope you didn’t think I was sending you UFO and other materials to “pick a fight.”  It just was my way of sharing and trying to inspire. As far as the UFO Mystery itself: I am just a simple observer that is just as ‘completely’ lost as anyone else. It makes no difference to me whether they are spaceships from mars, another dimension, multi-universes, government projects, etc. In fact, I suspect the Mystery is “multifarious.” There is no “one” explanation; and one aspect is as interesting as another – – – – especially to a journalist. Some people have turned it into a religious battle: the Spaceship Doctrine versus the Pure Bunk Debunkers. I’m afraid it is far too complex to show this kind of if arrogance. And if Bigelow and Vallee want to use their time and money to investigate- – – – it’s their time and money and no government, yet, can stop them! If sociologists like Leon Festinger want to study them as myth, that is real science – – – – they should go for it!

Michel Monnerie (What If UFOs Don’t Exist?), Bertrand Meheust (Science-fiction And Flying Saucers) and Carl Gustav Jung all spoke of UFOs as psychological-psychosocial phenomena using pre-existing motifs and memetic selection (though Jung saw more “meat” to UFOs, as an intelligent phenomenon, having synchronisms other than rumor). A description of The Society for Scientific Exploration describes their Ufological interest as varying from fringe proponent  David  Icke to respected mainstream scientists like  Peter A. Sturrock, Jacques Vallee, James E. McDonald, J. Allen Hynek or  Auguste  Meesen, some of whom argue that UFO reports are as worthy of study as any topic, and deserve case by case analysis using the scientific method: and not all ufologist–scientists believe that UFOs are necessarily extraterrestrial spacecraft, or even that they are objective physical phenomena. Even those UFO cases that are exposed as hoaxes or found to be delusions or misidentification may still be worthy of serious study from a psychosocial point of view.

(It may be out of this “soup” that some of our 20^th century “marvels” and scientific inventions have appeared; certainly our Space-Program. Recently it was announced that our Army had obtained a 4 million dollar ___ Carnegie-Mellon-“electroencephalography”-program ___ at the United States University of California-Irving to invent “thought helmets” for jet pilots to communicate by brain-wave [sounds a lot like Richard Shaver-type material such as the Telog, Ray Machines, Elder-Mech, Stim-Rays, and {guess what?} “thought-machines”]).

Similarly, Winston Wu, Graduate from California State University, had this to say on Carl Sagan’s approach: “Carl Sagan, though an amazing thinker, was wrong here.  Extraordinary claims merely require evidence. Good evidence has to exist before we can draw conclusions, to be sure, but certainly not extraordinary evidence….legitimate science is conducted by examining all evidence, not by myopic rushes to judgment.”

Diana Palmer Hoyt described it this way: “The UFO seems to bear a closer resemblance to problems in meteorology than in physics. The phenomena are observed occur episodically, are not reproducible, and in large part, are identified by statistical gathering of data for possible organization into patterns. They are not experiments that can be replicated at will at the laboratory bench under controlled conditions.”  

What is wrong with a multifaceted study? Life is multifaceted: why pull that string on the bottom of life’s page and try to force all those dots into a straight line? We won’t see that “STRAIGHT LINE” for millions of years, if ever. It is not the “scientific method” or the scientific community that should be faulted (right or wrong, they’ll do what they have to do), but individual maniacs with a deprived sense of value that parade as “pure scientists.” You’re not going to claim, as some do, that Hitler was always on a quest for “pure science” – – – his “pure race” ideas: The Reich’s talk about “pure-science,” “pure-books”? Hitler was ill! History says he was suffering from Huntington’s disease and there apparently was a linage of mental illness.

(Hitler’s Reich has its origins in Guido von List and Jorg Lanz von Liebanfels’ “theozoology”; Madame Blavatsky’s “The Order of The New Templars”. Many of his SS and military were steeped in esoteric, occult practices, such as the Thule Society, called the Black Order, and The Vril Society: spoke of the “vril force.” Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goering considered Hitler as the ‘King of Fear.’ The Edelweiss Society spoke of the Nordic Master Race, the Aryans, The Thule Society, and Rudolf Glaver, Dietrich Eckardt. Jorg  Lanz  von Liebenfels  spoke of “castration” of subordinates and victims).   

Some other miscellaneous comments: yes, animal mutilations exist, cats, dogs, rabbits, cattle – – – – no way around it ——  cow hearts cut out and put in a bucket, mutilated cows left with scalpels, on and on.  What you would like to see, and perhaps are doing, is trying to frame the mystery as “Mutilations As An‘unknown’” versus The Grand Debunker Gang (in regards to and as much as they are against ‘space ships’, ‘ghosts’, etc. [There’s that “Black on White again”]): and that, I, or other people, won’t do: That is giving into your jaded psychological Doctrines (just like John Schroeder has his perverted Doctrines on the other end of the scale).

Yes, there are and were real stealth craft made by terrestrial governments: And on some craft, there are even patents in the government patent offices.

You comment that in the James Fox production on UFOs called Out Of The Blue, that the name of Major Hector Quintanilla was ‘misspelled.’  If we are going to hold the UFO community guilty of such High Crimes then we will have to do the same to Moriarty Wild and one of his Debunking Mentors: Phillip Klass: In The Skeptics UFO Newsletter, September1,1998, Klass “misspells” presumably as “…..presum –ably (sic)”. 

PART V

WATCH OUT, I SEE A STEVE CONTRADICTION

However, I can greatly sympathize with Moriarty Wild’s position on some matters, or I would be contradicting myself. The paranormal or Fortean field of study is rift with deceptions, absurdities, unfounded religious belief (the believers) and fraud. No doubt about it. And I agree with Wild that after so much exposure, one can only become loathsome of the topic and its pranksters. When this becomes obvious to me: I get quite upset. It is a department of study of its own dimensions. If a UFO organization presents itself  –  more or less  –  as a fact-finding, scientific organization but continually is side-tracked into obvious sessions of story-telling and even science-fiction and invention: they obviously are not fulfilling their charter to the public ———- only to the their perverted or questionable egos. They can be basically nice, sometimes eccentric, people or they can be stinkers in disguise.  But aren’t we all that way?

Several incidents arose in my meetings with the Study Group that, as Moriarty Wild would agree, would cast doubt on their sincerity. UFO Study Group member Lee Pope (not his real name), on a visit to his home, introduced me to a neighbor who, at one point, almost as if prompted, began to speak about his personal UFO sighting of a “boomerang” UFO. I noticed that both had smirks and grins on their faces at the telling. There had been several incidents that seemed suspiciously insincere. One “field investigation” ( on Taylor Avenue) by Lee Pope to a family whom reported several Fortean incidents in mass (a one-day incident), including a Bigfoot sighting, here in St. Louis County, almost seemed “staged” and even rehearsed. And, yes, I recall the barely subdued grins once again! The UFO field certainly seems dull or even bleak without fresh, dramatic UFO and Fortean cases coming in every day, and the stench of overlaid lies and fabrication amidst large clumps of “play acting”, makes the subject very difficult and risky (Voodoo Histories, David Aronovitch – 2009: recommended with reservations).

Most people have turned their backs on the topic because of this. There are the “Repeater” Phenomena, where persons continually have Fortean events, causing great suspicion. John Schroeder may be one of those as his life is a long string of weird paranormal events, nonstop, almost always lacking in hard evidence. Most of them are not very believable (not that I can’t sympathize with that plight having been a ‘victim’ of a UFO sighting myself). 

One example: several years ago the Rev. Schroeder had a Parapsychological Subcommittee of the Ufosgogs that would meet at his home; at that time on Miami Avenue. At this particular time, Schroeder was conducting sessions of the supposed hypnotic regression of a member in an alleged “ET” contact. I invited Tim Zell, a professional psychologist and a trained hypnotist to witness the affair.

It was not very long into the session before Tim Zell exposed the fallacious hoax that it was – – – – – Schroeder and ‘company’ were at a loss for words that their ploy fell through. The ‘minutes’ of the meeting weakly mentions having better “controls” of any experiments in the future. Good suggestion: but I have never seen it practiced or hoax prevented in the Ufosgogs. Recently, Reverend Schroeder had visions that the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek was a “Reptilian” monster in disguise (I wonder how professional paleontologists would handle the factson the reality of Reptilians bodies never being found in the last 100,000 years?); Schroeder often says he gets his information from god! The “scientific controls” need to be greased and shined-up and brought back out of storage!

That UFO Cults are heavily weighted in various forms of psychobabble and esoteric mannerisms is true, as Leon Festinger and co-workers will testify (When Prophecy Fails, University of Minnesota Press) in their 1956 expose’ of a UFO cult. These “groups” are rift with what I suspect would be ample medical histories in various psychiatric files: Histrionic or Schizotypal personality disorder, Paranoid-narcissistic personalities, superiority personality syndromes, antisocial personalities, fantasy-prone minds, confabulation, fantastical-myth-mania, capgras delusion, fregoli delusion, delusional disorder (yes, yes, I’m in there somewhere), so on and so on: but most are just average street people with varying degrees of neurosis and stress (count me in that bunch!).

There is a list of psychiatric syndromes that could very well come into play in the topic of Fortean events; and never make mention outside of the doctor’s office. There was a study dated 2001 called Fantasy Proneness And Other Psychological Correlates Of UFO Experiences byGow, Laurie, Popper, Powell and Basterfield (almost sounds like the name of a law firm that I know: Buoy, Wee, Cheetham and Howe, LLP), Which suggests that those individuals with a high threshold for fantasy (like fiction writers and science-fiction writers) are more apt to have UFO experiences (and that does not necessarily denote fabrication!): opens a whole dimension for study  (not myopic censorship, debunking  or avoidance).

That paranormal participants and critics will admit to these findings: are  doubtful. And, yes, even debunkers have psychological defects and questionable motivations:Phyllis Glade noted in her “I See By The Papers” column in Fate Magazine  that a chemical was medically discovered in the bodies of ‘debunkers’ that might be a clue as to their cynicism; recently, moreover, studies on epigenetics [the study of how people’s experiences and environment affect the function of their genes] seem to indicate that chemical markers set-up a biological competition between maternal and paternal genes leading to impacted behavior at the epigenetic level. Other laboratory studies indicated a variant of serotonin receptor 2A gene – 5HT1A and 5HT2a – in male carriers of T/T genotype of 5HTR2A (UCL School of Life and Medical Science, 2007).  Genotype – phenotype correlations of personality traits reveal that genes determine ‘belligerence’ (bel), ‘cynicism’ (dub), ‘lack of personality’ (dul-1), plus others such As ‘obsessive-compulsive behavior’  (pic-e) (www.mja.com.au).

Hilary Freeman wrote in Psycho Bosses on The Loose (The Guardian, March 10,2001,www.guardian.co.uk):“Not all psychopaths areviolent criminals and fewer still have a desire to eat you for dinner.  Many are highly successful businessmen and women, lawyers, academics, politicians, doctors and teachers.  Psychopaths wear suits too; in fact, there could be one in your office.” Robert Hare, professor of psychology at the University of Vancouver, says: “These individuals are every bit as egocentric, callous and manipulative as the average criminal psychopath.” John Clarke, psychologist at the University of Sydney, refers to “serial bullying” rather than “serial killing.” (One could also add “serial hoaxing,” “serial hating,” “serial lying,” and so forth. Sadly, neither  is Moriarty Wild “beyond” this panoply of psychiatric accusations, though he has hidden himself in a shroud of arm-chair book-reading on various topics used to attack others, safely keeping the finger of suspicion pointed away from himself.

MISCELLANEOUS VENTURES

And the ‘media’ misrepresentation can go hand-in-hand with the above as well as I witnessed in Elsberry, Missouri in the 70s as the ‘hysteria’ by UFO enthusiasts and some public concerning cattle mutilations and UFOs.   

(Might as well include my TIA [“mini-stroke”] episode from back in 1973-1974 at this point, wherein I described a daytime sleep [though I was not asleep] paralysis and “tunnel” travel [in a room with bustling kids, a house-cleaning wife, and streaming sunlight through uncovered windows]: that was a weird medical state! I  described that episode in detail to Doctor Eric J. Lenze, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Washington School of Medicine, St. Louis, and he definitely said it was ”not” a TIA [maybe some other kind of crazies; but not a TIA]; Just another “speed bump” on the road before “armchair paranormal debunking”!)

The RRR Group in www.ufocon.blogspot.com said: “Displaying everything UFO-related won’t ever get to the heart of the UFO mystery. The panoply of flying saucer detritus merely showcases how discombobulated the UFO community is, with an obvious lacuna in serious research.”

Of course, the other extreme, of which Moriarty Wild adheres to, yet fails to accept or even examine, is also likely true: Trying to “‘sanctify” human enquiry according to some private cultist-distorted “perfectionism” and “uncontaminated” (in this case as a Moriarty personal, private prejudiced ideological…) version, is just as distorted, whereby he, in effect, forces the  elusive “scientific method’ (or, regressing its application) back to the17th 0r 18^th centuries.

MY FRIENDS, AND YOU  ‘ARE ‘  MY FRIENDS….

Moriarty Wild has said in a past bibliography that he had considered past members and some late members of the Ufosgogs  as his friends (written in 2008), and that I  suppose that is true enough(and it is true enough for me as well for I recall some affection and affinity with them) – – – – but, apparently, they were not friendly enough to prevent him from questioning their integrity as far and in regards to their respective UFO sightings or Fortean beliefs: these he has later questioned and even attacked repeatedly; Strange friendships. His friendship with Lee Pope (not his real name; Pope was a Study Group member who was vital in the groups incorporation) may have been built on more than a UFO connection: and these all seem very conflicting and contradictory: Pope was a strict right-wing Roman Catholic (Wild does not believe in any religion at all or, apparently, as  even having a belief in God [in the 60s he was labeling himself as an atheist]); likewise Pope had a personal UFO sighting, along with his son Larry (not his real name), the whole family – including son Larry — were alleged to have been involved in several Fortean, even Satanic, events (Moriarty disowns any belief in any Forteanisms; at least his dark diatribes of anything related to the topic gives that impression: he even told me at one time he was an Atheist). The only possible true kinship Wild had with Pope then or since may have been with pope’s vehement and virago “anti-Semitism” (Pope may have been making allusions to Super-rich Jewish descendants and families only and not average Jews, I am not sure; some of the literature he was reading and had shown me struck me as somewhat Hitlerian: he demonstrated a strong kinship with Hitler’s hatred of Jews and the cold strength and power that he brought to Germany as he took control). One time, I recall Pope marching into the Study Group engaging Leo Wicklinski in a conversation in which Pope announced that the “Jews” were behind the Flying Saucers! I spoke to Pope several times at which he announced the same topic and other things about the Jewish “takeover” and the theory that the Jewish Holocaust did not happen (but I keep reading something about, like, 9 million Jews were murdered). Now, these are beliefs that Wild may “not” have been so tightly against!

Wild summarized that Lee Pope, as far as he can remember, actually shied away from the ET hypothesis as a weak theory: in actuality, in many conversations I had with Lee Pope, “ran the gamut” of all kinds of theories and possibilities, including Jewish-Zionist-Cabal-inventions, and secret government inventions, as well as other realm dimensions, and all kinds of possibilities. He had a theory for everything, including his own son having been demon-possessed.

What could have been behind Wild’s quizzical pattern that allowed his incongruousness in associating with an avidly traditionalist Roman Catholic who believed in the customary miracles, God, doctrines of which Wild vehemently rebuked on the one hand. What Wild also failed to utilize or even recognize was that Steve Erdmann had multiple visits and episodes with Lee Pope over the years, going into as much as interviewing Pope, visiting and having many general associations with him as did Wild, maybe even more so; so much so that the Lee Pope story does not end just yet on the above mentioned few curiosities mentioned Wild describes as a staunch and upright example of the century’s emblem of the best “good citizen” does not quite hold-up. This “pretense” is ‘not’ entirely true, and is not identical to the Lee Pope I knew.

But the ‘Lee Pope’ several paragraphs earlier, but are highlighted even further by additional oddities. Wild, as a purported strict atheist, seemed All of this makes for incongruous and strange ‘bed fellows’ for Wild (who emphatically denounces the ultimate reality of anything at all of the spiritual, supernatural or religious nature) and those he esteems as associates, for Wild is constantly on a mission, every moment of the day, enduring, unrelenting, to discover those enemies that are ‘improper,’  “nonfactual,” “imperfect,” and have been “contaminated” by the Fabien conspiracy (and other societal contaminations, at least, as he sees them from his arm-chair diagnostics) and at almost any cost. 

It is nice and perhaps wonderful that Wild had become friends to Lee Pope, as Wild’s discourses praise Pope highly, and that he deliberately marks Pope’s military career with esteem, and that the Popes treated Wild so kindly and fondly, but this ultimately says nothing at all about the underlying stark reality of the baser side of the family and the discordant and conflicting practices they held that are so in variance with the ending and final Doctrine of Wild’s Cultist and  private peaching. It is nice that Pope’s wife, Marian (not the real name), baked cookies and served meals to him in friendship (they did the same to me as well), but this should not, in the framework of Wild’s stringent, unyielding, crass, Doctrine of “perfectionism” allow one iota of leeway of divergence from the strict reality that he has enshrined himself in. 

Likewise, I too had many friendly conversations with members of the Ufosgogs, and if compatibility were any criteria for putting these people as one-off, icons of virtue, merely because of their friendliness, then most of those—as well as many in the so-called UFO community— should receive the same stamp of approval and almost deification.

And that Lee Pope had served in the military and was a veteran, should in no way, abate or delineate from the millions of other men who served in and perhaps gave their lives in the service of their countries; again, not one iota. This includes both my brother and half-brother and my cousin George Banjak—and myriad others.

Spirituality and a host of other religious sentiments:  Wild was fervidly opposed to these. What could have been the kinship between these elements that appeared to be so incongruous?  The answer is: shared Cultist-beliefs[1], almost in concert and replica, if not identical, but certainly in large part.  Both Wild and Pope were sterling attackers of the “Fabian-sponsored” Communist conspiracy to over-throw America (which I am also a dissentient, but in modified degrees and severity), as well as the conspiracy of Jewish-aristocrats (which some presently are labeling Zionists) to help destruct authentic American culture.

In many discussions with Pope, Erdmann discovered that Pope had a wide-interest in a large range of topics that were very “‘speculative,” “‘visionary,”  “‘on-going,” and “intrigued,” and, what be termed by some, as “wide-eyed”— “Mysteries.” They usually reflected major paranormal topics floating around at the time.  At one interval, as example, when the book and movie THE EXORCIST was popular, Pope divulged, under strict secrecy, that his son Larry had “also” become possessed by demons and he had a personal story in this matter.  I told him I was going to write on that topic for BEYOND REALITY Magazine and asked if I could interview him; yes, I could, but he and his family could not be identified (and they weren’t in the article at all). Unfortunately, for Wild (and Pope), the whole interview was “taped” on cassette tape of which I still have and was not destroyed in a later storage debacle.

But Wild shouldn’t have liked his “friends” to hoax, spawn weak theories, or be incompetent (for Wild has said he is against all these things). Wild speaks in sardonic tones when he speaks against UFOs as spaceships (he implicates, as well, there should be “no” serious study). Yet when the late Leo Wicklinski, his good friend, spoke about the July 27, 1978 Clora Evelyn Winscher UFO case (in which an, alleged, pursuing UFO hit her car and left several dents in the rear of her automobile), at a room-filled Sunday Ufosgogs meeting circa 1978, Leo announced this case as evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships thousands of years in advance of terrestrial technology (to the hysterical applause of enthusiastic on-lookers): was this not in direct confrontation and contradiction with Wild’s core belief?

Ufosgogs members Rosetta and Dick Holmes, also declared as friends, were practitioners of the extraterrestrial theory and had intimately sponsored the late Betty Hill (of the famous September 19, 1961 UFO abduction case) lecture of which  she was speaker at the Forest Park Community College in the 1970s.  

Which all goes to prove that friendships can be stronger than politics or beliefs (and it can also go to show how we can have strange bed-fellows; which is a good thing)!

Iranian soccer players matched against American teams, and despite intense competition, they had developed intimate and deep friendships that went beyond the sport or even country patriotism. As one of the Iranian players said later: you don’t let politics get in the way of good friendship.  (Among friends, you tend to loosen your behavior and act more spontaneously because of the bond that may have developed; this can be a “trap” depending on how deceptive your ‘partner’ really is: and why trust in marriage or other partnerships are so vital and so exhausting)

(on the doctrinal or political horizons, I suppose I am an Agnostic; politically, I like to call myself an “Independent” with  leanings towards the Conservative side – sometimes toward the Right, but not very far.  In fact, and usually depending on individual case-histories, I can sympathize with people on the left – the ‘common’ person – I am and have been there – I have no reason to not empathize in their plight:  I am not a relic of past elite aristocracy.  Moriarty, as compared, seem a staunch Conservative Right-wing Aristocrat that deems the masses incapable of uplifting themselves to higher levels (except by nature of their given hard-work and destiny), and they must drown in their putrid ignobility as a lesson to all. And who can argue with this absolute correctness? All of this can be said to be subjective malarkey; this is why “friendships” can’t be based on such polarized and inflamed, diametrically opposed positions – and true friendship, comradeship and love must exceed such limits.) As John F. Kennedy said:

“If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal….Best we shall also do our part to build a world of peace, where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success.”   

For those who wish to see more on the history of Moriarty Wild, they can read the sister episodes at: https://wordpresscom507.wordpress.com/2017/08/28/i-dr-j-allen-hynek-ufos-concern-things-in-physics-right-around-us-phenomena-which-is-beyond-our-understanding-yet-will-eventually-be-natural-november-24-1/

PART IV

THE GOOD OLE’ DAYS VERSUS MODERNISM

Moriarty Wild has sent out letters and opinions on movies and television and different societal mannerisms and functions of modern-day society and how it has degenerated, especially since the 1960s  — but, then again, generally somewhere from the late 1880s through the 1920s and on into the 1960s. I recall one day we were at the Record Exchange (a record, CD, disc and DVD shop) on Hampton Avenue in St. Louis, and I was trying to help him select a movie, unfortunately from a very current date, and he shrieked like a wounded animal “but I am child of the 60s!”  Moriarty had and still has some very stringent and psychologically deep philosophies that have been developed over the years as his personal belief-system – – – – a form of anthropophobia, however, makeshift to his personal liking, based on books and articles he is reading at the time. This is somewhat different from my glassophobia: which is very real at times and is not a product of any “psychological play-acting” on my part (and play-acting may be part of the problem in this topic). Some of his complaints I agree with, but not in the depth and dark psychology (extreme?) he has developed. I have watched Moriarty on occasion “struggle” with a decision to exchange a DVD he was returning; and he was eyeing the supernatural-themed movie the Mothman Prophecies,  but apparently deciding not to exchange it because it collided with his deep beliefs. As in most religious belief, everything has to be carefully and soulfully weighed. I have watched Moriarty with the same struggle after winning a raffle at a Citizens’ Council picnic and he torturously wrangled mentally to decide (as to whether) to take a copy of one of David Icke’s paranormal books on ‘reptilians’ offered at the gift table.

Certainly I am exaggerating the drama of these incidents; any person will do expressions such as the above at any given time for a variety of unknown and innocuous reasons.  A lot of Moriarty’s feelings also related to language and its use: he was impressed with George Orwell’s diatribes of the slovenly and tricky use of the English language, such as portrayed in his novel1984  (I even doubt Orwell would have gone to the murderously bitter and  puritan-melodramatic [fanatical] lengths, however, that Wild does; Orwell, himself, was against the fanatic consternation of words, and he said: “Most of us have a lingering belief that every  choice is between good and evil, and that if a thing is necessary it is also right. We should, I think, get rid of this belief….in politics one can never do more than decide which of two evils is the lesser…..” [emphasis added…SE).  But we pause to highlight this activity in this case because Moriarty Wild would also micro-analyze the behavior of others, lending to his base puritanical belief of the Evil World versus Moriarty Wild. But this seems to change at times, as well; and as I said before, we all apparently become psychologically demanding of others until that self-centeredness (like Scrooge in Dickens’ ever popular A Christmas Carol) has it knocked out of us: Provided that we don’t venture into another “extreme” at ‘that’ time; which very well can  happen as a Phobic!

His complaint that modern movies are not only bad but almost evil is both true and not so true.  His approach is almost Christian Fundamentalist (almost puritan) — but Wild disavows religion.  (A Very Divergent Side-bar [eluding to Wild’s belief in ‘purity’]: The Pilgrim Thanksgiving celebration of 1621 was described as a big three-day party, breaking racial barriers, “…all slumbering discontents they smothered with common rejoicings.”,  W. Deloss Love, Jr.) And I definitely will agree that some movies seem so much better than others: that is for a variety of reasons and personal tastes. The one complaint Wild holds seems to be the use of a lot of modern technology in movies rather than “pure acting” – – – like in the “oldie but goodies” movies (there is that allusion to “pure” again). And this also seems tied in to one’s personal preference, guided howbeit from our subjective psychological mayhem. But, hey!, we are also children of our present milieu: and I don’t think Schroth has been able to escape that entirely, no matter how much his “play-acting” or phobias comes into action.

