Yawoh! Herr Kommandant!

60 Minutes ran a piece on Greg Smith, an ex Goldman Sachs employee who wrote a “tell all” book on his former employer. In it, he recounts how Goldman routinely screwed their own clients out of their money with nefarious investments that only a physicist could understand.

I found another article, below, where another Goldman Sachs employee discusses what Smith never touched upon, and that was the culture inside of Goldman. The culture prepped and preened it's own to insure compliance to the overriding Goldman goal, “make money in any shape and form.” This included buggering their own customers.

I can't but help think of this from history. Mein Ehre heißt Treue. The SS creed. “My Honor is my Loyalty.” In both cases, remaining loyal to Goldman or the SS, meant carrying out any order, no matter how ridiculous.

*****

"...Smith doesn’t get, and therefore couldn’t articulate, the implications of Goldman’s cultishness. Just the way fish don’t recognize that they are swimming in water, Smith likely does not appreciate how insular and inward looking Goldman is. The aggressiveness of Goldman’s response isn’t just to protect its external reputation; it’s also because, on some level, people at Goldman really believe their PR. Look at how remarkably thin-skinned Wall Street employees have been in the wake of the crisis, how utterly unwilling the overwhelming majority are to take any responsibility for blowing up the global economy. Goldman, with its exaggerated sense of righteousness, is even less willing to hear even a very watered down version of reality.

 

It’s been nearly 30 years since I worked at Goldman, but even back then, Goldman was quite explicit about the lengths it went to to build and reinforce its “culture,” and from everything I can tell, it has if anything gotten more extreme since then. For instance, it still puts recruits through far more interviews than other firms do, which helps screen not just for “fit” but also for how badly they want the job (most sane people would lose patience with the process). Goldman then, and I believe still, prefers younger MBAs (as in those with less rather than more work experience) because it likes to “shape” people.

 

Even though the investment banking industry is famous for requiring that staffers be willing to put in punishing hours, in my era, Goldman was unique on the Street in thinking it was perfectly normal to ask people to reschedule their wedding if it conflicted with a deal timetable. I did a summer at Salomon, and Salomon people didn’t socialize much outside of work, while at Goldman, there was quiet pressure to; junior Goldmanites were encouraged to get their summer “shares” in the same area frequented by other Goldman employees. To give an idea of how insular Goldman was then: of all the married non-secretarial women, the only women who were not married to Goldman men had come to the firm married.

 

The firm enforced behavior on far more levels than other firms: dress code, communication (both frequency, which was one of the firm’s strengths, but also mode: a sort of PC-ness about giving credit, not being openly political or self-promoting, not denegrating competitors or clients). The firm was dead serious about preferring people who hewed tightly to the Goldman cultural ideal. Guys who drove fast cars, got divorced and were a bit too flashy would not be promoted as quickly as guys who were somewhat less big producers but were complaint Goldman soldiers (yes, I can name exceptions to that pattern, but they were far fewer than you’d see anywhere else on the Street).

 

The firm was Machiavellian in its organizational design. In investment banking, it had product specialists (corporate finance, meaning stock and bond underwriting, M&A, real estate) and salesmen who covered clients and sold all products to them (Hank Paulson came out of that corporate calling group, called Investment Banking Services). The party line was that this promoted expertise and made sure there was consistent attention to corporate clients and prospects. That no doubt was true, but I doubt this was the operative truth. This structure also circumvented the way big producers normally had leverage over a firm, that if push came to shove, they could leave and take clients with them. If you have one person who has the relationship dependent on other people executing the business, neither group can readily leave with clients. Similarly, in my day (and it has changed since then) people were hired into a department and people very very rarely switched departments; the internal PR was that (again) it was to promote expertise. Again, the operative truth was that Goldman went to great lengths to keep politics to a bare minimum, recognizing how it diverted energy from making money for the firm. Having partners poach on other departments for talent would be enormously divisive, so best to make that an exceptional event.

Goldman people then genuinely believe Goldman was the best place to work; leaving was seen as a fall from grace. I knew very successful individuals who departed after I did, and were 6-10 years into their careers, and each said virtually the same thing, verbatim: that it took them two years to get over the idea that leaving Goldman meant they had taken a big career step down (and objectively, none of them had).

This is a long winded intro, but the critics of Smith’s naivete about Goldman’s conduct don’t get that the failings he saw were a big deal if you’ve identified strongly with the Goldman culture, and the firm works extremely hard to recruit and inculcate people with that end in mind. It appears from Smith’s age and his tenure at the firm that this was his first real job, so he was the perfect sort to be imprinted by Goldman. It’s like having been a loyal Catholic, say 40 years ago, and realizing not only that the church had pedophile priests, but the top leadership was aware of it and refused to do anything about it. Now with hedge and PE funds having knocked Goldman off the apex of financial glamor jobs, and the firm now a sprawling global enterprise, it’s actually remarkable that it has managed to maintain as much of its cultishness, um, cohesiveness as it has.

 

Goldman’s dedication to clients has fallen in the Blankfein era. Even though Smith doesn’t deliver the goods in his book, his bottom line is correct: Goldman’s internal ethics have declined, and the fall over Smith’s tenure likely is on a steeper trajectory than in its peers.

