The Flying Philosopher: April 2013

Epitaph for Martin Richard, 2005-2013,

Epitaph for Martin Richard, 2005-2013, an eight year old Boston Marathon Little Leaguer, who as a “pinch hitting” spectator, chasing his dream, ran to embrace his father at the Marathon’s home plate, died when the first of two enemy bombs explored.

A futuro Ted Williams, bursting with Revolutionary fervor in the City that spawned the emergence of one of the birth of the 13 colonies and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

A Johnny Tremain and Paul Revere pinch hitting for the ages.

III

Cry the flood of tears until the ducts are dry. .Old enough to know the legend of the Red Sox’s Ted Williams.

Fenway Park, sitting in the bleachers like a knothole 55cents kid, chewing on a hot dog, his hands on the rail, his eyes on Pesky pole. Watching his heroes, in those breaths only an eight year old Little Leaguer could inhale and exhale.

. IV

The eight year old female counterpart at the Championship game versus Japan,sitting in the stands, her sign “Wilya marry me, Martin?”

That enduring presence: the toothy grin..... chasing his dream.

“Martin Martin,forgive us for one more sob.. you’re priceless.”.”

Flags flying half mast, Boston’s Fenway Park, April 15, 2013

Unlike the Korean War tags we never were awarded

(Draft 2,August first, 1997. American Air Museum in Britain, June 11,2001)

Unlike the Korean War tags we never were awarded, the stringed I.D. dangling around our necks
‘’The American Air Museum in Britain ….Official Opening By Her Majesty, The Queen ….1^st
August 1997’,

The good wife and ourselves sidestepped the barricade unto the Duxford RAF landing strip that memorable

yesterday outside Cambridge, UK……

The Pakistani clerk at our London bed&breakfast digs , 50 miles away, had said earlier…”Sir, if the

hotos you took of me make me seem like a Prince Charming Don’t mail them back. My brother is on his
holiday at our sister’s apartment He works across the street. Save your money”,scribbling her phone
number, A Brooklyn 718 area code on a scratch pad.

Developing the view press &click snapshots back on Coney Island Avenue, we dialed the number..an a

Omar Sharif’s voice, in its lilting soft tones, answered “You got my brother’s pictures? Can yo deliver
them ipso facto Major. We’re flying back to perfidious Albion from JFK, later today.”

“Where are you? You know Brooklyn’s Flatbush? 815 East 14^th Street, apartment One H?”

“Do I know? It’s God’s way,”we said.”It’s a six floor elevator apartment house, on Avenue H. Two blocks

from the local BMT stop. Art Carney, Jackie Gleason’s kimosab (“Ed Norton”) lived across the street,
atop the Bohack grocery on the corner of ‘H’ and 14^th Street where Rugby Road begins.”

A day dreaming punk from Santa Monica, California.,we were raised in that reality scene.

Attending Public School 217 with Dr. Howie the piano player from apartment one H. Midwood High
School. The best man at our wedding. The “Moose” aka Jack the hack, left handed pivot frpom the rucker
basketball courts at Wingate Field..But Dr. Howie and his sister and folks lived in the same digs as your
sister.

“How’s that for being in the flow of the game. The fluid moment, sir?”

Our odyssey begins a month earlier, Fort Hamilton Army Library. Bay Ridge, a historical neighborhood not

that far from Flatbush. Keith Lewis, Jr. an internet pro, E mailed Sandra Brooks, Mildehalll
R.A.F.,Beck Row Village,29 miles from Cambridge ,U K. About standby billeting for a once Air Force
Ready Reservist with 23 years longevity, and his good wife.

III

When the electronic mailbox was sorted out for the fourth time, Sandra Brooks who wasn’t from Brooklyn

wrote “Major, call USAF-RAF Lakenheath direct.”
“Sergeant Gideonse,”answered, the NCO in charge of lodging. “Com’ on ahead, Major. We’re expecting
the good wife. Our motor pool is on orders for her Majesty’s honor guard, Transportation Squadron,48^th
Fighter Wing.”…………..

We thought back all of our yesterdays. 47 years ago, June 29,1950…..a Second Lieutenant, out of Ucla’s

Rotc, in the role of a Supply Officer on temporary duty to the Officers Club..448^th Reserve B 25 Light
Bomb Wing, Long Beach, California, adjoining Signal Hill’s rasping oil drills.

