What Would Kinky Do?: How to Unscrew a Screwed-Up World Read online

  When my father was a young boy growing up in the Chicago of the late twenties, his first job was working for a Polish peddler. The man had a horse and cart that was loaded up with fruits and vegetables, and Tom sat on the very top. Through the streets and alleys of the old West Side they'd go, with the peddler crying his wares in at least five languages and my father running the purchases up to the housewives who lived on the top floors of the tenement buildings. There were trolley cars then and colorful clotheslines strung across the sooty alleys like medieval banners. My father still remembers the word the peddler seemed to cry out more than any other. The word was kartofel. It is Polish for "potato."

  In November 1944 my mother, Minnie, gave birth to me in a manger somewhere on the south side of Chicago. (I lived there one year, couldn't find work, and moved to Texas, where I haven't worked since.) And all this time my father was far away fighting for his country and his wife and a baby boy he might never see. Tom was a navigator in World War II, flying a heavy bomber for the Eighth Air Force, the old B-24, also known as the Liberator, which, in time, it was. Tom's plane was called the I've Had It. He flew thirty-five successful missions over Germany, the last occurring on November 9, 1944, two days after he'd learned that he was a brand-new father. As the navigator, the responsibility fell to him to bring the ten-man crew back safely. In retrospect, it's not terribly surprising that fate and the powers that be had selected Tom to be the navigator. He was the only one aboard the I've Had It who possessed a college degree. He was also the oldest man on the plane. He was twenty-three years old.

  After each successful mission it was the custom to paint a small bomb on the side of the plane; in the rare instance of shooting down an enemy plane, a swastika was painted. When one incoming crew, however, accidentally hit a British runway maintenance worker, a small teacup was painted on the side of the plane, practically engendering an international incident.

  Tom was a hero in what he still refers to as "the last good war." For his efforts, he received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf clusters and the heartfelt gratitude of his crew. Yet the commanding officer's first words to Tom and his young compatriots had not been wrong. The CO had told them to look at the man on their left and to look at the man on their right. "When you return," he'd said, "they will not be here." This dire prophecy proved to be almost correct. The Mighty Eighth suffered a grievous attrition rate during the height of the war.

  After the war Tom and Min settled in Houston, where Tom pioneered community action programs, and Min became one of the first speech therapists in the Houston public schools. In the late fifties they moved to Austin, where Tom was a professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas. It was in 1953, however, that my parents made possibly their greatest contribution to children far and wide by opening Echo Hill Ranch. My mother passed away in 1985, but Tom, known as Uncle Tom to the kids, still runs the camp.

  Like most true war heroes, Tom rarely talks about the war. My sister, Marcie, once saw Tom sitting alone in a darkened room and asked, "Is everything all right, Father?" To this Tom replied, "The last time everything was all right was August 14, 1945." That was the day Japan surrendered.

  On a recent trip to O'Hare Airport in Chicago, I commandeered a limo and drove through the area where Tom had grown up. There were slums and suburbs and Starbucks, and the trolley cars and the clotheslines and the peddler with his horse and cart were gone. "Kartofel," I said to the limo driver, but he just looked straight ahead. Either he wasn't Polish or he didn't want any potatoes.

  Today Tom lives in Austin with his new wife, Edythe Kruger, and his two dogs, Sam and Perky. He has three children and three grandchildren. He eats lunch at the Frisco and still plays tennis with his old pals. He did not, as he contends, teach me everything I know. Only almost everything. He taught me tennis. He taught me chess. He taught me how to belch. He taught me to always stand up for the underdog. He taught me the importance of treating children like adults and adults like children. He is a significant American because by his example, his spirit, and his unseen hand, he has guided children of all ages safely through the winding, often torturous courses of their lives. One of them was me.

  Tom's war is long over. Indeed, the whole era seems gone like the crews who never came home, lost forever among the salt-shaker stars. And yet, when the future may look its darkest, there sometimes occurs an oddly comforting moment when, with awkward grace, the shadow of a silver plane flies inexplicably close to my heart. One more mission for the navigator.