 

I’d have dinner a few times a year with a senior Goldman officer in a staff function that put him in front of the of the Executive Committee and department heads on a regular basis. He was extremely circumspect about his day-to-day activities. However, he found it pretty much impossible not to convey to me how the firm was changing, and how disturbing he found it to be. While he did not think much of Hank Paulson, he did regard the co-presidents under him, John Thain and John Thornton as both concerned with preserving Goldman’s culture and franchise (Thornton had been particularly opposed to going public for that reason) and were long-term oriented. By contrast, he was distressed by and contemptuous of Blankfein and the new leadership, who largely came out of the commodities/trading side of the firm (the view from the old Goldman that commodities was lower class and less ethical than the more highly regulated securities markets was strong in my day and was confirmed by the negative reactions internally by non-partners to Goldman’s acquisition of J. Aron. I was the most junior staffer on that deal). My dinner buddy made it clear he thought the new management team was less able, less thoughtful, concerned only about as much money as possible now, and didn’t care much about what impact that might have long term.

 

Confirmation of the change in the firm under Blankfein comes from former Goldman co-chairman John Whitehead’s unusually direct criticism of Goldman’s bonus policies in 2007. Similarly, I’ve been told that the Weinberg family (Sydney Weinberg played a huge role in Goldman’s rise to pre-eminence; his son John was co-chairman with Whitehead) is distraught over the disclosures made over firm practices in recent years.

 

Goldman has such a strongly developed internal culture that even a change at the top would take a while to percolate through, and Smith appears to have seen the impact.

 

Finally, critics don’t recognize a hidden upside to Smith’s dramatic exit. If you leave Goldman, the assumption is you are some sort of loser and perhaps on the verge of being fired. Yet in Goldman’s efforts to trash Smith, the worst they had on his was his bonus ask was way too high given the firm’s overall results; one managing director even told him that he needed to be patient, it had taken him a long time to become managing director and Smith needed to keep the faith. So Goldman officially confirmed that while Smith was not on the fast track, he was still a contender, which is a lot more than most places will say when someone slams the door on their way out."

Stories From Long Ago...

When much younger, I had the arms of a girl.. Hell, I still do. That's genetics for you. My brother and I tried to remedy this according to Ahnult's The Education of a Body Builder. Neither one of us bulked up but I became a skinny yet damned toned teen boy.

So, throughout my childhood, teens and adult life I wasn't about to pick many fights where I still had command of my temper. Charging into some guy who was obviously of greater girth than I met with disaster; or at least a draw.

Temper gives you courage and sometimes it's enough. If you make the other feel the fear more than you, you can win.

*****

Jenks Jr High is where I received my Driver's education from a teacher named Mr. Zajda. It is pronounced, ZA-dyah. You have to leave it to the Polish to have too many consonants in their names. We renamed him Darth Zader, in honor of the Star Wars movie. He was the shop teacher in Jenks that drew from the blue collar neighborhood of Division street next to McCoy. Zader was appointed the Driver's Ed teacher and the class was chock full of kids from Tolman and Shea high school then. I and this kid, Phred, were attending the “posh” St Raphael Academy at the time. Phred and I were the only two from Saints.

I began to notice some ribbing the other kids gave us for attending Saints. The slights aimed at us two were that we had to be rich in order to attend Saints. In plain fact, Phred and I didn't come from wealth at all.

One week, I dragged myself to the Driver's Ed, sick as a dog with some deep seated chest cold and I was plainly miserable. In the beginning of the class, I overheard those remarks about rich Saint's kids that were definitely aimed at Phred and I and I, being miserable and short tempered, answered back.

“You think I'm rich? I said this as snottily as possible. I had had it up to “here” and my sickness wasn't helping my self control.

I lifted up my leg and said, “You see these boots? They're from Thom McAnn...they're NOT Timberland boots!” Timberlands cost $100 in 1980 and were well crafted, if you could afford them.

At the time, I had these busted glasses that I fixed with Scotch Tape (Yes, total geek I was then). I pulled them off, waving them around to the other kids there and said, “You see these? They're NOT new!” “Want to know why I'm wearing busted frames? My Mom is saving up for them. The oil bill is outrageous this month and that comes first!” (Again, it's 1980, when inflation was screaming high)

“Do I look rich to you?"   Again, I said it with the acid of sarcasm dripping off my tongue.

The other kids shot back about “Where do I live?” They were hoping I'd say Blackstone Blvd or something similar. I shifted my body in the chair, pointed east through at the back of the classroom and said:

“About 1/3 of a mile..that way...by York Ave...you know it right? There aren't any mansions up there! Believe me, I don't live in Country Side by the golf course!!”

There was this kid there, in greasy long hair, greasy jeans and who looked like a bad impersonation of some greasy 80's metal band who started asking his friends, 'Where is Country Side?” I overheard this and went right after him.

“You accuse ME of being rich and you don't know where it is? Are you dumb? Do you live in Pawtucket?” You apparently DON'T know where the rich in Pawtucket live...DO YOU?”

This punk gave me the meanest look then.

All during our little verbal fight, Mr Darth Zader was eating this up. He then had to step in and get the class started but you could tell he was enjoying this little argument between me and the Shea and Tolman kids.

When the class ended, I was still ticked. Guys reach that point where they just don't care anymore. I had reached mine. I was sick, pissed off and had no patience for crap then.

The punks were milling around Darth Zader's desk talking when I walk up behind them and ask the whole group, “Is there a problem? Because if there is...I can handle it now.”

Four of the kids disappeared except for Greasy Hair. Darth Zader then arose and immediately pushed Greasy Hair out into the hallway and told him to go home. Greasy Hair was ripping pissed. I overheard him say, “I'm gonna fuck his ass up! I'm gonna kill him!!”

Zader, shoved this kid into the wall telling him he's not going to do anything. The kid finally relented and stormed out of the school. I walk up to Zader and ask him, “Is there going to be a problem? Zader confidently says no to me and packs his briefcase to go home.

