Go in Peace, Grasshopper!

by Pa Rock
Obituariest

David Carradine died yesterday in Bangkok, Thailand. He was found hanging by the neck in his hotel room closet. His death was probably a suicide. Carradine was a highly successful actor, with over two hundred acting credits listed on his page at the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com). And while Mr. Carradine played a wide variety of characters on television and in films, he will forever be Grasshopper to my generation.

I'm not a lover of westerns, at least not to the extent that my father is, but there was one television western that was so much better than the rest that I couldn't keep from being a fan. Kung Fu ran from 1972 to 1975, roughly the same years as the United States was succumbing to the peace movement and extricating itself from Vietnam, and the years that democracy was repairing itself by removing Richard Nixon from the White House.

It was a time that America was sorely in need of some peace and tranquility, and that need was met by the television character of Kwai Chang Caine (aka Grasshopper), the son of a Chinese mother and an American father. Caine was forced to flee his homeland of China as a young man after he killed the Emperor's nephew - an evil cur who had murdered Caine's teacher. Caine traveled to the American old west where he walked from town to town righting wrongs with marshal arts and his peaceful philosophy. He was also looking for his mysterious American half-brother during his travels.

David Carradine, an actor, athlete, and dancer, brought Caine to life as a peaceful warrior. The great Bruce Lee wanted to play Caine, but he was passed over for the non-Asian, yet more serene, Carradine - a move that was instrumental in making both of their careers. Carradine's Caine became an unforgettable inhabitant of television history, and Lee went to Hong Kong where made some great marshal arts films. Today both men are legend.

David Carradine was 72-years-old at the time of his death. He had his demons, but his calm and reassuring presence in the starring role of Kung Fu did much to quell the demons that many of the rest of us had thirty years ago. I hope and trust that his demons are gone now and he has rejoined the peaceful and karmic flow of the universe.

Peaceful trails, Grasshopper!

Jimmy and Me

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

This evening is the kickoff of the President's Day weekend, and what better way to spend it than hobnobbing with one of our five living U.S. Presidents. Jimmy Carter, my absolute favorite ex-President, was at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona, signing copies of his latest book, We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land. I ordered two copies by phone early in the week, one for each of my grandsons, and showed up at the appointed time tonight to have them signed.

I had visions of waiting in line with a hundred or so other people and being able to chat with President Carter while he leisurely signed books for Boone Macy and Sebastian Files, both personalized, of course. I fully intended to tell him how much I appreciated all that he has done for the poor, at home and abroad, and to thank him for continually showing America's better face to the rest of the world.

The reality of the evening was two lines of people packed two-and-three abreast stretching for blocks in two directions. I had to work my way, very slowly, through the left line to pick up my vouchers (book tickets), and then get in the right line where I worked my way, very slowly, to the front door of the bookstore. Once inside the store I had to show the vouchers three times as the line snaked up to the place where President Carter was indeed signing copies of his book. We were herded past the President, who looked up and smiled between books as he automatically scribbled his name. Our line was about three feet in front of Jimmy Carter. We were warned not to take pictures as we walked past, but I, of course, did anyway. Then we were handed our books from a pile that he had already signed. Those with cameras were then shunted off to the side where they could try to get a picture by shooting through the line that was walking past.

It was a book-signing factory.

The highlight of the evening was getting to see President Carter. He is eighteen days older than my father, and looks almost as frail. Rosalyn was not in evidence, which surprised me because you never see one without the other. The President was as personable as he could be, given the circumstances - smiling and making eye contact between books.

But the evening had other highlights as well, and I managed to enjoy it all. First off, I got lost on the way over to Tempe and wound up pulling into a Circle K to buy a soda and get directions. A lady panhandler hit me up for spare change as I was going in, telling me that her three children had no food. I promised her that I would catch her on the way out - and I did - giving her three bananas that I purchased inside.

