My Lou Dobbs Story

Lou Dobbs is looking for another job. I hope he doesn’t ask me for one again.

Memories can be tricky. I can’t vouch 100% for this next tale, but I am pretty sure it happened...

Back in the late 1970s, I turned down Lou Dobbs for a job as executive editor of Chain Store Age General Merchandise Edition.

The now famous, or infamous, CNN ex-anchorman wasn’t famous, or infamous, back then. He was a standard TV journalist between station assignments. During our interview it became clear that any print job he secured would be a stopgap position until another one under the klieg lights turned up. So I passed on the opportunity to hire him.

Chain Store Age’s loss was Ted Turner’s gain.

At least that is how I remember it.

Lingering Thoughts

CBS Evening News with Katie Couric reported tonight that a major coastal storm is hovering over Virginia instead of moving north.

Could it be that God is punishing Virginia for voting in a Republican governor last week? Hey, if fundamentalists can invoke God for their causes, why couldn’t He/She be seen as the cause of disproportionate rain in Virginia when He/She’s not happy with the way humans behave? It wouldn’t be the first time God used a little, okay, a lot, of rain to express displeasure with mankind.

If I lived in New Jersey, to the north of Virginia, I’d seriously be looking into gopher wood stockpiles...

The lingering storm is not the only contributor to GOP angst. Republicans, and even some Democrats, are all over President Obama for taking too long to decide on a new Afghanistan policy. You’d think our political leaders and pundits would have a sense of history.

Do they not recall that 45 years ago Congress rushed to judgment after two U.S. destroyers allegedly were attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin. Less than a week after the alleged incidents, our elected representatives on August 7, 1964, green-lighted the Vietnam War by passing, almost unanimously, the Southeast Asia Resolution, aka the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, granting the president the authority to use military force without having to secure a declaration of war. It is now generally agreed that no such attacks took place.

Many, including myself, have warned that Afghanistan bears too many similarities to the Vietnam debacle. Why would anyone begrudge Obama the time needed to form a valued judgment? Afghanistan is not in imminent danger of falling to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. Caution, not cowboy diplomacy, is required. Cut the president some slack, and hope, pray, that he reaches a decision that will not burden our country for decades or fill our military cemeteries with the prime of our nation.

The Trench Coat Caper

When she was 21 and getting ready for her first job in New York, according to Tuesday’s NY Times, Angela Ahrendts bought a Burberry trench coat. Today she’s CEO of the iconic British company (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/business/global/10burberry.html?_r=1&sq=burberry&st=cse&adxnnl=1&scp=1&adxnnlx=1258056013-bhb65EpY716MXOhRZGwZCQ).

When I was 28 and getting ready for my first editorial job in New York, I decided to buy a trench coat as well. I hadn’t needed one before. Though a reporter, I was no foreign correspondent, unless you classify the Lower Naugatuck Valley of Connecticut as foreign soil. The dapper look of a trench-coated reporter would have been as incongruous as a tuxedo-clad journalist among the factory workers of the Valley. I hardly ever wore a sports jacket or tie, much less a suit. But my new job on Park Avenue required more dignified dress, so a top coat, a trench coat, was in order.

I couldn’t afford a Burberry. I found a more reasonably priced alternative, a Fox Run, light tan, double-breasted coat with a Burberry-inspired design for its removable lining. Apparently, I wasn’t the only newly hired field editor to find the Fox Run trench coat attractive. So did Mike Friedman, a writer for one of our other publications. Mike was a sci-fi aficionado who went on to become an author of Star Trek paperback books. A hastily prepared trip to Cleveland turned out to be a less than fulfilling literary excursion for him.

In his dash to catch a plane, Mike grabbed the first Fox Run coat he saw hanging in the common closet of our office. We wore the same size, so his mistake was not immediately discernible. It was only after he reached for the sci-fi novel he always kept in his front pocket that he realized his mistake. Instead of the book, all he found were my gloves. By then it was too late to return. My coat made it to Cleveland, and back, years before I did. Mike and I exchanged coats when he returned.

