When I arrived at Galloways, it not being my usual pre-seven a.m. visiting time, the place was half full. Mike Manning sat at my table, so I walked right over and took the seat next to him, which was also usually the chair I occupied.
“Want your chair?” he asked, without saying good morning or offering any other greeting.
“The fire,” I replied, waving over to where Lorraine worked serving customers sitting at the counter.
The seats were only 18 inches apart which made sitting on one of the stools uncomfortably close to anyone on a stool right next to you. I smiled to myself as she headed my way, as usual, the seats at the counter were only occupied leaving one cushioned top open between each customer.
“The fire?” Mike replied, caught by surprise.
“Yeah, it’s the fire, I see it in your eyes,”
Lorraine poured the coffee, which I accepted with some relief. I was still tired but rather quickly rejuvenating. The strong coffee would help I knew, psychologically if not physically.
“You can’t see shit in my eyes,” Mike replied.
I looked directly into his eyes for the first time, over the lip of my cup and through the vaporous steam. I knew Mike was right because the center of his eyes looked like two small pie plates made up of grayish-black soot. The marijuana he was partial to had either been taken in only moments before or the amount from the night before was nearly overwhelming. The drug seemed to help Mike although I couldn’t handle it at all. Why anyone would want to take a substance that made you less intelligent and unable to verbally express oneself I couldn’t understand except for the fact that I knew all drugs didn’t affect everyone the same. It was simply one that I would never take again in my life. Puffing on a ‘reefer’ made me feel like a regular human being, the way I saw it, and that was the last thing I ever wanted to be.
“It’s the hero thing, all over again,” I said, softly, knowing Mike was likely going through a rough patch. “They’re giving me another medal soon and they’re not giving you anything.”
“You didn’t know the gas tank was even there, I’ve been told,” Mike replied.
Lorraine had turned up the radio I noticed for the first time. A newly released song was playing, one that had lyrics that simply grabbed me each of the few times I’d heard it. I sipped my coffee and listened to the lyrics while I tried to think of what I might say to Mike. I wasn’t hurt by his comment, at least not for me. I was hurting a bit for him. The song played: “Last thing I remember, I was running for the door, had to find the passage back to the place I was before. ‘Relax,’ said the night man, ‘We are programmed to receive,’ you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
I didn’t know the group’s name nor could I recall the name of the song, but its words were written by someone who had a soul not too different from my own.
“You can check out but you can never leave,” I said, wondering if he’d get my meaning.
“Vietnam, all over again, isn’t it,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s not me, and I apologize because it’s not you either. It’s that place and how we can keep it back there where it ought to have been left.”
Mike got up, turned, and then walked toward the door, throwing a smile over his shoulder at me as he went through. I wondered if he was going to his apartment to sleep it off or whether he was going to be in good enough shape to open and run his store. I’d noticed that some people actually performed better under the influence of the drug, although I also knew I wasn’t and would never be one of them.
I walked over to the back of the restaurant to use the Galloway phone.
“Hotel California,” Lorraine said, as she passed me by to deliver a couple of breakfast plates. “I saw your expression while it played.”
I stopped, stood still, and waited for her to come back from her delivery. I watched her closely, something I normally didn’t do. She was amazing in many ways and damn near prescient when it came to some things, like noting the effect of the song on me. It wasn’t a war song or from the war period, so what had she seen or felt? I had no idea.
“The new police Chief’s going to come in and meet you guys,” I said to her when she came back.
“Murray’s gone, I know,” she replied. “I heard the new guy’s a pansy. That true?”
“Yeah, but he’s buying a policy, and you’ll want to make sure that all goes down,”
“So, he goes from being a pansy to your client,” Lorraine laughed out loud.
“Our client,” I said. “How much do you need?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean,” I said, softly and gently. “You might be able to read me a bit, but I can read you a bit too. I know that look. You’re short and there’s no way to cover the shortage.”
“A thousand,” Lorraine replied. “Tom can’t know if you can do it.”