Another area that seemed to be heavy on his mind is that of public etiquette and “manners”  —-  over and above  what  might be  termed  “common street behavior”:  perhaps from that Carondelet Finishing School or perhaps from some Victorian Age of which he may be reincarnated (but not in a religious sense, no). Moriarty has, in the past, shown skepticism on the growing use of television as a virus to good thinking and the use of the cell-phone for the same reason, especially cultivating the growing minds of youth and radical minority groups. I am afraid I did not have that opportunity to hobnob with the Victorian elite. I stuck to and found myself in the midst of the “average person”; particularly, those working-class people of South St. Louis in the 50s and 60s.

My role models were scattered and somewhat distant. My one brother was a typical teen-ager who was employed as a bus driver right before the time he died – – – it now reminds me of the HONEYMOONERS in the 60s television program with Jackie Gleason. He often talked about Ahmad Jamal as one of his jazz musician favorites, and I often remember his listening to jazz on the radio (i.e.,Poinciana, 1963).  He liked to draw and paint.  Other than that, he was a typical, affable and likeable, 1950s teenager: with “buddies” and girlfriends and a pompadour hairstyle and even those dark teenage moods. It was a time when the ‘Beatnik Era’ had appeared as a curiosity (“….a new trend analogous to the influential Lost Generation….[there was the] Dobie Gillis television show….The beat philosophy was generally counter cultural and ant-materialistic and it stressed the importance of bettering one’s inner self over and above material possessions….antipathy towards capitalism….much of the beat culture represented a negative stance rather than  a positive one, it was animated more by a vague feeling of cultural and emotional displacement, dissatisfaction and yearning….”) en.wikipedia.org. And, I must say: many of the kids, and me, were influenced by this idea in the 50s and 60s [I recall Ronnie Smith and I had our little ‘club’ room in his basement where we played a jazz radio station and drew ‘art]. [I miss my brother something terrible at times!] My other step-brother (much like a real brother) was a strong role-model and ended up with a great amount of success as a Manager at Caterpillar Tractor in Illinois. [He is a proud and good brother! He tried to be a stalwart stone and a good example in the midst of all the family turmoil and storm] Next-door neighbors Ronald and Phyllis Smith were fairly good models: Ronnie Smith now owns and operates a successful printing firm with over 200 employees (or so I am told; I believe I located Ronnie’s business: R. L. Smith Printing Company, Inc., 4030 Simon Road, Youngstown, Ohio. 44512-1320 [10 employees: 1 million dollars in business a year]) and Phyllis Smith has been on the cast of the famous and successful television program – THE OFFICE.   Phyllis has luckily branched out into the entertainment industry and become a ‘movie and television star’ (as of 2018).

The flip side to this card (outside of a teenage girlfriend which I adored and may have been my salvation), is twisted, sometimes sordid, a somewhat darker side. No one told me of or led me to the door of the Carondelet South Side Finishing School.

Edward Hoffman Passes Away

It was with regret that in 2016 my Half-brother (“my brother”) passed away from a number of ailments that time could not surpass.

MEMORIES: THE WAY WE WERE

Barbara Streisand highlighted these longings (as did Morris Albert in his song Feelings). Streisand sang them in her rendition of The Way We Were (..…Memories, may be beautiful and yet….what what’s too painful to remember we simply choose to forget…..so it’s the laughter, we will remember, whenever we remember, the way we were….) She even sang it more poignantly in Memory (..…..Memory – all alone in the moonlight, I can dream of the old days….Life was beautiful then…..I remember the time I knew what happiness was.…Let the memory live again….”)

I sometimes long for the memories of my childhood — the good portion — “this” nostalgia is all that I have; and aside from that, “it is still me” (My mother trying to teach me to polka in our kitchen on Michigan Avenue while she was busy fixing our usual – full-bloomed – Sunday dinner [a booming voice on the radio with a heavy German brogue announcing records on the German Hour radio program]. The summertime, back-yard barbeques with various laughing and friendly aunts and uncles and relatives arriving — roll out the barrel! — [when my mother danced the polka {and I’ve seen her in action} it was what she called “authentic German Polka”: flipping her heels and giving a “yip! Yip! Yip!” hollers….and so much more……..).

When we talk about the nostalgia of earlier days, that haunting and mysterious feeling about past lives and homesteads, we are also talking about their “spiritual” dimensions – a feeling of “saudades” – we are also speaking of those people whose lives are composite of all their beliefs, faiths, loves, longings, mishaps in life. When we travelled about Carondelet looking at relics of times past, the styles of their lives: this is not just a cold, aloof, dissecting “chopped liver” approach to the past, but one that sees the totality of those lives, even in  intimate detail; their “longings”; their hopes; their aspirations; their religions. Yes, many of them had religious beliefs that they strongly upheld and it is often embedded in to the architecture of their homes. It could be said that these ingredients go into cases of “hauntings.” This takes a certain amount of human empathy. It is an embodiment of what they were and may still be and how they synchronize with the extent of history as a whole.

IF WALLS COULD TALK

Andrew Carnegie could be an interesting example in a microcosmic sense. Here is a man of multiple layers of wealth and great accomplishment. In his youth he lived in a typical weaver’s cottage with only one main room consisting of half the ground floor which they shared with the neighboring weaver’s family: the main room served as a living room, dining room and bedroom. At the time of his death, Carnegie had a 64-room mansion with a private Otis elevator: many years of wealth in between. But those years also included his philosophic and religious struggles – he spoke about the irresponsibility and ostentatious living of the wealthy, was vehemently against war, helped form the League of Nations, turned from an atheist to a Positivist and then  to a person who believed in “an infinite and eternal Energy from which all things proceed”; an “infinite intelligence.” When we look at the artifacts of Carnegie’s life, we are seeing much more than steel, wood and cloth (or even the music he loved to listen to): We are seeing and feeling the very essence of the psychic qualities imprinted upon them.

“Today’s brain imagery techniques lend support to the theory that thoughts and beliefs not only affect one’s psychological state, but also cause the body to undergo measurable biological changes,” said Doctor Jeffrey D. Palmer, “what is known, beyond doubt is that we can create healing energies with our minds alone….what we know and understand about the nature and mechanism of thought and thought energy pales in comparison to the vast amount of information that we do not have….expectation, beliefs and thought energy related physiological and biological changes….thoughts are real….a real influence on people, places and objects which is not bound by time or space.”

Researcher Stephen Wagner said it might be possible for events to be imprinted on the environment in some holographic- psychic way that we do not understand yet. “Oft-repeated events remain recorded in the environment in which they originally occurred,” he said.

IF I ONLY HAD A BRANE

(“The anarchic principle follows from quantum mechanics, which tells us that all particle interactions that can happen will happen.  In quantum field theory, everything that is not forbidden will occur”, Lisa Randall, Ph.D., Warped Passages,, HarperCollins, 2005: Randall is a theoretical particle physicist and is a student of warped geometry, sink holes, and branes. She received the 2006 Klopsted award from the American Physics Teachers (AAPT), and the 2007 Julius Lilienfeld prize from the American Physical Society.)

 .

We often see and find “coincidence” in this respect – but some coincidences are, as Peter A. Jordan said, “almost too purposeful, too orderly” – and boarder on what Leibnitz calls “monad” – pre-established harmonies – or, as Schopenhauer called it – “interrelated and mutually attuned”.  It is what Braina Lolgram, Carl Jung, and neuroscientist (Stanford University) Karl Pribram labled “patterns inherent in the human psyche and shared by all mankind – – – – primordial images.”  Jung also spoke of synchronistic phenomena of strange coincidence too striking to be mundane, in case after case. Meg Lundstrom said in A Wink From the Cosmos, “participants  in a sensitive flowing  web of information. Physicists have shown, for example, that two protons are separated, no matter by how far: a change in one creates a simultaneous change in the other”.

Shirley Maclaine, a life-long mystical practitioner, artist and motion-picture actress, had this to say: “Jung defined synchronicity as ‘any apparent coincidence that inspires a sense of wonder and personal meaning or particular significance in the observer…it is a perceived conviction between two or more objects or events or persons without any recognizable cause’…..I don’t think it can be called coincidence. I don’t think it can be called accident….we are beginning to realize that we’re connecting with the very essence of primordial life itself, and maybe to the roots of what I call time-less consciousness….point towards an organizational principle of the universe and suggest that our connection with a higher order of consciousness is never far from the surface of ordinary awareness….The right person, the right place, the right time enters our life as a strategic moment, which seems blindingly without logical motivation.”  

(Closely aligned to the Cosmic-Consciousness idea is that of the Gaia hypothesis or principle that the planet earth is an interacting system, a homeorhesis, on an earth feedback loop as a single organism. A number of scientists support this idea, including William Golding, James Lovelock, Microbiologist Lynn Margulous and others. Carl Sagan, speaking of (1959) space probes, said planetary observations appeared to say that planets have the “character of a planet preparing to go to seed…..”)                       

St. Trinity recently announced that the church will have to close down in a few years because of their expenses and lax membership. When that congregation passes away, so will the embodiment of hundreds of memories and sentiments that gave those persons’ lives meaning: in their minds, those days will live on. To me: it will be a haunting by memories of Christmas celebrations, school episodes, love affairs —- cold winter days — and hot summer nights — the kisses of Margie  —- John Moeller/Steve Erdmann ‘Army-Navy Club’ —– the invigorating smell of church banquet dinners……..

Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein were not oblivious to this side of human nature; they spoke of it often: (Carl Sagan) “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known…science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality..…imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.”  (Albert Einstein) “There are two ways you can look at the world: one as if nothing were a miracle, the other as if everything was a miracle”.

“Quantum physics will in the near future be an inevitable, indispensable and useful part of everyday life,” says Johan Hansson, “It is coming, and is impossible to stop. In fact, we are already there, but have yet only scratched the surface of an enormous iceberg, the majority of which is hidden and unused…..”  (www.enzinearticles.com)

Mark Stevenson said about his book Optimist’s Tour Of The Future (Profile Books, 2011): “It is impossible to stop the Advancement of knowledge, and to ignore it is foolish!”   

(Speaking of coincidence: we once talked, Moriarty and I, about traveling to the old north St. Louis area were the Sportsman’s Park use to be to take photos, and decided it would be too dangerous.  I had work as security guard on the weekends at the Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club on Dodier Avenue at that precise spot, next to the old Carter Carburetor site; and I’m more accustomed to that area now: still want to take photos?  Come along!)     

BUT WILD IS CORRECT

But Moriarty Wild has been an admirably dedicated, innovative and self-determined “researcher”: of that there can be no doubt. I’ve seen some of his exploratory researches into crime (particularly in the Black communities where the “gangsta” mentality has been glorified by the youth and some adults), the tracing of liberal philosophies into the Communistic Movements of the 30s and 40s.  How the term “liberal” had been shanhaied into the Communist Movement (he once showed me a flowchart by the late Nesta Webster (I believe) of the many branching Communistic movements flowing through the Fabian vein and into such organization as the American Civil Liberties Union); and that the word “Liberal” (as in the Liberal political movement) is nothing but a “front” for the values of Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and their motto to bring America to its heels. His research ranks similar to that of John Earl Haynes (American Communism And Anticommunism: a Historian’s Bibliography And Guide To The Literature, February 18, 2009. www.johnearlhaynes.org). Wild indicated that the black community is and has been a “wedge” caused by decadent socialism in America.

W.E.B Dubois was an independent socialist since 1904, who travelled extensively in the Soviet Union in 1926, 1936, and 1949. Through the 1940s he believed that the black liberation movement in America had to incorporate a socialist perspective and be in the forefront in promoting peaceful co-existence with the Soviet bloc. But the Communist party had its roots in black culture as early as 1919 when Cyril Biggs, African Blood Brotherhood leader, spoke of Marx and how African-Americans could find their home and be taken seriously within the Communist Credo. “here was a party that seemed to have the goal of the lower-class citizen in mind and was out in public being vocal and defiant to white power,” says Denman, Scullin, and Goracy in Black And Red: a journey Through Communism In The Black Community (www.tcns.edu), “They  realized that the black social status was not much different from that of Americans as a whole….they decided to focus their energy on the lower class.”

In his book review of The Secret World of American Communism by Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, Irving Louis Horowitz says in the Fall, 1995 Orbis: “The Secret World of American Communism makes no attempt to be clever or overly interpretive.  Its analysis is based on ninety-two documents from the early 1920s through 1945, each one a part of the secret Soviet archives of the American Communist Party. These previously secret memoranda, letters, and other classified documents demonstrate for the first time the full extent to which the American Communist Party evolved an elaborate scheme of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union”.   

Similar views were espoused by Claude Lightfoot in his Black Power And Liberation: A Communist View: “The present moment can be characterized as one charged with economic, political and social turbulence….the people are striking back. Sometimes they strike according to plan. Sometimes they erupt spontaneously….these are all struggles by the people against a system…..must go forward today in new forms…..yesterday’s approach is too mild to meet the problems of this storm period.”

Time Magazine Authors Adi Igatius, Nathan Thornburgh, Simon Sebag and Monte Fiore spoke in the December 31, 2007–January 7, 2008 issue of modern-day Russia as just as dangerous and unchanged: “Putin is, above all, a pragmatist, and has cobbled together a system – not unlike China’s – that embraces the free market (albeit with a heavy dose of corruption) but relies on a strong state hand to keep order…a dark side…to achieve stability, Putin and his administration have dramatically curtailed freedoms…he has made the security organs as powerful as they were in the 1920s through the 1950s.”

Jonathan Brent in his Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia (Atlas & Company, 15 West 20^th Street, #2, new York, N.Y. 10010, 2008, 335 pages) outlines how modern-day Russia stills clings to old dictatorial ways and idolizes Stalin as an icon and hero.    

In Jim Marrs’ The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy  (HarperCollins Publishers, 2010), he spoke of “creeping socialism”: “A few older citizens may recall the words of Norman Mattoon Thomas, a pacifist who ran for president six times between 1928and 1948 under the Socialist Party of America banner. ‘The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism…But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.’….In  a 1948  interview, Thomas said he was retiring from American politics because both the Democratic and Republican parties had adopted every plank of the Socialist’ platform and there was no longer a need for the alternative Socialist Party.”

In a meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959, former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson quoted Khrushchev as saying a reasonable facsimile (there is a debate over when and where): “You Americans are so gullible.  No, you won’t accept communism outright.  But we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you finally wake up and find you already have communism.  We won’t have to fight you; we’ll so weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.” Khrushchev made a similar, earlier remark on November 18, 1956:  “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side: We will bury you…….”

H.G. Wells described this feeling of fear and boom so well in his science-fiction piece The War Of The Worlds  (about the unsuspected invasion of earth by evil and malevolent Martians): “….as he described an invasion so vividly realistic that it exposed the facility of the human mind when confronted by unfathomable fear,” said writer Kyle B. Morton in the September-October, 2010  (number 712)  FATE Magazine, “And with the additional adaptations over the years, I began to understand this story’s message of hubris and destruction was applicable to any era or country in which people reveled in their perceived dominance while unforeseen annihilation waited in the wings…..”  

AMERICA: TO ITS KNEES!

Gary Allen said in None Dare Call It Conspiracy: “If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, the seeming paradox of superrich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all.  Instead it becomes the logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking-megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately, socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite..…If you wanted to control the nation’s manufacturing, commerce, finance, transportation and natural resources, you would need only to control the apex, the power pinnacle, of an all-powerful socialist government. Then you would have a monopoly and could squeeze out all your competitors.  If you want – a worldwide monopoly, you must control a world socialist government. That is what the game is all about….Communism is an arm of a bigger conspiracy to control the world by power-mad billionaires (and) brilliant but ruthless academicians who have shown them how to use their power….” (Concord Press, 1971)

Allen described these “robber barons” that are willing to fix prices, rig markets, establish monopolies, buy politicians, exploit employees and fire them the day before they are eligible for pensions, but are also planning to rule the world and even use Communism “as the striking edge of their conspiracy”.  That “striking edge” became Jack the Ripper in America on Wall Street in 2008! 

“Incentives to make good investments had  deteriorated as the free-market-food-back-loop was being distorted: bad investments and irresponsible behavior was being rewarded on a massive scale, encouraging even more misallocation of capital and sloppy habits,” said Gabe, September 30, 2008, Did Minority Lending Drive Crisis?, www.marginalrevolution.com, “the frugal and ‘old fashioned’ were being made losers by a system backed by a Greenspan Put and bailout ideology, thus encouraging even fewer to be frugal or cautious. The habits and values most important to free-markets were being destroyed – – – the 5^th plank of the Communist Manifesto was doing its work and slowly destroying our economy….” 

W. Cleon Skousen in his The Naked Capitalist (Buccaneer Books, 1970) outlines 45 “declared goals” by communists to overtake America. Some of them stick out like a sore thumb in the growth of the 2008 Crash. Joseph M. Schwartz, professor of Political Science at Temple University, blames a 30-year “joint” project of Republican monetarios and Democrat neo-liberals going back to Jimmy Carter’s deregulation, Reagan’s “gutting” of regulation, and Clinton’s abolition of the Glass-Steagal Act. This all worked hand-in-glove with a liberal (defined and used more recently  as ‘liberal’  in Socialism) move such as a ”drive” by Bill Clinton to increase home ownership primarily to the lower-income and despite racial questions or warnings of repercussions……

(Fannie and Freddie popularized low-income securitization. The government pushed for greater mortgage securitization in an effort to increase CRA [Community Reinvestment Act] lending: A study put out by the Treasury Department in 2000 found that the CRA encouraged the mortgage services to provide loans to low-income borrowers; further, these lax lending standards spread to the rise of the market. Said John Carney about Clinton: “His administration went to ridiculous lengths to increase the national homeownership rate..….paper-thin down-payments….shaky financing and income..…opened floodgates to minority lending.”, Business Insider…...

…….Communist rule no.32: support any socialist movement to give centralized control over to any part of the counter-culture…..Communist rule no. 15; capture one or both of the political parties in the United States……Communist rule no. 40: discredit the family as an institution…….)

“Liar Loans” were given carte blanche and triple-A ratings and packaged in speculative investment banking and sold as derivatives around the world. Said former U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairperson Brooksley Born: “The market was virtually unregulated and many, many times as big as the trading on the futures exchanges. The commission had kept some nominal authority over the market, but there was no mechanism for enforcing the rules. For example, anti-fraud rules were retained, but no reporting was required. The Market was completely opaque. Neither the commission nor any other federal regulator knew what was going on in that market!”…..

……[Communist rule no. 37: infiltrate and gain control of big business……

“Meanwhile, economists were screaming from the rooftops that Democrats were forcing mortgage lenders to issue loans that would fail the moment the housing market slowed and dead-beat borrowers couldn’t get out of their loans by selling their houses”, said Charlotte Iserbyt, “A decade later, the housing bubble burst and, as predicted food-stamp-backed mortgages collapsed, Democrats set an affirmative action time-bomb and now it has gone off.” 

“Although it’s well known that the economic mess began with the banks, mortgage lenders, and real estate companies,” said Jim Marrs, “the current housing and mortgage mess actually was the result of maneuvering by both Democrat and Republican politicians, a fact that adds considerable weight to the argument that both major parties are controlled by the same globalists seeking to install a worldwide socialist system.” (The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy)   

Said Joseph E. Stiglitz in Freefall: “….(banks) engage(d) in excessive-risk-taking and to lend to those who can’t repay, There have been repeated instances of such lending giving rise to housing bubbles. It’s one of the reasons for regulations..,  …Yet, in the deregulatory frenzy of the 1980s, 1990s, and the early years of this decade, even attempts to restrict the worst lending practices ___ such as the predatory lending in the subprime market ___ were beaten back.”

In 1999, the campaign speared by Senator Phil Gramm of Texas was successful in an appeal, and Congress repealed Glass-Steagall.  Gramm’s efforts had the full support of Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, treasury secretary Robert Rubin, and President Bill Clinton.  Robert Rubin believed Glass-Steagall as a “roadblock” to the rise of Globalization and he wanted a more open and flexible environment — as were many others such as Sandy Weill, head of Traveler’s Insurance and its merger with Citiban, with John Reed’s unabashed backing of Greenspan’s campaign.  These were only a small few of the many crony-capitalists and wealthy, highly bonused, Wall Streeters.

Said Robert A. Sroze in Wildfire (www.wildfirebook.com): Tate Publishing & Enterprise , 2010: the Financial Accounting Board has determined that the Wall Street criminals could hold their derivatives and value them at any price.  The IRS does this kind of accounting as well. “They Argue about deck chairs on the Titanic while the whole side of the boat is split wide open,” said Sroze on April 13, 2011 during a Coast To Coast radio interview: One and over a half trillion dollars a month in the red; Two and almost 3 billion dollars in income during March 2011, while over 100 times that are running debt and growing.”

It has been estimated that the debt averages to 3.48 billion dollars per day since September 28, 2007.      

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

Said DREA, April 29, 2009, in Economy, People, Politics (“25 Men Behind the Financial Crisis” – www.businesspundit.com): “Although the Reagan Administration handled the S & L crisis well, the Teflon President seeded the risk-taking, Master-of-Universe mentality that spawned the current crisis.  Reagan turned deregulation into a dogma strong enough to blind business-peoples’ ethics.”

Reagan’s megalomania may have begun many years earlier with his fascination with politics, even as a motion picture actor, and later as the Governor of California, where he attended the infamous Bohemian Club  on July 23, 1967 (the Club is an exclusively private all-male group headquartered in San Francisco and displayed at pagan retreat ceremonies at a 2700 acre redwood forest at Monte Rio, California since 1872, catering to every Republican President and some Democrat Presidents since 1923, cabinet members of congress, and many powerful CEOs and business directors, such Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Casey, A.W. Clausen, Elliot Richardson, the Bush Presidents, and many powerful men into networking).    

Ronald Reagan later spawned more than just radical, voodoo deregulation, he also helped invent the Plunge Protection Team also known as The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, said Drake Bennett on September 21, 2008:  “….was created by Ronald Reagan  in 1988  in response to the stock market crash  of the year before.  He tasked it, however, not with buying up stocks or stock index futures (the Fed is not allowed to do this directly) but with planning for and responding future financial crises. While the Department of the Treasury doesn’t comment on the market manipulation accusations, a spokeswoman described the body as a sort of high-level discussion group.”

One 1989 op-ed written by former Fed governor named Robert Heller suggested that the government inject “money directly into the stock market”, while Clinton Administrative  Advisor  George Stephanopoulos, said on September 11, 2001 that the PPT was ”empowered to buy  stocks”, though he was unable to describe the  PPT’s creation mechanisms.

Enter the Bilderberg Group,  that mysterious  organization closed to the public (consisting of about 50 delegates  and 130 guests  from  22  countries that started May, 1954 and meets around the world in secret) and states its aim as ”promoting Atlanticism.”  President Reagan sent his official delegate, American political advisor  and lobbyist, Assistant Secretary of Defense, and member of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee,  Richard Pearle, as his liaison. The Bilderberg elite demanded that President Reagan parlay $50 billion taxpayer dollars from the U.S. Treasury over the period of  Reagan’s  Presidency  –  8 years  –   to be given to the Third World Bank and the IMF (International monetary fund).

“These treasonous acts constituted a redistribution of money from American taxpayers’ pockets into bank vaults,” said Deanna Spangle  in www.spingola.com,  “The poor received no benefits….it was the Bilderbergs who decided that hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars should feed the new democracy in the former Soviet Union…..”

Said Will Bunch of the Reagan Administration in Tear Down This Myth  (Free Press,2009) : “The jingoistic military moves, the glow of hyper patriotism, and the pure plays for public emotion, held together by the glue of Reagan’s personal popularity and skills as a performer in the public eye, were critical to cementing the president’s popularity In the mid-1980s, because of a dirty little secret so rarely reported in the press,” Bunch went on and said, “The majority of voters disagreed with him on most of the major issues  facing  America  from time he took the oath of office until the day he left.”

But, as it, so often, really exists in Washington (things are never what they seem): each administration is but the setting-of-the-stage for events in the next administration. In the Reagan Washington, it was really a Busch administration: “George Busch: The  Unauthorized Biography  says that Busch was pretty much running things during the Reagan presidency”, said www.sott.net in “A Scary Tale”, referring to the Tarpley-Chaitkin book, “Reagan was the front man, telling funny stories but doing nothing more than  reading scripts.  He needed long naps in the afternoon.  Reagan was manipulated through the influence of James Baker on Nancy Reagan, a vain and shallow woman who was mostly interested in how she was perceived in the press.”  Tarpley-Chaitkin outlined the “Busch Reich”.

“…but Reagan’s policies had the opposite impact, swelling the debt to nearly $3 trillion while raising the government’s interest payments to $260 billion, or nearly the amount that taxpayers were spending at the time on national defense,” said Will Bunch, “….The 1991 deficit alone was initially projected to use $300 billion, a new record….the U.S interest payment on the debt accumulated mostly under Reagan and Busch were a still-staggering $200 billion a year, equal to 3.5 percent of the gross national product….the accumulative debt, which had been 25 percent of the gross national product when Reagan took office in 1981, was now more than half of the GNP.”

Said Paule Burke, author of Journey Home, on August 10, 2010: “The power grab was when Reagan took office and rolled back taxes for the richest 1% ‘only’.  Those richest 1% are the ones who have grabbed power, re-written the laws and crippled the middle class…..the power grab continued with creating a Supreme Court based on ideology instead of precedent. The power grab was the Office of the President itself by George ‘W’ Busch. The power grab was Cheney’s closed door meetings with national oil producers, handing them the keys to the kingdom and the rule book re-write. The power grab was the dismantling of all the common sense regulation developed after the first Great Depression. It took five decades to have selective amnesia thanks to greed and reject the lessons of reason, logic and pragmatism embracing ideology like a rabid cult.”  

