The Cowardly Lion, Volume Two, Chapter I

The Cowardly Lion, Volume Two, Chapter I

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My first day working with the Home of the Western White House, as the Cotton Estate was becoming known everywhere in and around the town of San Clemente, wasn’t a workday at all.  After reporting in to the remarkably strange and alienating H.R. Haldeman, there was...
The Cowardly Lion, Chapter XXVII

The Cowardly Lion, Chapter XXVII

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Craig and I rode in his 1960 Pontiac Bonneville Convertible.  He’d driven in and picked me up outside my apartment, as he lived at the bachelor officer’s quarters on the base.  We didn’t drive from there in silence, but we drove without talking.  The Bonneville’s...
The Cowardly Lion, Chapter XXVI

The Cowardly Lion, Chapter XXVI

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This Chapter is dedicated to Jim Flynn The entire mess of paperwork that transferred the GTO to Slate and the 1969 Volkswagen bug to me took almost an hour.  The Volkswagen was brought out from the back of the dealership and parked for me to drive.  The GTO had...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter XXV

THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter XXV

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The day wore on, my time spent playing with Julie, watching her sleep, and trying most unsuccessfully to write about what had happened to me in Vietnam. How to tell a story and have it accepted in a time when no such story was going to be received by anything other...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter XXIV

THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter XXIV

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Piaget, the man who owned, with his prisoner brother, the San Clemente Hotel, was a font of information and assistance, although arcane in attire, language usage, and personal style. “Do you have a first name?” was one of the first things I asked him when we got a...