Cool. Zader backed me up. He was on my side and I had no idea up until that moment that he was.

Phred and I walked back to his home behind McCoy stadium talking about what happened.

“Shit!” says Phred, “I thought they were all going to nail us!”

I was still in that mood. My probable flu had my chest hurting still and I had NOT an ounce of patience left at all.

“Ahh...between you and me...We could've bloodied some noses...I wanted it to happen.”

A week later, as we huddled in alcove of the Jenks building trying to escape the February wind, the Tolman and Shea girls said to me that, “I was OK, I was cool.” I told them I was just in a rotten mood a week earlier, hence the show I put on. Luckily for me, being sick as a dog and ill mannered, I stood my ground and wrenched some respect out of those kids.

Greasy Hair had bombed out of the class I found out a few minutes later. Good.

The Manga Lifestyle

 

Japan has always had their fads. Their teens and 20-somethings take to them with gusto too. I never knew they dressed up like Manga characters, but there you have it. This isn't what you'd normally expect with many Japanese since they place such an emphasis on conformity. These kids are going way out their way to blow the Old Ways off.

The article I read about Manga Teens said there is an odd cultural shift with the young of Japan. They're seeing less and less of that studiousness the Japanese kids were known for because there aren't any real decent jobs out there to absorb them all. The teens now figure, ”Why knock myself out for what isn't there anymore? Why study my brains out?”

What's also funny is the slang the Japanese have invented about these newer kids. Herbivores or “Grass-Eaters” are uncommitted, uncompetitive youth who have long since blown off their father's Samurai ideal of masculinity. You can work as a freeter (minimum wage jobs that allow only low expectations and cheap living) and never have to put up with the shit your Dad did 70 hours a week. Again, why work to kill yourself for now lower pay? Theses kids now believe the pride of being a dutiful, competent worker means nothing if that can't be backed up with a decent salary.

The article goes on to complain of a newer phenomenon. These kids prefer to stay home, since they can't find decent pay to start a life of their own. The parents of these kids will now actively seek to marry them off as it's the only way to get them out of the house. Their kids now have ditched the idea that being unmarried by a certain age is a social embarrasement.  

Japan in the 90's had their “Lost Generation” of youth who were decimated by the country's long, long recession. Now, the newer kids, the Next Lost Generation, are coming of age and aren't really bothering to put their nose to the grindstone and prefer to “make just enough” to get by. There aren't many dreams of devoting your life to Hitachi like their Dads did.

So, work you a cheap job, hang out in the city center and wear garish costumes. Conforming to the old ethic no longer pays out any longer to these kids.

Ayn Rand and Atlas the Lying Bastard

From The Testosterone Pit A Book about Selling.

---Possibly only Karen in payroll knew his real name. He’d been a roughneck and had made tons of money, but during the oil bust, he’d lost his job, and for a couple of years he’d tried to find something else in the oil business, but the oil business had moved to Houston, and no one needed roughnecks like him in Houston, so he stayed put and climbed down the ladder. Still, he couldn’t find anything, as all the other jobs had disappeared at the same time.

He lost his house and his boat and went bankrupt and got divorced, and all he had left were child support obligations, a garnishment on his paycheck, coarse hands, a red leathery neck, and fond memories of drilling rigs. But he’d become an adequate salesman, and he loved Logo because he’d introduced him to Ferronickel, and he loved Ferronickel because he’d given him a chance.

Millikin had gone into a closing booth to hammer Mr. Taylor. Angie Grinder, the salesman on the deal, was loitering nearby. She was praying. Ferronickel, who watched from the Tower, was praying too. Because every fucking deal counted. When it came to selling, they were all religious.

Angie was the quintessential dingbat. She was dressed in a long flowing skirt, embroidered vest, and wooden jewelry. She used to be the office runner, the low end of the back-office pecking order. After hearing stories about the money being made in sales, she considered becoming a salesman.
But the long hours were a handicap. Some salesmen never sold enough to make above minimum wage, and after a few weeks on minimum wage, they were fired for not selling enough. And she abhorred the idea of spending half her life out on the lot in the brutal summer heat or in the miserable winter cold.

No, she preferred her predictable eight-hour workday and her wage, which was a buck above minimum. One afternoon, out of idle curiosity, she asked Karen in payroll how much the best salesman made in a good month.

“Massacre?” Karen said. “Somewhere in the low gazillions.”

“No, really.”

Karen clicked through a few screens. “Okay, last month for example.” She had Angie come around the desk and look at the monitor, at a number she tapped at with her pen: $16,546.

“That’s more than I make a year!” Angie gasped. “A lot more.” And she thought about Lucas, who’d turned four, and how for her, a single mom, every little thing was a struggle.

“I know it’s not fair,” Karen said.

But Angie didn’t hear her anymore. She was already at the Tower, breathless and feverish. “I want to sell cars,” she told Ferronickel.

In her first month, she sold twelve units and tripled her pay and tasted greed, and it was sticky sweet and intoxicating. In her seventh month, Angie Grinder sold twenty units, the sound barrier in the car business that most salesmen could never break, and people were impressed and called her Meat Grinder out of respect. And she hadn’t been able to get anywhere near twenty units since.-----

*****

In 1992, I attended a sales seminar on mortgage origination and closing. I was convinced by Tim, the owner of the mortgage business, that I should give it shot. We had met through mutual friends and had white water rafted once. When I was done with the seminar, I worked for one summer pushing re-fis on people. Those three months gave me my first introduction to the atmosphere at a sales office.