PUPPET-MASTERS AND BILDERBURG ATTENDEES

Rhodes Scholar (a graduate of the – gold and diamond magnate – Cecil Rhodes’ Round Table organization for a “new world order”) William Jefferson Clinton was also an attendee to the Bilderberg Group in 1991 (Germany) and 1999 (Portugal). (Enabled Clinton to visit very wealthy and powerful people; started its practice in 1954 at the Bilderberg Hotel in the Netherlands) Hillary Clinton, our present Secretary of State and President Clinton’s wife, recently attended a Bilderberg meeting in 1997). (The William J. Clinton Foundation has a worth of over 300 million dollars to date)

Our current President Barrack H. Obama was said to possibly have attended a Bilderberg meeting in 2008.

“There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the Radical Right believes the communists act. In fact, this network which we identify as The Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so.”  (Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World In Our Time, Carroll Quigley, 1966, Macmillan Publishers)

Barrack Obama began his left-wing leanings as a teenager listening to his “uncle Frank” (Frank Marshall Davis), who was a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). John Edgar Tidwell says that Davis had ties with several communist-front organizations. Later Obama aligned with far-left community forces such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in his days as community organizer in Chicago. There were associations with former Weatherman terrorist William Ayers, European socialist groups, Socialists International (SI), Students For A Democratic Society (SDS), Carl Davidson, and in 1996, Obama gave his endorsement of the Chicago branch of the DSA. Obama eulogized for Saul Mendelson, a long-time socialist in the Chicago Democratic Left.      

Speaking of the present Barrack Obama Washington administration, created in the heat of the 2008 Wall Street “meltdown”, Micelle Malkin (Culture Of Corruption, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2009), said: “Obama’s team – the ‘best of the Washington insiders’, as David Brooks called them – is a dysfunctional and dangerous conglomerate of business-as-usual cronies….they are every bit as disreputable and demanding as their 1940s  counterparts….ethically challenged bailout-burglary money men (such as) Larry Summers and Tim Geithner at Treasury, crime-coddling corporate lawyer Eric Holder at DOJ….Executive Ron Sims at the Department of Housing And Urban Development, fined for suppressing public records from taxpayers……”

As the build-up of the housing and mortgage fiasco was progressively put in place prior to 2008, Obama had his own 1.7 million dollar Chicago manse financed with a discount mortgage from Northern Trust, associated with convicted felon/donor/developer tony rezko. One of the “boiler pot” companies in the Meltdown, Countrywide, gave Obama minion Jim Johnson more than 7 million dollars in below-market-rate loans from Countrywide. The left-wing Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was deeply involved in  the housing contribution to the sub-prime housing bubble (over-shadowed by the CRA), worked hand-in-hand with the rubber-stamp leftist SEIU (Service Employee International Union). “These foreclosure con artists are just the top of ACORN’s fraudulent enterprises….voter fraud, corporate shakedowns, partisan bullying, and pro-illegal immigration lobbying,” said Malkin, “This is the bread and butter work that ACORN does.  President Obama knows it, and he appreciates it.”

The Obamas worked on the boards of the left-wing Woods Fund – along with Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers – and the Joyce Foundation: both which poured money into ACORN. But there was a Republican/Democrat agenda! “In October, 2008 under the Bush administration, HUD announced more than 44 million dollars in new housing counseling grants to over 400 state and local efforts. The Bush Whitehouse increased funding for housing counseling by 150 percent since 2001.”

One example of HUD-like interference is the Housing Welfare Program in Detroit, a microcosm of the housing:

Detroit’s miserable history: the city’s change to a Democratic government and eventual downfall into a welfare state: The failure of Detroit’s Model Cities program, which wasted nearly $1 billion attempting to renew inner city slums. Here’s an synopsis of that failure:

Five years of centralized planning, higher taxes, and a fleeing population, what did the government decide to do with its grand experiment, its “Model City”?



Seeing it had accomplished nothing but failure, the government endeavored to do still more. The Model City program was expanded and enlarged by 1974’s Community Development Block Grant Program. Here again, politicians would decide which groups (and even individuals) would receive state funds for various “renewal” schemes. Later, Big Business was brought into the fold. In exchange for various concessions, the Big Three automakers “gave” $488 million to the city for use in still more redevelopment schemes in the mid-1990s.

Even with all of their power and all of the money, City Planners couldn’t make good with any of their plans. Nearly all of the upper, middle and poor class left Detroit. The Model City area lost 63% of its population and 45% of its housing units from the beginning of the program through 1990. (3) Detroit’s exodus crisis is getting worse… The Census Bureau released data yesterday showing the city’s population has fallen to a level last seen in 1910 – the city has fallen back 100 years. Middle-class African Americans are fleeing to the suburbs, cutting Detroit’s population 25% in the past decade, to 713,777. What’s the only city to suffer a worse population loss since 2000? New Orleans lost 29.1% of its population. But New Orleans also suffered one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. Detroit’s decline was pure mismanagement. (4) Detroit’s population peaked in the 1950s at around 2 million (when the auto industry was booming). And population declines have accelerated in recent years due to the automotive industry’s failure and the mortgage crisis (more than a fifth of the city’s housing is vacant). But this fundamental deterioration of a once-great city couldn’t be the reason for everyone’s exodus… It’s got to be a problem with the Census. At least Local officials were expecting a count closer to 800,000. And he requested a recount: City Planner David Bing said (at least to himself, convincingly)… “If we could go out and identify another 40,000 people that were missed, and it brings us over the threshold of 750,000, that would make a difference from what we can get from the federal and state government.” (5) Government officials get creative when something stands between them and “their” money. And we’re sure David Bing will find a way to add 40,000 to Detroit’s population… Whether it’s pulling homeless people off the streets or bringing them in by the truckload. And we’re sure that extra money will go to good use. Purchases of new U.S. homes fell nationally in February to the slowest pace on record. Sales fell 16.9% to a $250,000 annual pace (economists expected a gain to a $290,000 rate). And the median price dropped 8.9% from the same month in 2010 (its lowest level since December 2003). To date, Congress has NOT extended a rope for American homeowners to hang onto. Worse still, Wall Street took the 0% emergency loan – extended to it by the Federal Reserve and reinvested it in Treasury bills and other government securities to earn another quick fortune. So, in effect, Wall Street borrowed from the government, lent those funds back to the government, and earned the spread. The Power Elite gets a healthy cut of the proceeds, of course. In an interview with “60 Minutes,” famed author, Michael Lewis, called this practice – one still happening today – an “elegant form of theft.”



ACORN and the recent housing debacle emphasized the crisis:

ACORN suffered two 2008 set-backs that crippled funds that the organization received. The million-dollar embezzlement within the organization that was covered up in 2008, as well as the negative publicity that caused donors like George Soros to stop funding it. Undercover video tapes by two conservative activists, Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe, revealed that ACORN employees unknowingly aided and abetted this couple in their sting operation as a pimp and prostitute who wanted to open brothels for underage girls from El Salvador; a brothel for pedophiles. Supposedly, the clamp-down on ACORN supposedly caused their bankruptcy.  But ACORN is already planning to reorganize under a new name, said Matthew Vadium, senior editor at the Capitol Research Center, a Washington, D.C. think tank that studies the politics of philanthropy for left-wing activist groups.

Vadium said that sources with ACORN have confirmed that the organization is not really dissolving. On ACORN’s website it still heralds “to organize a majority constituency of low-to-moderate-income people across the United States….to take on issues of relevance to their communities whether those issues are discrimination, affordable housing, a quality education, or better public services.”  ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis is quoted telling of a strong list of activities that ACORN still wishes to advance.

But Vadium said ACORN is “not a benign social welfare organization”, having rather sinister goals, corrupt and promoting big government at all costs “ and by any means possible, in accordance with the teachings of the late Saul Alinsky”

Radical professor Frances Fox Piven of Project Vote, the ACORN affiliate President Obama worked for in the early 1990s, and an  author of the of the Cloward-Piven strategy, a 1960s proposal to bring socialist revolution to the United States “by flooding cities with welfare applicants, bankrupting them, and provoking collapse.” The website www.cloward-piven.com honors New York City’s 1975  bankruptcy to this plan.

Vadium told WND: “These are dangerous radical people who don’t believe in the American system; ACORN is a shell corporation that runs hundreds of nonprofit affiliates.  It is going bankrupt, but it’s not going away, it is simply changing into a new legal form!…”         

Socialist Barbara Ehrenreich confessed:  “The truth is that we, the Socialist International Conspiracy, not only saw this coming, we are the ones who made it happen. The plan took shape during a particularly intense criticism/self-criticism session at our 2000 annual convention in a booth at an Akron IHOP….we would focus on destroying capitalism, hedge fund by hedge fund.  First, we selected a cadre of crusty punks from  the streets of Seattle, stripped off their Che t-shirts, suite them up in Armani’s and wingtips, and introduced them to the concepts of derivatives and dental floss,” she goes on to say, “Then we shipped them to Wall Street with firm instructions: Make as much money as you can….send it out to make more money by whatever dodgy means you can find – subprime loans, credit default swaps, pyramid schemes….we could not have inflicted such massive damage to capitalism if we hadn’t also painted skilled agents in  high places within the government and various quasi-government agencies.  Phil Gramm will be getting a Hero of Socialism award……” (www.crookedtimber.org)        

“The mortgage crisis, for example, arose out of a long-standing erosion of the property rights concept – first on the part of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but also on that of the Federal Reserve” said Bloomberg columnist Amity Shlaes, “Broadening FDR’s entitlement theories, Congress taught the country that home ownership was a ‘right’. This fostered a misunderstanding of what property is. The owners didn’t realize ownership entailed – that is, they didn’t grasp that they were obligated to deliver on the terms of the contract of their mortgage.  In the bipartisan enthusiasm for everyone an owner, our government debased the concept of home ownership.”

“….trying to assign blame to either Democrats or Republicans is pointless,” said Kathleen Parker of The Washington Post, “Everyone is culpable.  From the early 1980s when Ronald Reagan deregulated banks, through the two Bushes, Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama, each administration has endorsed – and each Congress has helped tweak  —-  laws and rules that made systemic abuses and the meltdown not only possible but, looking back, inevitable….many investment bankers knew the mortgage loans they were packaging and selling were junk.  They knew because their own analysts told them so.  Tens of thousands of loans failed to meet basic underwriting standards, according to recent testimony before the Financial Crisis inquiry Commission, a bipartisan group created to examine the causes of the meltdown. Not only that, (but) Wall Street insiders were betting against their own customers and institutions.”

“….as it’s being reported on all other (web) sites we look at, the Communist and Socialist elements of the Democrat party have never been on prouder display…Since 2008, these people have really come out of the woodwork and are no longer working in the shadows,” said Kevin Dujan on www.hillbuzz.org, “No one at the DNC is keeping them in the closet anymore, or hiding them in the basement.  They feel like they own the DNC now, and in fact the Left really does. They have taken off their mask sand have revealed themselves for who they really are: anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-everything the majority of this country believes in.”

The Communist Party USA official website (according to World Net Daily quote and coverage) quoted the CPU as having said on December 30, 2007:” Our Party actively supported Obama during the primary election.” This referred to Obama’s 2004 election to the Senate, and it spoke of how the African-American community and trade unionists played key roles in defeating the “ultra-right.” The article (John Bachtell, National Board member, December 30, 2007, Communist Part USA)  went on to say how the Party actively supported Obama during the primary election (a screen shot captured by the New Zeal blog). This comment has since been “scrubbed” off of the CPU site comments. The Political Affairs Magazine, the Communist Party USA’s magazine, quoted AFL-CIO President John Sweeney (a longtime member of the Boston chapter of the Democrat Socialists for America) saying about his hope for Communists to work with Obama: “The election is just step one in delivering the change we need. Working men and women are poised to keep the energy pumping to help the Obama administration lead the change we need. There will be no gap or letdown.”

Leaders of the CPU spoke of their agenda for Obama: regulating Wall Street, International Trade, health care reform, a second stimulus package, and overhaul of the criminal justice system, plus assorted Communist goals.  “All these – and many other things – are within our reach now!”  exclaimed Sam Webb at a speech for the official Communist newspaper, the People’s Weekly World. (www.theuniversalsaeduction.com. “Communist Party covers up support for Obama”).

Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily’s senior staff reporter, spoke of the infiltration of Congress by Socialists (August 18, 2010). He specifically pinpointed Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat-Illinois and her husband Robert Creamer: a convicted felon and political consultant to the Obama administration. Both have endorsed Socialist policies such as a radical new health-care plan, and the distribution of wealth and power. “As WND reported Monday, the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, boasted in a newsletter to insiders that 70 of its members currently serve in Congress, including Schakowsky,” said Klein.

While running for Congress in 1998, Schakowsky was “endorsed” by the DSA and was listed in the socialist group’s official newsletter as an “old friend” and a “real fighter”. While in federal prison in 2006, Creamer wrote How Progressives Can Win.

Likewise, the Republicans were nothing but disguised and masqueraded liberals. Said Lucian E. Marin and Canarypapers – October 27, 2008 -12;53 p.m. in McCain-Gramm Economics; Communism with a Capital “G” (www.canarypapers.wordpress.com): “If David Addington is the architect of the Bush-Cheney assaults on the U.S. Constitution (and he is), then McCain’s long-time economic advisers/gurus, Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan, are the architects of our collapsing economy.  And John McCain, his finger ever on the pulse of what’s best for America, has approved – bill by bill, measure by measure – eight years worth of assaults on our economy….If you trust in nothing else, trust in this: These crooks know exactly what they’ve done and what they’re doing.  That’s why they want to avoid close scrutiny to the blame game….these crooks, who have benefited to the tune of millions and billions of dollars over the past (11, s.e.) years (since 2000, s.e.), will only continue to rake in millions and billions more from the so-called bailout….December 15, 2000….the U.S. was rushing to pass an 1,000-page government –spending reauthorization bill….Sen. Phil Gramm…a 262 page amendment, called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000….’credit default swaps’ – a legalized form of gambling, whereby financiers could place bets on  whether people defaulted on their mortgages.”

Dr. Ron Paul, a Republican member of Congress from Texas, said on April 27, 2010, Socialism vs. Corporatism, that calling President Obama a Socialist was not entirely accurate: Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages business; Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hand, but are in  fact controlled by the government – they act in collusion with their favored business interests with policies that cater to interests in a monopoly position to the danger of “both competitors and consumers”.  Obama is a cunning version of Socialism-Plus: Corporatism.  Hitler had a similar scheme during the rise of the Nazi party whereby he was funded by international corporate concerns.

Author Jim Marrs sees this culmination in the New World Order promised by Adolf Hitler and signed off by President H.W. Bush.  These Globalists are above petty nationalism and are now guided by what Janine Wedel spoke of in Shadow Elite as “flexions” who manipulate global economics as “poker chips” in some vast, unseen, poker game —  or some Ponzi Scheme of which they stand aloof and above —  and utilize to their own advantage.

The Rockefellers, Jack Schiff, Elihu Root, J.P. Morgan, The Harriman family, others, sponsored the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks. The same globalists sponsored National Socialism in Germany; John J. McCloy, Schroeder Bank attorneys Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles, Prescott Bush, director of Union Banking Corporation and the Hamburg America Shipping Line.

The late Hollywood producer Aaron Russo quoted Nick Rockefeller (a participant in the World Economic Forum and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations): “The end goal is to get everybody chipped, to control the whole society, to have bankers and the elite people control the world.”  

Robert F. Brunner and Sean D. Carr outlined the roots of the problem in their book The Panic Of 1907 (John Wiley & Sons, 2007). Credit default swaps were then called “bucket shops” – and for nearly 100 years were outlawed as a felony; surely, known by Greenspan and Gramm: “their crime was one of foreknowledge”, said Canarypapers and Marin. John McCain embraced these giant betting parlors, and he still does, as surely as the Bush Administration protected and threatened to veto any attempt to regulate the credit default swap market. We can call it fascism, communism, plutocracy when trillions of dollars is spread by the government to cover and pay off sleazy casino bets of capitalists.

On June 5, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt entered America into bankruptcy and into the hands of 115 creditors in receivership and new government securities as monetized debt (www.nomoreserfs.com); effectively, America had become The New World Order.                                                          

In 2008, America entered into a multi-trillion dollar debacle when its economy collapsed, rankling and kidnapping the security of foreign countries, and bringing America to its knees!

Greg McCoach, Wealth Daily  financial analyst, said on December 24, 2010 that that sovereign debt problems in Europe were systemic, could no longer remain solvent, along with states in the U.S, were on the road to ruin – the derivative problems had been passed to Europe in a  worldwide “perfect storm” of financial insanity about to be unleashed.

Just one of several diminishing countries, years of unrestrained spending, cheap lending and failure to inaugurate financial reforms, left the country of Greece badly exposed when the global economic downturn struck; in 2011 their national debt was listed as $413.6 billion.

U.S banks are on the books for $41 billion if Greece defaults; the Bank for International Settlements, French and German banks combined are on the hook for more than $65 billion contagion in Spain, Portugal and Italy. The European Central Bank also owns around $50 billion euros worth of Greek bonds.  In 2010, Eurozone bailed Greece out to the tune of 110 billion euros ($157 billion American dollars).

The Brookings Institution, in June, 2009, reported that U.S. consumption accounted for more than a third of the growth in global consumption between 2000 and 2007. “The U.S economy has been spending too much and barrowing too much for years,” said en.wikipedia.org, “and the rest of the world depended on the U.S consumer as a source of global demand.”  The dollar serves as the basis of the world’s economy and monetary system.  If Europe implodes, as it must on the course it has set, dollars will be used to bail it out; this is already a crack in the damn – the U.S provides much of the funding for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – whose funds are being funneled to Greece.

Athens followed a model of borrowing money to boost current consumption. But Greek debt exploded to $481 billion (340 billion euros) Government debt as a percentage of GDP will be 166% by 2012.   

AFTERMATH AND CONFESSIONS

(“There is no subtler, surer means of overturning society than to debauch the currency.  The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction and does it in a way that not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” [John Maynard Keynes})

Jim Rodgers, economic analyst, spoke of the current Obama Administration’s “Rescue Plan”:  “The New Financial Rescue Plane may not work and could even make things worse because it plunges the U.S further into debt and it is designed by the same people who failed to forecast the crisis and take measures.”  Rodgers said that Geithner, who was President of the New York Federal Bank, “…has been dead wrong about everything for 15 years in a row, and so was President Barack Obama’s economic advisor Lawrence Summers, who acted as Treasury Secretary at the turn of the century….these guys have been wrong year after year consistently and they are again making the same mistakes again.  This is not going to solve the problem. It’s going to make it worse.”

Len Bracken said in the summer 2009 issue of Paranoia Magazine, ‘‘The Invisible Currency of Fascism”: ‘We know that on May 5, 2006, the same day that Porter Goss resigned as the director of the CIA, President Bush gave his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, the authority to excuse publicly traded companies from their accounting and securities disclosure obligations. This was the first time such authority has been delegated to someone outsider of the Oval Office, giving Negroponte the ’function of President’ under the law in question.”  In early  2006. Wall Street’s major firms agreed to standardize credit default swaps on collateralized debt obligations, enabling speculators to pay very small fees and gain enormous rewards as the bonds began failing and reneging.  At the center of it all was the “greed factor”, using collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs), at firms like Goldman Sachs, through fictional, evil, imperious “tranches” that would never supposedly default as far as “as any kind of debt” and was  housed in  collateralized loan or debt obligations.

Kevin Horrigan said in the Sunday, September 4, 2011 Post-Dispatch News: ”The top 25 hedge fund managers in the United States made a combined $22 billion last year (2010), enough to equal the combined income of 441,000 median-income families.  But we prefer to call most of our income ‘carried-interest’, so it’s taxed at the 15 percent capital gains tax rate….plain old ‘income’…would have been) 35 percent incomer tax.”  

Nicholas Vardy in his February 23, 2011 “The Financial Crisis of 2008: Nothing New Under The Financial Sun”, The Global Guru, said the past financial crises of 1837, 1866, 1873 all had common characteristics with modern crashes: excessive leverage.  He quotes Wall Street Financial Engineer Nicholas Taleb and author of Dynamic Hedging (a bible on derivative trading), and his 2007 The Black Swan, that Fannie Mae was a powder keg ready to explode.  Yet, for all the latest “tweaking”, the problem is still highly delicate, unknown and speculative; “It’ll take a lot of thinking – and a lot of luck – for financial regulators to get it right this time around.”

Hale “Bonddad” Stewart, former bond broker, tax lawyer, and financial blogger, saw it as pretty uncomplicated when he said on December 23, 2008 that “actually, it’s pretty simple. There has to be oversight of the mortgage underwriting industry. There must be strict rules about who gets a loan and when they get a loan. This means some people will be (gulp) turned down for a loan at least initially…This problem comes down to oversight of an industry.  There have to be regulators who are looking over the shoulder of anyone who underwrites mortgages.” (www.huffingtonpost.com)

Moriarty Wild’s eyes narrowed into a head-on penetrating stare as his face grimaced into almost a grotesque sneer upon reading Stewart’s words at a Winter meeting at the Carondelet Public Library, “And who is going to stop them from doing it again, if not with to homes, then some other industry?”  Wild glanced to one side and to the floor, almost as if he were going to spit.  His gaze drew serious and his eyes darted back to stab through my consciousness, “They are out to destroy us!  It’s like I told you; it’s been going on for hundreds of years.”  There was always that protruded silence before his next remark.  “It is not over this time, anyway; what’s the use of talking about a next time?”  Wild stood to gather his newly purchased grey trench coat, briskly buttoning the front and twisting the coat belt into a knot and drawing it tightly together.  “Besides, you are dealing with Civil Rights, so-called Power to the People, remember?  Communists bent on revolution; bent on taking this country down-hill – and like most dictatorial regimes, the Puppet-Masters are set up to take the spoils.” I stood a few feet behind Wild as he starred out into the icy wind whipping along the street, bracing himself.  I glanced down to the steps to brace myself as well.  And when I looked up, Wild was gone.    

Floyd Norris said that the current Wall Street practices may have begun in the 1920s, “…collateral trust securities….Wall Street sharpies thought they had found a way to make lots of money while not bearing the ultimate risk if the game suddenly ended.” (www.cjr.com)

 Extracts from “The Great Crash: 1929”, John Kenneth Galbraith, First Published 1955:

During 1928 an estimated 186 investment trusts were organized; by the early months of 1929 they were being promoted at the rate of approximately one each business day, and a total of 265 made their appearance during the course of the year. In 1927 the trusts sold to the public about $400,000,000 worth of securities; in 1929 they marketed an estimated three billions worth. This was at least a third of all the new capital issues in that year; by the autumn of 1929 the total assets of the investment trusts were estimated to exceed eight billions of dollars. They had increased approximately elevenfold since the beginning of 1927.

“The Great Crash: 1929”, John Kenneth Galbraith, Published 1955, Page 27:

“The U.S. stock market boomed in the 1920s. Prices reached levels, measured as a multiple of corporate dividends or corporate earnings; that made no sense in terms of traditional patterns and rules of thumb for valuation. A range of evidence suggests that at the market peak in September 1929 something like forty percent of stock market values were pure air: prices above fundamental values for no reason other than that a wide cross-section of investors thought that the stock market would go up because it had gone up.”

By 1928 and 1929 the Federal Reserve was worried about the high level of the stock market. It feared that the “bubble” component of stock prices might burst suddenly:

“It argues that one of the primary causes was the attempt by important people and the media to stop market speculators. A second probable cause was the great expansion of investment trusts, public utility holding companies, and the amount of margin buying, all of which fueled the purchase of public utility stocks, and drove up their prices. Public utilities, utility holding companies, and investment trusts were all highly levered using large amounts of debt and preferred stock. These factors seem to have set the stage for the triggering event.” Harold Bierman, Jr., Cornell University, Friday, February 5, 2010. (eh.net/encyclopedia)

“Thirty-eight states had closed all their banks, and everywhere else withdrawals were sharply curtailed”, told Michael Perino speaking of the 1928 Crash (The Hellhound Of Wallstreet, The Penguin Press, New York, 2010), “Outright bank failures numbered in the thousands annually. In those days, before deposit insurance, one in four families lost their life savings. The economy was in full retreat, industrial production was half of what it had been just four years earlier, and unemployment was an appalling 25 percent.  Farm incomes were decimated after a decade of plummeting crop prices. Shantytowns of the dispossessed, sarcastically dubbed Hooversvilles, dotted the landscape, breadlines stretched around many blocks.  Homes were foreclosed, renters evicted, and signs of malnutrition among school children were increasingly evident.”

History always seems to repeat itself. Similarly, on May 31, 1931 the oesterreichische Kredit-Anstait was declared insolvent, and it was the largest bank in Austria. The bank had been founded by the Rothschild family in 1855, and became the leading bank in Europe. The Rothschilds created a bank in every city across Europe. When the Rothschilds bank came to the recuse of a weaker bank, the Boden-Kredit, financiers like J.P. Morgan, Schroeder of London, and the Rothschilds of Vienna, found themselves wrapped up in the market crash of 1929, hoping to repair the Banks’ loan books. However, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 split their world’s economy in half, raising taxes on 20,000 imported goods, causing governments to retaliate with matching duties on American exported goods: the world’s economy collapsed.

