On the Road to '76

 A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Lao Tzu

It was fifty years ago that the late Charles Kuralt, famed CBS reporter and travel writer, began the subset of his famous and award-winning, On the Road series. He referred to it on air as On the Road to '76, and it would become not just one of his most memorable bodies of work but a blueprint for my own journey.

My college roommate and I (not, as you might suspect, over beers) discussed some sort of trip that might interrupt our quest for degrees at Northeastern University, in Boston. Frankly, I don't remember what he was going to do about his trip or if it ever came to pass, but I concluded abruptly, and somewhat carelessly, that I was going to ride a bicycle across the country.

I've written on this subject before (It's the Mileage). What I am remembering today is that fifty years ago a small band of TV chroniclers set off from Massachusetts in a motorhome, on their own personal road to explore America, especially small town America, during the Bicentennial celebration. Ironically, I was at school when that happened.

I followed every segment on the CBS Evening News. While I struggled with fitness goals, accumulated cycling and camping gear and prepared for an incredible unknown, On the Road gave me glimpses into what was ahead. It was often inspirational when the gray winter days of Western NY (and graveyard shift as a security guard at Xerox) made my quest seem unattainable, even idiotic.

They found, as I would a year later, that our country is populated by wonderful, cheerful, helpful people. It is big, bold sometimes and bucolic other times, and delightfully ours. It was then, and remains, a place to love.

So, to Charlie and the gang, happy 50th!  We're on the road to '26. It's been bumpy, sometimes we have to give the whole enterprise a push, but what a hell of a ride.

Happy Birthday, BCB

Bikecopblog turned sixteen last month. There was no cake (or, more appropriately Key Lime pie) nor were there cocktails. The milestone, if you want to call it that, passed with more of an "Oh?" than an "Oh!" I sat down to write a blog about my blog.

And then...

A friend once described this moment as, "Jim is out of words." Ironic, no? A writer who has kept a blog going for more than 16 years, nearly 800 posts (not all published) and 314K hits just...runs out of words?

What Is Right?

Deputy Claudia Jean (Cici) Onofrio is going into work one beautiful Colorado afternoon believing her biggest problem is deciding whether to stay at mostly rural Arroyo County Sheriff’s Office, or move to an urban department in the Denver metro area. She’s wrong. A More Perfect Union

Your phone "rings." It is your sergeant, calling on your day off. Of course you let it go to voice mail. You're not a rookie, or in line for promotion.

Yeah, um... When you get this, get your gear together and report to headquarters. The President is having a giant pissing contest with our mayor and governor and there is some big protest this evening. The Guard will be here.

What do you do?

I wrote A More Perfect Union to provide one answer. Maybe it's not your answer - one reader said frankly, "It's my least favorite of your books."  Maybe you'd see it a different way, like several of the people I talked with while the novel took shape.

Maybe you think Cici should have turned in her gear. Fair enough. But, as events around the country ebb and flow, it is a question being answered in police departments all over America.

It is a law enforcement axiom that one should never go anywhere that their mind has not already gone. Officers have had many opportunities to think about what they would do. It shouldn't be a surprise when the call comes.

What would you do?

Hot Fun in the Summertime

Noting the passing of Sly Stone, musician.

This song was a huge presence on AM/FM airwaves circa 1969/1970. Sly and the Family Stone had a number of hits around then, but this was the song I remember the most. Why?

Who doesn't remember summer as the best time of year. Especially to a young boy growing up in Western New York (snow removal capital of the world) the summer months were a welcome respite from gray, dreary and cold. School was out and, except for the misfortune of having seasonal jobs (among them picking corn for a local farmer) there was fishing, bike riding and kick-the-can games until dark. Pick-up baseball, swimming in the backyard pool. Hot dogs on the Barbie... Bike rides.

Those are great memories, aided by a band that knew how to put just the right tone on the season. Thank you for this anthem to the best days.

Everywhere, Signs

 Sam Clayton (Gene Hackman): See that he does it! You see to it. 

 Carbo (Jan Michael-Vincent): What he said, is it that important? 

Reporter (Robert Donner): Must be. He said it twice. 

Bite the Bullet, (1975)

First, the tone on my phone alerts me that there is a person on the driveway. Then, a different sound chimes when they have reached the front porch. Finally, if they press the button on the Ring doorbell Alexa tells me they've pressed the button on the Ring doorbell.

Joy goes nuts.

For a seventeen-pound Havanese she sounds terribly ferocious. Jed, our fifty-pound Portuguese who really is intimidating, stands next to her to do the IFF - identify, friend or foe. Joy regards anyone not a "peep" to be hostile, and treats them accordingly. To put it mildly, a shit show ensues.