In all honesty, I wasn't gung-ho about it. I was bored with my current job and drifted into this to see whether it had more fun. It was like Dim Sum, I tried a little of this, a little of that and see what I liked. As the weeks went by I found myself becoming more and more desirous to succeed.

The leads we generated ourselves. Every mortgaged home, in every city, is recorded at the City Hall and is public information. I'd go down with one of the other guys with a laser hand scanner in my pocket to get this data. I'd flip through property books and slide that weird green light across leaf after leaf of juicy information. Once back at the office, I'd download that information into the computers and print it out. Then came a good half day's work of finding those loans with high interest rates. These were the people we were after. Hopefully, they weren't bad credit risks and had these higher rates due to being screwed by the bank who sold them this overpriced mortgage first off.

Then you'd call them up. Your likely success at selling was 1 in 50. The payoff wasn't bad as you were selling $100k, $200k or say $400k worth of a product with a 1% commission. 1% of $100,000 is $1,000. Not bad if you can routinely sell enough in a month.

When I first started this, I was very honest, not particularly hawkish nor driven to push these people into signing that day. To add to this, Tim the co-owner, didn't lean on me to “sell, sell, sell” either as he was fairly laid back.

I began to watch the other sales people and managers in the office. They were hopped up nearly all day on too much coffee and constantly talked of money or the last “kill” they managed to bag. This talk of making a couple of grand in a day started make my mouth water. As I contacted more and more leads, I started bending the truth harder and harder. I would ask about their life situation. Were they married? Single? Did they have kids? This information gave me a way to wheedle into their brain with the right tactics.

I was becoming a scumbag quick.

My first sale shocked me in a way. I never sold $200,000 worth of anything to anyone in my life. But there it was, the paperwork to give to Tim for the final kill. It took a month to process the new mortgage through and one day Tim comes to me and says, “Here you go kid, you busted your cherry...it's a check for $2,400...I managed to eek a bit more out of them.”

I was elated. This money alone was enough to make me more of a lying, manipulating prick to get that second sale.

It took several days more of digging up records, calling and getting blown off by many people until I scored another. It was for $120,000 but that would translate into a $1,200 check. However, when the loan was processed, the commission check was for $700.

“What happened? I asked Dan, who was the other co-owner and closed this particular deal.

“Oh, we ran into problems. They're credit wasn't really that great and I could only get them a loan for less.”

“Do you have the paperwork? I ask. I'm now becoming very suspicious about it.

“Oh, it's not here...it's in my car..and it's in the shop today.” Great I think, a nice lame excuse.

I couldn't prove it, but this sales manager fucked me out of part of the commission I was owed. I was told about these tricks by other guys in the office who were similarly screwed by other sales managers in the past.

A sales guy who I became friendly with tells me

“In the sales field, a lot of sales managers think, because they've arrived and are managers, they're entitled to a piece of your commission. It's a lot more common than you think. It's sort of an unwritten law. And if you bitch too much and are not the top salesman in numbers, you'll become very uncomfortable working there.”

I quit by the end of the week.

I took this job as a lark and I found it lucrative and dangerous. The idea of someone else dipping their beak into my hard work, didn't suit me at all and I was OUT.

A few years later, I found out the two co-owners had a rout. The sleazy one had taken all his customers, the people in the office loyal to him to a new operation he had started on the sly a few months before. Tim, the guy I knew, was pissed to no end that his business associate had back stabbed him.

Tim's business was so wounded that he had to eventually close it down and go back to working for the banks in downtown Providence, where he had started in his 20's.

That's the dog eat dog world.  That's the way the game is played. Everyone is in it for themselves and they play this game with a blatant, yet cunning selfishness. Under their Brookes Brother's suits, I'm sure they wear tee shirts that tell the reader, “No Prisoners: Meaning YOU!”

Dionysus

There are times when I feel 14 again when that enthusiasm comes out on it's own. A desire to throw away all conventions and act like the rakish kids we all were in the late 70's and early 80's. I can't go back but I do remember how it felt to be a few rows back at a Quiet Riot concert. Cum on Feel the Noize was being played and I was screaming at them, “louder! Louder! LOUDER!” You yell, dance around like an epileptic and seem the fool. But so what, 11,000 others are too.

I know some people who play their own Fight Club games in the woods. I was invited but at my age, I'd tear my ACL. There's that rebellious spirit to wipe your snot on a Monet or bust up something beautiful at these games. You toss out all restrictions and go nuts. These people I know are in their twenties so it sort of makes sense. The energy is there in youth. Once are all agreed, they'll pound one another. It'll last sixty seconds and get that release they've been wanting to do for weeks.

There's nothing new about this. You had girls screaming their fool heads off seeing Elvis in the 50's when girls weren't supposed to show anything sexual. You had Primal Scream Therapy in the 70's where you'd let out any and all emotions in you. All of this, was to release all that pent up energy society says you can't spew due to a convention to “act right and proper.” Well, that just dams up of all that libido that wants to tear across the sky like a meteor.

I will not tell you all what I did then. HA! One thing though involved a Remington 700ADL .308 at the back of Slater Park with opposing Seekonk kids across the reservoir. Was it dangerous? Yes. Stupid? Yes. Fun? Yes.

As a grown up, and with a few margaritas and the right company, things can get interesting. You can see people will rapidly abandon their middle class constraint and act like Greek priests celebrating Dionysus under the moon, with wine, wife swapping and actions that result in broken refrigerator doors.