“The commission is five hundred, as usual, and Tom will figure it out, of course, as he always does. So, what about the rest?”
“I’ll have to owe you,” she said, “and I don’t care if he knows later, but right now he’s got too much on his plate.”
“Owing is a lousy foundation for a friendship,” I replied, not waiting for her to say anything before acquiescing to the deal.
“When do you need it?” I asked, as my schedule for the day was starting to fill up.
“The day before yesterday, or maybe earlier,” Lorraine said, not smiling when she said the words.
“Okay,” I said, hoping Mary was already at the beach with Jules, or at least headed that way.
I found it very uncomfortable to try to explain to her why I was doing what I was doing with the money. I hadn’t taken great pains to change the ‘hiding place’ for the cash, which meant that she probably knew about the twenty thousand, but explaining, once again, why I was supporting Lorraine as my bird dog for insurance would be difficult ground to cover again.
I used the phone to call Butch. We’d briefly talked the day before after I’d missed our appointment. We were back on for the following morning. I made certain he understood just how important meeting with him was to me. Despite my luck at coming home and meeting some really good people, I was also becoming aware, particularly in working with the Western White House, and then likely the CIA personnel to be coming my way, that such people were very uncommon, and, in my condition, I needed a good supply of them.
The Volks waited, parked on the street. I’d recommended that the Chief stop at Galloways to grill Lorraine about life in San Clemente since the man knew nothing about the place but what might be found in travel brochures and on maps. The police department itself was a poor place to try to learn about the community because all one got when asking culturally related questions of cops was negative or ribald jokes made in mostly bad taste. I almost started walking across Del Mar when I remembered that I didn’t live in an apartment only a few hundred meters from Galloways anymore. Lobos Marinos was a good bit further at just over a mile.
The transit from Del Mar to home was almost nothing at all. The Chevy was in the driveway when I pulled in, but then it would be, I realized. The almost always clean and groomed beach was two blocks west, down a rough path and across the railroad tracks. For some reason, Mary and Jules both loved negotiating what was a difficult path for most people. Both of them thought that the path and the lack of any decent parking near the top entrance made the beach almost like a private one.
There was no one home and I breathed a sigh of relief. Mary had purchased a fake rock to keep the front door key in, which made me laugh every time I opened the rock to get the thing. Although the rock looked real enough it only weighed about two ounces, which would be a dead giveaway to some halfway-bright burglar that it was a key repository. I carefully put the key back. The door would lock itself when I left.
I went upstairs and there was, of course, no one there. The shoeshine box was now located in an upper wall panel over the closet. It was too high for Mary, at five feet tall, to reach, which I knew meant little. She had a mind much bigger and taller than her physical height.
I counted out 15 of the crisp consecutively numbered hundred-dollar bills. They were so new that they stuck together. I was getting fifteen hundred for Lorraine because I knew that if she needed a thousand as badly as she’d let on then fifteen hundred might be a real relieving help. One thing I knew for certain, the ability Lorraine had to enthusiastically find and then convert prospects to giving me an appointment, if not outright closing a deal on the spot, had everything to do with her being in a great state of mind. Desperation was no place to be when trying to convince someone to buy something they might not think they need.
I found an envelope and put the bills inside, noticing for the first time that not only were they consecutively numbered but they were old silver certificates issued in 1934. I’d had some silver certificate one-dollar bills when I was younger, but I also knew they’d gone out of production in favor of treasury notes in the early sixties. What I possessed, now a hundred and eighty-five of them, might be collectors’ items not that that was important for the short term. Lorraine needed the cash right now, and it wasn’t like there was some sort of collector’s store located within many miles. The main thing was to get the cash to her and have her go to the bank and get change. Twenties, older money, nobody questioned at all, but all those hundreds might cause suspicion and questions I didn’t want to have to answer or have her attempt to answer. The bank wouldn’t care, as the employees at any bank would only be concerned about whether the hundreds were any good or not. I smiled at that thought. I didn’t think the government itself ever handed out bad bills.