In response, Austria sought a 1931 free-trade agreement with Germany. The French feared a upsurge of a reunited German economy, demanded an immediate redemption of all the short-term loans they had extended to German and Austrian banks. The International exchange was gold. Kredit-Anstalt could not meet the demands of the French banks, and panic spread throughout the world.  Rescue attempts by powerful financiers did not work Austria itself went into bankruptcy; unable to meet the demands in gold, Austria was forced to adopt a paper currency. Panic spread throughout the world to England and America, declaring a banking ”holiday” in 1933, was followed by FDR’s confiscation of all privately held bullion.

After the collapse of Kredit-Anstalt, the Rothschilds merged it with their Wiener Bank-Verein, called Kredit-Anstalt Bankverein and that bank morphed over the years until WWII and merged into the national Bank of Austria Kreditanstalt.  After that it transformed into the German-Bavaria’s HVB in 2000, and in 2005, it merged with Italy’s Unicredit. Unicredit, a magnanimous bank of Europe, is about to collapse and again bring another global crisis and the end of the U.S. dollar standard.

This Day in Wall Street History: 1933: World Economic Conference Ends in Frustration:

“By the summer of 1933, the Great Depression had long since spread from the shores of the United States to vast chunks of Europe. Earlier in the decade, America’s decision to raise revenues by adopting hefty tariffs had shattered Europe’s fragile finances. Awash in red ink, Europe’s leaders imposed their own stringent set of duties on American goods, causing international trade to grind to a halt and both the U.S. and Europe to sink further into the depths of the Depression. It was against this dire backdrop that American and European big wigs gathered in London to hash out a fiscal remedy. Though the World Economic Conference stretched on for a good bit of the summer, running from June 12 to July 27, the talks yielded few tangible results. In the main, the Conference stalled on differing opinions on how to revive international trade. European leaders pushed for the stabilization of exchange rates as a measured first step that would initially boost international prices and eventually goose global trade. But, with an eye clearly cast on national interests, recently elected American President Franklin Roosevelt balked at this ‘internationalist’ solution. Much to the chagrin of ‘American internationalists,’ including Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Roosevelt maintained his refusal to liberalize trade by reigning in the dollar throughout the rest of 1933.” Source: http://www.history.com.

Now, once again, like dominoes, the highly indebted economies of Europe – along with  America – are going to topple.  Analyst Martin Weiss referred to it on July 5, 2011 as the coming American Apocalypse, saying that Fed Chairman Bernanke’s recent money printing made sub sequential printing frenzies look like “tiny hiccups” by comparison, eluding to the money-printing in  the Weimer Republic in Germany in pre-world War II.  It took three trillion marks then to buy a single dollar.

PLAYING WITH FUNNY MONEY

Martin Hutchinson, financial analyst, said on June 28, 2011 that he ran a modest derivatives desk from 1982-87. They were looking at ways to design derivatives that worked with credit events. A market existed for shifting credit from banks to such entities as insurance companies and pension funds. Banks could originate loans, but had limited balance sheets. Insurance companies and pension funds, however, had a very limited ability to source loan assets, but loved to consume properly remunerated credit risk.

Unfortunately, there was no fair way to calculate the payoff on bankruptcy, nor was there an error-free means to manage the multiple situations that were not quite formal bankruptcies.

In 1995, another 10 years, when the first credit-default-swap agreements were finally carried out, a late date indicating the shakiness of the structure.

Those evil practices took a definite turn for the worse in the 2008 fiasco as those con-artists became seriously diverse: “Yes, I am choosing to remain a coward,” said whistle-blower Zero Hedge Blog, “I just have been waiting for this shoe to drop for a long time. The last thing I want to do is have to explain myself and get my ass sued for defamation.  Not worth it. This much I can tell you: we had no idea what is in those packages (mortgage Backed Securities). I personally packaged billions in MBS which have been placed on public shelves. Those assets were underwritten by Goldman, Morgan or numerous investment banks….I started packaging loans as early as 2003, at the beginning of the crisis……We take the pool to the ratings agencies, S&P, Fitch, or Moody’s where we get levels of over collateralization required for the waterfall of public tranches offerings: this is where the process breaks down.”

Zero hedge blog  went on to explain that the underwriters failed in applying  “due diligence”  –  failed to check  every asset and used only “sampling” to verify the makeup of the pools. “We’ve done some pools that came back very different from what the trader originally told us,” he said, “We threw all the stated income assets out of the deal….I told my boss on several occasions that it was real funny way of doing things. But as everyone was also doing it, my coworkers, the guys from Goldman, the agencies, I just kind of went along with it.”  S&P put their name on the package, Goldman underwrote it, and sent it out to hedge funds and pension funds.  There far too many instances of incorrectly labeled loans, in correct documentation, so that the pool information was vastly different from that which was the actual makeup of the pool. “I knew there was shit floating around in the pools we were putting together, but the sampling technique and level of due diligence was never going to clean it out.  During the heyday of securitization, due diligence was something we tried to limit: we relied on the threats of reps and warrants to help us feel comfortable.  We’d have no idea what was in those packages.”

Felix Salmon, one of the inventors of derivatives on Wall Street, warned of the problems in their misuse: “you are creating an agency problem and you are creating a potential for asymmetries of information. You are creating the possibility of the originator having different information from the buyer.  Not only is there information asymmetry but in this context there are perverse incentives: the originator has an incentive to provide distorted information. The buyers should have been aware of this, but it’s quite apparent that they weren’t aware of this as they should have been about risk diversification, systemic risk; and securitization helped create systemic risks.”

Porter Stansberry, Stock and Market analyst, said in December, 2010: “we haven’t had capitalism in this country since before World War II.  What we’ve had ever since then is this sort of phony corporate state capitalism, really sort of socialism-light. So you have to have sound money….otherwise, the economy can’t function appropriately or efficiently….I mean either gold and silver as money or a sound backing for such a currency.”  

In the Spring of 2011, Moriarty Wild sent a news clipping in the mail from a blog on  the internet.  At the top was a note he had written: “He is closer to the truth than  you think!” It was a column from Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle (FSK) and his  Feb . 5, 2011 Blog “Fsk’s Guide To Realty”.  It was titled “Communist USA: The Five Year Plan”. It read in part:  “In the Soviet Union, state leaders would talk about their ‘Five Year Plan’.  They announced all planned production for the next five years. In Communist USA ,state leaders don’t plan that long: a CEO talks  about his ‘three month plan’ or ‘twelve month plan’. A politician doesn’t plan past the next election.  Instead of the politburo controlling the economy. The US economy is controlled by a handful of CEOs.’ The plan is to maximize short term profits; if there is a short-term collapse in five years   – that is someone else’s problem.  Cash out!  In Communist USA, state leaders  don ‘t  plan past  the next election or earnings statement. State leaders control resources they don’t actually have own. “The incentive is to steal as much as they can, and passing problems to the next guy.”              

Barry Ritholtz went further when he said on March 14, 2010 (www.ritholtz.com):

“In addition to tarnishing what little name Fuld had, the tentacles of the (Anton R.) Valukas (2,200 page) Report are reaching the NY Fed and Geithner, Ernst and Young, even Linklaters, a firm in the UK that blessed repo 105 for the British subsidiary of LEH as kosher.”

“….the report made a strong case that Lehman was hiding the truth in the months before it fell,” said Maria Bartiromo, “(It used) a device called repo 105 in the second quarter of 2008 to move $50 billion off its balance sheet….in repo 105 (it) was Lehman (which) recorded it as a sale and no longer had any record of the assets on its balance sheet.  Nor did the firm disclose repo 105.”

Portfolio Magazine titled Fuld  as the worst CEO of all time. But case after case of Wall Street leniency throughout the 2000s emboldened them to rob. Lehman Brothers lawyer Oliver Budde discovered cooked books time and again and even turned in proxy statements and hid accounting to the SEC, only to be ignored or misled. The law firm of Simpson, Thacter and Bartlett hid additional Fuld salary of $263 million in the fine print.  Later, this same law firm received a lucrative contract to serve as federal legal advisor to the TARP bailout.

There was six solid months that they could have moved against Fuld, but didn’t.  Concealed also was $50 billion dollars in loans. Fuld told Representative Henry Waxman during the House Government Oversight Committee  hearings that he had earned a paltry $310 million (a grating Hoovers Ville amount in Wall Street dollars), when  actually it was $529 million. Said Oliver Budde, comparing the Justice Department’s lack of zeal to prosecute Fuld as compared to the perjury of sportsman Roger Clemens: ”At least Roger didn’t screw over the world…green flag on a new stealing season.”  

Wild parties and wild money seemed to be part and parcel of the pre-2008-2009 ‘gang’ on Wall Street (reminiscent of the ‘roaring twenties’). Ex–hedge funder Raj Rajaratnam held eager parties as he hobnobbed with big shots the day before his arrest. He boasted of being “the last man standing”. He controlled 130 employees, held $7 billion in assets and masterminded the biggest insider trader ring since the late 1980s.  He went from a net worth of $1.5 billion in 2009 to $700 million in October, 2010, along with 13 counts of Conspiracy and Securities Fraud.

For his 50^th birthday, Raj chartered planes and flew 70 friends he called the Raj Tribe (The Riotous Rowdy, Rebellious Raj Tribe, said their T-shirts) to a birthday bash. On a Manhattan cruise, Danielle Chiesi, a well-coiffed blonde consultant for Bear Stearns, took to the dance floor to demonstrate her allure. A year earlier, Raj joined in a strip poker game hosted by Salomon Smith Barney of boys and girls alike. (Power and Pleasure, Anita Raghavan, www.forbes.com)

Speaking of a similar mood in the crash of 1929, Lucy Moore could have just as easily been speaking of 2008, when she wrote in Anything Goes, “and so the crash came, arriving with a kind of surrealistic slowness – so gradually that, on the one hand it was possible to live through a good part of it without realizing

what was happening, and, on the other hand, it was possible to believe that one had experienced and survived it when in  fact it had no more than just begun.”                    

(“Dr. No: ‘The Americans are fools.  I offered my services, they refused.  So did the East.  Now they can pay for their mistake.’  Bond: ‘World domination. The same old dream.  Our asylums are full of people who think they’re Napoleon.  or God’.”, DR. NO, 1962)                                              

NO ATTENTION TO HISTORY

(Kevin Kerr. Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 7:30am):

“The mighty U.S. dollar’s fall from economic grace didn’t happened overnight. It’s been a long and painful process driven by bad judgment, irresponsible fiscal policies, and arrogance.

Like many fiat currencies before it, the greenback’s paper and the ink printed on it is only worth what individuals are willing to assign to it. Otherwise it becomes as worthless as green wallpaper with numbers on it, just as happened in Rome.

Nero and other Roman emperors debased the currency in order to supply a demand for more coins. Sound familiar? By debasing the currency, instead of a coin having its own intrinsic value, it was only representative of the silver or gold it had once contained. That’s all well and good as long as the silver content is what they say it is.

But by the time Claudius II Gothicus (268-270 A.D.) took power, the amount of silver in a “100 percent” silver denarius coin was only 0.02 percent. This led to widespread severe inflation and instability….. shows just how that inflation occurred, eerily much like it is today in the U.S.

In addition to recklessly devaluing the currency, the Roman Empire tried to ratchet up revenue through extreme taxation and finding new sources of wealth. We’re now seeing this in the U.S. as municipalities boost taxes while home values plummet. Plus they’re slapping citizens with fines and tickets for even the most minor violations, all in a desperate effort to stop the flood of red ink.

In Rome, the poor and wealthy alike were taxed extensively. Eventually the wealthy and powerful were no longer rich or powerful.

To escape the burden of tax, some small landowners actually chose to sell themselves into slavery, since slaves didn’t have to pay tax and freedom from taxes was more desirable than personal liberty. Eventually that didn’t even work, and Rome essentially imploded. The once mightiest empire on earth simply disappeared.

The same thing could happen to the United States. Let’s face it: The middle class and business owners are struggling, and disappearing fast! Unfortunately they’re also vital to the

U.S. economy, and any hope of recovery.

One modern day example of inflation run amuck is the African nation of Zimbabwe. The country is famous for having issued 100 trillion dollar notes during a period of inflation, which reportedly reached 231 million percent at the height of the disaster.

Much like Rome, and the United States today, the inflation was largely self-imposed.

Can you imagine walking into Wal-Mart and a gallon of milk going for more than U.S. $150? This is what it was like when Zimbabwe’s currency was destroyed by inflation.

When hyperinflation occurs it results in an imbalance between the supply and demand for money, including currency and bank deposits. Eventually a complete loss of confidence in the money is almost inevitable. The public panics, and global market participants dump the currency.

Just like in the U.S. today, Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation was a result of the monetary authority irresponsibly borrowing money to pay its expenses and obligations.

One of the biggest factors that has gotten the U.S. into the disaster we’re in, is the arrogance of the nation’s leaders. The belief that what happened in Rome and Zimbabwe could not happen in the U.S”. (http://www.moneyandmarkets.com.)

Stock Analyst Porter Stansberry examined the aftermath: “Currently government spending in the United States, just Federal spending, is 44% of GDP (October, 2010) which has never happened outside of World War II. On the revenue side, Federal government is 32% of GDP.  So it’s not even a misnomer any- more to say that we’re living in a socialist state,” he continued, “44 million people are on food stamps, 60 million people in the United States depend on the State  for either their income or their food.  Two-thirds of all the families in the U.S depend on the government, which is broke, and the debt per taxpayer is $122,000.”

Said Greg McCoach, mining analyst of Wealth Daily, on December 3, 2010: “much of my investing decisions over the past ten years have been guided by watching the U.S. government’s abuse of the dollar into its current near-worthless state.  This has brought me to one basic conclusion: politicians on both sides of the aisle are not trustworthy or credible individuals, they are power-seeking liars, hoodwinkers, and bamboozlers,” he went on to say, “They’ll do or say anything to get you to hand your power over to them, i.e., vote them into office. And until a majority of Americans come to this understanding, nothing can fun fundamentally change within this country.”

BOND, JAMES BOND…..

(“Choose your next witticism carefully, Mr. Bond, it may be your last.”  Auric Goldfinger, GOLDFINGER, 1964) 

Maria Bartiromo, TV hostess, financier, recalls the wild devil-may-care- atmosphere of the Wall Street Gang at one of the many  parties they held leading up to the 2008 explosion.  She recalls one specific holiday celebration in 2006:  “The high-profile  party  was crowded with well-known Wall Street faces. The host was dressed as James Bond, 007, and ‘scantily clad Bond girls’ roamed the party serving drinks,” told Kerry Hannon, USA Today writer, about Bartiromo.  “looking  back  on those parties,  I can recall this giddiness in the air,” said Bartiromo, “the extravagance, the excess.  It is burned into my memory – the sight of all those incredibly accomplished and wealthy men and  women  laughing and drinking.” Bartiromo saw well-known Wall Street faces: john thain, Chief Executive of the New York Stock Exchange, who recently had purchased a 27.5 million-dollar apartment.  Investment bankers  from Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Golden Sachs. Paris Hilton. Jimmy Cayne, the flamboyant Chief Executive at Bear Stearns, took friendly bards from guests about his 15- million-dollar Christmas bonus. Dick Fuld, the head of Lehman Brothers, preferred being a lone-wolf and would hug one corner. Hold private conversations, and “look uncomfortable”.

A couple of Bond Girls slid next to Fuld, along with a photographer: “take your picture?”, asked the photographer.  Fuld rushed off in protest: “I’m not getting my picture taken with any Bond Girls!” he snapped and rushed off. Cayne was amused by the whole thing.

“The Bond theme was an interesting commentary on the era. Schwarzman might well have imagined himself as the 007 of Wall Street, smoothly sailing above the troubles that afflicted others,” said Bartiromo, “He appeared to enjoy playing the sophisticated man’s man; the male ideal; a magnet for power, money, and women for whom danger and intrigue were all in a day’s work.”

The apartment in which the Bond Party took place was purchased by Schwarzman

From previous owner Saul Steinberg (Bartiromo’s father-in-law), and was once owned by John D. Rockefller in 1971. A story of the world’s richest apartment building; old money, oil money, new money, and barrowed money. The Steinbergs were the ”‘undisputed Dean and Doyenne of Nouvelle society,” said Johanna Berkman in New York Magazine, “He…as one of Wall Streets most feared Masters of the Universe…she…the ultimate trophy wife.” Saul Steinberg was CEO of the Reliance Group Holding Company, having taken a 311 million-dollar loss in 1999. A 150-guest April 4 cocktail party found the Steinbergs “stock-rich, but cash-poor”. Their earlier lifestyle lingered like rum tobacco smoke: Gayfryd Steinberg’s 3 million-dollar “French Directoire-themed affair” for 500 guests (and 50,000 French roses) in the marriage of Saul’s daughter to a scion of the Tisch family, and the $1 million fiftieth-birthday party themed in Saul’s love for Old Master paintings (this particular party highlighted a nude female dancer celebrating Rembrandt’s danae), Saul had been advertised in a 1968 Forbes  as making more money than  any other U.S citizen under 30-year-of-age.     

(“Bond: ‘I admire your courage, Miss…..’  Sylvia Trench: ‘Trench….Sylvia Trench. I admire your luck, Mr.…..’

Bond: ‘Bond.…James Bond’.”, GOLDFINGER, 1964)

Steve Schwarzman’s 60^th birthday celebration at the cavernous Park Avenue Amory on February 14, 2007 was a 3-million dollar  extravaganza fit for a king. Schwarzman was not exactly a king, but not far behind with his company, The Blackstone Group, holding $88-billion in assets and 112 companies worth $200 billion: Schwarzman was worth $677.2 million in a public offering of Blackstone and $7.8 billion in  shares.

James  B. (Jimmy) Lee, vice-chairman at J. P. Morgan Chase, sent him a June 21, 2007 email: “You were like Indiana Jones over the last few weeks….they rolled giant boulders at you….fired poison darts at you ….threw  you  into that giant snake pit…..and yet you still found the grail and got the blonde….bravo.”  Said Daniel Gross in his June 19, 2007 “The Golden Ass” (www.slate.com): “he’s like an NBA  player who, having gone the length of a court for a slam-dunk with the game already put away, starts trash-talking, jumps atop the scorers’ table, gestures obscenely at opposing fans, pinches a cheerleader, chest-bumps the referee, sticks his tongue out at the camera, all the while grabbing his crotch and yelling loudly that he’s the Man. That would certainly get the attention of the ordinarily forgiving disciplinarians in the league office.”   El-Erian, CEO of Pimco, the world’s largest bond holder, said of Schwarzman: “He was everywhere that year, bullish verging on boastful about the wonders of private equity and by implication, his own golden touch.  When I lunched with him at the Four Seasons Restaurant in January, 2006, he was ebullient: twenty to fourty billion dollar deals in a very short time, a phenomenal uptick in the amount of money  flowing  into private equity, at least a twenty per cent annual return on investments.”

George McCartney said on August 10, 2007 in “Jekyll And Hyde In A Box” (www.chroniclesmagazine.org): “Schwarzman, George W. Busch’s roommate at Yale and Skull and Bones brother, wished to inform all who cared that, when  he pursued a deal, he wanted to ‘inflict pain’ and ‘kill off’ his rivals,” said McCartney, ”So there we have it.  In American business today, it pays to have murder in your heart.  Who can doubt the wisdom of Schwarzman’s lethal intent.  He’s a billionaire seven times over. Can’t argue with that.”  “You watch,” Schwarzman would boast to Dan Dorfman, “Like the Rockefellas, i’ll own the world.  I could be the first Jewish President.”

In his senior year of school, Schwarzman wrote W. Averell Harriman, war-time Ambassador to Russia and former Governor of New York, during the Paris Peace Talks at the time, because of his admiration of Harriman as a fellow Skull And Bones member. He met with Harriman for lunch at his upper east side townhouse:

“Young man, are you independently wealthy?”  Harriman asked.

“No, sir, I’m not” was the answer.

“Well, I am the son of a very rich man, which has made an enormous difference ____that’s the reason you’re seeing me.  If you have any interest in the political world, I’d advise you to become independently wealthy yourself.” 

“His business philosophy is ’I want war – not a series of skirmishes’ and ‘I always think of what will kill off the bidder’….the combination of self-indulgence, seeming disregard for those less privileged, and militant hostility towards rivals inflamed many on Wall Street.….Schwarzman’s holiday parties were always ‘themed’.  That year’s theme was Bond – as in James, not municipal,” Said Maria Bartiromo in “Eyewitness To The Crisis” pdf (www.msnbcmeddia.msn.com), “The host was dressed in a snazzy  tux, portraying 007, with Christine shimmering at his side in a silver gown.  Scantily clad ‘Bond girls’ roamed the party serving drinks and hors d’oeurres.  There were repeated joking references to ‘Goldfinger’ throughout the evening.”

Novelist Jane Stanton Hitchcock said: “Steve, I always knew you were going places, I just did not know you would end up owning them all.”

The Valentine celebration at the Armory was in the same Roman-type-Saturnalia celebration. A full-length portrait of Schwarzman by Andrew Festing was brought in, and dinner was served in a faux  night-club setting, with orchids and palm trees, lobster, stone crabs, filet mignon, baked Alaska, and an array of expensive wines. A Palm Beach chef complained about an employee’s shoes because he found the squeaks of the rubber soles disturbing.

Composer-pianist Marvin Hamlisch played a number from ‘a Chorus Line’.  Patti LaBelle, along with the Abyssinian Baptist Church choir, sang ‘He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands’. The headliner, Rod Stewart, among other songs, sang ‘Tonight’s The Night’ and ‘Reason To Believe’.  Stewart was paid about one million dollars for his performance.

In a decadent modern-day reenactment of Petronius Arbiter’s Satyricon, said Ron Mwangaguhungr in his blog “The Corsair”, was an army of power and obscenely wealthy people such as real estate kingpin Sam Zell. Zell exemplified the stratospheric rise of private equity: the then sixty-five- year-old billionaire was the wealthiest men in the world. “Crusty, confident, and an unrepentant potty-mouth,” said Bartiromo, “zell was both admired and feared for his ability to play extremely high stakes games.” Zell owned Equity Office Properties Trust, a conglomerate of 573 properties.  Zell sold to Blackstone Group for $39 billion.  Schwarzman’s Blackstone Group, then flipped hundreds of the buildings for $27 billion.

(“Bond: ‘Do you expect me to talk?’ Auric Goldfinger: ‘No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!’”,  GOLDFINGER, 1964, said while agent James Bond is about to be dissected by a lasar beam.)

Zell stood to make $900 million from the Blackstone sale. “For Zell, the vote ends another chapter in the career of a real estate developer known as the ‘grave dancer’ ”, said Brian Louis and Bob Ivry in www.bloomberg.com, “for spotting opportunities in distressed properties.”

After the sale, Zell approached Tribune Company (which owns 11 daily newspapers), buying a stake in that company.  For Steve Roth of Vornado Realty Trust, the other bidder, the purchase would have allowed Vornado to bolster its East and West Coast holdings.  In the end, Vornado benefited by buying some Equity office properties that were put up for sale by Blackstone.

Samuel Zell was the only son of a Polish Jewish couple who fled their native country shortly before it was invaded by German soldier hordes in 1939. The couple immigrated to Chicago where Zell was born. At the age of 12, travelling on the way to Hebrew class, Zell noticed out-of-the-neighborhood sales of Playboy Magazine at a 50 cent price – and Zell would resell the magazine for $1.50 to his classmates. Zell would later use his ‘greed is good’ acumen upon forming the Equity Finance and Management Company in 1968 with partner Robert Lurie, acquiring distressed properties from developers (some inhabited by squatters), renovating them into fully rentable units at highly inflated prices, earning him the nickname of “the Grave Dancer”.

Zell was able to slink through the recession of the early 1990s at a lesser pace until REITs were created by Congress in 1960 (allowing real estate investments much like mutual funds), and in the 1990s, became an attractive way for many private real estate companies to raise funds; and by converting their holdings into REIT shares, Zell could postpone paying capital gains taxes.

PETER COTTONTAIL HOPPING DOWN THE MONEY-TRAIL

In 2001, EOP Acquired Spieker Properties, Inc., the largest REIT on the West Coast. The $7.2 billion price included $905 million in cash, $431 million in stock, $3.6 billion in equity, and $2.1 billion in debt. In October 2001 EOP became their first REIT to be added to the S&P 500 and the only member of Fortune 500.

Like most real-estate, REITS carry large amounts of debt on their books. REITS enjoyed a sturdy bull market from 2003 to 2006 and Americans went insane for real estate – launching further into 2007 with soaring prices and big firms leveraged with increasing debt to the exploding craze. Sam Zell sold Equity Offices Property Trust to buy-out-firm Blackstone in the largest takeover ever of a real estate company –a $36 billion deal.  Then the bubble burst.

Sam Zell told CNBC television on March 3, 2011: “My single biggest financial concern is the loss of the dollar as the reserve currency. I can’t imagine anything more disastrous to our country…you’re already seeing things in the market that are suggesting that confidence in the dollar is waning….I think you can see 25% reduction in the standard of living in this country if the U.S dollar was no longer the world’s reserve currency.  That’s how valuable it is.”  

During the Populist Egyptian uprising and over-throw of President Hosni Mubarak in February, 2011, there was particular attention and suspicion as to the where-about of Mubarak’s billions of dollars (much of it confiscated from the donations of United States taxpayers) and how handler and spy Hussein Silem, similar to many of Mubarak cronies, played a part in the transfer of such funds.