The staid, middle class reminds me of an old Star Trek episode, Return of the Archons. In it, Kirk and his team find a planet that during the day, is peaceful, quiet and polite; but every weekend night, everyone is ready for the “Festival.” Rampart violence, sex and mayhem rule the night when they all bust loose. There have been some summer BBQ's I attended where you saw this but without the murder.

Oh, and the richer ones I knew once, off Blackstone Blvd in Providence, were no different.  The difference was that they had higher quality liquor flowing.

People get bored and want some excitement, some real excitement.

By Monday's commute, everyone's back into their former roles with that face you wear to show how stable and reliable you are.

So, what's wrong with going bonkers once in a while? What's wrong with tossing years of moral restraint out the window for seven hours? The trick is when to do it and when not to do it. You can do any damn thing you want, if your smart about it. The release is fun!

 

Yeah, Sort of Like This, Click Away.

Happily Blind

Well, that last piece I wrote was an angry tirade. Ah, so what. I'm not apologizing.

*****

I found out another reason why like telling stories here. I like hearing myself talk. My Dad used to say this about me all the time, which I strongly denied. I guess he was right.

So, I now will content myself yapping once more. Yeah, it's a form of mental masturbation, which I find nothing wrong with. So what if it's unproductive. Whacking off is unproductive too.

*****

The older you get the more you realize that you don't know it all. Do you remember being 14? I do. I knew it all then. I'm 48 now and know that there are huge swaths of life I know little about.

I've never been married. There are those who pat me on the back and say, “Damn, aren't you lucky!” So, I know nothing about marriage except the little things I'm told. I suppose I can surmise what it's like. But what I can comprehend is divorce, as I'm seeing more and more now. We non-marrieds can grasp that easily due to it being so shamelessly public.

I can't lay out here the finalized and impending divorces I know about, so I have to make an amalgam to hide the participants. This will be from a guy's perspective as the stories I hear are from the boys. I'll add that I know it takes two to tango and very probably both sides are guilty as sin for dissolving a marriage. What I'll speak of is my reaction to hearing about these slow motion train wrecks.

My God, they are train wrecks though. It's something to see a couple who once were luvy-duvy, denigrate into vicious contenders. I remember the weddings, I was there for most of them. It was nothing but cake and bright futures. But since I didn't know the intimate day to day details of their married life, it's a bit of a shock to see them suddenly explode like a bar brawl spilling onto the sidewalk. These couples fight like fisher cats.

“Huh...and I thought they were doing alright?” I'd think.

What spooks me are the little guerrilla attacks the couple will assault each other with. I knew of one pissed off husband who very cleverly destroyed the home they once lived in by flooding it via the forced hot water radiator system. He attacked a water supply to the cellar pipes, opened up the highest, third floor radiator and left the house. It basically rained indoors for a couple days, down through all three floors. The house then could not be sold in the condition it was, except at fire sale prices.

Or this. A wife was secretly, for the past several years, skimming the profits of her husband's business, in cash, to a safe deposit box she opened in her name only. She was smart enough to keep the paper trail to a bare minimum as she planned her escape. The amount the husband tells me is near $80,000.

“Dammit! Not only did she keep that, she got the house and half of the other accounts as well! It took me fifteen years to build that up...now it's wiped out! I built that up...me..not her!”

Or, a wife going on a fucking binge with every guy she could meet when she found out her husband was having an affair. “Oh, I'll get you!” I can imagine her saying. “You shoved that knife in my gut? I'll twist a larger one into YOURS!”

The worst in people certainly comes right out huh?

I stand by the sidelines, watching the players tackle one another and I think to myself, “Thank God I'm not allowed to play this game.”

At 48, I know I don't “know it all” and in some instances, that's perfectly fine by me.

There Will Be More

I spoke before on here about a teen I once knew who was treated like dirt. Today I flick on the CNN website and I see this black and white video of a girl peeling card after card away telling her miserable story. It reminds me of a sad version of Dylan's video, Subterranean Homesick Blues.

Amanda Todd, a thirteen year old from British Columbia, made the mistake of flashing her breasts to some guy via web cam. He was recorded it and then splattered the picture all over the BC area. Little time passed before her “friends” at the school got a hold of the picture and tormented her to no end about it. Once again, teen politics took over and her social status was wiped out between lunch and biology class. Welcome to Loserville was the next stop on the train in her social life.

It was a mistake to show off like she did. Do I blame her? Nope. She was a very young teen and they sure as shit don't have the best judgment on the whole, do they? I'm 48 and I still can't hit a 100% success rate on all my choices.

But here's what struck me. Amanda's mom, looking out for her daughter's best interests, felt moving away to a different school system where her daughter could start fresh would be a great idea. Move away? Run away? Guess who else had to run away when the community around them made it very plain they weren't welcome anymore. The Jews.

“Oh! Oh! Oh! You can't compare this even with the Holocaust! It's totally different!” some may say.

My answer to that? “Bullshit.”

People...we're dirt bags a lot of the times. If it wasn't Jews we were chasing down, it was gypsies, blacks, Indians, short, tall, fat,skinny...you name it. And, we chase down 15 year old girls who make the silly mistake of being goaded into flashing their breasts. Had she been in New Orleans during Mardi Gras and did that, she'd have beads and probably a coupon for a free beer.

Moving to another town was just a respite for Amanda, before her teen world ripped her apart again. As of today, she's dead.

I hear a lot of talk of choice and responsibility. It's usually aimed at the individual to BLAME them for their inability to rise above whatever personal demon they may be trying to conquer. Blame makes it very easy then to NOT help and walk way. One can feel quite smug because you managed to frame the situation as their personal, private failure. You on the other hand are the best thing that ever existed...right?