  DON IMUS DIED FOR OUR SINS

  ecause of the illness known as human nature, I suppose it was necessary for Don Imus to die for our sins. Every good Christian knows, however, that's already been done by Jesus. When judgment comes, they will tell you, it's not about the bad things you may have done; it's about the good things you do. Throwing stones in glass houses notwithstanding, there probably isn't a single one of Imus's vocal critics who comes anywhere close to matching his record of philanthropy or good acts on this earth.

  Judge a man by the size of his enemies, my father used to say. If two neighbors are bickering over a fence line, that doesn't tell you much. But consider a man who year after year has raised countless millions of dollars for charity and has

  fought hand-to-hand combat against childhood cancer, autism, and SIDS (none of which, by the way, have ever afflicted himself or his family), and well, you've got a rodeo clown who not only rescues the cowboy but saves the children as well. Imus's work has also been well documented in fighting relentlessly for the fallen, forgotten heroes of a rather dubiously conceived war.

  But Imus's good works, which are a matter of record, as well as a matter of heart, will indubitably be judged by a higher authority—higher than the media, the racemongers, or the rats leaving the sinking ship. Imus sailed that ship for almost forty years as dangerously close to the truth as he could get. There are two kinds of sailors, they say: the sailor who fights the sea, and the sailor who loves the sea. Imus loved the sea. He also loved his job. He loved children and animals and yes, even people. I speak in the past tense only because Imus is gone for the moment. I predict he will be back, very possibly bigger than ever. Every saint was once a sinner and every sinner was once a saint.

  I met Imus on the gangplank of Noah's Ark. He was then and remains today a truth-seeking missile with the best bullshit meter in the business. Far from being a bully, he was a spiritual chop-buster, never afraid to go after the big guys with nothing but the slingshot of ragged integrity. I watched him over the years as he struggled with his demons and conquered them. This was not surprising to me. Imus came from the Great Southwest, where the men are men and the emus are nervous. And he did it all with something that seems, indeed, to be a rather scarce commodity these days. A sense of humor.

  There's no excusing Imus's recent ridiculous remark, but there's something not kosher in America when one guy gets a Grammy and one gets fired for the same line. The Matt Lauers and Al Rokers of this world live by the cue card and die by

  the cue card; Imus is a rare bird, indeed—he works without a net. When you work without a net as long as Imus has, sometimes you make mistakes. Wavy Gravy says he salutes mistakes. They're what make us human, he claims. And humanity, beyond doubt, is what appears to be missing from this equation. If we've lost the ability to laugh at ourselves, to laugh at each other, to laugh together, then the PC world has succeeded in diminishing us all. Political correctness, a term first used by Josef Stalin, has trivialized, sanitized, and homogenized America, transforming us into a nation of chain establishments and chain people.

  Take heart, Imus. You're merely joining a long and legendary laundry list of individuals who were summarily sacrificed in the name of society's sanctimonious soul: Socrates, Jesus, Galileo, Joan of Arc, Mozart, and Mark Twain, who was decried as a racist until the day he died for using the n-word rather prolifically in Huckleberry Finn. Today many people believe the book to be the greatest work
of fiction in the western world because Twain created a slave named Jim who was a man of integrity, dignity, and humanity in a world full of scoundrels and hypocrites.

  Speaking of which, there will always be plenty of Sharptons and Jacksons around. There will be plenty of cowardly executives; plenty of lazy, Gotcha! media types; plenty of fair-weather friends; and plenty of Jehovah's Bystanders, people who believe in God but just don't want to get involved. In this crowd, it could be argued that we need a Don Imus just to wake us up once in a while.

  Finally, I believe New York will miss its crazy cowboy and America will miss the voice of a free-thinking, independent-minded, rugged individualist. I believe MSNBC will lose many viewers and CBS radio, many listeners. Too bad for them. That's what happens when you get rid of the only guy you've got who knows how to ride, shoot straight, and tell the truth.

  ANIMAL HEROES

  inti Jua: Binti Jua is a western lowland gorilla who resides in the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, Illinois. Her aunt is Koko, the gorilla who is famous for her ability to communicate with humans using American Sign Language.