Ibrahm Oweiss, a Georgetown University economist, warned of Zell’s connection to the 2007 shares he had in an Egyptian company that shipped natural gas to Israel. John Kosmon, Philip Shenon and David Wurmser of the Delphi Global Analysis Group referred to it as a $220 million energy bet in the middle east, and Zell held a 10 percent stake in the natural-gas consortium, the East Mediterranean Gas Company (www.nypost.com. Feb 12, 2011, John Kosmon. USA Today, Philip Shenon, Feb. 16, 2011. Content.usatoday.com, “Tracking Mubarak’s Fixer”.).

Seemingly not fazed by any crisis, in June, 2011, Sam Zell continued his climb in commercial real estate: Zell had just purchased a controlling stake in a 40-story office tower in Chicago – an estimated $106 million value.  

THE FUND FOR FULD

(Otherwise known as Fuld’s Foolish Funds)

Dick Fuld came to be known as “The Gorilla of Wall Street”; steering Lehman Brothers deep into the business of subprime mortgages, bank-rolling lenders across the country that were making convoluted loans to questionable borrowers. Fuld used several highly questionable accounting practices enabling him to earn $469 million in stock sales between 2000 and 2008. Said Reuters on April 29, 2010: “Oliver Budde, former Lehman lawyer, spent many years drafting the bank’s compensation disclosures and hiding the redirected astock unit (RSU) component of Fuld’s pay.  An email sent on April 14, 2008 to the SEC’s Enforcement Division never heard anything (never brought a response – se).”

Dick Fuld studied business and he received a B.A. and a M.B.A from the University of Colorado at Boulder and the New York University’s Stein School of Business.  After being discharged from the Air Force, he began his career with Lehman in 1969 as a commercial paper trader. His competitive nature aided his Advancement to Power.  At the time of his departure he had worked 40 years in the industry; another ‘gorilla’ pouncing his chest in defiance.  

Tyler Durden (www.zerohedge.com) spoke out on the Shadow Economy on March 11, 2010: “Lehman employed off-balance sheet devices, known within Lehman as “repo 105’ and ‘repo 108’ transactions to temporarily remove securities inventories from its balance sheet, usually for a period of seven to ten days, and to create a materially misleading picture of the firm’s condition in the late 2007 and 2008,” Durden went on to say, “Lehman accounted for repo 105 transactions as ‘sales ’…. by recharacterizing the repo 105 transactions as a ‘sale’, Lehman removed the inventories from its balance sheet.”

Christian A. DeHaemer, market analyst, said on December 6, 2010: “I’m of the opinion  that you can’t spend your way out of a debt crisis but Ben ( S. Bernanke, chairman of the U.S Federal Reserve) believes in ‘priming the pump’ by spending – loaning to banks, anyway. And by banks, we mean massive trading companies that got us into this mess to begin with.”

Swell Chan and Jo Craven McGinty said in the December 2, 2010 issue of The New York Times thatunder a Federally mandated release of 21,000 transactions, it has been revealed that in the financial Crash 0f 2008, the Federal Reserve had paid out to troubled institutions on a shockingly wide scope. Citigroup sought help at least 174 times during a 13-month period. The British bank Barclays owed nearly $48 billion to the Fed. Goldman Sachs was offered billions at rock-bottom rates. The Fed catered “…far beyond Wall Street, touching manufacturers like General Electric, Detroit automakers and Harley-Davidson, central banks from Britain to Japan and insurers and pension funds in Sweden and South Korea.” The Fed lent money banks, brokers, businesses, investors and prominent names such as John A. Paulson, Michael S. Dell, the pension funds of the Philadelphia Teamsters, and Omaha’s teachers under the canopy of emergency lending programs and other arrangements the Fed conjured up in response to the Wall Street virus.

The, then, Fed’s Vice Chairman, Donald L. Kohn said: “perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations.”  From December 2007 to October 2008, the Fed opened swap lines with foreign  central banks, allowing them to temporarily trade their currencies for dollars to vent dangerous pressure on their financial markets. The European Central Bank gulped American funds with much gluttonous relish, along with Australia, Denmark, England, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and Switzerland.

In America, from March 2008 to May 2009, the Fed extended a cumulative total of nearly $9 trillion in short-term loans to 18 financial institutions, including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch – the last three tapped the Fed more than 100 times. Foreign banks that sucked-up funds were UBS of Switzerland Mizuho securities of Japan, and BNP Paribas of France; going well beyond Wall Street, entrenching money-market mutual funds and even commercial paper in aiding companies make day-to-day payroll and paying vendors, including mutual fund giants such as Fidelity, Blackrock, Merrill, T. Rowe Price and Oppenheimer.

The Fed Commercial Paper Funding Facility bought more than $225 billion in debt their first week from companies such as the Ohio’s Fifth Third Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Sumitomo, the weakened automakers, and bank franchises of Europe and Asia; as well as ties to Caterpillar, McDonald’s and Verizon. The commercial paper sickness went well in to the latter half of 2009.

THE TALF

The Fed Term Asset-backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) forced the Fed into fantastic positions: “…of supporting small business, auto, student, and credit card loans,” said Chan and McGinty, “Plentiful helpings of low-cost debt encouraged institutions to ramp up lending and lured back private investors.”  Among them were H. Wayne Huizenga, Julian Robertson, Kendrick R. Wilson III (a former Goldman executive who had been a top aide to Henry M. Paulson, Jr. [the Treasury Secretary during the crisis]), and Christy K. Mack, the wife of John J. Mack, the former chief executive of Morgan Stanley.

Big institutions that sucked up funds from TALF included: the American International Group (AIG: the insurer bailed out by the government), Jonathan S. Sobel (who ran the mortgage department at Goldman Sachs), Pimco T. Rowe Price and Blackrock, California Public Employees Retirement System, as well as “several insurers and university endowments.”

In 2007 when the crisis had already broken out in the USA and was spreading to the EU, Alan Greenspan, former Director of the US Federal Reserve, wrote: “A recent financial innovation of major importance has been the credit default swap. The CDS, as it is called, is a derivative that transfers the credit risk, usually of a debt instrument, to a third party, at a price. Being able to profit from the loan transaction but transfer credit risk is a boon to banks and other financial intermediaries, which, in order to make an adequate rate of return on equity, have to heavily leverage their balance sheets by accepting deposit obligations and/or incurring debt. Most of the time, such institutions lend money and prosper. But in periods of adversity, they typically run into bad-debt problems, which in the past had forced them to sharply curtail lending. This in turn undermined economic activity more generally. A market vehicle for transferring risk away from these highly leveraged loan originators can be critical for economic stability, especially in a global environment. In response to this need, the CDS was invented and took the market by storm. The Bank for International Settlements tabulated a world-wide notional value of more than $20 trillion equivalent in credit default swaps in mid-2006, up from $6 trillion at the end of 2004. The buffering power of these instruments was vividly demonstrated between 1998 and 2001, when CDSs were used to spread the risk of $1 trillion in loans to rapidly expanding telecommunications networks. Though a large proportion of these ventures defaulted in the tech bust, not a single major lending institution ran into trouble as a consequence. The losses were ultimately borne by highly capitalized institutions—insurers, pension funds, and the like—that had been the major suppliers of the credit default protection. They were well able to absorb the hit. Thus there was no repetition of the cascading defaults of an earlier era.”[3]

In 2007 the IMF issued the following declaration referring to the health of the United States and particularly CDSs, labeled new risk-transfer markets: “Although complacency would be misplaced, it would appear that innovation has supported financial system soundness. New risk transfer markets have facilitated the dispersion of credit risk from a core where moral hazard is concentrated to a periphery where market discipline is the chief restraint on risk-taking. (…)Although cycles of excess and panic have not disappeared — the subprime boom-bust being but the latest example — markets have shown that they can and do self-correct.” (IMF, 2007 Consultations Report, article 4 with the United States)[4].

Clearly, certain supposedly reputable banks are still covering themselves against defaults through CDSs. Thus the Deutsche Bank announced at the end of July 2011 that it had reduced its exposure regarding the Italian debt by 88%. The principal German lender claims to have reduced its exposure in Italy from EUR 8 billion to EUR 997 million. According to the Financial Times, the Deutsche Bank achieved this not by selling over 7 billion euros’ worth of Italian bonds, but by a stroke of book-keeping wizardry, buying up CDSs to hedge its investments against possible default on the part of Italy.[5]

[3] Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence, Adventure in a New World, London, Penguin, 2007, pp. 371-2.

[4] See http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2007/cr07265.pdf . For more on the IMF’s errors of judgment concerning the USA and Ireland, see: François Sana “Zéro de conduite pour le FMI” http://www.cadtm.org/Zero-de-conduite-pour-le-FMI

[5] Financial Times, “Deutsche hedges Italian risk”, 27 July 2011, p. 13.

Shilomo Maital, academic director of the Technical Institute of Management in Israel, said in a Barrons editorial commentary, ”Blame The Fed”, Dec. 13, 2010, that the low interest rates and easy money caused housing prices to double between 1997 and 2006. Many Americans believed that they needn’t save money because their soaring home values were saving them by creating wealth.  The Fed ignored the chance to warn of the impending mortgage crisis. “In three forthcoming academic papers, Brown University economist Jerome Stein shows there were early-warning signals in 2005 that financial institutions were overleveraged,” said Maital, “….applied to economic analysis, stochastic optimal control would read changes in capital gains, interest rates, debt and supply and demand for goods and services, identifying excessive, unsustainable leverage and generating early-warning signals to monetary policy.”

Maital asks: quantitative analysts use sophisticated math to create risky instruments; why not use it as well to track risk?  He said that Greenspan’s Fed failed to curb irrational exuberance during the dot-com asset bubble in 1996-2000 and the real-estate asset bubble of the 2003 – 2007.  ”Instead, the Fed waited for the bubble to burst, and then tried to clean up the mess,” said Maital, “Let the Fed refrain from creating bubbles and there will be fewer messes to clean up. Bernanke say, in effect, that the Fed can only hope to be clever. It must be wise, or it must stop trying to be so clever.”  

Len Bracken wrote in “The Invisible Currency Of Fascism” In the summer 2009 issue of Paranoia Magazine (www.lenbracken.com):  “Bernanke was reportedly furious when he learned that AIG’s financial product unit had created so much debt with its credit default swap contracts….The worldwide notional value of outstanding derivatives is now estimated to be $1.405 quadrillion, up 22 percent from the 2008 level. D.K Matal of the Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance notes that a conservative 10 percent default or decline could result in $100 trillion of payouts.  Financial institutions, nation states, even blocs such as the European Union will be unable to fund these obligations, often owed to speculators by bankers who grossly mispriced risk.”

Senate panels were sit up to investigate shady dealings of companies such as Goldman Sachs, a company that the courts deemed them to pay $550 million in the summer of 2010 to settle federal fraud charges from an offshore mortgage deal. Goldman Sachs, however, failed to tell investigators about a second bundle of $2 billion of risky mortgage securities – on which they were secretly betting on their default, the Senate panel charged April 13, 2011. When the value of the securities plunged, Goldman confiscated a $1.35 billion profit at the expense of their investors. Democratic Senator Carl Levin, the panel chairman, will refer those facts to the Justice Department and the SEC for enforcement.

Rolling Stone writer Matt Tabbi  (“The people Vs. Goldman Sachs”. Issue 1131, May 26, 2010) spoke of the 650-page report of the bipartisan senate subcommittee: Speaking of the Crisis perpetrators:  “To get $1.2 billion in crap off its books, dumps a huge lot of deadly mortgages on its clients, lies about where that crap came from and claim s it believes in the product even as its selling $2 billion against it.  When its victims try to run out of the burning house, Goldman stands in the doorway, blasts them all with gasoline before they can escape and then has the balls to send a bill overcharging its victims for the pleasure of getting fried.” 

Descriptions used by Tabbi include ”CDO-squared”, “highly dubious doubled-down”, “magically converting risky subprime mortgages into AAA investments”, “ The Big Short”, “myriad deception”, “misfortune to their own clients”, “gouging customers”, “trapped”, “failure to disclose”, “corporate sociopathy”. Tabbi says Federal crimes were committed and jail sentences are in order; he points out that the subcommittee report has been passed on to the Department of Justice.  He points a finger at Lloyd Blankfein, David Viniar, Daniel Sparks and Michael Swenson.

On April 15, 2011, Senator Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, said the constant referrals to the bailout as $800,000 was inaccurate – it was more like $8.5 trillion.

(Challenging the popular misconception about Republicans as being fiscally responsible, specifically, they did four things: cut taxes [with a heavy tilt toward the rich], waged two wars on the national credit card (one of which was against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and posed no serious threat to America), passed a prescription drug benefit with no pay-for [the first entitlement in American history without a revenue source], and deregulated Wall Street [which helped turn the American economy into a casino and touched off the Great Recession] Tsunami? No hurricane that wiped out our surplus. It was instead a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Republican president who squandered the surplus. In full possession of the federal government for the first time since Eisenhower, the GOP—with, to be fair, some help from some very foolish Democrats—systematically dismantled the economic and fiscal policies that produced the strongest economy and largest budget surplus in our history.

Specifically, they did four things: cut taxes [with a heavy tilt toward the rich], waged two wars on the national credit card [one of which was against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and posed no serious threat to America], passed a prescription drug benefit with no pay-for [the first entitlement in American history without a revenue source), and deregulated Wall Street [which helped turn the American economy into a casino and touched off the Great Recession]).

Chris Weber, financial researcher at Stansberry & Associates, said on February 14, 2011: “Understand, we as Americans are about to see a major, major collapse in our national monetary system and our normal way of life….even if all Americans gave away 100% of their income right now it would still not be enough to balance the Federal budget! We’d still have to borrow money just to maintain the status quo….what are we doing to repay our debts?  You guessed it….we’re printing more money….creditors….will stop accepting the U.S. dollar….” 

Financial analyst Allan Sloan of www.finance.fortune.cnn.com said in “Relief from Economic Turmoil”, Vol. 164, No. 4, Sept. 5, 2011, page 56, “The root of our current problem is that there are no grownups of serious power in Washington. I’ve never felt this way before….now I do….we’ve got this problem because our leaders rolled over to pressure from big companies instead of breaking them up into pieces small enough to be allowed to fail.”                                                    

(Christian  A. DeHaemer  said of Japan’s  similar  decline:  “The country was run by one political party – the Liberal Democratic Party – from 1955 to 2009…..the political party’s  main platform was ‘spend money and create growth’….it tried stimulus after stimulus….they’ve built bridges in  mountainous villages where few people live….they’ve forced banks to take on massive debt, and shuffled other debt to different banks….and after twenty years of spending, Japan has $9.7 trillion in public debt – twice its GDP in 2009….they still have no growth….the Greece Prime Minister warned the Japanese Parliament, ‘It is difficult to sustain a policy that relies too heavily on  issuing debt’….Japan has been in a deflationary spiral for 20 years.”

“Just as inflation scarred a generation of Americans,” says Martin Fackler of The New York Times , “deflation has left a deep imprint on the Japanese, breeding generational tensions and a culture of pessimism, fatalism and reduced expectations….it faces an increasingly grim situation, particularly outside the relative economic vibrancy of Tokyo, and its situation “provides a possible glimpse into the future for the United States and Europe, should the most dire forecasts come to pass.” “Deflation destroys the risk-taking that capitalist economies need in order to grow,” said Sumpei Takemori, an economist at the Keio University in Tokyo, “Creative destruction is replaced with what is just destructive destruction.”)

OPERATION MELTDOWN

(“The bomb would irradiate all the gold inside the building and make it unusable….international liquidity would seize up, and the Western trade and monetary system would collapse.” Auric Goldfinger, 1964, GOLDFINGER, describing Operation Meltdown.)

Contributing Money Morning editor Shah Gilani, said near the first week of June, 2011, that if something isn’t done now to  fix the U.S housing market it will “drag the rest of the economy down into a hellish bottom that will take years, if not decades, to crawl out of”.

As Mike Larson, financial analyst said onFriday, July 15, 2011 at 7:30am. (Weiss Research, Inc. 15430 Endeavour Dr. Jupiter, FL 33478. 1-800-291-8545):

“There is NO EASY FIX! Nothing can be done to eliminate the multiple threats facing us right now. They’re the result of years and years of failed policies, out-to-lunch regulators, too much easy money, and more.

The only ‘cure’ is a long, drawn-out period of paying the piper. Or as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner finally came clean about in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press a few days ago:

‘It’s going to feel very hard, harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for a long time to come’ “.  (http://www.moneyandmarkets.com)

(At the end of March, 2011, America’s debt ranged approximately 24.46 billion dollars a month.  In August, 2011 the national debt was about 14.3 trillion dollars, 3.80 billion per day, and 14,142 dollars per citizen)

Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D.  (Monday, August 1, 2011 at 7:30am)  All told, U.S. financial institutions now hold an astonishing $6.3 trillion in securities subject to immediate or future downgrades in the wake of a U.S. government debt downgrade. (http: //www.moneyandmarkets.com)

August 2, 2011: Congress approved a deal to raise our national debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion – supposedly enough to fund the government through 2013 – with conditions for automatic spending cuts to reach a goal of cutting $2.4 trillion in spending over the next decade. PIMCO co-CEO Mohamed El-Erian’s partner, Bill Gross, spoke in his monthly investment outlook that  the biggest shortcoming of this deal is its failure to address the “debt men walking” – the 330 million living Americans with promised entitlements. While the U.S. claims $10 trillion in liabilities, the present value of these future obligations is an additional $66 trillion. With no severe spending cuts or revenue increases, the government has no way to fund its current liabilities, much less Gross’ “debt men walking.”

Even though Congress voted to confront the debt ceiling and the growing national debt, here are final facts: This deal does nothing to reduce America’s debt burden. In fact, the $14 trillion we owe now could very easily exceed $23 trillion by 2021. That’s a 62% increase. The deal brokered by Congress cuts spending by just $917 billion over a 10-year period, with a special congressional committee assigned to find another $1.5 trillion in deficit savings by late November.

That’s $2.5 trillion in “savings” over a 10-year period and is inconsequential when you consider that President Obama added nearly $4 trillion to the national debt in just a few short years in office.
No progress on the debt front when you’re adding $4 billion in new liabilities every day?

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said that the $2.5 trillion the government claims to be saving is quickly dematerialized by inflation and lost economic output. (http://www.moneymorning.com).

The deal brokered by Congress cuts spending by just $917 billion over a 10-year period, with a special congressional committee assigned to find another $1.5 trillion in deficit savings by late November.
Even if you round up, that $2.5 trillion in “savings” over a 10-year period is inconsequential when you consider that President Obama added nearly $4 trillion to the national debt in just a few short years in office. How can you make any progress on the debt front when you’re adding $4 billion in new liabilities everyday? And the story is even worse than that: According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), even the $2.5 trillion the government claims to be saving is quickly vaporized by inflation and lost economic output. (Martin Hutchinson, Contributing Editor, Money Morning: August 6, 2011).


Investment analysts clearly hoped the $125 billion Fed-orchestrated bailout of Greece would be the end of Europe’s sovereign debt worries. They say these small economies “don’t matter.”



Many of the world’s developed economies have been forcing growth with foreign debts. This growth and the asset values created under the euro standard are unsustainable for the simple reason that debt service cannot be made and creditors are unwilling to extend these debts on suitable terms: running from creditor to creditor and intensify as the market realizes these defaults are unstoppable. The next major country likely to experience a credit crisis is Italy, which has enormous exposure through its banks to Eastern Europe and the rest of Europe’s weak economies.   Italy’s public debt totals €1.7 trillion – seven times the size of Greece. Italy is the world’s third-largest sovereign borrower. It cannot be bailed out – it is simply too big. It cannot pay back its debts as long as it remains in the euro. Italy has been in recession almost since the day it adopted the euro: Its economy has grown by a total of 0.54% over the last decade. The total public debt to GDP will soon surpass 120%. At that point, it will become progressively more difficult for Italy to extend its foreign debts because all of the foreign creditors will know these debts will never be repaid. A default and devaluation will be the only way to restart Italy’s economy. (Stansberry’s Investment Advisory, June 2010). Porter Stansberry, Baltimore, Maryland, August 5, 2011.)   AN EYE TOWARDS THE FUTURE





We paraphrase Shah Gilani, Capital Waves Strategist, Money Morning –  August 19, 2011: Violent volatility is now the new normal:  Massive market moves in the week of August 10, 2011 saw the Dow Jones  tumble 419.13 points: Wall Street wants these moves to amass their personal wealth in a scheme utilizing dramatic volatility in capital investments.   The roots of manufactured market volatility can be traced back to an obsession Wall Street has with disadvantaging the public while giving itself every advantage it can. In 1969, Institutional Networks Corp. launched Instinet, the original off-exchange “communications network” designed for private use by institutional traders and dealers. Instead of placing their orders and transacting on the principal exchanges where stocks traded almost exclusively, Instinet provided its members a competing venue where they could show each other bids and offers that the public wasn’t privy to. The club became so successful (I was member myself) – partly as a result of its exclusivity – that it eventually spawned competition. In fact, it spawned a lot of competition. What eventually became known as electronic communications networks (ECNs) proliferated in the 1990s. Eventually the multiple electronic exchanges, fashioned after Instinet and the over-the-counter (OTC) exchange that became Nasdaq, ended up competing for orders from brokers, dealers, institutions and a new breed of gunslingers known as “day traders”. All of this competition dispersed trading to such a degree that it was difficult to know where to go to get the best price when trying to buy or sell stocks. But Wall Street eventually saw the benefit of the wide price discrepancies across multiple trading venues: It increased volatility, creating new trading opportunities. Working (Over) the System   Nobody on Wall Street believes you can ever have too much of a good thing. The first result was that big-name trading shops and old-world exchanges bought up the more profitable ECNs and start other private exchanges and trading conclaves known as “dark pools .” In order to drive business to their trading venues, these synthetic exchanges pay for “order flow” and offer incentives to attract bids and offers for blocks of stocks. The game, invisible from the surface, is designed to accomplish several things. If you control a venue that generates a lot of buying and selling, you can “internalize” the order flow. That means you don’t have to trade outside your house – you match orders internally because you have so many buy and sell orders coming in. And then there are transaction fees. If you are the “house,” you can also take the other side of any trade you want, which has its advantages. But the biggest advantage these venues have is that they “see” what orders are coming into them. And, regardless of whether or not it’s legal, they trade against them and take advantage of knowing the specifics of other pending orders that can be used to backstop losses. I’ll get to that is a moment. Another piece of the market-volatility puzzle was neatly fitted with the advent of “decimalization.” Beginning in 2000, and finally encompassing all stocks on July 9, 2001, trades could take place in increments of one cent. Prior to the implementation of decimalization, stocks traded in increments of eighths. Stocks used to trade in increments of $0.125, $0.25, $0.375, $0.50 and so on. You couldn’t buy or sell a stock for $50.01 or $50.05, for example. You would have to transact at $49.875, $50.00, $50.125, or $50.25. Even though changing to one-penny increments was sold as a way to reduce spreads and transaction costs, the hidden agenda was to increase volatility. Decimalization didn’t make for more liquid markets. It simply encouraged more risk-taking. Trading and holding horizons became shorter. And institutions stopped putting down big limit orders, because traders used those orders as backstops to sell into if their speculative buying didn’t work out. Markets got “thinner” and less liquid as a result of smaller orders being put up. Instead of lowering transaction costs, decimalization increased transaction costs: It now takes a lot more trades to buy or sell large blocks. It also can take a lot more time and expose buyers and sellers to steeper price moves. The increased number of venues combined with more risk-taking to increase volatility exponentially. It was all working. But there was still one little problem that Wall Street wanted out of the way. The New Abnormal   Wall Street finally got what it wanted on July 6, 2007, when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) did away with the “uptick rule.” As of that day, it was no longer necessary to wait for a stock to go up in price before short-selling it. Without the uptick rule, short-sellers can short any stock, at any price, at any time. There’s plenty more that Wall Street has done to ratchet up volatility. It has flooded the world with derivatives that aren’t regulated, and blessed high-frequency trading. It also introduced innumerable securities and financial instruments that it can arbitrage for healthy profits against unsuspecting institutions and the public. Not surprisingly, market volatility is now a tradable product. And now that Wall Street has taken us down this path of entrenched, institutionalized volatility, there’s no going back. Don’t expect any respite from what’s going on in the markets now. On the surface, it’s all about Europe, debt, downgrades, earnings, fundamentals and technicals. But underneath all those prime movers are the real shakers, the greasy palms of the markets hidden hands. Abnormal is the new “normal “.   (http://www.moneymorning.com).    “Faced with the choice of profits or prosperity, Wall Street made its decision.  Closing their eyes to the problem loans, the banks kept feeding them in to the mortgage machinery….the bank made sure the renders cut them enormous discounts on the costs of the loans….they simply increased the profits earned by the investment banks on the garbage loans….It was like warning an alcoholic not to take a drink.” (Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner, Times Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York. 2011. Page 289)   It seems the U.S. government isn’t the only such organization thirsty for funds. The International Monetary Fund (to which the U.S. is the largest contributor) wants more money. At a Council of Foreign Relations event in New York on August 13, 2011, the head of the world’s bailout fund, Christine Lagarde, said, “The question is, do we still have the level of resources that is now needed and appropriate to address… the crises? Maybe it could do with more. In the not-too-distant future, we will probably have to revisit this issue.”   WORLDWIDE The IMF has already increased its resources several times since 2007. It doubled its fund last year. The fund now has around $1.5 trillion of commitments (though the IMF says only around $396 billion of that is available to lend in the next year… and most of that will go to Greece). Once the IMF exhausts its funds saving Greece, Italy and Spain (both of which would bankrupt the IMF and European bailout funds on their own) remain. Yields in Italy and Spain are still rising. The euro is falling in August, 2011. And the European Union still says it won’t increase the size of the 440 billion euro European Financial Stability Facility. It’s only a matter of time. If the American economy falls back into recession, as many economists are now warning, the damage and terror could be a lot more horrific than the last time around. Given the chaos of the Great Recession, skeptics tell that this is not true. But the economy is much weaker than it was at the outset of the last recession in December 2007, with most major measures of economic health — including jobs, incomes, output and industrial production — weaker today than they were back then. And growth has been so miniscule that it seems invisible, even though a recovery technically started in June 2009. “It would be disastrous if we entered into a recession at this stage, given that we haven’t yet made up for the last recession,” said Conrad DeQuadros, senior economist at RDQ Economics. (CATHERINE RAMPELL: August 7, 2011 ).