Security at the event was interesting. There was a squad of local police on the other side of McClintock Drive - a busy thoroughfare. At least one policeman was on top of the bookstore and occasionally peeked over, much to the entertainment of the crowd. Several police and Secret Service were inside of the bookstore, but President Carter appeared to be fairly vulnerable despite all of the "protection." Everyone was pulling cameras out of their pockets and purses and snapping pictures. Security was nowhere nearly as tight as it is at Skyharbor Airport.

I stood in line next to a young man from England (the town where Wedgewood Pottery is made). He had come to the University of Arizona twelve years ago on a scholarship, and stayed after graduating to work in the computer industry. He hadn't pre-purchased a copy of the book, and learned, after being in line for an hour, that the bookstore had sold out of the Carter books.

There was a troupe of entertainers working the lines: a man on stilts, face-painters, and a balloon artist. A wonderful Black lady and her second grade daughter were in line behind me. The balloon artist made a sceptre of balloons for the little girl, which got me to calling her "princess." It was a liberal group, and we quickly got around to discussing Obama. I asked the lady if she had seen Obama in Phoenix last February, and she responded that she had not, but she had been to the Inauguration. Then she pulled out her Blackberry and showed everyone nearby a photo of her and her daughter with a very relaxed Obama. She had been at a hotel where he was vacationing while he was in the Senate. She had asked Michelle Obama to take the picture - and described her as being very courteous.

Another diversion was a group of war protesters holding signs and singing out next to the boulevard. One lady brought her sign up to the line and began talking to us about the war. A police woman on a bicycle came up and told her that protestors with signs had to stand out by the road. Several people were working the lines handing out pamphlets for various causes.

It was a fun evening, with more than a passing feel of the sixties!

My history with Presidents: I saw Tricky Dick Nixon and Pat in Springfield, MO, while I was in college. That was before he became President. I also saw Reagan on two occasions before he became President, as well as Obama one time prior to his election. I saw George H.W. Bush at a Fourth of July parade in Marshfield, MO, while he was President.

And...Barack Obama will be in Phoenix next Wednesday selling the stimulus, but specifics for that visit have not been announced as of yet. Watch for me on the evening news!

To cap off a nice evening, I pulled through El Pollo Loco on the way home and bought a box of the world's best chicken! All in all, it was a very good evening.

Army Life (2)

Ft. Eustis, Virginia, is located on the James River about five miles from historic Williamsburg. It is close to Yorktown, Jamestown, Ft. Monroe, Ft. Lee, Newport News, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach. I had been a history major in college, and being assigned to a post in historic Virginia was a stroke of luck. As I arrived at Ft. Eustis in April of 1971, I was determined to make the most of being thrust into the highly historical area.

I was going to Ft. Eustis to complete the Army's 9-week basic Transportation Corps Officer's course. I lived in a BOQ (Bachelor's Officer Quarters) that was something like a glorified college dorm, only there weren't as many restrictions. The other guys in my class all lived in that same BOQ. Those who were married left their wives at home during the training.

I rembember that I had two good friends in that class, Ron (?) from Cannonapolis, NC (where they made Cannon towels) and Joe Spagna who was from Delaware or Rhode Island or one of the smaller northeastern states. The three of us found a roadside dive that had really good food, and we would drive out there most nights and chow down on the house special. The spaghetti was a particular favorite of ours. We also did a few weekend trips to Virginia Beach.

The Officer's Club was a new experience for me. We would sit around one of the bars on weekends and drink beer and watch TV. I remember sitting in that bar with a group of friends watching the Tricia Nixon and Edward Cox get married on the White House lawn. That wedding had a lot of history in attendance: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy's daughter, was there, as was Martha Mitchell who was soon to be famous during the Watergate Era. Mrs. Mitchell, the wife of Attorney General John Mitchell, had an alcohol issue that eventually was a factor in ending the presidency of Richard Nixon. She showed up in a flamboyant dress and hat (orange, if memory serves) that one TV announcer jokingly said made her a frontrunner for best costume.

The queen of the Officer's Club was an oriental lady named Peaches. She ran the place, and was always there to commisserate with any young man who wanted to share his troubles.

