Night divides the day

Tried to run, tried to hide

Break on through to the other side

Break on through to the other side

The Doors, Break on Through

Chapter 14

Walking the Camino de Santiago in the Time of Covid

I was lost. I needed a new perspective on life. For no reason that I can understand, the idea of walking the Camino de Santiago across Spain popped into my head and I knew I had to do it. I think it was Lisa.

The Camino is an ancient Christian pilgrimage that includes routes spidering their way throughout Europe, all leading to the big cathedral in the city of Santiago, where the remains of Saint James are interred. I chose to walk the most common route, the French Way, that starts on the French-Spanish border in the village of St. Jean Pied du Port and traverses five hundred miles (870 kilometers) across northern Spain to Santiago, near the Atlantic coast, in the Celtic heritage province of Galicia. For centuries, pilgrims, or “peregrinos,” have been making the journey to pay homage to St James, the patron saint of Spain.

James the Greater, the story goes, was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, a fisherman of souls who brought Christianity to the Iberian Peninsula before he was beheaded in Palestine by Herodotus in 44 AD. His devotees reportedly journeyed from Spain to recover his body and brought it by sea back to Santiago. There, his body was entombed in the magnificent Santiago de Compestela cathedral. Pilgrims walk, bike or ride horseback (and donkeys, the butt of many jokes) over great distances seeking spiritual enlightenment, inspired by the good works of Saint James. I went seeking peace for my grieving soul.

There was a rail strike when I arrived in Madrid, so I navigated the city subway system with my backpack bumping into the packed commuter trains to the outskirts of town where the strike zone ended and the regular trains were running. The train to Pamplona, the closest city to the Camino starting point at St. Jean, arrived ten minutes late, which made me ten minutes late for my 11 pm check in at the Aloha hostel. When they say the doors close at 11, they mean it. On day one I was homeless on the streets of Pamplona.

Pilgrims generally overnight in the alburgues, or hostels, that populate the Camino route. The tradition is for pilgrims to walk as far as they can each day and sleep in the alburgues with other peregrinos. Many provide basic dinner and a cup of coffee with a chunk of bread in the morning. Before COVID, pilgrims would often cook communal dinners and get to know each other in the evenings. With COVID, the communal dinners were cancelled and the alburgues were operating at half capacity. In practice, this meant they were only using the lower bunks in the dormitory, although the rules varied by town. With fewer people walking the Camino due to COVID, half capacity shouldn’t have been a problem, but as the number of pilgrims began to grow, the alburgues were often oversubscribed and resorted to either packing in more people or turning them away. I experienced both, but on my first day, in Pamplona, I was shut out completely and no amount of banging at the doors or yelling from the street would change that reality. No aloha at the Aloha alburgue.

The bars and cafes in Pamplona were jammed with partying youths celebrating some unknown holiday (there are many in Spain), which meant that all the hotels and hostels were full. Around midnight, wandering the streets trying to figure out where to sleep, I met So Young Kim, a pink haired, South Korean fellow pilgrim who was in the same situation – the Aloha had shut its doors for the night and she too had nowhere to go. We went to every hotel and hostel in town, like Jesus and Mary seeking shelter, and finally started scouting city parks and church doorways for a place to sleep. Finally, around 2:00 am, the desk manager at one last business hotel, whose name was Jesus, said he had a room. “I’ll take it,” I said. So Young said that she too would like a room, and Jesus clarified that he had one room only. “Two beds, dos camas?” So Young asked hopefully. “One single queen sized bed,” Jesus confirmed. “Uno cama.” It was awkward.

I looked at her and said “You’re just going to have to trust me. I’m not a weirdo and we can share the room without any problems. I promise.” She sized me up there in the lobby and made her decision. “Okay,” she declared resolutely. We slept side by side, like matchsticks, no hanky panky. We got up early the next morning, showered and set off. It’s not as if I would have pushed her away if she had rolled over and nuzzled up to me, but I didn’t want to screw things up. I liked her and I wanted to be her friend.

I told So Young I was going to skip the official Camino starting point in St. Jean, in the Pyrenees, and start walking from Pamplona. She wouldn’t hear of it. This was her nineth Camino and she respected every inch of it. “No, you must not do that” she told me in her slightly husky, heavily Korean accented voice. “You must start from the beginning. You have to go to St. Jean.” Within minutes she bought me a bus ticket on her phone. She’s a Gen Z whiz with a zillion apps on her phone. She even has her own Korean Camino pod cast. So Young directed me to accompany her to the bus station, where we had a sumptuous lunch of tapas and beer and boarded the bus for St. Jean. She dozed while I watched the scenery and wished that she would rest her head on my shoulder.

The invisible border between France and Spain runs through the mountain village of St. Jean, which is the official starting point for the Camino’s French Way. We reported to the pilgrim office where volunteer Camino officials validate your official pilgrim passport and provide basic information about the way ahead. We then checked into a quaint little alburgue run by a Belgian hippie named Karen who had ridden her bike from Belgium, walked the Camino, met the mystical owner of the alburgue where we were staying, and was minding the inn while her mystic boyfriend was off walking the Camino. Karen was in her thirties, pretty, blonde, fit, and offering yoga and meditation classes while running the alburgue.