(Catherine Rampell writes for the New York Times and is editor of the Economix Blog.)

Following through on a months-long threat, S&P cut the U.S credit rating to AA+ from AAA late Friday, August 6, 2011, sending global stock markets tumbling and a flood of investors to one of the few safe havens available – gold.





 Money Morning Contributing Editor Shah Gilani warned back in July, 2011:
“After studying everything that could happen due to a downgrade of the United States’ top-tier AAA credit rating, and the potential default on its debt, we found a scenario that would result in forced asset sales that are so widespread that global stock-and-bond markets would plunge — and economies around the world would crash”. (http://www.moneymorning.com).

	

	August 9, 2011: The market’s in crash mode. The rubber band broke. Comparisons to 2008 abound, The Dow Jones tumbled 643.76 points yesterday on August 8 – the sixth-biggest point fall in 112 years and the biggest drop since December 2008. The Dow sank more than 500 points last Thursday. The S&P 500 is down 18% in the past two weeks. The market is crashing. Investors are terrified. Thursday, 11 Aug 2011 | 7:51 AM ET, Jesse Eisinger, The New York Times, asks: When European banks destruct, what will happen to American banks? Investors and analysts seem nonplussed. American banks disclose some of their exposure to specific countries, but the information isn’t up to date and the figures depend on weak estimates of how well invested the banks are. Analysts differ on the amounts at risk. Unfortunately, we simply don’t know whether the analysts are right. Neither the Fed nor the Securities and Exchange Commission has forced United States banks to make as detailed disclosures as the European stress tests did of its banks. So it’s a matter of having to trust the banks and the regulators. Jesse Eisinger is a reporter for ProPublica. The above are summary comments from his story that appeared in The New York Times. A messy Eurobond default, or the breakup of the euro zone, would have consequences on the scale of the Lehman bankruptcy that triggered the long, global, all-market dive in September 2008. And this time, there would be no magic tricks in the Federal Reserve’s or European central banks’ kit bags to pull economies up by their bootstraps. (Aug 11, 2011 12:18 AM EDT, Charles R. Morris, a lawyer and former banker, is the author of The Trillion Dollar Meltdown (2008) and  The Sage [2009]). The government and the Fed have bailed out or guaranteed at least $12 trillion in debt so far. The guarantees to Fannie and Freddie alone are larger than $10 trillion. People doubt real estate prices, stock prices, and commodity prices. Sooner or later, they will also begin to doubt the value of the paper bills that delivered them into debt and deprivation. When that happens, we will have a crisis. (Sean Goldsmith, analyst, Stansberry And Associates, Baltimore, Maryland August 12, 2011.) Foreign leaders like People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have sternly attacked the United States for failing to control its economy. Putin said Monday, August 7, 2011, that the United States was “leeching on the world economy,” and questioned the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve .currency. “They are living like parasites off the global economy and their monopoly of the U.S. dollar,” said Putin. “If over there (in America) there is a systemic malfunction, this will affect everyone. Countries like Russia and China hold a significant part of their reserves in American securities … There should be other reserve currencies.” (“Man has climbed Mount Everest, gone to the bottom of the ocean. He has fired rockets to the moon, split the atom, and achieved miracles in every field of human endeavor, except crime.” Auric  Goldfinger, 1964, GOLDFINGER) A USA Today/Gallup Poll in July, 2011 showed that just 7% of Americans believed their representatives in Washington were negotiating in good faith when it came to the debt-ceiling debate. What’s wrong with Congress – and the overwhelming majority emphatically agreed: Elected representatives are only out for their own interests, not those of the people. An economic meeting Tuesday, August 16, 2011, between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy converged on the current problem: New data show Europe’s economy grew slower than expected during the second quarter, with the German economy—so far, the best-performing in the Western world—completely stopping. The German GDP grew by only 0.1 percent between April and June, while the French economy did not grow at all. The average growth for the 17 euro-zone nations was 0.2 percent, behind expectations of 0.3 percent growth. Can the Germans solve the debt crisis? Currently, the total-debt-to-GDP ratio in the U.S. is almost 400%. (Total debt is the combined federal, state, municipal, corporate, and individual debt in the U.S.) Crushing debt loads have already destroyed the real estate market and led to an economic decline. For now, the government has stepped up to replace the private borrowing and spending. As a result, we’re now spending close to half our GDP merely on interest and government taxes. This simple fact should give everyone a reason to worry about the future of our country. Spending half your production each year on the government and interest payments doesn’t leave much to live on or invest for the future. In Europe, the problem is a bit different. Most of the debt in Europe is held by the big banks, not the sovereigns. Look at just two French banks, for example. Credit Agricole and BNP Paribas have combined deposits of a little more than 1 trillion euro. But they hold assets of 2.5 trillion euro. Those assets equal France’s entire GDP. And those are only two of France’s banks. Right now, the tangible capital ratios of these banks have fallen to levels that suggest they are probably bankrupt – like UniCredit in Italy and Deutsche Bank in Germany. BNP’s tangible equity ratio is 2.85%. Credit  Agricole’s  tangible equity ratio is 1.41%. (UniCredit’s  is  4.42%, and Deutchse Bank’s is 1.92%). These banks have long been instruments of state policy in Europe. They’ve funded all kinds of government projects and favored industries. Making loans is far more popular with politicians than demanding repayment for loans. As a result, these banks are left with nothing in the kitty to repay their depositors. If there’s a run on these banks (and there will be), how will they come up with money that’s owed? No one’s saying. The numbers are similar across most of Europe’s biggest banks. And the money that’s owed is staggering. The reason the market fears these debts so much is that there’s no clear mechanism to increasing the money supply enough to paper them over, as there is in the U.S. As strange as it may seem, investors prefer the U.S. Treasury market precisely because they know there’s nothing to stop the Fed from buying as many Treasury bonds as the market wants to sell. On the other hand, in Europe, there’s no guarantee whatsoever that the ECB will continue to buy the sovereign bonds – and there are even rules that explicitly forbid the ECB What’s the end game? How will this huge mess be sorted out? The essential problem is there’s too much credit and too little money. So a lot more money is going to be created.    (Porter Stansberry, S & A Digest, August 19, 2011)   Financier Tyler Durden mentions about June 20, 2011 that the derivative market and CDs’ around the globe has become a ticking time bomb to the tune of 600 billion to 1 trillion dollars. Ron Paul, Presidential candidate, said in July, 2011 that the national debt was about 14 trillion dollars, with net liabilities of 200 trillion dollars, and A Federal Reserve debt of 1.6 trillion; he called this a “government debt bubble” and that we must end “loose central bank monetary policy”. According to the Daily Market Briefing of December 9, 2011, the bailout given from the Federal Reserve amounted to 29.616 trillion dollars; Keith Fitz – Gerald, Chief Investing Strategist for Money Morning, spoke of $600 trillion in loss if the banks of Europe failed (October 12, 2011). Analyst Neil Garfield also mentioned a $600 trillion credit derivative crunch (November 29, 2010).	



(“Come and sing a song of freedom.…sing it like you never sang before….let it fill the air….tell the people everywhere.…we, the people here, don’t want a war..…”  Bobby Darin, Simple Song of Freedom, February 6, 1971).

 (The events involved in the financial debauchery of 2008 are far more complex than this short rendition, and all areas would need to be aired and investigated [and even challenged by opposing viewpoints for clarity and revision]).

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FAMILY

“The decline of the American family has reached critical and truly dangerous proportions….The breakdown of the family now touches virtually every American. It is not only the major source of social instability in the government..….the erosion of marriage, out-of-wedlock births, divorce, and fatherless children are now mainstream problems that threaten the general society.”  (Taken Into Custody, Stephen Baskerville, Cumberland House, 2007)

”As we will see,” said Baskerville, “the astonishing but incontrovertible fact is that with the exception of convicted criminals, no group  in  our society today  has fewer rights than  fathers….parents summoned to these courts have entered a nightmare world where children are abducted and exploited and even  abused by government order, where parents are forced to stay away from their children, prevented by the police from protecting them, incarcerated without charge or trial, and driven into bankruptcy and poverty, and where the Bill Of Rights may as well not exist.”

He continued: “Far from merely exploiting family breakdown after the fact then, domestic relations law has turned the American family into a game of ‘prisoners’ dilemma….willingly or not, all parents are now prisoners in this game….In short, state officials now possess the power to break up families by imposing divorce on happily married parents….Harsh as it may sound, it cannot be denied that these officials are united by one overriding interest; having children separated from their parents. Without the power to remove children from their parent – and most often the father – this industry cannot thrive, and these officials will have no business….put simply, the first principle of the divorce industry, the basic premise without which it has no reason to exist, is the removal of the fathers from the family. Once this is accomplished, the state is free to assume control over mothers and children as well.”

Baskerville quoted Rabbi Lapin in The American Enterprise in Lapin’s quoting of Adolf Hitler: Hitler said “The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasury of the people. As long as government is perceived as working for the benefit of children, the peopled will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty.”

Comparing Child Support enforcement to institutionalized Marxist principles (“from each according to his ability, to each according to her need….”), Baskerville says child support has nothing to do with “justice” but is interwoven in a long panoply of unusual punishments and punitive measures in a regime were the father is forced “to finance the filching of his own children”, becoming the subject of a national demonology as officially designated villains whose “guilt is assumed unquestionably by politicians, press, and public alike….Not since the collapse of the Weimar republic have the top leaders of a major western democracy used their public office to verbally attack millions of their own citizens.” As an example of ‘Soviet Logic’, Ronald Henry, says that coerced child support is not predicated on uniting children with Fathers but keeping them apart: “despite the touchy-feely language about family and stability and relationship, such decisions have nothing to do ‘with enforcing anything other than financial obligations’”.

Walter Olson wrote in The Litigation Explosion: “Lawyers have more power to ruin your life in America than they do in any other advanced country…..power without responsibility.”  “The legal system is increasingly run for the enrichment of lawyers and not the public,” writes columnist Robert Samuelson. “The idea that American courtrooms strive toward justice is no long taken seriously…the courts are greatly feared for their ability to ruin…” said the Wall Street Journal.

Family law today is the largest and fastest-growing sector of the civil judiciary, accounting for at least 35 percent of all litigation.  It is estimated that, as a percentage of the state cases filed between 1984 and 1995, family cases grew by 70 percent. Much of this growth is self-generating. “Child-support enforcement is now a $4 billion national industry in terms of the money expended,” says Baskerville, “in terms of the money it aims to collect, it is a multibillion-dollar enterprise with targets upward of $100 billion.”          

Some 24 million American children or about 34 per cent live in households without their fathers.  For African-American children that figure is 66 percent.  Nearly 2.5 million children join the ranks of the fatherless each year. Since automatic wage garnishing has been mandatory for all new child-support orders since 1992, the question arises as to how so many fathers allegedly avoid their payments? The principal method is by being unemployed. Sherri Heller, OCSE Director, says that about two-thirds of the debt and about two-thirds of the people who owe it earned less than $10,000 last year.  It appears that most of the debt is owed by extremely poor debtors.                      

As of 2018, the Debt Continues to Grow

A somber reminder remained as of 2017 that the national debt—relating back to 2008—continued to multiply by the millions of dollars every minute, despite what the present President had done.

WE TOO ARE HUMAN

(“Surely, if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity – pity for those witless souls that suffer our domination”, H.G. Wells speaking of the Martians that attacked and almost destroyed the earth in his story The War Of  The Worlds.)    

Poor people (including Socialists and persons on the Left), however, are not all the evil, heartless, deprived people I seem to depict in the above remarks on Socialists (certainly, most do not knowingly consider themselves as Communists). Neither are lower–income and poor people included as knowingly evil. Most are warm, caring, kind people who see the more elitist and aristocratic areas and people of society as the truly evil elements. The real witches cackling about the caldron may be closer to home and even more deeply implanted. Concerning the “common  poor  person”  (and I am one of them, by the way): I had the opportunity to live with the poor in my trips to Jamaica, West Indies.  They, as john F. Kennedy said, breathe the same air, have blood in their bodies as well as the next human, a beating heart, and the pains and hopes that all other humans do. They have feelings of love, passion, fear, hunger as other life-forms that we call “human beings.”

A father of a very wealthy family took his son to visit a “poor” country family for one day as a lesson  (the kind of bravado that only  rich people can provide: sort of, “if you can hold your head up with magnanimity after being kicked in the nuts by a Clydesdale, then you can call yourself a man” mentality) about how  ‘good of a life’ their rich life-style entailed. After a day of visiting, the father smugly asked the son: “What did you think of being poor for a day?”  The son smiled and began: “Well, we have one dog – but they had four! We have a pool that runs to the middle of our garden: but they had a creek that never ends!  We havea patiothat runs to the middle of our front yard – they have a front yard that runs to the horizon!”

Barron’s Book notes at www.pinkmonkey.com spoke of the empathy that novelist John Steinbeck had for the poor and down-trodden (my mother had left my father’s collection of Steinbeck’s books to me upon her death): “Closely related to the Common Man theme is Steinbeck’s creation of a naturalist or realistic atmosphere. Steinbeck is not a romantic who makes a big deal about people or natural wonders. Like a scientist, he observes things as they are and sees people as just a small part of the overall natural world.”

Adds www.cyberessays.com: “throughout history, less fortunate people have been set apart or shunned from the general public. In The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, this statement holds true. Through-out the book, all of the less fortunate people are treated like they aren’t human.  This is not much different than how our society is now….in The Grapes of Wrath, and in the present time, the general public has set the less fortunate apart from themselves without even realizing it….”

Latoya Peterson, commented on the report Insight Center for Community and Economic Development, “As the report explains the key to financial stability is wealth (for example, assets, savings, stock holdings, business income) which can be passed from generation to generation to ease the path for those struggling in their youth. However, for more than 46 percent of single-parent black households that have zero or negative wealth, there is literally nothing to pass on….”  Says Megan Cottrell: “..…(we) lift as we climb, but we’re also bogged with baggage – positive or negative – the baggage our parents left us.”

The number of people in poverty rose to a record level in  2009, 14.3 percent, a national rate which is the highest since 1994  and, among the work-age poor, the highest level since 1960s in the U.S. population, grown by more than 130 million  in that time. Recently, a shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty or 12.7 percent of the population – the highest percentage in the developed world. Photographer Glenn H. Austin said 32.9 million. Sandy Franks of the Taipan Publishing Group said that in November, 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, poverty in America hit a new high: 43.6 million. Each year since 2001 their numbers have grown. During George Bush’s Administration an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line: yet they are not examples of the destitute or even the unemployed; some work and have two jobs. Films such as Once Upon A time In America show the poor in searinghonesty.

The United States had 403 billionaires in March, 2010: the highest number in the world with an estimated $1.3 trillion dollars total; but that was quickly outdistanced in 2011 with 413 and a $1.5 trillion total.

Fox News on Varney & Company television said 0n 12 -15- 2011 at 8:23 a.m. CST that 49 million American citizens lived in poverty. MSNBC “Morning Joe” listed at 6:31 a.m. CST on January 12, 2012 that the figure was 46.2 million Americans, and 50.7 were uninsured.

Photographer Glenn Austin went about State Street visiting the homeless (www.inside-voices.com) and had this to say: “They are not cardboard – cutout- poor people; they are real, living, breathing, human beings. They have problems and feelings…..they are the discards of our society: the poor, the veterans, the homeless, the drug addicts, the alcoholic, the runaways, the abused, the unemployable, that nobody wants.  They deserve something better than the lives they lead now, but these photos are not about how bad their lives are.  These pictures are mostly how good their lives are….stop and talk to these folks that you have previously been ignoring.  You will discover that they are just people.  Contrary to popular myth, poor people do not enjoy being poor, and they do not enjoy panhandling.  They panhandle because they are poor….jails and prisons are filled with poor people.  (There are very few rich people in prison;: I guess they don’t commit any crime?) They give each other social and physical support, acceptance and human touch. ‘We are family; the State Street family,’ one person said. Disabled people on crutches, quite a few who are mentally ill, can come to State Street and find unconditional acceptance, not as freaks, but as human beings”.  One is reminded of scenes in the movie Down And Out In Beverly Hills.

“We are complex beings. I believe that there is a great deal more to us than  the ubiquitous battleground of good versus bad,” said Charles S. Weinblatt, “Most of us are not one or the other, but both. We are beautiful and ugly, soothing and terrifying, brutal and caring: we love and we depose…I believe that people find it easy to hate because tolerance requires effort. Haters live with haters in a community of malevolence…..” (www.enotalone.com)                      

There “is”a lot Moriarty Wild is correct about   –   and a lot he is not(if only on a personal, private level). It is hoped that this lengthy treatise, if only scratching the surface of the debates and problems inherent herein, can shed some light. I thank him for the opportunity to speak my mind on these matters. I hope that, even we as Marvin Udalls, will (at least) agree that differences of opinions are allowed.

PART V

Arlene (my wife since 1985) and I, as well as some of the members at St. Trinity, were quite concerned with Wild when Wild spoke of an illness – possibly cancer. There was talk about getting him free or reduced medical help. I personally tried to find some patient care for Wild. Also, the pastor and I discussed having the parish nurse visit Wild, or other avenues of help. I hope that it was nothing as serious as that. From what I last heard, Wild’s pains were related to pinched nerves. Now, I know how that can be after dealing with a herniated disc and surgery of my back. Wild was talking about the expenses involved (I believe you were out of work at the moment, and we were trying to map out the possible avenues you might take as suggestions). There appeared to be some miscommunication; It is hard to interpret everything that is going on about Wild, especially when a number of people are involved and there is unplanned and hidden information involved. This is why good communication and information is always necessary.

(And to mention again, in September, 2010, after several meetings, the laity voted to ‘close down’ the church as soon as possible due to lax membership and rising expenses; fortunately, near 2012, a new Pastor was elected and is attempting to revive the strength of that congregation)   

In so many ways, I understood Wild’s alarm at and disgust with “the human situation.” I’ve about given up on pleasing people – “costumer service.” Those humans can be hard to handle and even “devastating.” But I find myself caring for many of them some-times: strangest doggone thing. People can be pretty rough and raw (“Society is full of hypocrites, arrogance, self-righteousness, thoughtlessness ignorance, envy, etc. These are things evident and rampant in our society,” said Me, Atheist in www.amplicate.com, “and these weren’t mentioned just because of the Seven Deadly Sins and that religion thing”.): I have seen and even have been victim of immense cruelty of humans by humans time and time again (if only I could tell you). To that extent: your point is well taken. Why should we forgive anyone? Because we are human also, and we make mistakes – sometimes, great mistake! “We think that when we forgive, we need to reconcile….for those whose lives have been tragically altered by the mindlessness of others, this process can take a long time because the wound could be very deep,” said Rosanna C. Rogacion, “Forgiveness is a process and it is one that must not be rushed.  The important thing is to take the first step: make the decision to forgive……” We are going to be here in this life only a short time. And when you get a certain age, you are so tired of the struggle: you don’t care who wins the “boxing match” and you just want to turn the television off. Does that make me a “humanist”, a “sophist”, a “Communist” or just “hissed”? But, still, you wish for some “hope” – and you dream  (“Take a bolt out of the blue….Fate  steps  in and sees you through.…when you wish upon a star your dreams come true….”, On Disney Songs The Satchmo Way,  Louis Armstrong, May 16, 1968).   Please keep in touch.…….

“To my mind, there is no better demonstration of the folly of human concepts than this distant image of our tiny world. To me it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and perceive and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known…For small creatures such as when the universe is bearable only through love.”’  (Carl Sagan)

IT Doesn’t Get Any Easier

Writing an autobiography from memory, instantaneously and without revisions (hoping someone will later pick up the pieces and do the grammatical and prose housekeeping), one tends to leave out large “gaps” in the telling, often hopping around in hop-scotch-fashion, causing some incoherency in the tales of one’s life. I will attempt to fill in some of the more recent and concurrent happenings since writing Part V.

Missing are the 1960s—with expectations were confused, dreary but a teenager could always hang his hopes on music like TELESTAR, the mysteries of TWILIGHT ZONE television, and the passing of time reading science-fiction and the promises it gave for the future—but also the under-scoring of real life terror and fear that seemed to encompass the present.  (“Telstar” is a 1962 instrumental written and produced by Joe Meek for the English band the Tornados.)

Sometime around 1983

Stephen Erdmann: I can add some coincidental comments. I worked in a plastics factory that had a Teamster Union (apparently having little consequence or influence) and was “wide open” in almost every other way: there was gross dating of employees and bosses galore, sexual allurement on the part of both sexes, and torrid stories about the escapes the bosses conducted with the female employees. When a particular boss’s birthday came around, they would gather selected employees (included the Union Representative shop steward) into the lunchroom, and have a paid ‘stripper/dancer’ come in to celebrate the boss’s birthday (I swear!). The three big factors the company had going for them was the bought-and-sold Union that would have done nothing to discipline the situation, and the ‘fear’ of employees losing their job (which many employees desperately needed; in fact, with fire-at-will laws [and a next to nothing Union] employees were being dismissed like flies in an electric debugger), and lastly, the eagerness for some employees to participate in the fluid dating scenario in the plant. I had other jobs in which a similar situation existed. It wasn’t until one particular employee as a ‘runt’ was selected as a whipping-boy, did the crap hit the fan, and most stood behind management to cover-up the true facts; sad reality in the real world (at least, in America in the 1980’s).

EVENTS OF 2018

Private

_Confidential

_{(Unless “I” deem otherwise)}

Letter to Movie Star Phyllis Smith

By Steve Erdmann

Hello Phyllis,

Your old-time neighbor and friend from your childhood here speaking to you, I guess you’d call me a voice from the past.

Since once again seeing you several years ago suddenly appearing at celebrations at the homes of Roger Bauer and other family relations (Roger, being another old-time friend and currently a brother-in-law), many things have happened to both you and I over the years, causing some distance from the times I spent on Michigan Avenue as a next-door neighbor to your Mom and Dad, Glenda and Loy Smith and your brother Ronald.  My life has not been as illustrious as yours (seemingly) over the ensuring years, but still interesting.  Never once, never, however, have I looked back on my years as your former neighbor with disdain, shame, contempt or foreboding to my time spent with your family and the companionship with “Ronnie”— dim, enginn, wala, aucun, zaden, wala — none. Yet, despite this, during the last few years, especially beginning with the time I went to St. Anthony Hospital to visit your mother, along with John Erdmann (my nephew), pertaining to your mom’s broken hip and surgery, like a creeping mist rolling along the forest surface and foliage, bits and pieces of ‘rumor’ and ‘gossip’ have kept popping up that seem disjointed, inexplicable, bizarre and unexplained to me. Perhaps we should spend some time here, at this point, reviewing, questioning, and examining some of these peculiarities in hopes of finding solutions to those mysteries, or, perhaps, explanations that could possibly reconcile the events.

When at the hospital trying to see your mom, she appeared in great pain, and I believe she has been calling out for help from the hospital staff, sadly coincided with my and John’s stepping into her cubicle to see her. Trying to be a patriarch (which I, indeed, am in the hierarchy of our, the Erdmann, family, despite whether you or anyone else agrees with that historical fact), I asked you to please keep me informed of your mother’s condition. Even at that point, I was rebuffed somewhat unkindly, and I got the indication of some discordant tensions.  Again, my remarks, and my intentions for making those comments, and gestures, was ‘sincere’ and presented as concern for your mother’s well-being. There were no evil connotations or anything bad about my remarks.

Let’s go back a few years and months in my recollections and see some other incidents that would give ‘focus’ to the events I am about to described.

Occasionally, John Erdmann would announce, either by phone or message that our family was trying to get together at Pietro’s Restaurant on Chippewa Avenue in the county, making an invite. Sometimes, my half-brother was invited and his sons, other times, different people whom John somehow felt would add flavor to these family gatherings. A few times, I believe, there were birthday celebrations that included John’s mother and, even ‘your’ mother, surprisingly. I never did mind that, as being a friendly gesture, and I considered your mom as close to our family because of being neighbors at one time. If I am not mistaken, there was a lady there who was, in actuality, Trudy Williamson, also a neighbor from Michigan Avenue. One time I jokingly asked your mom if some our (Ronnie’s and myself) ‘antics’ as kids bothered her: she replied something like “nah, you were just kids.”  And that pretty well sufficed the general sentiment at that time—this was about eleven years or so ago.

Fast forward to John and Gina’s Anniversary celebration about 10 years ago at Crusoe’s Restaurant in south St. Louis where I also met your mom and dad once again. Your mom seemed in good spirits and was proudly showing me photos of you in your new job at the studios of The Office.  I also greeted your dad rather warmly, which sadly was the last time I saw him before he died (I would have gladly gone to his funeral, but, here again, I was excluded mysteriously and no one informed me; it would have been nice to have seen Ronnie again [John tells me that he asked Ronnie if he missed me, and Ronnie has said ‘yes’: what has happened since that remark?]). 