I drove back to the restaurant, went in, and delivered the envelope without waiting for any response or effect. I knew how very serious the money was to her, however, she said nothing, only turning to open the unsealed envelope and begin counting.
The drive back home was without incident, although when I drove past Fred’s Liquor store on South Ola Vista, I thought about stopping in for a bottle of Bacardi. It would be good to have a Rum and Coke and hit the sack again, and the woman who managed the place thought I was a real war hero from what she’d read about me in the local paper when the Corps had finally given me the Navy and Marine Corps medal for saving Young in the sure. God knows how she’d treat me following the fire and the outlandish hero the media had made of me over that. I drove on, she was no tony too attractive to flirt with, but I had plenty to do. I was tired but would just have to tough it out.
Gularte needed some of my time or the new Chief was going to end up either very screwed up or dead. The cowboy-style man had absolutely no idea of what he might be dealing with in someone as potentially lethal as Gularte. I didn’t care about the Chief, however, I cared about Gularte and the simple fact that he didn’t have either the constant therapy I was getting from friends and family or the innate ability to look young and innocent despite such brutal life experiences like I too had. There was also the scheduling of the beach patrol, the arrangements for presenting a package to Chief Brown so I could get the nearly fifteen hundred commission from that sale, the coming meeting with first the Dwarfs, then Butch the following morning, and finally, the very strange arrangement to have a confidential meeting with Herbert, my current ‘employer’ inside the back of a limo while sitting on Del Mar, the main street of the city.
Just what kind of secrecy was taught at the coming schools I was supposed to attend? My confidence level was continuing to erode and I hadn’t even started with the outfit yet. Just how many big limos did my control officer think might sit all alone on Del Mar in mid-morning, and why wouldn’t it be thought that the attention this might draw would outweigh whatever the merits of the discussion inside might be?
Once home I decided to ‘take a break’ and spend a few minutes checking out the artifact once more. Instinctively, I knew that I couldn’t possibly be holding on to the object for much longer. Something like what it represented, to the world of physics alone, had to mean that someone was going to come for it. But my curiosity was endless when it came to considering what the thing represented. My life had changed in its presence, the first time I’d seen for myself its effects, and there’d be no changing my life back to what it had been before. If nothing else, I wanted to make sure the thing had not disappeared, not physically but mentally for me. Had I made the whole thing of the experience up? If nothing else, and there was a lot ‘else,’ the A Shau taught me that my perception of reality around me wasn’t really of reality at all. It was only my view of reality.
The garage was huge, one side built to house some monster of a motor home that wasn’t present any longer. I spent only a few moments climbing up the ladder to release the bolts I’d used to hold the heater in place, the bolts not having or needing the nuts to be screwed onto their four ends.
I opened the aluminum safe-like box after entering the simple combination and there it was, once unwrapped, just like it was before. I looked at the palm of my hand, trying to match up the serrations somehow formed into the skin, except a bit deeper, and the markings on the outside of the object. The exercise was useless unless I was to remove it from the container and hold it closer to my eyes, something I wasn’t going to do. I’d never handle the thing with my bare hands again. Its power was well beyond my understanding, and maybe, exclusive of trying out some more Mr. Wizard kind of amateur experiments, that was all I needed. The unreality of the thing’s existence gave my presence in what I conceived the universe, to be more real. The thing wasn’t real, not in any definition of that word, but I was. My mind was taken back to the theologians I’d been forced to study under at St. Norbert College. The wild mental speculation adventures they’d taken classes of us students on had been remarkable, now that I was older and in the presence of the artifact. They’d inadvertently made unbelievers of many of us, simply because our earlier catechism learnings were disproven one after another and there was nothing left to replace them.