The switched coat caper was not the only time my wardrobe was filched from the closet. One Friday afternoon as I prepared to leave for home, I couldn’t find my Yves St. Laurent blue blazer. Thinking back to what happened with Mike, I searched for a sports jacket left behind. But there was no other jacket hanging in the closet. I went home distraught.

To my surprise, Monday morning my blazer was back in the closet where I had left it on Friday, but without any telltale clue, such as a scrunched up movie ticket or a matchbook cover, to reveal where it had been over the weekend. Though none the worse for the wear, I vowed never again to leave anything in the closet. The next day I brought a hanger for my cubicle.

Of course, that didn’t stop a real thief from making me a victim in our office. Back in the more lawless days of the 1980s, I started carrying two wallets, my real one and what I called my “mugger’s wallet” that I kept in the vest pocket of my suit jacket that I now always hung in my cubicle. The mugger’s wallet held a $10 bill, some of my business cards and my frequent flyer and hotel cards that I hoped would confuse a mugger into thinking he had stolen my credit cards.

One evening when leaving work I noticed my mugger’s wallet was missing. More distressing than the actual loss was the realization that someone had been able to infiltrate our office. A few weeks later a building manager several blocks away called to say he had found my wallet and credit cards in a stairwell. At first I told him he was wrong, but then realized he must have my mugger’s wallet. Sure enough, he did. When I picked it up, I noticed all the travel cards shuffled around. The $10 was gone, but the ruse had no doubt frustrated the thief. I smiled all the way back to my office.

Veterans' Day Salutes

I was born in 1949. That means I came of age, draft age, during the height of the Vietnam War. Like 99% of my draft age friends and family, I did not serve in the military. I’m alive today, but not totally sure I’m as complete for it.

Perhaps I’m being naïve and simplistic, and probably too sentimental and starry-eyed, but I’ve swallowed the pap that says military service builds lifelong bonds with a band of brothers. I’ve accepted the Hollywood version of combat as character-building. So my lack of military experience is a missing part of my armor.

It’s Veterans’ Day today, and though I salute the men and women who have protected and continue to guard our liberties, I ultimately have no regrets that I thwarted Johnson’s and McNamara’s desire to send me to a rice paddy half way around the world to be fodder for what is now acknowledged to have been a war that could not be won. Even McNamara, several years before he died, owned up to the evil delusion he perpetrated on our country.

139. That was my March 6 birthday lottery number in 1970, my senior year at Brooklyn College. With my education deferment about to expire, my draft notice came in early spring. Report in 10 days to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn for a physical. Time to put my action plan into practice.

I had read in “1001 Ways to Beat the Draft” that the military had an acceptance table based on weight and height. At six feet, which I was, you had to weigh at least 131 pounds. I weighed 134. I had 10 days to lose enough weight to get under the minimum, and then some, because the book also said they could keep me for three days of observation, read that, time to fatten me up for the kill.

God bless Dr. Stillman, as in Dr. Stillman’s Water Diet. His regimen, much like the latter day Atkins Diet, permitted only proteins and required drinking 80 ounces of water a day. For 10 straight days I avoided all carbohydrates, all fruit, anything but meat, fish, eggs and water. For years my mother had tried to fatten me up, forcing me to drink milk shakes spiked with a raw egg that my sister gleefully recalls preparing, even threatening to send me away to a special camp for the undernourished. Now faced with the prospect of her youngest child being shipped off to Vietnam, she reversed course. She worried I was eating too much of my restricted diet. She removed food from my plate.

The fateful day at Fort Hamilton, the scene played out much as it did to Arlo Guthrie in the film “Alice’s Restaurant.” The sergeant told us no one, absolutely no one, would fail the intelligence test. We walked around the physical area in our skivvies, holding our valuables in see-thru plastic bags. Medical technicians poked our arms to draw blood. They couldn’t find the veins of a really fat guy ahead of me. He fainted. At the urine sample station, real or sarcastic offers and requests for extra fluid abounded. At the weigh-in, I tipped the scales at 124 pounds.

Ten days. Ten pounds. They could still keep me for observation. I cautiously approached the decision desk. They could keep me on base for three days, or ask me back for another physical in six months. They deferred me for a year.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was forever safe. The draft never reached number 139 again.