So, here's a challenge to every moral coward out there. CHOOSE, take RESPONSIBILITY to NOT grind down some poor sap who's having a hard time. Don't worry, I'm not asking you to save them...just have the moral guts not to make it worse, and we'll see just how strong and upright you really are.

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We Boomers...

70's Parents lamenting: "They have no respect for their elders, they dress like bums, and their music...it's just noise!"

That post about the Blizzard of 1978 reminded me of my time in Goff Jr High. Nostalgia comes into play but I temper that with the fact it wasn't all fun. It's true that no matter what age you are, now or then, there were great days and some real ugly ones.

 

I called Goff Jr High the “Rat Trap.” Goff at the time was processing the tail end of the Boomers through and there was a good many of us. The administration of the building ran the place like a prison camp. It was an education on how to follow orders. We were guided through the maze to the next class, to the cafeteria and to wherever.

“uh-TEN-HUT! Eyes Foward...foward.....MARCH!”

I suppose there was no other way to manage that large a group of young teens but some of the teachers and administration took to it with the relish of a camp guard.

“You there! No talking! Get back in line!”

 

Teachers doubled as hall monitors as the classes changed. They would stand at strategic spots, looking for those known trouble makers and keeping an eye on them, while those looking more innocent would pull pranks behind their backs. There was a definite us and them mentality.

The bell would ring, and a flood of kids would spill into the hallway with a instant burst of talking that was quite loud. Then there was that “tramp, tramp, tramp” of 900 pairs off feet going down the hallways all at once. In about four minutes, the changeover was complete and most of the kids were in their next class. Occasionally we'd hear a burnt out teacher in an adjacent classroom scream at his class to “Sit down and shut up!” Those teachers needed to retire.

There was an old World War II ditty some kid reworked that made the rounds in the school about the most pissed off, run down teachers we knew. He swapped out Hitler and Mussolini’s names for the two most hated teachers.

 

Whistle While you Work!

Hecker is a Jerk!

Bertoncinni, Bit his Weenie

Now It Doesn't Squirt!

You have to love the level of maturity fourteen year olds have.

There were some teachers who could command respect from us without resorting to screeching and threats of detention.  The best one was a woman too. She had little problem in her classroom when it came keeping it manageable. She made friends of us and did it well too.

 

Miss Knight was a recent Providence College English major graduate who might have been 25 years old at the time. She was your perfect 70's chick too. She was thin and wore the latest clothing but nothing Disco. She sported Dorothy Hamil's haircut and drove a really beat to crap Alfa Romeo.

She looked cool to us.

Knight's english class was enjoyable and not drudge work as many of the others were. What made it enjoyable is that she blew about ¼ of the class time just talking to us about pretty much anything.

We kids would toss subjects at her that in no way you could even joke about in a classroom of today. She stood up in front of the class and told us that some of her friends were gay. That topic elicited a ton of questions from the girls in our class. The boys sat there and stared, as most of us had no clue to what gay really was, beyond the sexual aspects. She told us of her love life in college, but nothing graphic. One of the conversations we had ended up killing the entire class period. She spoke of getting high.

Now, how about this. She never got into any hot water at all for talking to us about it. Not only that, she very nearly was promoting pot smoking to us kids. That day's conversation made the gossip circuit in the school and there was no reaction from the teachers nor administration. Nothing.

I can see her still, leaning on her desk, explaining why pot made listening to music on headphones so much better. That and how a Snicker's Bar tasted far too heavy and sugary when stoned. She said pot would enhance all of our senses. We kids kept raising our hands to ask a zillion questions about it. I, however, sat there very quiet. I wasn't about to add to this conversation with any stories; or, betray myself with well-informed questions about being stoned, lest any suspicions about me were further enhanced. She had reason to suspect me, and I had my concrete evidence on her too. We both caught one another getting stoned once.

I've mentioned before that my first concert was Frank Zappa. I went with my older brother and his friends who were well supplied with pot and mescaline. I never got any of that mescaline but my brother and his friends kept lighting and passing joints up and down our little group. I became fried.

This being my first concert I had take everything in. I stared at the 13,000 people in there and thought of the Roman Colosseum. The trusses that held up the Providence Civic Center's roof and Zappa's PA system, which were suspended by these very thick cables, were interesting to me. I had never seen any of this before.

During the intermission when they brought up the main lights, I could see better and looked at all the people around me. Over my shoulder, to the left and up about three rows, sat a women who was sucking greedily on a joint. I stared...is that...no...yes! It was Miss Knight.

Of course, her head happened to turn around and spot me sitting the few rows below her. Our eyes met then and we both darted our heads away. I wasn't thrown by the fact she had a joint in her mouth. I was too busy asking myself, “Shit, did she see me passing joint after joint between my brother's friends and I? She must've of!”

She had guts I guess, talking like she did in that class that day, with me in there. Or, perhaps, she didn't care at all. We both knew about one another and sort of made an unspoken pact to shut the hell up.

You have to understand. The late 70's were a time when nearly all prohibitions, restrictions on behavior, were thrown OUT. What the adults did in the 60's, filtered down to us kids in the 70's. No one cared really. There was a phrase back then that I still remember, “Too Young to Know and Too Old to Care.”

What a time it was then. What a different culture. 1978 was when sex couldn't kill you and cocaine was regarded as safe before it's quality shot through the roof in the early 80's. These were the early stages when living like libertines hadn't the time to damage you much yet.

*****

I'll compare the young and hip Miss Knight to an older teacher we knew. One who now that I think about it, we treated unfairly.