The low burble of the Caprice penetrated through the closed garage door. My wife had come home from the beach, gotten changed and not come out to the garage to get me, even though the Volks was parked right next to her car. I quickly replaced the object into the box, shoved the box into the heater, and raised the affair back up to the ceiling. It took only a few minutes. I rushed out of the side door. The Chevy was still idling in the driveway but there was nobody in it. Mystified, I went inside the house.
Mary was in the kitchen, with Julie on the couch trying to communicate with Bozo who sat on the side table in one of his classic statuary poses.
“Why’s the car running?” I asked, walking through the kitchen door.
“Because you were in the garage doing something and I didn’t want your daughter to see what it was,” she replied.
I thought for a minute. “How did you know I wasn’t out for a run or something?”
“You can’t run yet, at least not very far, if you’ve forgotten, which might be a good thing. Besides, your clothes would be strewn all over the floor upstairs and they weren’t.”
I walked out of the kitchen and then the house toward the Chevy. My wife was a Chinese box of mysteries that I knew I was never going to figure out. Maybe that was a ‘good thing,’ as she’d used the phrase, but I wasn’t sure. She’d been right, once again, I also knew.
The Caprice sat idling, like me, but sounding a whole lot better. I wanted to simply get in the car and go for a drive, but I knew better. I’d have to think up something to tell Mary later in the day or toward evening. She was never going to let go of what I might have been up to in the empty garage and the last thing I needed her to do was somehow, which might even be likely given her native high intellect, search the place and come up with the artifact, or at least the mysterious box that held it.
I moved into the driver’s part of the front bench seat and switched the ignition off.
Instead of reflecting on my busy schedule, the money going in and out too rapidly, the coming meeting with my control officer, or even thinking up a grand lie believably enough to fool my wife into some kind of contentment, I sat thinking about the names that had played in the tape and President Nixon’s disturbing comments about their passing. Dorothy Kilgallen’s name had been a complete surprise since I’d barely heard of her before doing some investigation. She was tied up in the investigation of the Kennedy assassination and the papers she’d had with her that she’d been about to share with her published had vanished with her death. The second name was more shocking. Aristotle Onassis. Again, the Kennedy assassination came to my mind and what Nixon said about his passing; “Had to be, and not truly undeserved, I might add, not that one, but choking himself to death.”
My memory kicked in with the expression of the president’s comment even more than the nature of the wealthy Greek shipping magnet’s passing.
Supposedly the man had Myasthenia Gravis all his life and was hospitalized at the end because of it. Few people suffering from the autoimmune disease, which was incurable, die from not being able to breathe anymore, much less from self-strangulation, as the president mentioned. It was going to take some research at the San Clemente library to learn more.
My memory of the previous exchange between Nixon and Jackie I’d listened to on the earlier tape came to mind when he’d asked her how she was getting along with Aristotle. She replied that she didn’t expect they’d be together much longer. When Nixon asked if she was leaving him Jackie promptly replied “No, he would be.” Until listening to the last tape I hadn’t thought to reflect on the strangeness of her answer, but now it seemed to make sense.
Right after that exchange, she’d left the Western White House. Not long after that Aristotle had ‘self-strangled’ himself in a Greek hospital. Jackie’s comment indicated to me something I didn’t want indicated. She knew. How could she possibly know something like that or was it mere coincidence wherein she was talking about his potential dissatisfaction with her as his wife in some way?
Kilgallen was a mystery, but Aristotle’s passing and what had transpired between Nixon and Jackie was much bigger. There were more names but none as big as the first two, yet that didn’t mean they might not be even more revealing. The question of who was on the receiving end of the conversation Nixon had about the identities of the dead and the nature of their passing was becoming ever more on my mind. Who had Nixon been talking to? The end of that tape was filled with several minutes of crackling and hiss that were different from all the others. Was there some hope that special equipment could draw a conversational response from that mess of sounds?
I got out of the car and breathed the wonderfully clear afternoon air into and out of my damaged lungs. Despite everything, it was good to be alive, maybe as good to be alive as the people on that tape might have felt just before it was over for them. I was home, but the dangers of the valley were ever present, nearly as deadly, but very much more subtle and better hidden. I was reminded of an expression of thought and conjecture moving to action written using Sherlock Holmes as the protagonist in a series of novels.