Ft. Eustis was, and still is, the Army's transportation center. It is located on the James River. The 558th Transportation Company (of which I would become executive officer three years later) has a floating machine shop whose mission was to make marine repairs on the water. The post also had its own small railroad called the MGB (Main Gate and Back). Our classes also had a strong emphasis on map reading, convoys, and truck transportation - skills that would serve me well at my first actual duty station.

I'm Fired Up - Ready to Go!

Barack Obama was in town tonight, and he was amazing! As I sit here trying to collect my thoughts of this spectacular event, I am hoarse from shouting and my hands hurt from clapping almost continually for over an hour.

The future President (and after tonight I am certain of that prediction) was accompanied by two very notable women. The first person to speak was Caroline Kennedy, the remaining heir to Camelot, and she talked about how Barack Obama had personally inspired her to become active in this race. She, in turn, introduced Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona. Napolitano is a barn-burner of a speaker, and she stirred almost as much excitement in her home state crowd as did Obama. Here is my second prediction of this paragraph: Governor Napolitano will be his running mate. Their chemistry bordered on being explosive! Prediction number three: Obama-Napolitano will crush McCain-Huckabee, even in McCain's home state of Arizona!

I've seen some world class political speakers - Nixon, Reagan, George Romney, Nelson Rockefeller, Bush Senior - but all of them pale in comparison to Obama! He was electric, and the crowd of 15,000 or more spent most of the evening on their feet cheering him on. He was exciting. He was all about the future, telling us about our potential for making America great again. He was empowering, he was charismatic, and he was ours for the evening!

The One That Got Away

While most people in America appreciate the protections of the law and the necessary existence of law enforcement and the courts, there is, it seems, a little bit of the rascal in many of us. Take, for example, our love affair with outlaws. It probably goes back to England – just as our law does. Don’t we view Robin Hood as the good guy and the Sheriff of Nottingham as his evil nemesis? Robin’s American heirs include such famous individuals as Jesse James, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, and John Dillinger. True, they may not have been as altruistic as Robin Hood, or even altruistic at all, but each of these villains rose to the status of folk hero. They have been the focus of books, magazine articles, movies, and term papers. Not too shabby for a bunch of gun-toting, hardscrabble ne’er-do-wells!

(Patty Hearst, during her bank-robbing, gun-moll days may have been motivated by altruism, but she was brainwashed, so she doesn’t count!)

My favorite modern outlaw is the one who got away: D. B. Cooper. He boarded a Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, on November 24, 1971. After the flight was airborne, Mr. Cooper (or whoever he was) gave the flight attendants a note saying that he had a bomb in his brief case and demanding $200,000 in $20 bills and two sets of parachutes. The plane landed at Seattle where the ransom and the parachutes were delivered. The hijacker then released the passengers and followed up with a demand to be flown to Mexico City. The plane flew low (10,000 feet) with the landing gear down like Cooper had instructed. Two US military fighter jets followed the passenger plane through the stormy night. It was the storms that prevented the pilots of the jets from seeing exactly where the hijacker, with booty in tow, jumped into the night.

Some of the money was found eight years later by a young boy who was gathering wood for a campfire near the Columbia River in southeast Washington, but most of the cash as well as the famous outlaw remain missing to this day.

D.B. Cooper is the only hijacker of an American plane to ever escape punishment. On the night of his disappearance J. Edgar Hoover was alive and running the FBI, albeit occasionally in drag, Richard Nixon was in the White House happily taping all of his meetings and conversations, and Elvis was still the King. It was a long, long time ago.

This past week the FBI reopened the D.B. Cooper cold case. They are now suggesting that Cooper probably did not survive the jump into the storm that night. The new push is to get someone to come forward and provide a positive identification to the illustrious D.B. Cooper so that the FBI can have some closure on this on-going agency embarrassment.

Maybe the answer will reveal itself, or maybe Mr. Cooper was a loner with no relatives to miss him and rat out his identity to the feds. I’m a romantic at heart, and I would like to hold out hope that D.B. Cooper and his ill-gotten gains spent many years together on a beach somewhere under a smiling sun with an endless supply of rum drinks and good times! An occasional happy ending is good for the soul!