To celebrate my immediate victory, I took advantage of the free meal they provided in the mess hall. I remember I ate breaded, yes, breaded veal cutlet, corn niblets, mashed potatoes, rye bread, banana cream pie, Coca-Cola. Army food was delicious.

Today is Veterans’ Day. It’s also what would have been my mother’s 92nd birthday. I’ll pause to honor both today.

Reflections on Fort Hood

In the aftermath of the Fort Hood massacre, Monday’s NY Times carried an article (“Complications Grow for Muslims Serving Nation,” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/us/09muslim.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=akgun&st=cse) that invites commentary on two parts of the story.

First, a personal note—during World War II my father spent some time at Fort Hood prior to his discharge.

Now on to the Times story.

Midway through the article, a veteran, Amjad Khan, is depicted as saying that “the most difficult part of his wartime service came before he was deployed, when a senior officer found his Islamic faith cause for suspicion.

“He said, ‘I have to watch my back because you might go nuts,’ ” Mr. Khan recalled.”

I don’t doubt this happened. There are bigots throughout the military, regardless of rank.

What the remark reminded me of was a similar though antithetical incident in my uncle’s wartime experience. Uncle Willy, my father’s brother, survived the Nazi extermination of his family and friends in their Polish-Ukraine village in October 1941. He hid in the area for two years until the Russians liberated the region, whereupon he was conscripted into the Russian army and sent to Siberia for training. When his unit was ready to be sent to the Western Front to fight the Germans, they mustered at the base. As was the custom of the Russian army, the commandant asked if any soldier had reason not to be sent to the battle lines. Uncle Willy and several other Jewish soldiers stepped forward. They told the officer they did not fear the Germans. What they feared was getting shot in the back by their fellow soldiers, many of whom were anti-Semitic Ukraines. The commandant kept them in Siberia. Uncle Willy always suspected he was sympathetic because secretly he might have been Jewish.

The Times article also reported on a debate within the Muslim community about the righteousness of a Muslim “engaging in combat in a Muslim country on behalf of the United States military. The consensus was yes, provided the conflict met the Islamic standard of a ‘just war,’” which one scholar explained as, “in the Koran it says that war is to end the state of oppression and to uplift the oppressed,” but that the killings of civilians, local corruption and prisoner abuses had undermined the support of Muslims for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is very difficult for me to understand the Muslim community’s antipathy toward the U.S. military when every day Muslims are killing Muslims through indiscriminate acts of terrorism within Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Even more difficult to understand is why the Muslim community has not universally and publicly condemned the perpetrators, especially when, according to the Times article, returning U.S. Muslim veterans “hear at their local mosques that they will go to hell for ‘killing Muslims.’” The double standard makes no sense.

I can understand why Muslims would compare their situation to “the Civil War, where brothers fought each other across the Mason-Dixon line.” But their predicament is not unique in the annals of our military history. The largest group of immigrants to the United States came from Germany. Before both World Wars, German-Americans had to reconcile their allegiances, as did Italian-Americans and Japanese-Americans during WWII. Though religion did not enter their deliberations, they chose to fight tyranny, even if it meant possibly facing their kin across enemy lines.

Our pluralistic nation of immigrants has been a beacon for people of all creeds, races, ethnicities and religions. For many of them, the military has been the closest thing to a melting pot. Our military has not always been right. Innocent civilians sometimes are killed. Rogue servicemen sometimes do bad things. But the overall conduct and intent of our military are exemplary, and we should be proud of their service, every day and on Wednesday, Veterans Day.

Chipping Away at History

Today marks the official twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the climactic events of the last century.

I wasn’t present when East Germany relaxed the rules on border crossings on Nov. 9, 1989. East and West Berliners rushed to the Wall, climbing atop the 12-foot high barrier to celebrate. But I did make a side trip to Berlin on February 16, 1990, just three days before the section of the Wall near the Brandenburg Gate was to be torn down.

I had been attending a conference in Dusseldorf, inside Germany’s western border. It was a no-brainer to make a quick, one-day jaunt to Berlin and back, to be able to walk through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin, to say, “I was there.”