Mr. Sable, aka: “The Hook!” was my homeroom teacher in 9^th grade. He won that nickname because his right hand was bent in the shape of Peter Pan's Captain James Hook's hand. He would use this malformed hand as a pointer and still could manage to jam a piece of chalk into it and write fairly well on the blackboard. I will admit, as a young teen, this was slightly disgusting. But, being young as we were, being unfair, immature and not knowing dick about life, we adjudged this man as less than what he was. We were fresh kids still. Healthy, full of life and pretty. Life hadn't chewed us up yet time and again to where we finally learned that scars, physical and emotional, aren't really ugly, when everyone now owned quite a few.

Mr Sable, at his age and being a World War II vet, had a lousy time connecting to us young upstarts in an age where parents shared their drugs with their kids. What brats we were then too. We had it all in a sense. Money, safety and the freedom to stay up till 3AM wandering the neighborhood without the cops giving a crap.

I am sure Mr Sable had his particular opinions on our upbringing, but unfortunately for him, the world evolved beyond his generation's values. So, he had to put up with our guff. I have to say this too, he did it expertly. He never flew off the handle when some kid made an off color comment about his hand or his old fashioned nature. A very even keeled man he was.

I found out, years later, why his hand was in the miserable shape it was. We were talking about old times when Mr Sable had come up. One of us, who happened to know his family somewhat, said his hand was ripped to shreds by a German MP-40 sub-machine gun in the Ardennes forest.

When I heard that, it stopped me.

“He was in the Ardennes offensive?” I said with some surprise

“Yep” I was told. “My neighbor, and old guy, was in the same unit as Sable.”

The battle in the Ardennes forest wasted hundreds upon hundreds of American lives. The Germans had a defensive structure that made such good use of the dense forest and very narrow roads, that the Americans trying to invade it, were tossed into a wood chipper.

Had we known about this, had we kids known that Mr Sable's hand was the way it was due to being wounded in that war, we might have acted differently. But the tough old bird never did mention why he was deformed.

Miss Knight and Mr Sable. One was young and cool and the other, not. One had the easier time dealing with the kids and the other, not. One made her kids her friends and the other didn't.

You see what maturity brings to you after all these years when you can look back on what you thought you knew?

Some of Us Were There

These grey, flat skies are reminding me of snow. I know it's not that cold yet but the evenness of the cloud layer we've had reminds me of what the sky looks like in December when a storm first sneaks in. When I remember that, I see the eastern sky in my mind and no other direction. I guess the memory is fixed due to my house being buffeted by those East winds when a storm arrives.

I enjoyed snow up until I was sixteen and then learned what it meant to drive in it. Snow was no longer fun because digging your car out after you've buried it into a four foot high snowbank became real work! I didn't mind snow past sixteen when it closed my highschool down though. Those free days to sleep in and make a little money shoveling other people out was a nice diversion.

The absolute best, A-1, Blue Ribbon storm was 1978. I was fourteen then and it gave me two weeks out of school. By the third day I was bored silly. You couldn't go anywhere as the snow depth was four feet and drifting to twenty. Even if I could manage to get off my street there was nowhere to go as everything was closed. So I was stuck at home with the TV. How many daytime TV soaps can you watch without pulling nose hairs out to distract you?

In January of 1978, we had two monster storms that I swore, everyone swore, would never happen again. We had one good 15 incher come though which was surprising as we hadn't had something like this in a long while. Then a nice ice storm came to cover that snow and everything around us in glass. The morning after the ice storm pulled out, the sun shone and you saw a trillion diamonds in the trees, on the houses...everywhere.

Sunday, February 5^th came with a forecast of a maybe, perhaps a large snowstorm for Monday morning. “Well, that can't be.” I thought. We just had the two largest storms I could ever remember. How can a third one show up? I wasn't alone in that thinking. Everyone blew it off. I didn't even hope for it and beg the Snow Gods to shut down school the next day. I knew school would be open.

The snow arrived that Monday but seven hours late. After our lunch period we were sitting in history class when the principal announced that he was closing the school due to getting reports that it was starting to snow one inch per hour. In my head I think, “Well, that's all well and good. We get a half a day when I thought we were getting nothing.” The let us out in under twenty minutes after the announcement.

I remember walking down Armistice Blvd., with Pat and Jimmy saying, “Ah, this is nothing. We'll get ten inches at best.”

The afternoon spent itself out and night came in, and the snow just kept falling harder and harder. I started to think I may get Tuesday out of school too. After dinner, I thought it odd that WJAR had kept interrupting my shows with John Ghiorse blaring warnings. I began to see he wasn't screwing around at all.

“I'll be smart!” I thought. “I'll get a jump on the shoveling now and there will be less to do tomorrow!” I was out there, till around 10pm at night shoveling our walkway and driveway. I'd turn around and see the top of the driveway already had another four inches in it.

“Sonuvabitch! I just shoved that!”

Randy, an older guy happened by and told me, “Hey, don't bother. I saw the forecast. They're calling for two feet by morning.”

“Ahhh...that can't happen.” I tell him.

By 11PM, my mom stuck her head out the front door and wanted me to come in as the temperatures were diving and the wind was starting to howl fairly high. I told her I'd be in in a minute and dragged the shovels to the backyard when I saw this, lightning flashes in the sky. A few seconds later, thunder.

That was enough to get me inside.

I stayed up till around midnight, watching it all,  before I went to bed. I can remember lying there hearing the house getting thumped a bit by the wind and our maple tree smacking the side of the house. What was weird, the house was getting colder too. All that wind helped to suck out that wonderful oil heat we had.