“The game is afoot,” I said out into the empty air. I smiled as I turned to go back inside and face a mental firing squad being artfully and dutifully prepared by my wife.
My perception of reality around me wasn’t really of reality at all. It was only my view of reality. …and we each have our own view. Isn’t that a fact ??
After recently getting my cataracts removed I can attest to that !! Proving my wife was right more times than gave her credit for !! LOL 🙂
Onward with the new job and adventures ahead LT.
Semper Fi
Thanks for that affirmation and compliment SgtBob, now that you can see well enough to ready my work
and have gained a sufficiency of wisdom to listen to your wife as little closer….
Semper fi,
Jim
Late comment here but I had to read & reread this chapter. Lots going on. This led to researching of Hebert.
From this chapter “You don’t want to become famous for anything in the agency”
Could the CIA have been behind the hit job 60 minutes did on him?
I have no idea about the 50 Minutes hit job, and that was what it was. The Agency seldom acts against former agents unless there
is traitorous activity assumed or proven.
It will take your house, your cars, your money and leave you broke with your family however, if you commit rather extraordinary violations.
Usually, however, you simply get early retired, fired outright or continued on with payments you have to make back to them.
Thanks for the comment. Herbert shared almost nothing of his personal life with me.
Semper fi,
Jim
James, I did not see this chapter posted on your website – so went looking on Facebook for it. Surprise! It’s been up for three days.
I like this line – “My perception of reality around me wasn’t really of reality at all. It was only my view of reality.” …and we each have our own view!
I await the next chapter.
Some minor editing suggestions follow:
The seats were only 18 inches
Maybe add “there” to indicate the seats at the counter
The seats there were only 18 inches
seats at the counter were only occupied leaving one cushioned top open between each customer
Maybe add “alternately” after “only”
seats at the counter were only alternately occupied leaving one cushioned top open between each customer
It’s that place and how we can keep it back there where it ought to have been left
Context seems to indicate “can” should be “can’t”
It’s that place and how we can’t keep it back there where it ought to have been left
she passed me by to deliver a couple
Maybe flip “me by” to “by me”
she passed by me to deliver a couple
saving Young in the sure
“surf” instead of “sure”
saving Young in the surf
she was no tony too attractive to flirt with
Maybe reword
she was not only too attractive to flirt with
absolutely no idea of what he might be dealing with
Drop “of” after “idea”
absolutely no idea what he might be dealing with
Had I made the whole thing of the experience up?
Maybe shorten
Had I made the whole experience up?
she’d been about to share with her published had vanished with her death
“publisher” instead of “published”
she’d been about to share with her publisher had vanished with her death
Blessings & Be Well
Thanks Dan, much appreciate the hard work to hold the whole thing together once I get it out there to you.
Sorry about missing it on the website.
Semper fi, my friend,
Jim
Jim,
I did much earlier read and cogitate about what you offered us in this chapter. I intended to pen a comment earlier, but got tied up in prep work (power washing, applying a treatment, washing it off) on a double sided 650 foot wood fence that I need to get ready to stain. At 76, I think I might be too old for this kind of work anymore. But back brace and Advil help.
Anyway, your enlightening and thought-provoking words of this chapter did cause me considerable thought as to what transpired and how it may show up later, or set the scene for a new twist
. Seems like one section of our life is wrapping up and another section is about to take off at warp speed. You sure were a good friend to those who you considered friends in your life back then at that time. I am sure they appreciated you friendship.
Thanks for the incredible ride of each chapter.
Anxiously awaiting your NEXT chapter to se where it takes us, my friend.
THE WALTER DUKE. What a pleasure, as usual, to get your take on the continuing work.
Yes, it was a period of considerable upheaval although that kind of topsy turvy stuff kept right on going for some time.
Thanks for the great comment and the compliment, as well.