To minimize this...

I really don't need a reason to put up "No Soliciting" signs. There is one visible from the street, staked into our front flower bed. Another, for those who have broken the outer perimeter, is on the door. I suppose a ten foot electrified fence, gun towers and drone surveillance would be a bit much...maybe not, but it's my call. We have signs.

They work, because I've watched people on our driveway-cam look at the ground level sign, turn around and walk away. Not only is there fair notice, but people actually have the common damned decency to honor them. Fair enough?

Yesterday, two people disregarded the sign and rang the doorbell. Chaos ensued. Sometimes, it's obvious who they are - first responder friends/family stopping by to say hi, neighbors, Xcel... Sometimes, it's also obvious they "Just want a minute of my time." Usually, I don't answer. Last night...

"Hi, we represent a leadership organization collecting--"

Uh huh. I demur ("No, thank you" is recorded by the Ring) and close the door. That wasn't so hard. The ring also picks up one of them saying, "Dick." Since that's not my name they probably meant someone else. That was that.

We went out front this morning to take the dogs for a walk and discovered that someone had stomped our sign into the ground. Because our truck is parked in an unusual place we don't have video of the crime, but...

Circumstantial evidence is indirect evidence that does not, on its face, prove a fact in issue but gives rise to a logical inference that the fact exists. Circumstantial evidence requires drawing additional reasonable inferences in order to support the claim.

On the old "Perry Mason" show they went on at great length about the presence of "motive and opportunity." Here, I totally draw the logical inference that one of the assholes who came to the door last night decided to take out their ire on the sign they seemed to find so...distasteful.

My wife, whose doctorate is in leadership studies, mentioned that damaging our sign was a poor example. I had to agree.

Mine is in law. Giving money to unvetted door-to-door solicitors is sometimes to unwittingly be party to a crime. Fly-by-night organizations collect up a few dozen street urchins, give them legit-looking documents and their charges start banging on doors. The kids get to keep a few bucks, the company gets the rest and...

Unvetted is the key. There is no way, in a brief encounter at the door, to know if these are legit students of leadership or just pushy individuals hoping to make a few bucks on a Friday night.

Given what happened, my sense is the circumstantial evidence points to B.

Should you encounter these delightful young people, tell them Dick said hello, that the damage they did to my sign was easily corrected and they should pay attention next time.

I said it, twice. It's important.

Something Unusual in a Past Ritual

 "Wear the old coat and buy the new book."

Austin Phelps

Rituals.

Everyone of a certain age and comportment remembers The Book of the Month Club. Not the watered down 2025 version. The coupons and deals BOTMC. Four books for a dollar (you mailed in a card with actual stickers you pasted on) with the agreement that you'd buy four more over the next year...or something.

That deal was sometimes problematic, as any working-class parent would know. So a new book was a treasure, a moment to savor. This was especially true when it was a long-awaited offering from a beloved author.

The book arrived in the BOTMC box. It would sit for a day, sometimes more. Then, the kids in bed, the dogs settled... Pour a glass of wine, struggle with the box and open the cover.

The book binding crackled. New hard covers had a certain fragrance, of glue and paper. The tactile sensation and unblemished perfection of turning pristine pages was prelude to the ideas impressed in black letters on each page. Reading was not just an intellectual journey but a sensory bouquet.

So I buy an actual book from time to time, as I did recently. Social media puts one in touch with individuals who share interests (in history, here) and exchange opinions about books they have read. One person said he'd finished a particularly gripping account of a WWII bomber pilot, Those Who Fall, and recommended it.

It was available, used, on Amazon. There were no sticker perforations with which to struggle, no waiting "4-6 weeks." An envelope arrived within ten days.

The rituals today are simpler. Our kids are grown, the dogs have their niches. I'm retired and so the only question left to answer is...tea, or a restorative? I take a seat in the recliner, extend the porch for my reading and writing buddy and open the package.

The book has felt other hands. It is, in fact, a former library book that retained not just the dust cover but the due date card that showed it was checked out in 1999, 2003 and 2012. Stamped on the title page was the identity of the previous owner:

Post library, Dugway Proving Ground, Dugway, Utah. Property US Army

 What a long, strange trip this book has taken into my home. One wonders - is it possible that the personal observations of a B-17 bomber pilot have fallen so out of favor that it was read three times in 13 years on an Army post? Still... The author does not write in the modern manner - "Write the first chapters until you get to the action. Then, delete everything except the action scenes." He begins calmly, almost laconically. Tent living, eating military meals, flying out of bases that are rudimentary airports, even for the times.