  A three-year-old child climbed a railing at the Brookfield Zoo's gorilla exhibit and promptly fell eighteen feet down into the enclosure. The fall knocked the boy unconscious. Zookeepers rushed to rescue him, but his fall placed him in an area that they couldn't reach quickly. Binti, who witnessed the child's fall, rushed over to the unconscious boy and gently carried him in her arms to a safe area where zoo officials could treat him. Her own baby, Koola, clutched her back throughout the entire rescue. The little boy Binti Jua saved spent four days in the hospital and was then released. Binti Jua's quick reactions that day made her a hero.

  Cher Ami: Messenger pigeons were used extensively during both world wars. In World War I, the U.S. Army Signal Corps used six hundred pigeons in France. One of their carrier pigeons, a Black Check cock called Cher Ami, was awarded the French "Croix de Guerre with Palm" for heroic service while delivering twelve important messages in Verdun. On his final mission in October 1918, he delivered a message despite having been shot. The crucial message, found in the capsule hanging from a ligament of his shattered leg, saved around two hundred U.S. soldiers of the 77th Infantry Division's "Lost Battalion" in the battle of the Argonne. He is enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution, and is currently on display in the National Museum of American History's "Price of Freedom" exhibit.

  Paddy: On November 25, 1944, Royal Air Force war bird "Paddy" was decorated for his effort in the war against Nazi Germany. This brave bird made the fastest recorded crossing of the English Channel, delivering messages from Normandy for D-Day, traveling 230 miles in 4 hours, 5 minutes. When receiving his Order of Merit he was described as "exceptionally intelligent."

  Lola: Lola the white rat is the top student in her class at a police school in Sibate, near Bogata. She is among six rats being trained to sniff out land mines in Colombia. Security experts credit the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN), with planting mines because they are effective in preventing soldiers and police from raiding their coca fields and the camps they use to hold thousands of kidnap victims. The International Campaign to Ban Land Mines estimates that 100 million mines have been laid worldwide, from antipersonnel and antitank mines hidden underground to above-ground mines triggered by tripwires. More than 1,075 Colombians were killed or maimed by stepping on mines in 2005, a higher number than in any other heavily mined country such as Cambodia or Afghanistan.

  Colombian police animal trainers, frustrated by seeing so many of their valuable explosive-sniffing dogs blown up by stepping on mines planted by the leftist rebels, decided to explore other ways to locate and detonate the explosives. Inspired by a similar pilot program in Mozambique, Colombian police purchased six rats and were surprised to find that they learned to sniff out explosives, such as C4, twice as fast as dogs and, unlike even the best mine-detecting dog or human, they are relentlessly single-minded. Rats are plentiful, cheap, and easily transported. At about 220 grams each, Lola and her classmates are too light to detonate mines accidentally. "The dogs are heavy enough to set off the explosion, sometimes killing officers nearby," said Police Colonel Javier Cifuentes, head of the program at the National Police base in Sibate. "The rats can stand on a mine without anything happening."

  Katrina: In March 2006, The Humane Society of the United States hosted the twentieth annual Genesis Awards, a program that honors works from the big screen, the small screen, and from print-media news and entertainment that convey the message of respect and compassion for animals. The guest of honor was Katrina, a black Labrador retriever who proved herself a hero in the aftermath of one of the deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States.

  On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina's storm surge caused several breaches in levees around New Orleans, leaving 80 percent of the city submerged, tens of thousands of victims clinging to rooftops, and hundreds of thousands scattered to shelters around the country. Out of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, many stories of heroism and bravery came to the forefront. One man's tale in particular captured the hearts of people worldwide. In an on-the-spot interview, the man described how, when the waters rose, a nameless black dog pulled him to higher ground and saved him from drowning. The dog stayed with him until he was later rescued by helicopter. Despite the man's pleas, the dog had to be left behind. Like many of Hurricane Katrina's animal victims, she would have been abandoned if it weren't for the actions of a television crew covering the big storm; the crew rescued the dog from the flood waters and promptly named her "Katrina." After an unsuccessful search for Katrina's owners, she was adopted by KCAL photographer Jeff Mailes and taken to her new home in California. Katrina was later featured in a two-part report on the hurricane in New Orleans.