Your friend,
and Semper fi,
Jim
LT, had no one ever noticed the serrations on your hand? Hard to believe with a wife as sharp as yours she hasn’t noticed and quizzed you to no end on how they came to be. The Kennedy thing is a bowl of worms. We will never know the truth. A sad part of history along with Tricky Dick in forced retirement brought on by his on doing.
Still have the serrations, although they’ve faded over time a good bit. Nobody really notices physical stuff on other people
except for faces, or blatant scars, etc. My wife didn’t take not of them for some time and then my explanation that I got burned by
working on a hot auto engine cylinder head did the ticket. She doesn’t know to this day..and doesn’t read these comments!
At least no so far. She wanted nothing to do with the ‘Voodoo,’ as she described the thing when we had it.
Thanks for the great comment,
and Semper fi,
Jim
Oh, wow, the intrigue just gets deeper and deeper. Keep it up, my friend! Batman
Thanks, Batman. I moved over from Mass Mutual to Bankers Life when I left for Albuquerque.
Talk about wild insurance times. To try to build an agency alone, knowing nobody, in the middle of
that desert. Wow. Talk about adventure. Of course, I had your coaching and leadership training when I made the move.
Semper fi, my friend,
Jim
Jim, All the bouncing balls of moving from a place & people you may have not minded staying around for a bit longer. Plus the new job & wondering (?) who will come by for the artifact. A large bowl of stew with too many ingredients, resulting in having to focus too much on just what is in the next spoonful vs just being able to enjoy a simple stew. More later my friend. Regards, Doug (Oh, ever have to deal with multiple ‘trigger fingers’ on both hands? If so, ever get any relief of it?)
Thanks, my friend, for the usual in depth comment here.
Sometimes I wonder about comments, since I respond to them all. I wonder if my responses are a bit over
the top since no authors I know of any caliber at all do anything like that. I understand about not having
the time when one has a large following but I also decided some time back that this kind of personal response
is required to make me more personal in feeling as well as I think it allows readers to be straight from the shoulder with me
about my work. Here, you, and they are just that…or so I trust.
Thanks Doug and hope to talk to you soon.
Semper fi,
Jim
Every week I read the latest chapter then lay awake wondering about your latest reveal of history. I never liked history as a school subject but now I find myself trying to remember dates and stirring up old memories. I was hoping we would learn how you came to be photographed wearing your new Chief’s cowboy hat. If you or Gularte did not borrow it, did you find a movie prop?
Now, I must read the previous chapter the third time because I don’t remember what was said Onassis. Maybe it was a good thing that I was so busy studying to make certain that I stayed in school at that time I rarely listened to music, read anything for fun or noticed what was happening to our country. Thankfully, enough heros and good citizens did pay attention to keep me believing that our leaders were always honest for a few more years.
John, the cowboy hat in the picture is the actual one Brown wore and that photo itself is of him, not me. Never have worn a cowboy
hat or even put one on in my life. I am happy that my work may have raised up an interest in history from the dead. I excerpt from the tapes of the work but not always in full detail. I don’t need people coming for the tapes at my age (or any age for that matter). The real players in the baseball game of life don’t play softball and I don’t have a glove for the fast pitches anymore.
Semper fi,
Jim
After reading this episode, I felt like you are entering the Twilight Zone, everything seems too surreal, too many weird things happening back to back!!
Rod Serling, who wrote most of the Twilight Zone segments, had a life like what he wrote in many ways and I get the same
feeling as he must have. I almost literally have seen ‘the signpost up ahead’ many times in my life.
Thanks for the comment and wanting to continue on with me in the telling of this thing.
Semper fi,
Jim
I had all but forgotten about the artifact with all the other things going on. Lot of loose ends that are all somehow connected in a Gordian knot.
How was it that I was so important back then to so many, but never felt during those years like I was really
important to anybody other than my family…and maybe Bozo? The complexity is more like a Monkey knot but
Gordian will do.Thanks for the great comment, as usual.