Years after the war, this man sat down and memorialized a time that, he writes, "Something unusual happened to me."

Please, sir. Tell me more. 

Softly

 "I heard he sang a good song. I heard he had a style."

Killing Me Softly With His Song

Noting the passing of singer Roberta Flack.

It was impossible to walk down the hallway of a college dormitory in the early 70s and not hear Roberta Flack's clean, sinuous voice. She'd released a number of singles, each wonderful in its own right. Then came the song that made her ubiquitous.

It's not just a great song, with an involved and very music-business back story. It captures a world that escaped many at the time, and continues to be lost in the 60s/70s continuum many people think they know. Somehow, this woman from North Carolina grasped the deeper meaning of this elegant tune, married it to a lush arrangement and brought it to life.

The song was about singer/songwriter Don McClean, of "American Pie" (and so much more) fame. A young woman named Lori went to see McLean at a concert and left spellbound, having written her thoughts on a napkin. She reported all of this to her music collaborators, with whom she wrote a song.

When Roberta Flack recorded it... What a beautiful, expressive way she had with the words, with the melody, with the meaning. She sings with a vibrant vulnerability, at once lamenting and at the same time marveling at the genius of her subject.

He sang as if he knew me, in all my dark despair. And then he looked right through me as if I wasn't there.

 During an era when men were going off to war, when America was still wrestling with questions the 60s did not answer, Roberta Flack took a song about another artist, and made it hers. She took an idea, that there is beauty in the simple act of singing about how a musician can touch someone so deeply, and made it ours.

She had a long and successful career, charting popular songs into the 90's. She was still performing into the Twenty-teens. She passed this week at eighty-eight, another of those timeless icons who cannot be as old as the numbers seem to suggest.

There was a time - it doesn't really seem that long ago - when a young woman sang a simple song in such a compelling way that it never ages. That's the gift of music. That was the gift of Roberta.

 

 

A Beach Chair, A Restorative and A Puzzlement

 "We are tied to the ocean. And, when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came." John F. Kennedy.

A real book.

Mostly now, I read a Kindle. Part of that reason is mercenary - all of my books are available in that medium and I should support it. Part of it is practical, that a hundred books on a Kindle is...the Kindle. Then, there is the "I'm in the mood for" moment when one can shop anywhere wifi is available.

But on the beach, the tactile appeal of real pages to turn draws me to bring a book on vacation to a beach resort in Mexico. And, so it begins.

We'd stopped at a new/used shop by our house the day before we left. Have you ever... I feel like Andy Rooney. Have you ever gone to a bookstore on just a general purchase mission and started blankly at the rows and rows of volumes? Even genre can be daunting. I glanced across the tomes until one caught my eye.

Mark Bowden. If you don't know him, he writes a good book. His most recognizable is Blackhawk Down, the story of an American military operation gone awry in Somalia in October 1993. It was turned into an excellent (if not entirely accurate) movie of the same name. I've seen him in person, doing a presentation at the University of Denver for his book about a battle during the Vietnam War. Smart, well spoken. Easy to read. That's it.

Well, about a third of the way through I began to question my judgment. It wasn't that the book is awful - in fact, it's well-written and informative. Bowden writes with an easy grace, descriptive without taking a microscope to the world he is trying to describe. He doesn't generally tell you what to think, or who the bad guys are. It's that, well, drones.

The book is a bit dated, copyright 2016. Bowden discusses the early evolution of both recon drones and those weaponized as particularized killers. Along the way he explores the legal underpinnings of their use, both on the battlefield and in places that are not technically (or otherwise) combat zones. And, you are thinking, this is a beach read? 

Right? I closed the book and set it aside.

My mind goes first to A More Perfect Union, with its strong and marginally legal drone applications. Did I handle the dilemmas posed by Bowden artfully, or clumsily? Does Bowden's legal assessment comport with mine?

It moves on to Amy 3, a work in progress as yet untitled. Am I contemporary in my thinking, up to date in the technology and current on the law?

And what, exactly, is the definition of sovereign?

I look out over the horizon. The deeper water is a dark blue. Closer to shore the water is turquoise. Palm fronds rustle overhead in the gentle breeze. By and by the young man working the beach bar will bring me another Tequila Sunrise to go with the chips, quac and pico I scored at the snack buffet. My mind drifts - it is 80 degrees, sunny and I'm with the love of my life at one of the best beaches in Mexico.

This is the definition of sovereign.