I knew in advance people were chipping away at the Wall, so I stopped at a Woolworth store in Berlin to buy a small chisel and standard-sized hammer. When I arrived at the Wall that rainy and snowy day, I discovered how pitiful my purchases were to the task at hand. The reinforced concrete gave no quarter. You couldn’t even classify as pebbles the pieces I managed to dislodge.

Standing next to me was a man with a huge sledgehammer and 30-inch chisel. He was breaking off softball-size or larger chunks. He took pity on me and offered me his tools. As I remember it today, my new efforts were hardly more rewarding. He took pity on me once more, and gave the Wall a few choice whacks for me. I left Berlin with a bagful of souvenirs, most of which I gave away to family, friends and colleagues at work. I kept the two largest pieces, one to display in our living room, the other to be mounted on a plaque and hung in my office.

For the April 1990 issue of Chain Store Age, I wrote a column about my exploits, aptly titled, “Chipping Away at History.” Berlin today is a vibrant city, unified and culturally important. It’s hard to reconcile the Berlin of today with what I saw 20 years ago. But all I have to do is pick up the piece of the Wall in my living room to recall the divisions of an earlier era. And recall that I was there when at least part of it ended.

That Championship Feeling

I was pretty excited and emotionally drained when the Yankees won their 27th baseball championship Wednesday night, but my all-time cathartic sports experience was the Stanley Cup victory by the NY Rangers in 1994 which ended 54 years of frustrating hockey for Rangers fans.

Aside from the Yankees, the two teams I root for are the NY Giants football team and the Rangers. I have almost no interest in watching basketball, and only if really bored will I watch a sports event that does not involve any of my favorite teams.

I became interested in hockey in 1962 because of Elliot Levine when I entered 9th grade. Elliot was a rabid Rangers fan. Those Rangers teams were led by Andy Bathgate, Camille Henry, Jim Nielsen, Harry Howell and Gump Worsley. Rooting for the Rangers back then was an education in humility.

I first met Elliot in 1957 when I was eight-years-old, my second year at Camp Massad Aleph in Tannersville, Pa. Though a scrawny (read that, really skinny) kid, I was a pretty good athlete. The prior year I was arguably the best in my division.

So on the first day of my second year at Massad, I was quickly alerted to the prowess of one of our new bunkmates. I was told he could punch a ball all the way up the hill to the flagpole, a truly prodigious feat. With trepidation, I stepped outside to witness what proved to be an accurate accounting of his talent. He also could pitch softball better than I. He was, in short, a better athlete.

Naturally, we sustained a rivalry throughout that summer and the next three that we shared together, culminating in an after-lights out fight one Friday night when we were 11. The fight ended after he flipped me against the metal frame of a bed and a counselor mercifully showed up to end the mismatch. Actually, it didn’t quite end there. As we wanted to tangle, the counselor said, let’s do it the old fashioned way, with boxing gloves. Elliot outweighed me by about 30 pounds, but that didn’t matter to anyone except me. I’d like to say I acquitted myself admirably, but I’m still a little woozy as to the particulars of that encounter.

By the time we re-engaged in high school, our rivalry had pretty much ceased. I even turned out to be the pitcher on our school softball team, undefeated our senior year. Elliot played shortstop. Elliot took me to my first hockey game at the old Madison Square Garden. I became hooked with the sport. I suffered through the lost opportunity years of Gilbert, Ratelle, Hadfield, Park, Tkaczuk, Nevin, Stemkowski, Neilson and Giacomin.

When the Rangers traded Ratelle and Park to the hated Boston Bruins, I lost interest in hockey. It was not rekindled until the Mark Messier-Adam Graves-Brian Leetch-Mike Richter era. Messier remains the single greatest team leader I have ever seen. I won’t recount his exploits here, except to say that he not only guaranteed a Stanley Cup, he virtually single-handedly delivered it. He surely willed his teammates to victory.

The night the Rangers won the Stanley Cup, I stayed up into the early morning hours watching highlights and locker room interviews. Though I had waited just 32 years, my whole body felt released from the weight of 54 years without a championship.

Fifteen years have passed, but the good feeling remains. It’s been nine years since the Yankees last won the World Series. Yes, I’m overjoyed they won again. But it feels nothing like it did back on June 14, 1994.