The next morning, we discovered a fifteen foot drift had covered the south side of our house.

 

 

Not my house, but it sure enough represents what was around here after that storm.

Poconos

Lehigh River Cutting It's Way Through the Poconos

I could tell some other great stories about the Channing Way Communes that sprung up around UC Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement, but I'm kicking a dying horse. A final word on them though. The communes died off as the kids got sick of starving all the time. Careers in hippy-dom don't create much wealth.

*****

I saw the Extreme Games up close in Providence years ago. It's not like what you see on TV. There is no loud, lead guitar music to egg on the competitors nor 400, one-second-long fast cut camera angles either. When you see it on the TV, it's a complete stage show.

I saw the street luge event. I watched as young 20 somethings lying flat on their backs as they passed me doing...a flaming 20mph. They rolled by me and...and...that was it.

“What's the big deal?” I thought to myself.

What was more interesting were the contenders and video crew milling about. I heard most were out of LA. They were more entertaining than the games themselves.

There were California dudes who did have that surfer look down pat. It's odd seeing a dude walking on brick sidewalks past old Colonial Houses on Benefit Street. The early New England architecture and surfer attire do not associate well. That beach look can be pulled off in San Diego only.

*****

My dalliance with Extreme Sports was a whitewater rafting trip on the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania. It was a package deal for a group of us that provided the bus ride, condo and a day trip down the Lehigh. It was a typical weekend getaway. I had never rafted and visiting the Pocono mountains seemed like a cool idea.

The rafting company should've been called. “Uh, We Just Slapped This Company Together as You Guys were Driving Out.” I can't say we didn't have accommodations but their training course was about six minutes long and all they kept repeating was, “If you fall into the water...point your feet downstream!”

We piled onto our rafts with our food, beer and paddles in a fairly quiet section of the river. What surprised us all was how cold we felt. We were deep into the Poconos and under a thick canopy of trees, so not much warm sun penetrated at all. The forest was full of that grayish fog that crept into the hollows and darkened the scene further. Adding to our chill, we had to step into cold mountain water to move the rafts out to center to catch the main stream.

The Lehigh river is not that wide. At it's widest in the Poconos it might have been 20 yards.  What the Lehigh lacks in width, it makes up by falling twenty-five feet down at times. The first rapids we approached none of us could see, but heard just fine. All of sudden the raft fell from under us and down we went. None of us had any idea of how to steer it.

Quickly we were shoved up against this monstrous pillar of rock that rose out of the churning water and as we inched further and further up it, the center of balance changed and one by one, we all were dumped into the water.

 

All I remember was being sucked under. We all had life vests on but they don't really work in rushing water too well. I can remember that the sun had come out as I was looking at it as I was being dragged along the bottom of the river. The surface of the water sparkles just as much from underneath as seeing it from the shore I can tell you.

The water rushed so fast that I don't recall all the cuts I received from banging into the rocks. The next thing I remember, I was hacking, coughing and bobbing like a cork in a quiet pool where the rapids had finally spilled into. I regained my bearings and dog paddled to the shoreline, grabbed an overhanging branch and pulled myself halfway onto the mud. I tried to stand up but I couldn't.

“Shit! My legs are broken!” I thought.

After looking at them and finding nothing wrong, I tried standing again. I managed it but they were shaking so much. Later the I found the reason. I was so frightened I couldn't stand.

I leaned against the tree and saw beer coolers, empty rafts and people thrashing about. The pool was turning into a traffic jam. My thought was, “Oh Christ, we have another 50 miles of this!”

Once it was over, we all collected our gear and set off anew but I was hopped up on fear for the next spill. I jokingly said to one of the leaders there if there was a way through the woods to get back to Wilkes-Barre. “Nope! This is the only way to get home!”

I can attest to this: You will become competent very quickly when you have fear and 20-40 foot drops in the river to deal with. I learned, we all learned hastily, how to spot the current as it goes over a cascade and how to position the raft to find that “slot.” We learned how to look down the river about 50 feet to see where the current twisted and turned so we could paddle like maniacs to the center of it.

It took me about three plunging rapids to become confident in one hell of a hurry. Once I got the hang of it I could calm down and focus on the mountains as they rose right out of valley bottom.

It's beautiful.

The further along we went downstream, the distance between rapids spaced out more so we just leaned back, sucked down beers and drifted along. I think I can understand why Pennsylvania is a huge deer hunting state. As we floated along, all you heard were the hooves of deer taking off. On occasion you'd see one bounding in 15 foot leaps through the woods to escape us. We think, think we saw one black bear a ways off too.

What's cool too, as you drift along, the land changes. It went from sloping forested banks to sheer rock cliffs that stood up on either side of the river. The guides estimated the height to be around 100 feet up. These cliff faces had tunnels dug into them that made them look worm eaten. “This is coal country!” The guides told us. The first miners would spot a coal seam exposed in the cliff wall and would mine both ways, towards the river and back into the mountain itself. These were cut before Lincoln was President we were told.

By the end of the trip, the Lehigh does widen out and the current slowed down markedly, which meant we were approaching Wilkes-Barre.

In the condo that afternoon, as I was taking a shower, there was a puddle of mud at the bottom of the stall. I had no idea I became that filthy. It was nice to wash off the smell of algae though. What was an unknown perk was that we found out the band Little Feat was performing at a 4-H thingy nearby and there was open admission. The locals there thought we were all from NYC due to our accents. We were told by some they had relatives that lived on Long Island, completely mishearing us say “Rhode Island.”