  Roselle and Salty: On September 11,2001, guide dog Roselle successfully led her owner Michael Hingson to safety from the seventy-eighth floor of the North Tower, shortly before the World Trade Center collapsed. On that same day, Omar Eduardo Rivera was in his seventy-first floor office. After the first plane struck, Rivera heard glass breaking and he unleashed his guide dog, hoping that the golden retriever would escape. But, as Rivera told Reuters, "The dog was very nervous, and he ran off but came back and kept by my side. He didn't bark." Instead, Salty led Rivera to an emergency exit and down the stairs.

  Both Roselle and Salty led their owners to safety by picking their way through the buildings and down to the debris-filled streets. The guide dogs were honored for their bravery with the British Dickin Medal for their devotion to duty during the World Trade Center tragedy. The Dickin medal is recognized worldwide as "the animals' Victoria Cross"—in American terms, the animal equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

  Staff Sergeant Reckless: Decorated equine war hero Staff Sergeant Reckless served in the second Battalion, fifth Regiment of the first Division of the United States Marine Corps in Korea during the Korean War. Reckless was purchased from a Korean boy who needed money to buy his sister an artificial leg, according to Marine Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Geer, commander of the unit. Geer wrote two articles about the horse for the Saturday Evening Post in the 1950s and later wrote a book entitled Reckless, the Pride of the Marines. Trained as an ammunitions carrier, the horse served at the bloody Battle of Vegas Outpost, March 28-30, 1953. In his book, Geer wrote: "Every yard she advanced was showered with explosives. Fifty-one times she marched through the fiery gauntlet of the Red barrage—and she saved the day for the Leathernecks." Marines who served with her remember seeing the horse hero walking around military camps in Korea wearing a blanket bearing stripes and her Purple Heart.

  After the war ended, Reckless was left in South Korea as her fellow Marines returned to the States, but after publication of Geer's article, Post readers and friends of the horse arranged to bring her to the United States. In 1959, five years after arriving at Camp Pendleton, Reckless was promoted to a staff sergeant, according to a Nove
mber 1992 article in Leatherneck magazine. The decorated war veteran passed away in 1968 and was survived by three offspring.

  Judy: Judy, an English pointer, served on a Royal Navy vessel before and during World War II. She was known for pointing out the approach of hostile Japanese aircraft long before any of the human crew could hear them. When her ship was sunk in action and the crew became prisoners of war, Judy continued to perform her duties by helping find food and providing comfort and companionship to her fellow sailors. She was the only animal to have been officially registered as a Japanese prisoner of war.

  After the war, Judy was adopted by Frank Williams and smuggled back to England. She was awarded the Dickin Medal in May 1946. Her citation reads: "For magnificent courage and endurance in Japanese prison camps, which helped to maintain morale among her fellow prisoners and also for saving many lives through her intelligence and watchfulness."

  In 2006 her collar and medal went on display in the Imperial War Museum, London, as part of "The Animals' War" exhibition.

  Scarlett: On March 30, 1996, a homeless mother cat and her five kittens were in an abandoned garage allegedly used as a crack house in Brooklyn, New York. A fire broke out in the building and Ladder Company 175 was called, and they quickly extinguished the blaze. One of the firefighters on the scene, David Giannelli, noticed the mother cat carrying her kittens away from the garage one by one. "What she did," he said, "was she ran in and out of that building five times, got them all out, and then started moving them one by one across the street." The cat, later nicknamed "Scarlett," had been severely injured in the process of pulling her kittens from the fire. Her eyes were blistered shut, her ears and paws were seriously burned, and the hair on her face was almost completely burned away. After saving the kittens, she touched each of them with her nose to make sure they were all there and alive, as the blisters on her eyes kept her from being able to see them. Satisfied that her kittens were safe, she then collapsed, unconscious.