Now, fast forward again to about three or four Christmases’ ago when Roger Bauer held a celebration at his home and also you and your mother attended.  Your mom appeared to be her usual self, and my wife and I remained somewhat sedate in the background.  At one point your mom came over and presented my Christmas card that I mailed to her that had a home and snow scene on the front, and she asked him if that was my house. Of course, it wasn’t, as many Christmas cards are stock-features and relate in no way to actual scenes.  But your mom seemed pleasant, and hopefully, so did myself.

(No, Phyllis, I have no mansion or fancy home.  The family home I ‘had’ with fireplace and other more rustic settings—bought and paid for with a lot of over-time work—was destroyed when my first wife filed for divorce and the legal cabal and racket got their mitts into my affairs and bank account—I had to make drastic living standard adjustments and bought a much cheaper and smaller home, which I have remained in to this day, and will probably be my second and last home until I die. Many a divorced man, caught in the web of the ‘divorce mill’ and industry, often become ‘slaves of the court,’ and their private and personal circumstances or contorted often for the worse.)

Fast forward to a following Christmas celebration, after your mom’s accident, and after a special Thanksgiving celebration given by myself at the Lemp Restaurant, and I was greeting your mom and yourself in Roger’s basement in which I ‘thought’ was being quite cordial and respectful, realizing your mother was still recuperating and still had difficult moving about, I said, holding her hand, “Now, you take care of yourself, okay?” Your mother exploded into a frenzy of anger that quite shocked me. Usually, when a response is given out like that, it means, “something is in the air,” something unbeknownst is going on, causing such an inappropriate remark.  There was absolutely no evil intentions meant by myself,  dim, enginn, wala, aucun, zaden, wala, none—but something was amiss. It hurt me and I was in pain, shocked, at that moment as I had, despite the entire rumor, gossip and hard feelings, unbeknownst to me at that time, looked upon the Smiths as my “Second Family” next door.  I spent more time there on certain days than I did in my mom’s house, my own house.

(The Lemp Restaurant celebration was my way of repaying back my family for the several times they sponsored celebrations, and I felt it was my ‘turn’ to commit myself to showing the same.  I believe it was a fine celebration for Thanksgiving, unless someone, somehow, in their misguided endeavors has found some inappropriate evil in it.  Janet Erdmann – my sister-in-law by direct blood relationship — seemed to enjoy herself greatly, last big celebration before she passed away [speaking of poor Janet, I recall a younger John Erdmann, upon returning from a dinner-out event with them, of which I treated, John sarcastically referred to his mother as ‘that looney.’ Much more about toxic family relations will come later in this syllabus {John certainly changed his viewpoint about his mother as he mentioned her attendance and celebrating at the Lemp meeting and said many nice things for the funeral of his mother}] Sad to say, upon continually discovering more toxic gossip, ridicule and cruelty in people mixed in my family sitting, it probably will be my ‘last’ event by myself.).

I suppose I could have selected a different expression like “nice seeing you,” “happy holiday” or some such—none of those would seem to fit the moment.  And, looking back now, I feel that no other expression would have made a difference as there was something bizarre going on, as I said, ‘something in the air.’  Your further co-greeting to me upon saying hello in the basement was, “I didn’t get you a Christmas gift, Steve, because I didn’t know that you were going to come.” It didn’t bother me that you excluded me from a gift, but your mother’s outburst did. And the further thought occurred to me: why wouldn’t I come? I had been sent a “physical invitation,” I was a genetically and officially a member of the Erdmann family, a brother-in-law, an Uncle and a direct relation in the family: why was it such a surprise to you? 

Such incidents have continued right up until very recent times, unfortunately. We had a funeral ceremony in the March of 2018 with the death of John and Christy’s son.  Someone called me and I was invited: Suit and all (unlike Roger who wore a Batman or Superman tee-shirt),   I had just gotten out of the hospital (same date and time as the deceased’s  trip to the same hospital) for a gall-bladder operation (at 74, it does not come easy) and was in much pain from just a day or so earlier. Darlene announced she had such an operation, and I was eager to talk to her and compare notes.

From the minute I walked into the parlor, I started to receive glaring looks from some family members, many not in suits.  John was obviously in pain and unhappy, desperate to see I walk in and I consoled him briefly and discussed the incident, of which I had little knowledge. From the time I wished John and Christy condolences to the time I consoled Gina to the time I walked into the parlor luncheonette, I got the feeling I was shunned because I wore a suit (what a crime!): Or was there something ‘else’? There is always ‘something else,’ I am beginning to understand and discover.  It was almost as if “I” had been the cause of the victim’s death, MiiMii Perez actual hid and glared at me (I realize it was a very depressing and solemn occasion, but ‘glaring’?), you and Darlene skittled off to the lunch room, whereupon I discovered you two and Roger in some deep conversation, which (guess what?) apparently had been about yours truly because the first comment out of your mouth was “what year did you get out of the orphanage?”

(As far as I recall, I came over to the table, quite innocently, to discuss and compare Darlene’s gall bladder surgery against mine, I had no idea I was interrupting your private interrogation about me.)

(I went into the Lutheran orphanage about 4-years of age, or close to it, and must have come out of there about 7 or 8-years-of-age, which brings us to another situation where family members really show their asininities and ignorance: guys, it was a Lutheran home for lost or indigent children, it was not a ‘reformatory,’ or a jail, but had uses for all sorts of families and children, it was not a criminal facility, and the ignoramuses in my family that abound, don’t have the slightest clue as to why my mom put me in there, and one family members was so asinine as to ask: “Did you do something ‘wrong?’” Of course, I explained why my Mom found herself in a situation where she felt it best to put me into the orphanage till I was old enough to go to school and stay by myself.  Not that it will mean anything to the pompous asses that claim to be righteous Christians but are totally ignorant of the facts.)

Here are some March 29, 2018 comments I posted on Facebook, that I posted along with a group photo of myself and some fellow children staying at the orphanage (see downloaded photos at the end of this article):

Here is the “Lineup” of some of my fellow felons and criminals jailed in the orphanage, wrong-doers all, especially the one top far right, dastardly-acting reprobates out to cause terror and crime to adults, SE. ************* As to those family and friends (?) that are attaching to and utilizing ‘rumor’ about my being in an orphanage for three years at the age of six, please get your facts straight, as to what I did “wrong.” A six-year old is hardly accountable for any dastardly-done deed, but other than that your ‘witnesses’ weren’t there and could not possibly know ‘anything’ but rank speculation and, what is now appearing to be, cruel and idle-minded talk. If you want to get fresh and real ‘facts,’ talk to my cousin Betty Banjak (and her husband George) that were on the scenes and part of my life back then and can testify first-hand as to what happened. I talked to George recently and repeated this rumor, and he said “No, Steve, you did absolutely nothing wrong to bring that about, it was all caused by your mother and some the adults at that time, you did absolutely nothing wrong.”

Betty Banjak lived with my Mom on Castleman Avenue and was like a co-parent, and knew intimately some of the problems. Here are some facts for your “Case File”: 1) my father, Steve, died when I was 10 months old  and my Mom could no longer be a stay at home mother. She had to go to work, to adequately support a household, and with bothers not able to stay with me, and relatives in the same fix, not enough avenues were open: she would leave me by myself part of the day—-this did not work out so well when the neighbors discovered I was home alone at that tender age, and some were threatening to file complaints with the city. 2) It did not help when I was able to escape now and then through an unlocked kitchen window and roam the streets until the police picked me up (eventually, my grandmother Bork could babysit me until that time I was in school and could stay by myself for a few hours).

The orphanage was the best solution as far as babysitting, they had all the facilities and care one could need (though I was heavily heart-broken for those years). It also gave my mother time to sort her personal life out (and that entails some other rumor, if you are interested to accumulate for your “Case File”). Of course, being a problem like that to ‘adults,’ I suppose is a ‘great crime,’ but four-to-six-year-old children are noted for being grand criminals and doing those criminal things to grown adults.

George and Betty said they, as well as other relatives, when learning of my Mom’s decision to use the orphanage as a babysitter, were very willing to take me in for those years and help out, but my Mom couldn’t be dissuaded….and then, maybe the city had more to do with her situation than you “adults” were aware. Did “I do something wrong?” Oh sure, like so many other fellow 2 to 6-year-old’s I met in the orphanage, criminals all, out to blacken the lives of “pure, sanctimonious, holy” adults. Get your facts straighten, or bring forth the source of your accusation, or remain silent and ignorant. ********* Now, here is another sick, sordid alley for your investigators of childhood children gangsters: My father, Steve Erdmann, sr., died when I was 10-months-old and the death certificate said he died from “fluoride poisoning.” What a tidbit for our sanctimonious investigators: A 10-month-old baby poisoning his own father: think of the implications! No, it was something much more mundane than that extravagance: He died the year and the same time that the State of Missouri decided to place fluoride into the drinking water of its citizens, and the fluoride reacted with my father’s ulcerated and ill stomach condition. But, hey, you can’t be too careful about those 10-month-old to eight-year-old-child suspects, they might actually find something “bad” us adults might really be doing and make us look “bad.” Shucks, back to the family mystery novel.

Stephen Erdmann to Donna Maxwell: Well, Donna, they haven’t gotten that far yet in regards to my father died when I was 10-months old, it takes time and more sardonic imagination, and gossip, to get to that point—so maybe I shouldn’t have given them ideas. But they did ask me “if I had done something ‘bad'” for my mother to have put me in an orphanage. Weird. I don’t remember it like that, neither do some of my relatives (like Betty and George Banjak), rather they remember relatives feuding and fighting and nobody wanting to take me in as a babysitting situation, so when I did get out of the house, I guess my mom threw in the ‘rag’ and used the orphanage in as much as a solution. Actually, I had a lot of care and even fun out there for those two or three years. But who and ‘why’ do people think up these things and what motivates them? It is almost as if some kind of adulthood-guilt lies in their lives that they even have to think up such fiction! George — and my late half-brother Ed — make a few illusion to ‘friends’ my mom gathered around her while I stayed out on Manchester; now there is something their loose imagination can play with! Hey, go for it!

Stephen Erdmann  Donna Maxwell:  I didn’t exactly find anybody to play with. Rather, I recall roaming the neighbor crying, “Mom! Momma!” I remember it was rather cold or cool and I was in pajama shorts. Finally, a family called me over to their porch and asked questions and a police cruiser came to pick me up, my half-brother showed up at the station and bicycled me home in his front basket. Looking back, it was all kind of amusing (only those years out at the orphanage seemed very gloomy at times).

 — At Lutheran Orphanage on Manchester Road, St. Louis, Mo.

The time and setting for me in the orphanage was somewhat different than the latter years that you probably remember of the 60s; the “atomic” age was upon us, and I remember sitting in the lunch room watching the atomic tests on the television that was provided for the children and adults. We had “duck and cover” exercises to do, in fear of atomic bombs being dropped. News events were posted on a bulletin board and had pictorials of the Korean War and various mafia shootings.  It was the early dawning of the ‘space age’ and the news talked about the progress of rockets and V-2 simulations by captured Nazi scientists (mainstay news, until 1957 and the orbiting of Sputnik). It made an impression on me. Not to mention Saturday TV fare with SPACE CADETS and SPACE PATROL.[2]

Despite my home-sickness, the orphans  and children had all that they needed: a farm with rows and rows of fresh crops, hogs and cows for milk and fresh meat (slaughtered right on the farm), apple trees for apple sauce—and in the summer, picnics galore right on the premises, Ferris Wheel, tilt-a-whirl, you name it: Schooling and teachers, onsite nurse and medical facility, trips to circuses, the now defunct Manchester movie drive-in, horses to ride—quite a bit for lonely children.  Not that It meant a heck of a lot to me at that time. 

And I was not “abandoned” — My Mom, grandparents, brothers, relatives, came to see me regularly on weekends in frequent cycles.  Eventually, yes, actually, I was allowed to come home on the weekends to stay with my Mom and my brother John Erdmann, all tailored to my eventually coming home to be on my own and go to school, and also, at one point, stay with my Grandma Bork, who eventually consented for me to live with her some time before entering St. Trinity.  Of course, only a certain segment of society will be familiar with and sympathetic to the plight of the “working mom.” All this orphanage stuff happened in a span of two to three years, yet my mother’s employment struggles continued for a much longer period.

Were you ever been a “working mother,” Phyllis, did you ever care for children on a daily basis, especially at a tender and infant age? Or, were you protected from this segment of society, of which there is a large, large portion. Were you aware of the plight of “working mothers” in the late 1940s and early 1950s, a special time of hardship for mother and widows?

Not that this information is ‘really’ going to make one darn bit of difference to those who have dedicated and preconceived notions and disjointed facts already lined-up in their heads to slander, defame or further use their evil-thinking to distort and attack. However, for you and me, Phyllis, I will be happy to answer any or questions in a private meeting, in hopes of filling out the truth, until that time it becomes obvious as to those who might be a real enemy and not a friend, in some insuring intrigue and gossip. Contact me at any time. 

But all this, still deeper (or, higher), lurk some formidable questions.  For all the present ‘intrigue’ and ‘gossip’ being discovered and seeping out from the cracks, how come I don’t see my “Second Family” as a bad part of my life but have fond and happy memories of the Smiths? Strange, isn’t it? Where you are finding all kinds of childhood scandal, I remember pleasant playtimes, happy adventures and exciting Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn rustic pleasure with Ronald Smith. Let’s move along and recall some of those pleasant childhood memories that either you were not a part of or deliberately now fail to see.

The trips with the Smiths to Kohler City to visit the town large sale shop and pavilion.  Visits to the Broadway Drive-in Theater (now defunct).  A picnic with Loy’s Baptist church to Meramec Caverns. The trip to the Lemay baseball field and Heine-Meinie’s 4^th of yearly July fireworks. Glenda took Stevie to a relation’s rodeo event with the relative riding an actual broking-bronco horse that he owned. Ronnie and Steve’s trips along the railroad track down past the shipyards and Titanium smelters all the way out to Cliff Cave Road where we explored the cave, and climbed up to the bluff and have a cook-out on the cliff. Bicycle trips to Jefferson Barracks several times a year (on one trip, we discovered an old wood-plank-encased ‘fox hole’ along with old Army Canteen food tin cans back in a wooded area—now gone because of the  veterans’ cemetery).  Loy’s church service and baptismal events at the Southway Theater in Lemay.

The three to four or more times a year that Ronnie and Steve went to the famous Admiral Boat on the riverfront and took river cruises; Trips to downtown St. Louis for adventure and shopping. The ‘Diggers’ Club’ in your dirt floor basement were we worked many days digging down until Loy said to fill it up. The “Rocket Club” where we made and ‘flew’ actual rockets from and  in the vacant lot next to the Coca-Cola plant, some more successful than others: but they flew —one right out of your backyard barbecue pit — right at dusk — a beautiful sight as it climbed into the sky. Took several minutes before we heard it hit the street over on Minnesota Avenue.  Must have gone very high. Ray Carter was a witness to that one (ah, yes, the infamous Ray Carter, I will have much to say about him shortly). The tent-‘camp-outs’ that Ronnie and I did in his backyard and my back yard: along with snacks and my telescope to watch the night skies. We both swore that if you stared long enough at various stars, they move eventually ‘move.’ The “tree climbers,” we had a favorite tree at the corner of Tesson and Michigan at which we’d practice our climbing skills. The magnificent ‘two-stage’ rocket launch at the vacant lot (electronic ignition, miner’s helmet, and all)[3] out of a ‘launching tube”: blew the whole apparatus to smithereens, and Loy came following after this announcing this was the end of our ‘rocket career.’[4]

The many times Ronnie and I stood on the Reilly Street Bridge and watched the Admiral steamboat on the river and its calliope musician perform loudly on its top deck. Ronnie discovered a neighbor ‘mutt’ running wild, of which Ronnie took a liking to, fondness to, and trained and kept the dog for a few days. The dog would follow him about and take any instruction Ronnie gave him, the two had an obvious attraction and affection to each other. Sadly, your mom and dad somehow made a determination that the dog had a ‘disease’ and would have to be “put away.”  Ronnie was heartbroken. I know the feeling, having had to put-down Sparky our pet dog for almost 12 years in the 60s, after some unbeknownst punks had dropped by to visit and attacked Sparky, breaking his spine. Poor sparky had a heck of time, including the times Othie Wright, from across the alley, kept trespassing through our yard, despite Keep Out and Beware of Dog signs and a chain on Sparky. We had to get Sparky out of the dog pound that one time, begin a loyal protector of property, Sparky bit Othie (Sparky had all his shots) and Sparky was arrested by the city and put in jail: but I don’t believe Wright trespassed again. (I pray for Sparky’s forgiveness, every day, as he was a completely innocent ‘person,’  loyal, caring, loving, as so many pets are, and so much better than the ‘humans’ walking the earth.)  I know how Ronnie felt. [5]

The “Cannon Club,” inspired by my reading Jules Verne’s FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON and Verne’s mention of a giant rocket and cannon, and this was a prelude to the “Rocket Club” that came a little bit later. Ronnie went a little further than I did and invented a Civil War-type model of cannon on wheels; I stuck with straight-up pipes and wooden bullets. I shot many of those off in the backyard and that may have caused Darlene’s recollection of someone firing a gun “out back,” and not Ray Carter.

The “Beatnik Club” probably was created in that time period when the Beatniks came on the scene. And we constructed a room down in your basement where we could listen to jazz music and do art and poetry. In fact, I asked Ronnie to paint a nighttime scene of a symbolic road leading towards a horizon bright moon; typical Beatnik stuff.  Also inspired by my late brother John’s ‘art’ and ‘painting’ ambition, with which he had done many paintings, many created working late into the night. John switched to Cleveland High because he heard they had a good art program. It was my Brother John Erdmann’s interest in jazz and art that led me into a similar interest in writing and the paranormal.

Likewise followed by the “Go Cart Club,” (this venture led to ‘speed’ contests on the slope of the downhill Riley Avenue part of the bridge—and Ronnie fell victim to us boys pushing him too hard down the hill and he lost control and crashed; not the first crash the boys encountered, by the way)[6] “River Raft Club,” “The Rocket Room” (simulating the pilot cabin of a spaceship with electronic dials and the whole bit), the “Tree Climbing Club” (the corner tree at Michigan and Tesson, as I already mentioned) and not the least, the “Hikers’ Club.”

Midge and Red, neighbors directly across the alley from our house, address on Minnesota, were typical Carondeleters of the 50s and 60s, and good friends to my mom and stepdad.  Midge was, of course, a midget, and Red was the taller of the two.  Midge had the fame of playing one of the “Munchkins” in the movie THE WIZARD OF OZ (1930s version). Whenever the movie came on television, she would run up to the screen and would point herself out on the TV set.  Both Midge and Red shared the normal fare of being part of the Carondelet scene with factory and household jobs that most in our neighborhood held, and, of course, the corner tavern on Michigan and Primm where a lot of the neighborhood would gather (and held many unpleasant, scary, frightening memories for me).

Dave Schroth and I had had joined the Carondelet Historical Society for many years (Dave, much more intently than I), and for a period of time, would go about Carondelet (and other neighborhoods) photographing and documenting older sites and homes and interviewing the homeowners about the history of the home or business. In a few moments of inspiration, I called your mother, thinking of the history of the building in which your family had lived, but also the rich tales you family could tell about being a south St. Louisan, as I esteemed in my memories of the times with my Second Family. It would have been like old times, I thought to myself. Sadly, your mother brushed us off, and I believe the second call was a promise to get together “far in the future.”  Well, that happened, but, sadly, in a strange and cryptic way.

Not to underestimate our almost weekly trips to the local Michigan Theater a few blocks up Michigan Avenue where we had our imaginations stoked by the continual venue of movies of the 1950s, many science-fiction, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, RIDERS TO THE STARS, THE THING (my brother, John, originally took me to see this movie the first time at the Shenandoah Theater on Grand), GONE WITH THE WIND, EARTH VERSUS THE FLYING SAUCERS, THE HOUSE OF WAX, and so many typical 1950s movie fare.  All of this was adjunct to the similar television programs we were watching at the time, such as SPACE PATROL, SPACE CADETS, TARZAN, LASSIE, and a long spectrum of 1950s media production.

My media ‘training’ actually began in the Lutheran orphanage where the kids could watch in the lunch room televised atomic bomb tests out in the Nevada proving grounds. Of course, we had a number of television sets there, and we saw the usual 50’s media fare of THE WIZARD OF OZ, THE LONE RANGER, MR. PEEPERS, THE LIFE OR REILLY and HOWDY DOODY (we even had a political campaign amongst the children of Mr. Bluster verses Howdy Doody for Mayor of Doodyville. One of the television stations got wind of the campaign and had a Piper cub plane fly over and drop voting leaflets over the orphanage). 

EARTH VERSUS THE FLYING SAUCERS, as I recall, was a particular inspiration, as Ronnie and I would go over to the large vacant lot just south of Loughborough (now a shopping plaza) and ‘play act’ the Army defending against the saucers, the two of us running over grassed mounds of dirt there, throwing imaginary hand grenades and shooting rifles.

I recall the day that, the then,  poor Bobby Williamson was one of the children that was jumping off a makeshift ‘wood plank’ they invented over at the box-factory vacant lot and it did not go well for him and he landed on his back breaking both of his arms.  

Recalled, also, are the many times we walked by 7905 Minnesota, after our neighborhood ‘ventures,’ and passed a child parked on the porch there in a wheelchair—the child, with a deformation due to his hydrocephalus. The child appeared to be happy and eager to see us and always attempted, in not speaking well, to mumble some salutation, of which we giggled to ourselves and ignored him and walked on past. Like so many of our other childhood ‘antics,’ I now regret that greatly and tell myself we should have attempted to be kind to this child who  obviously was in need of love and attention.  We should have been kind to Mary Swartz across the street, despite the gossip and childish remarks about her “mustache,” as all she wanted was kindness, love and affection.

I recall the time my mom asked Loy, Wesley, and my stepdad to help tear-down an old shed in the back yard of 7910 Michigan, and they worked late into the night, seeing their deconstruction job by campers’ lanterns.

And then there is the case of that mean ole’ Raymond Carter; I’ve heard him referenced several times by yourself and Darlene Faulkner as a terrorist from the past.  He was a pretty mischievous child, of that there is no doubt, as were many in the Carondelet neighborhoods, especially those who were living fatherless and with somewhat destitute mothers. Many lived around and right up the street from us, classic cases of the Carondelet class of people. You were a classic case. I defy anyone living in the area to claim a pristine and aristocratic background. But times change and lives move ahead.

Since those ‘very early’ days, Ray has left behind many of the things that you and Darlene are trying to ‘nail’ to his hide (like some are trying to do to myself). Ray spent several years in the Army serving in Germany in a Tank Division (I saw his photographs), serving with honors, and then marrying to his childhood sweetheart (as my brother, John, did with Janet Bauer), enjoying many grandchildren, owning now a 12-room-home and also quite a few acres in the Missouri countryside. Also in the ensuing years, Ray (like your dad, Loy) has embraced the Baptist religion and also become a minister of the various churches to which he belonged, Bayless Baptist Church at the present time. He has talked about the various ministerial services and activities he had been a part of, family care, neighborhood ministry, baptisms, outreach services, caroling, others.  Ray would, at times, walk about the pond at Carondelet Park and talk about his church and Christian Gospel in his visit with the other visitors. Yes, this is the ‘same’ terrorist Ray Carter that you, Darlene, a few others, so fondly remember with long noses and tinges of contempt.

Recently, I was invited to have a luncheon with Ray, his wife, and several other members of his church at Miss Sherry’s Restaurant: they all seemed solid people from Lemay, south St. Louis, and thereabouts, many retired and having sober and also congenial stories to tell.

Ray (as do I) recalled many of the same childhood events on Michigan Avenue, clearly, and much in fondness and cherishment (alien to the seeming and sudden probing and diminishing recollections you and Darlene seem to share now) as those happy moments in childhood. It is sad and amazing in how we block-out all that childhood stress with pleasant recreations of our own imagination. Ray remembered using the wood ‘out-house’ in the backyard, playing in your family’s ‘dirt basement’ (one time, because of the darkness, Ronnie asked to guide Ray by his hand in the dark. Ray asked why, and Ronnie said  that in that way Ronnie could plug it into the light socket and shock him; another time, Ronnie was playing with his blaster-squitter gun and the water canister was swung and hit Raymond in the mouth, chipping a chunk out of his front tooth which is visible to this day;  ah, kids!), he remembers the times your Mom had to give you a bath on your kitchen sink because you had no bathroom, he remembers all that and much more. 

As much as we wish our childhood could have been shining examples of pure aristocratic physiognomies, they were not, and kids, such as me, spent a lot of time creating fantasies and imaginative games to compensate, and we pretended we were kings “of our own domains” away and apart from the cruelties about us. [7]

Rather than comparing and remembering the incidents of childhood back on Michigan Avenue as mysterious acts of noir terrorism and crime, actually, to be honest, I would compare those childhood antics to the illustrious antics of The Little Rascals movie themes, and the teenage antics to the Bowery Boys movies.