President Harry Truman, a no nonsense Commander in Chief, activated the 452^nd B 25 Light Bomb

Wing, on being briefed about the North Koreans invading South Korea, crossing the demilitarized zone.
Colonel Cochrane, the Long Beach base’s full time operational officer for Colonel Keeney, the
448^th,Colonel Sweetzer, later Brigadier General,452^nd…

.”Lieutenant, you’re on verbal orders. Report Hamilton Air Force Base, the 2567^th Processing Squadron,

San Rafael, California. Travis Air Force Base, Japan, Korea. That’s your fateful scenario, my boy.”

Deferred until February ’51, for graduate school in Education, Colonel Paul McGuire called ,during the

Cuban crisis, Kruschev steaming missiles toward Castro’s Cuba, ”Be my Group Intelligence

Officer, Canoga Park, California . We’ll cut orders, giving you jurisdiction from Santa Barbara to Long

Beach, sending you to Intelligence School, Shepard Air Force Base, Texas. On the panhandle to

Oklahoma…Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Pentagon. Defense Intelligence Agency, Western

European Desk, Arlington, Virginia.”

How’s that sound, Lieutenant?”

“How can we resist you, sir?”

For another 12 years…two week tours at a stretch ,several in California’s Mojave desert, the AF Academy, teaching Space, we found ourselves August 1^st,1997, at Duxford RAF base, strolling toward the elliptical designed American Air Museum in Britain, the skies opening up, the raindrops descending.

VII

She ran for cover in the makeshift hangar where 2000 Yanks, many of them in their tattered khakis, blues, bespeckled ribbons, medals galore….Milling around the dining tables ,with wives, children, grandchildren, widowers, widows, sweethearts, mistresses, girl friends, chums, next of kin, testing the grub of sandwiches, English biscuits, warmed over hot meals, fish&chips, tarts, pastries, tea, coffee..

Reminiscing of some 6 decades, spilling the air ,the BBC audio taping “in yer face”,London’s Imperial War Museum pro Greg Smith, clicking, snapping away….pilots, co-pilots, crew chiefs, navigators, bombardiers, tail gunners, ground crews, flight officers, air controllers, radar techs, intelligence officers, supply , operations….

VIII

Meanwhile the Major “nuisance” in his good wife’s stead. fled for the Air Museum’s cover, those earlier

rain drops, pelting the air strip like big chunks of hail out of the ice age .…the hangar’s door, inside the
swooping P38’s, ‘47’s, step ladders into the cockpits, flying fortresses, nary a B 25…

“Charlton Heston,”he called, the echo resounding in the cavernous space, the actor stumbling at the

Museum’s door .on hearing his marqueed name .

”It sure is wet,”he said, looking into&thru the Major, a limo pulling alongside the entrance,

”Where did we meet?”

Those yesterdays trailing back 30 years, Ucla’s reality scene of a bon voyage for Jules Stein’s departed

soul. Henry Mancini playing out his theme from “Romeo et Juliet”,the solemn airs sounding thru the
campus..Dr.Stein, a bandleader turned opthomologist had bought Universal Studios where Mr.Heston had
starred, “Airport ‘75”.

The limo driver cried “Charlton, her Majesty’s jet , from Edinboro Castle, Scotland, is taxying .Hurray,

water cress sandwiches with venison is worth writing home. Rank knows no chow hounds, sir.” Insides the dining hangar for the 2000 Yanks, the War Museum’s pro,Greg Smith, continued his viewing. Snapping, shuttering.

For the benediction, the well groomed museum staff, distaff and male,set up chairs and benches…outsides

on the strip, the skies closing, raindrops ceasing..

Her Majesty, Prince Philip, former Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher, Duke of Kent, a Field Marshall, Charlton Heston.

Greg Smith clicking away like into a dot.com, on a web site’s home page. Her Majesty in her yellow ponchos tucked under the canopy set up outside the Museum hangar. Her USAF color guard in their protocol, the band playing the strains that bonded the American Anglo Saxon peoples in the Battle of Britain.

“Do you know the Greg Smith singers, always playing the Ucla Spring sing?”asked the Major.”Any

relation?”,the Fly Over into the graying mists. 3 F’16’s ,wingtips fingerprint touching thru the skies, a lone
Flying Fortress… sailing thru the ocean of humanity…

XII

The resounding voice of “Airport ‘75”,Charlton Heston, leaping into the Bard’s “Henry V”, the

loudspeakers in sync….”My soul shall thine keep company to Heaven; tarry sweet soul for mine. Then fly
abreast.…As if an Angel dropt down from the clouds….O for a muse of fire that would ascend. the
brightest Heaven of invention.. A Kingdom for a stage, Princes to act. And monarchs to behold the
swelling scene….”

XIII

On the USAF bus ‘s return thru the countryside toward Lakenheath, the Honor Guard stripped of their protocol, cajoled the latrine officer from Cleveland’s Shaker Heights ,laughing at the toilet talk, reminiscing about her moment’s moment..