Semper fi,
Jim
The book written by Tony Herberts childhood that I mentioned earlier was written in 2019 not early last year as I originally wrote . Time flies ! In the review that I read of it there seems to be nothing mentioned of Tonys other life in the CIA which his friend either did not know of or decided not to mention. I will soon be getting a copy of the book and read it and compare it with Tonys book Soldier it should be interesting. Now as a side note nowhere in the book Soldier can I find and references to Ronald O Kaiser which if he was a close childhood friend of Tonys like he says he surely would have been mentioned early on in Tonys recollections of his childhood in Herminie Pennsylvania.
Truly and sincerely appreciate the research you have been doing on Herbert. I, of course, knew about his CIA connection because of him being my
first control, although it was hard to understand why he held that post as he was becoming so famous. You don’t want to become famous for anything
in the agency or you find yourself out of the CIA overnight. Like Valarie Plame and all that. Thanks for the hard work and filling in some of thge
gaps where and there.
Semper fi,
My friend,
Jim
Now this chapter is another that hits close to home ! A couple of years ago I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis and I was scared shitless after reading up on it . After more testing I was found to have Narcoleptic Cataplexy . That diagnosis didn’t make me feel much better because some of the symptoms are the same hence the the first mistaken diagnosis . Now back to your control officer Tony Herbert . I did start rereading his book Soldier and it seems that he got his start in the intelligence business quite early on . Not long after his return from Korea he was sent to the Army Intelligence School then sent to Chicago on a mission to infiltrate a ring that was stealing documents from the Fifth Armys Headquarters . One of the members was a Chicago police Lieutenant . Tony did not reveal in the book who they were selling the documents to though. So during this time frame Tony was leading what was essentially a triple life . His life in the CIA , his private life pursuing a degree in I believe it was psychology and a very public life in his battle with CBS and the Army to get his reputation restored . There was a book written about him by a childhood friend last year that i need to get because now I wonder how much his friend really knew about Tony and his life versus what you knew him to be.
Holy Cow, as we say in Wisconsin instead of MFing Shit! I read up on your affliction.
The falling asleep thing has to be a social bitch, much less dangerous under certain circumstances, like standing on a ladder!
And waking up paralyzed. Panic time. Mainly I feel so bad for you about this.
I am glad that you are still able to write on here, be as totally coherent as you are and even investigate stuff on my behalf.
Thanks. I have to think about this.
Send me your phone number.
Mine is 2625815300
Your friend,
Jim
The plot deepens, Jim.
You seemed to have a knack for being in the right place at the right time, or conversely, wrong place at the wrong time. I am glad it wasn’t me, as I’m not equipped to handle all that.
But whom can you tell? And keeping all that inside can’t have been good for you.
We are each of us made up in different ways. I’d go mad from an inability to share your newly acquired knowledge. Yet you seemed to be able to handle the information without bursting at the seams.
Eagerly awaiting the forth-coming chapters!
Thanks Craig, for a great comment. Hold everything inside is par for the course in the CIA, particularly with respected to field work.
Even the ‘home office’ gets to know very little about what really happened on missions, but then they really only wanted success.
Thanks again,
Semper fi,
Jim
Kilgallen had called her editor from her room and told him that tomorrow she would blow the Kennedy Assassination open!
And the next day she was found to have committed Suicide…. and all of her documents and notes were gone.
Not unlike Marilyn’s diary….
Yes, I read about that much later in the game. Back in those days there was no place to go for real information on stuff that wasn’t old history and available at the local
library. Thanks for your comment.
Semper fi,
JIm
Another interesting chapter. I didn’t realize that Nixon ever had any kind of relationship with Jackie, let alone where he might be asking about her marriage.
I sent you a PM you might can use.
Kemp
I don’t think very many people understand that Nixon was physically present in Dallas at the time JFK was killed!