So many of those “South Side” Carondeleters took consolation and solace in their ‘past memories’ — so much so that some of them advertised a ‘reunion’ of “Old Farts” of the 1960s Carondelet. I am quite sure this group has a more scientific name. Ray discovered them by accident, seeing two of the “Southsiders” putting a sign-up asking people of that era to contact a telephone number for the purpose of reunion. I attended the last meeting, and I was surprised to meet many of them now married, some retired, Louie Bach having worked years in the auto manufacturing industry, quite a few other familiar faces, all now grown, settled in, matured and regular citizens. I met “Victoria,” (another product our common south St. Louis heritage of which we both belong) who said she knew you when you attended Cleveland High School, and would wait for the bus at the corner of Primm and Michigan, drank hot chocolate together and did high school things together. Victoria said to tell you “hello,” when and if I saw you.

These are the same bedrock people that you and I arose from in Carondelet and Lemay:  none that were, now, “looking down long noses” in shame, horror, disrespect, or other invidious glances or gestures, and all apparently, happy and cherishing their ‘memories’ and ‘old times’ in some forms of comradery. As the old saying goes; “It ought to be a book.” I am quite sure these citizens had ‘dark moments’ in their lives of which they had regrets and battles with, the same as you and I had, Phyllis, and. in fact, no one, any one in my immediate family relations could possibly be holding their lives up as being pure. pristine, holy and without blemish; that would be a mistake. We all hold secret tragedies, regrets that everyone probably wishes they had not happened, but none of us request eternal or continual judgment or blame from fellow humans standing in guard over us.

And I bet almost all of us would be very willing to ‘forgive’ each other for past mistakes, as everyone, all, have things that each of us need our fellow person’s forgiveness to live amongst each other.

We hold on to those carefree and happier moments that have helped each human surmount the painful and horrible episodes in their lives in a world that continues to consist of vanity, hate, murder and horror that your Hollywood has also been mirroring pointlessly and hypocritically glorifying. We Southsiders, and those like them in spirit and kind around the globe, are pining and yearning for, in the words of Dorothy, “somewhere over the rainbow.” 

MY MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE YEARS 1963 – PRESENT

Katie Zenkert  That’s beautiful. I hope he gets in touch. My mother tried to drive a wedge between my father and I, but when I grew older I saw the truth. I always loved my father, no matter what she made me say. The trouble is, those hateful words were the last he heard from me before he died. I never meant them. He loves you.

1Stephen Erdmann  See my Fathers’ Day tale on my meeting with my daughter, I forgive her, though I am not sure there is any way to get that message to her.

• Katie Zenkert  Stephen Erdmann I can’t seem to find it. Still looking. Hire a private detective to track her email, phone or social media down. My father died without me ever knowing if he forgave me for the hateful things my mother made me say to him. That’s haunted me my whole life since age 12, when he was (possibly) killed. Someday when she is older, this will haunt her as it does me, not knowing if you forgave her. Please don’t let that happen.
  • Stephen Erdmann  Katie Zenkert That’s the uneven part of the equation; your part and feelings; both are so smudged over by PAS there is no telling what is really going on. She told me (shouted at me) that I ‘abandoned’ her— which is absolutely silly in light of the facts, and how much time we spent together after the divorce.(which I didn’t want, even after discovering my ex-wife’s lovers). How far back does this ‘hoax’ go and why did my daughter even participate in it?
  • Stephen Erdmann  I am thinking of writing a letter detailing all the unmentioned details, put it in my safe deposit box, and, have a lawyer type it up and notarize it.

Katie Zenkert  Stephen Erdmann welllll, if it were me, imo, I wouldn’t put the details in a letter typed by a lawyer. It sounds to me like what happened to me might have happened to your daughter. Maybe not all of it, but some at least.

You see, my dad got caught on the phone with his girlfriend, who he had introduced to me a year and a half or so prior. He did so because he and I had the stronger bond by far, and he understood that his coming home at 5am or not at all sometimes made me nervous. Knowing why he was late or absent would comfort me, and it did. I liked his girlfriend immediately. She was warm and genuine, and I kept his secret because I am my father’s daughter and my mother and I didn’t really get along. She was nearly impossible to live with and I knew it.

But, when he got caught and she demanded he leave, I was losing the one parent who understood me, and who protected me, literally, from my mother. I was so upset that he wasn’t taking me with him. He sat me down and said, “Your mother’s gone off the deep end (I knew that), but I have to leave.” He didn’t have to leave. The house was in his name, he could have demanded to stay….with me, for me. So…in the ensuing weeks, my mother took this small flame of upset and lied to me about my father, every day working on me, fanning the flame until I wasn’t upset and sad, I was angry. She caused and manipulated that, completely. She turned to his family, my Oma, my dad’s mother, who I loved. She demanded I tell Oma she no longer had a granddaughter, and I was the only female grandchild in the family.

Then came the day my father was coming to get some things from the house. She rehearsed with me what she wanted me to say. I didn’t say it. In front of him she prompted me, and I knew what was in store from her if I didn’t say what she wanted. So, I did. And I was firm about it. It was hateful. I regretted it afterwards. I thought about calling him when things got bad, but I traced his number in her phone book so many times after she had gone to bed or passed out. She was a light sleeper, though, even when passed out, and she had an extension in her room. She lifted it and listened in on calls with my friend from school often.

I knew I could get caught so easily, and if my dad couldn’t or wouldn’t come get me, the consequences would be disastrous for me. I won’t even tell you what she threatened to do to me if I breathed a word about her, her drinking and her behavior toward me to anyone. She promised me no one would believe me. I had a guardian ad litem for the divorce, but it was a man, and I was nervous around him, plus my mother’s threat was foremost in my mind. I thought, what if the judge makes me live with her despite what I say? It was the 70’s, when women were given custody pretty much by default and I knew it. I was 10 or 11, but very smart at figuring things out, plus my mother gave me the legal play by play of the divorce daily. A lot of it was lies, I found out later. It took until her death to find out the extent of the lies she’d told me. So, I told the guardian I wanted to live with her. I didn’t.

Then she manipulated the situation so that my father couldn’t get his visitation with me, and I knew how and what she did. I never saw him again until he died. I regret what I said and think about it a lot. But it took me getting out of her house and beyond her threat to grieve for my dad, to acknowledge out loud to myself how much I always loved him.

My mother created and perpetrated the hoax. She fanned the flame of my sadness and upset at being left behind, she worked on me daily, she lied to me about my dad and his family. I initially believed the lies, and was pretty scared, upset, angry at being left behind and she used that, manipulated it, threatened me until she got me to say what she wanted.

Here’s the thing. No one knew about the drinking, or the threats or anything she was doing to me. No one. Not a single person, because her threats were enough to keep my mouth shut until I was in college and my roommate saw her drunk once – long story why I went back to that house, with my roommate and best friend in tow, no less. I still said nothing until I met my husband, and I trusted him with a little bit at a time. She had me afraid to say a word for so many years.

I always loved my dad. He taught me things I am forever grateful to have learned. I regret forever saying what I did, but it took a LONG time for me to even talk about it, or let go of the anger she created. It took her death to understand the depth of the lies.

What I am saying is, you don’t know what your wife said to your daughter. You don’t yet know if she’s afraid to tell you what might have gone on that you would never have guessed in a thousand years. But know this…a daughter never stops loving her father. Never. And this…. the opposite of love isn’t hate and anger, it’s indifference. She’s not indifferent, she’s angry. I know for certain that means she loves you underneath that.

I don’t know how old she is, but reach out, yourself, not through a lawyer. Do whatever you need to in order to find her and then just remind her of all the things you did for her out of love, the good times, good memories, times when you both connected over something. Tell her how you feel about her, that she’s amazing, that you’re proud, that you would walk through fire for her. That you would never abandon her.

Give her a chance to vent residual anger. Tell her that divorce is tough on kids, she has every right to be angry and sad, and to put it all out there onto you, you can take it, because she is your daughter and that is what you want because you love her so much. Tell her what it’s been like without her. Tell her everything when you have a chance to get a word in edgewise. If she’s still buying into lies told by her mother, just apologize, even if you have nothing to apologize for. Just do and say whatever needs to be done and said in order to get your second chance, for all of us who wish we had one.

When she is older she will understand, she will see the truth and she will regret what she said more than you can possibly know, but we never know how much time we have. My dad’s death taught me that the hard way. Sorry this post is so long, but I felt like the details might help. I wish you all the luck in the world with this. I truly hope you and your daughter find your way back to each other. ❤🌅✌💪♾

Stephen Erdmann  Sounds pretty much like PAS but with a few details on the other sex; new. I did not have a girlfriend, I WANTED A TRADITIONAL GERMANIC MARRIAGE, and I fought to keep it that way; but I began to notice the devil in the details. I caught her in an affair, forgave her, and worked with counselors, told her the main problem was her spousal support (much like her brother and his wife had together; she supported him through law school) I also asked her to do a ‘remarriage’ in the Catholic Church, which we did. Little did I realize it was a farce.

Later, my little daughter kept dropping hints inadvertently (names, details) (we had my daughter after this first affair and with remarriage–my ex requested it.) I kept my visitation up on weekends. We did a lot of ventures together. But the bond was under heavy fire by way of new boyfriends and girlfriends that were posing heavy interference. A lawyer said I needed documentation, which I attempted with a telephone wire-tap. It revealed the conspiracy that had been going on for years, (lawyers, girlfriends, other—for years), but I could not use it in court because it was an illegal wire-tap. A contested divorce occurred, and I requested custody of my children; but you know how that goes. Years later, my daughter was of an age that she rather be with her friends, but she wrote me one day and asked to visit with me, and we did for a number of months. I had asked her if everything was okay or if she has any hard-feelings, she said “no, not at all.”‘ She even said my ex-wife wanted to get back-together again.

This was a bit of a shock to me, and all I would say is that all I ever wanted from her mom was her love and support. But this all was part of some kind of hoax, a realization that my ex-wife was applying PAS. Much detail has to be left behind because of the length; leave me to say, my daughter disappeared, moved out of her condominium, just about the time I discovered she had a daughter. Emily; a daughter that she lied about and denied. I did discover her new address (about a mile from my Ex’s place). And we would send cards and brought flowers, but could never get her to the door. That ended this Fathers’ Day when we caught up with her pulling up and she cursed me out in a demonic rage. Emily was attendant. Said she would get a court-order if I continued. This is leaving out a lot of intimate details, which I hope to write-up some day. She said I “abandoned her,” that seems to be the opposite of what actually happened. Millions of stories like this exist, but to collect them under one-roof would mean expense and the revelation of the multi-billion-dollar-divorce-racket. My daughter was 51 and my son a little older at this date; I could see the Dark Hand slowly working behind the scenes but could prove nothing.

Katie Zenkert  Stephen Erdmann what is PAS? I tried to do a search on this and didn’t come up with anything.

You wanted a traditional marriage. You were faithful. My Oma and Opa (I’m Austrian/German) had a traditional Germanic marriage: strong, committed and they ap…See More

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Robyn McCoy Had an evil stepmother and she turned my father against his own family, very sad!

Stephen Erdmann  Your welcome to tell your story here.

Robyn McCoy Stephen Erdmann , it’s just too horrible to tell. She’s gone and the world is a better place. My father went first and she did her best to turn me against my own family.

Katie Zenkert  A similar thing happened to my husband and I. His family, especially his mother, didn’t like me. So they/she created such a negative situation that he had to walk away from them and put distance between them. It’s sad. He has 2 nephews he saw just once, when they were babies. They live 15 mins away. There’s just so much anger on their part, I am guessing b/c he didn’t listen to them and chose me instead. We’re married 32 years, so we both chose well.

Additional Divorce Comments: Stephen Erdmann

December 8, 2017

Letter to the Editor/Post-Dispatch News:

Dear Editor: Karin Mark’s letter in the Wednesday OPINION section on December 6, 2017, A 14, “Men also responsible for children born into poverty,” belies the stigmas already placed against men in domestic and divorce cases where penalties are placed against males for all sorts of extravagant and disproportionate reasons (men eventually find out they have only five foes in domestic court: his lawyer, her lawyer, the judge, her innate allurement, and the status quo). Truly, as Mark propagandizes “it take two to tango,” so-to-speak, and here Mark appears to assume that the female quotient in the equation should be near invisible in responsibility, as if men can only carry the full burden and guilt. That needs to be fully explored and scientific investigated.

Cordially,

Steve Erdmann

Steve Erdmann

Recent Update:  7/15/2021 9:52:44 AM

7/15/2021 9:52 AM

Significant and meaningful changes  

have been made since the last update:

please note from last copy. 

---

[1]  In Wild’s criticism of Ufoloogist David Marler using the term “skeptical believer,” Wild likewise fits a bizarre and incongruous term I would apply to  Wild as a “religious cultist/atheist.”

[2]  Loy had World War Two photograph-encyclopedias with very graphic scenes of slaughtered, attacked and maimed people of that war that he occasionally allowed Ronnie and I to review, but even we felt it was far too graphic.

[3]  This was reminiscent of the book and movie OCTOBERT SKY about some teenage rocket scientists. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/october-sky-1999.

[4] One rocket-launch preparation went haywire in my own room in our house from packing the cap dots, match head ‘fuel’ and compressing the fuel with the end of a wooden spoon:  the fuel ignited and the rocket flew about the room in circles ( of which I was reprimanded by the head of household).

[5]  About two years ago, while I sat on my front porch recuperating from open-heart surgery, I had the opportunity to get to know and become friends with two Tabby cats and their babies, and as the summer wore on, we became close friends. MiiMii was then called “Mama” and the other one, not having her spayed as yet, we named in a misnomer as “Dexter.” I made a promise to Mama that I would do my best to take care of her and Dexter. 

Well, the babies were adopted by Joey across the street, and as the winter became more and more hostile, I took my friends into the house for permanent shelter.  Mama became “MiiMii,” and Dexter stayed Dexter, even though “he” was actually a girl. MiiMii would cry at times, though she appeared healthy.  I told her when we got her spayed we would discover the source of her problem. That we did, the vet came back and told us someone has ‘kicked’ her when outside and she was in desperate need of surgery or other.  We barely—barely—got her into a specialty hospital out west of St. Louis: they did immediate surgery, and, like her daddy, she has to have CPR done to her, and with many prayers, she somehow survived.  Then, two years later, we again had to contend with hospitalization once more as she ate something toxic and it blistered her tongue, as she did not eat while in the hospital, nor for some time at home when we brought home to see if she would eat. After much worry, the vet’s medications strengthen her and she came out of a ‘slump’ and is presently a frisky, scampering feline daughter at home.

[6] I had written a science-fiction story on note paper about a machine that was rocket-powered and would reach fantastic speeds on a long ramp, and I asked your Mom to read it as I wanted to get her opinion, and she did that over several days.

[7] I had located Ronnie’s place of business on the Internet, telling about the Company, and it also listed an email address.  I felt positive it was his business and wrote a short hello to him asking if, indeed, this Smith was the same Smith I grew-up with.  I same sure it was.  There was never a reply. 

*****

Steve Erdmann – Independent Investigative Journalist

Another version of this article can be seen at The Boys from Carondelet – https://wordpresscom507.wordpress.com/2020/06/07/

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Rex’s Story

Posted on July 10, 2021 by steveerdmann      Rate This

The Saga of Rex Smith

By:

Steve Erdmann

Copyright, C, 2021

Another version of this article can be seen at Rex’s Story – https://wordpresscom507.wordpress.com/2020/06/07/

*****

Here’s to Rex Smith –

One hell of a man –

He could beat you at Checkers –

With one tied hand –

He knew every red space –

Every black square –

And spot –

And if you thought you could beat him –

You’d have to learn more than –

A lot.

*****

But life was not his checkerboard –

Please crown him now King –

The moves he made while living –

Required a few more things –

His cluttered, dirtied apartment –

Did not royalty make –

And iced and strewn sidewalks –

Threatened his lower flank.

*****

Still Rex –

(Some called him, Bud) –

Persisted to lavish his friends –

And those befriended –

(And quite sure he took with him –

Fond memories of men –

 And those left unattended –)

With his love for Virginia –

Not much stronger then he –

And by her side did stand –

Undauntedly vigilante –

Till she crossed into that –

Spiritual land.

*****

I remember the time –

He and his girlfriend did not speak –

Two weeks without discourse, phone, or gram –

Rex would be seen on porch –

Vodka in hand –

I’d swear if he would not be there –

That tiny porch would collapse –

But often he’d stand there –

Heavy thought –

And time passed.

*****

Heavy breathing –

And drinking –

And talk about friends –

Family and happiness –

Shuttered the man –

As girlfriend Virginia passed away –

His Security Check in hand –

And some token appreciation from a widow’s providence –

Bud still took care of Virginia – and Virginia them –

Without a whimper –

A fight for survival –

Followed the man.

*****

“Stop tht damn drinking –

“My neighbor and friend.’’ –

His double-chin would wobble –

Cigarette in hand –

A twinkle in his eyes, he’d muster –

His rough texture would past –

“Do you give a damn about me? –

“Will your friendship last?’’

*****

Did I or didn’t –

Rex’s health had laid plans –

“Would you come to visit at Piggott?

‘‘There’s a grave in that land –

‘‘It’s held in reserve by family and I –

“And it’s there in that plot –

“That I’ll soon see Arkan.”

*****

I knew Rex was no daisy –

Or flower in full bloom –

But you’d take him for granted –

Like an old tavern spittoon –

He’ll always be here –

That old buzzard and friend –

He’s had a few good years –

If no real wins –

But extremely lonely –

He’ll keep that inside –

But you could tell by his demeanor –

He needed allies –

And he was willing to pay –

A price, a ransom –

To always hold hearts –

To treat people as grandsons –

To wish for fresh starts –

His choice, his selections –

Left much to be mentioned –

Some were drinking buddies –

And some were just spies.

*****

But it became clearer and clearer –

His contribution to time –

His presence on sidewalks –

Cooking, coffee –

Taking rides, sweepstakes tickets—

Baseball and rhymes –

His kitchen window, aglow –

A beacon in the night –

All these contributions did Bud –

Towards life, make a strike. 

*****

These things and places –

Bud would make sight –

Kitchen-window, I can see it from here –

A harbor spotlight, you knew he was there –

Sitting at his table, fumes in the air –

Watching his TV favorite, ear glued to the phone –

While his voice somewhat quivering –

Would tell his sis a poem –

His humor, his wisdom –

Reflected his line –

And he became as one with cantor –

Ribald jokes and rhyme.

******

And then there was the night –

The old country-boy departed –

For weeks on end, no whiskey or drink –

Did his weaken frame sorted –

But rather, a quiet burden –

A silent  contention –

Seemed to muscle his humor –

And one night early –

Rex became broken hearted –

No longer a rumor.

*****

Outside the Quick shop, he grunted and groaned –

“Are you all right?” —

 “Hell, yes but let us move on!” –

But he wasn’t, tears in his eyes –

But he need not, should not have lied –

Back in the car, drops in his eyes –

His breathing did fly –

Cold sweat descending –

“To the hospital old boy!” –

“No, no, no, to my house let us drive!” –

His eyes ten-feet tall –

“Are you sure?” His lungs filling with fluid –

“No, I am really not sure at all!”

*****

Back on the driveway –

I rushed inside, while Bud assured me –

It would all subside –

A cigarette he lit as if nothing was astride –

But he could not speak –

With the fury he hid inside –

Within minutes I assembled three neighbors –

To observe, but believe I would not –

A strange fate was to occur – I’ve never seen –Sickness come so stalking –

And envisioned a good bath and rest –

On clean sheets –

Would put Bud tip-topper –

And suited for health the next day –

Or the next –

But no more of this stealthing.

*****

Call 911, a neighbor instructed –

“No, oh no, you won’t!” –

Bud suddenly interjected –

Listen, we told him, you go now –

Or go later –

I will not –

He murmured and mumbled –

And continued to argue –

With ambulance coachmen –

I stood by the tele –

Waiting a call from his dear sister –

When his buddy, George, said ‘head on’ –

“Go Take him, he’s acting peculiar’’ –

“He’ll willingly go with you –

“And none other.’’

“This time he’s not lying.”

The ambulance driver would follow—

To swerve and park –

If Bud looked like dying.

*****

Bud wanted to know if the ambulance followed –

But at the hospital entrance –

The coffer-driver departed –

A wheelchair is needed, Bud instructed –

An attendant emerged, “be careful of his polio leg.’’

The ole’ boy even smiled as he rolled down the corridor –

His last –

Never to smile –

As he did in the past.

***** 

They all knew Rex down in Piggott –

By his casket, they did bow! –

The checkerboard was now closed –

And shelved –

The game over and gone –

Not another significant sound  —

From the ole’ hound.

*****

Another version of this article can be seen at Rex’s Story – https://wordpresscom507.wordpress.com/2020/06/07/

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A summary and comparison 3 UFO documents, one from the US Army Air Force (USAAF) IPU UFO (9393 Detachment) Recovery Team & 2 Official FBI Memos written by FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, in July of 1947 and March of 1950 prove conclusively that the Roswell UFO crash was real and that a UFO (a “Flying Saucer”) along with 4 alien bodies were recovered near Soorro, neew mexico between July 4th and July 7th, 1947.

This writer has uncovered confirmatory evidence of the Roswell crash in an official memo written to FBI agent David Ladd by FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover on March 22, 1950 <with copy of his July 15th, 1947 memo attached) citing the US Army Air Force’s dismissal of an FBI request to inspect the Roswell craft).

Hoover’s memo to “DL” claimed that the FBI had been denied access to the craft, excluded by the USAAF from even “a cursory examination” of the alien Roswell craft.  

Proof of the veracity and authenticity of the dismissal of the FBI’s request for examination of the UFO is contained in the US Army Air Force IPU UFO Recovery Report, which explicitly mentions the curtailment of “FBI interest” in the inspection of the recovered UFO craft.

This denial of access by the FBI is confirmed by J. Edgar Hoover’s signed “lamentation” to “DL” (David Ladd) in the 1950 FBI Memo.  Quote:

“…we must insist upon full access to discs recovered. For instance in the La. case the Army grabbed it & wouldn’t let us have it for cursory examination.   – Signed “H” for Hoover, Edgar J.”

The 1947 FBI memo, written by hand by J. Edgar Hoover is referred to by some UFOlogists as the “La.” memo because a (misinterpreted) 2 letter reference, an acronym, used by Hoover to designate the purported UFO crash and recovery site.

Hoover’s chicken-scratch writing has been misread by many investigators as “La” or “Ca,” but when closely examined by this writer proves to read “Sw,” in short, for “Southwest.”  Even if he eltters were indeed “La,” it would be a direct reference to Los Alamos where some of the wreckage was taken, explicitly described by the USAAF in the IPU report, therefore, making perfect sense, referring to the site from which the FBI had been barred, i.e., Los Alamos National Laboratories.  

The original Hoover memo was signed on “7/15” (1947) while the IPU report explicitly states that “on the 10th of July, FBI interest was curtailed upon request of Deputy Chief of Staff, Lt. General Collins.”

It is clear to this investigator that the apparently intentional misreading and misconstruction of the initials (by both UFOresearchers and the FBI referring to the crash site (La/Ca/Sw) (to deny its authenticity) have been used by interested parties on bohtth sides as ploys and distractions to confuse the issue and debunk/discredit the authenticity of Hoover’s FBI memo, but as is now revealed, corroborted by the USAAF IPU UFO Recovery Report, Hoover’s FBI memo is real, bona fide and, therefore, authentic.  

Over the years, I’ve found the same memo filed in CIA UFO files and in the USAF Blue Book files, as well. 

This ivestigtor has also uncovered a copy of an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) drawn up in the early 1950s between USAF General George Schulgen and the FBI Director creating an arrangement for the FBI to funnel UFO reports and information on flyng Saucr sightings that was being reported to the bureau by concerned citizens topass them on to the USAF, using general George Schulgen as liaison officer.

The reason for this needed arragngement was the “hamstrung position” that UFO denial and UFO secrecy had imposed upon the US Air Force as their publical denial of the existence of UFOs and disvowel of any interest in the investigation of the subject of Flying Saucers had actually dried up their sources of current information as the general public avoided contact with them due to the US air Force’s use of both ridicule and harassament to play down the reality of UFO incursions into our national airpsace.

This reporter discovered the USAF-FBI MOU during the late 1990s by pursuing an interesting memo connecting renowned Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe to UFOs via a report regarding the FBI’s phone tap(s) adn recordins of Moroe’s calls and conversations with famed reporter and national columnist Dorothy Kilgallen. my curiousity was aroused when I reead a notation on the Monroe-Kilgallen phone tap memo that read, in a boxed aea at top right :

 “cc: Gen. Schulgen”

Furthermore, a recently uncovered 1989 “Briefing document for MJ-12 entry level “ describes:

1.  Communications with four (4) types of aliens with whom MJ-12 had made contact since the 1940s;
2. The signing a formal agreement by the US Government with one of the ET groupsl
3. Reveals major clauses of the so-called GREADA Treaty that was signed by President Eisenhower with one group of aliens at Kirtland Air Force Base on July 18th, 1954.
4. Reveals that the treaty conferred “Diplomatic Status” on the alien group;
5. That the US goerment provided ambassadors quarters to the alien group an an undisclosed air force Base in Nevada (assumed by this writer to be at or near Area 51).
   

I reccomend reading Charles Hall’s UFO series “Millenium Hospitality” for more more information in greater detail regarding this alien colony, populrly known as “The Tall Whites,” offical “alien ambassadors” of their ET race currently based in Nevada.

Stay tuned to The UFO Spotlight for more Revelations from Roswell & Majestic 12

That is all…

Robert D. Morningstar

Majestic 13

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