XIV

On the ‘morrow, Greg Smith called from London’s Imperial War Museum.”Major, before departing for Heathrow,. call Andy at Duxford’s darkroom. He’s processing all our negatives. You &Estelle might be lucky.” Greg Snith not knowing New York cut steak was a la carte for the Major and the good wife’s getaway back to JFK and the City that never sleeps.

Walking thru the lush Lakenheath grass toward the post office’s phone, he stumbled, his blue eyes sighting a buried tablet. To Andy. He paid the ultimate Transportation Squadron 48^th Fighter Wing sweeping into a plaque….

‘To the airmen of many nations who flew with the R.A.F. during the Battle of Britain. And soared into the
Heavens that others might live...”If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years,
men will still say “This was their finest hour.” Sir Winston Churchill, Prime Minister….

Saturday, July 12,1997,Duxford RAF, England

30 lashes with a wet noodle

“30 lashes with a wet noodle” playing out at a Rutgers University basketball drill...shades of Bobby Knight’s repetitive compulsion at Indiana, his tantrums during a game, seen on Saturday’s Big 10 rivalry, his competitive juices short circuiting; the officials, the players, and Indiana University administrators, who put an end to his reign of terror.

The need to dominate vis a vi the mentor’s cause celebre . His ego trip to an other level is the cliche. But the heat of battle during the coach’s need to justify himself before the immediate television audience, his peers in the “business”, and himself.

Whence where he hails from? What’s he trying to prove?

III

“30 lashes with a wet noodle”, the New Jersey Rutgers coach caught on tape, gay taunting his “sissy” athlete. Demeaning the student athlete during the defensive drill. In other words heckling him in front of his team mates....and why porque? what’s he trying to prove?

A “w”?

The current “Sweet 16" into the final 4 playoff games on global television mirrors the aspirations of the civilized struggle at humanity’s most enduring competitive level.

Shades of immortal John Wooden at Ucla, his streak of ten or eleven Ucla championships, 77 straight victories: an All American player in college.

He wanted to become an English teacher. To bring out the best in his being a surrogate father for young men.

And women thru his own vision, and personal victory. Or vice a versa. Personal victory, thru his own victory and vision in finding himself among larger than life role models, when growing up.

Here the role model thrust playing out is degraded, the student athlete having to find his own way. All for a “w”....his divine providence denied by an older adult , not sacrificing his ego trip for immediate gratification..

A “w”!

What ho, Simon Legree?

“30 lashes with a wet noodle?”

thee city that never sleeps, April 3, 2123 Diane, what whence ho? Presidentre in reality. Kudos and kudos. From our electrical engineering scholarship yesterdays.Bravo! For your staying power......”and a mighty fortress be she””

“The streak has peaked at the right time. Right from the get go”said the basketball icon in

“The streak has peaked at the right time. Right from the get go”said the basketball icon in the windy city’s springtime. But when he was still in his cribbed womb and sitting in his hi- chair, he would have remembered another streak at the very beginning of televisions birth into dramatic shootouts in our cultural boondocks.

Across from Jack LaRue’s (Gene Autry’s nemesis) villainy bistro on Ventura Boulevards reality scene in Republic Studio’s television pre digital menu was “Gunsmoke” starring Marshall Matt Dillon.

James Arness into the role for so long, the towering Angel of frontier justice couldn’t remember. His skimpy Deputy had long since passed on to the prairie beyond , the script changes and the clutter that constitute that reality scene.

Down away on Ventura Boulevard before the freeway was Burbank’s hosting the Warner Brothers studio and the likes of Clint Eastwood’s own pre Italian spaghetti shootouts and Lorne Green’s Boys High ensemble “Bonanza”

Yet earlier Jack L. had given the “get go” to a local detective drama starring Jack Webb as the honcho. Barrio, Whittier Boulevard, Hollenbeck police station Brooklyn Avenue, Boyle Heights culture vulture tacos and tamale carts..

III

“Just the facts, mam. Just the facts,” said detective Joe Friday, his mind set and fedora angled like a 21st century Dick Tracy, pounding the East L.A. beat, keeping tabs on his Julie London, his cell phone mercilessly ticking....

Julie was also an expatriate from Boyle Heights and the Hollenbeck Jr. High, Roosevelt High School’s campus. Thus “Dragnet” peaked into a popular mass appeal crime “drama”. The shoot out, opposite the Burbank studio...it’s eatery “The Smokehouse”

“Awesome””

the city that never sleeps, March 28,2013