Nobody talked about it and the ‘official’ records have him flying out just hours before the event, on a governmental aircraft
he was not entitled to fly in. All I have is what I have on tape and it was shocking to me too since nobody ever had one
word to say among the White House staff about her showing up…and they were all rumor mongers of the highest order.
But I sure as hell believed, and still believe, the tape’s contents.
Thanks for the great comment, as usual, and the number of times you appear on here writing like you do.
Semper fi, my friend,
Jim
James,
I don’t know what to say! I’m scratching my head and wondering if I’m just having a weird dream. I know that isn’t true, but still bewildering.
I know I can’t wait for the next episode!
Thanks so much.
Steve Ward
Belief has become a much more difficult conclusion to come to in this strange day and age.
I do onderstaand, and so much of history, if written about as it really went down, is simply’ not believable.
The mythologies constructed by the more powerful pervade all of human presentation up and down every avenue and
in every thread of public presentation. Thanks for the comment and the ‘truth’ you reveal in its content about you.
Semper fi,
Jim
Captivating as usual, glad you are still around to share the story. Seems like there were penty of opportunities for that mot to happen. You have us hooked on the astonishing but bery teal story. God Speed!
Thanks David, much appreciate the compliment and the steadfast support in the reading and commenting.
The writing itself is a sort of risky adventure…although contact lately with any of the forces that
be has been non-existent after a bit of it a ways back. At my age now there’s just no point in doing
anything but laying the story down as I view it having happened. The ‘fog of war’ one of my good friends
comment about on here but truly I more fear the fog of cold age. I’ve still got the edge though and I’m
going to write until I can’t anymore.
Semper fi,
Jim
we all leave the war but it didn’t ever leave us. you are a great storyteller and I mean that in the most positive sense that you can take life situations and weave them as a compelling story that’s a great skill
you are juggling a lot of balls which I have learned is usually a choice we make thinking we and we alone can help and protect those close to us or those we feel a great responsibility to protect/guide/help those in our sphere: Lorraine , Gularte, Mike, even the pansy chief.
You also express a longing to connect with Butch.
Tells alot about your character.
Onassis, Jackie,et al are a distraction designed by the universe to challenge your insatiable honesty. Riddles inside an enigma- the Matryoshka doll
your writing is like seeing my reflection in a still pond
Very thought provoking
Now “Hotel California” by the Eagles is a song that has been interpreted in various ways -At its core, the song tells the story of a traveler who arrives at the mysterious Hotel California and becomes ensnared in its luxurious but ultimately sinister atmosphere. The hotel is depicted as a place of decadence and indulgence, but also one from which escape seems impossible. Some interpretations suggest that the song is a metaphor for the hedonistic lifestyle of the 1970s, while others see it as a commentary on the darker side of the American dream or the pitfalls of fame and excess. The iconic lyrics and haunting melody have contributed to the enduring fascination with the song and its enigmatic meaning.
And i think it is Metaphor fot the Viet vet experience
Ask Taylor Swift
Hotel California. The writer of that song. His daughter visited my home for dinner a few years ago.
She was saying one of my cousins at the time. She laughed when we started to discuss her dad’s famous song.
“He was so loaded on drugs he has and had no idea what he was weriting about, and then the other guys in the
group got hold of it and added their own parts. I like your interpretation better, just as I much enjoy your commentary
on here. Love the ‘seeing my own reflection’ comment. Thanks my friend,
Semper fi,
Jim
It is interesting how we move forward from a very structured existence; St Norbert’s, through the Matrix of RVN toward a normal life only we are uniquely able to navigate! I realize that this epiphany is based upon “review” and not the fog of war we carried at the time.
This includes some of your disciples that ride in the comments in their own battles.
Quite an accomplishment
Thank you Colonel Homan, who flew my ‘six’ over the valley in Vietnam. Thank you, I think, because I don’t always understand
what you are writing…and I know that’s me and not you. I’ll ponder over the ‘disciples’ part and the fog of war.
Thanks though, anyway, my friend,
and Ssemper fi, of course,
Jim