Many pilgrims return to volunteer along the Camino. A few devote their lives to it, like Alexandra the foot masseuse I met several weeks later. So Young is an artist who gets her inspiration from the Camino and incorporates Camino themes into her creations. Mid-thirties, sharp as nails, and cute as a kitty cat, So Young showed me the ropes of Camino etiquette. “Don’t leave your backpack on the bunk, it ruins the mattress,” she instructed as we dumped our backpacks at the alburgue and strolled around St. Jean together as the sun set over the Pyrenees. It would have been easy to mistake it for a romantic moment.

Day one on the Camino is about crossing the Pyrenees, not romance. After a night of operatic snoring from the guy in the bunk next to me, accompanied on nose oboe by his beastly wife in the next bunk over, we rose before dawn to begin our journey. So Young was gone within five minutes, out the door and up the mountain. People come and go on the Camino. Sometimes you meet up with them down the road, sometimes they are gone forever. I had coffee and toast with Karen and two young pilgrims, Pietro from Sicily by way of San Diego, and Antonia from Dusseldorf. Before leaving, Karen held our hands and recited a meditation to a soundtrack of John Denver tunes. We were supposed to have our eyes closed but Antonia told me later she peeked and saw me snickering. I hoisted my backpack and took the first steps of my five hundred mile hike.

Reality hits you hard and fast as the path steepens drastically and the pleasant walk turns from casual to strenuous. You lean into the rising road and dig your trekking poles into the surface for traction. My doctor told me not to go, at least not before getting a hip replacement. So Young Kim told me my pack was too heavy and advised me to ditch some non-essential items, starting with my tent and cooking gear. I didn’t listen.

Within two hours I was wondering if they were both right. The wind started to howl. I could see a line of pilgrims marching across the stark landscape of scrub bushes and rock slabs that reminded me of the “scree and boulder” described by Japhy Ryder in Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums. Soon we transcended the tree line, exposed to the merciless elements. Pilgrims were now being blown asunder like drunkards trying to stay upright while pathetically failing a field sobriety test. The wind bullied us like frail children. Several pilgrims fell down on the ground and rolled on their backs like overturned turtles, feet in the air, arms akimbo. Others cowered behind rocks seeking refuge from the sixty mile per hour gusts that stripped us of pretense. Metaphors on the Camino are not subtle. They hit you square in the face, like the wind.

My first day of walking was more like a cruel hazing ritual than a pleasant stroll in the countryside. It put me in survival mode, an early reminder that the Camino is not be trifled with. The wind tangled my legs with every step, forcing me to impersonate the Monty Python silly walk contest, with my limbs flailing wildly and my trekking poles slashing spasmodically in every direction. The feeling was similar to being held underwater by a breaking wave and tumbled like a rag doll. Looking up the road at the mountain peaks I saw a disorderly parade of pilgrims, all of us doing the same silly Monty Python wind walk. We were all humbled.

Near the ridge, an attractive Italian doctor in a red jump suit passed me doing her version of the spastic Pilgrim dance. Her name was Chiara. I caught up to her and Antonia, my German meditation buddy from the morning, huddled behind a rock ledge taking a water break. The three of us put our heads down and trudged until we crested the summit around mid-afternoon. Experienced hikers know that going downhill hurts even more than the uphill because gravity jangles your bones with every lurch forward. A cold rain slapped us in the face and drenched out clothes. We trundled down the narrow, jagged, slippery, wet path until we reached the alburgue in the ancient monastery at Roncesvalles as the sun set. We covered the 24 kilometers (14.9 miles) of extreme terrain and harsh conditions from St. Jean to Roncesvalles in under twelve hours.

We checked in, wolfed down a pilgrim dinner at the café next door, and crashed in the bunkhouse with a hundred other exhausted pilgrims. Lights go off at ten PM and are turned on at seven AM with classical music as the alarm clock and staff members ordering everyone to be out the door by eight, no exceptions. “Get walking pilgrims!”

Pain is a central theme of the Camino, whether it’s physical pain from your blisters, joints, and muscles, or emotional pain in your heart and soul. I had them all. A few weeks before I left for Spain my left hip started hurting and the X rays persuaded my doctor to advise against walking the Camino and to get a hip replacement instead. “Fuck that,” I told him, “I’m going.” He backed my decision by loading me up with a shot of steroids into the hip and a supply of high dose ibuprophen. He understood my situation and being Catholic, he thought the Camino would do me good.

The first day climbing the Pyrenees made me wonder how much pain I could endure. Physical and emotional pain compete for your attention. Most of the first hour of walking each morning is spent processing the crush of thoughts and feelings that bounce through your brain like Cirque de Soliel acrobats, celebrating a new day in a new place with adventures waiting on the road ahead. All you have to do is walk. The first miles are spent reviewing your personal playlist of greatest hits from your life. Memories of joy and misery cycle through your consciousness like a revolving cinema of your favorite songs, philosophical quandaries, lost loves, what ifs, great new ideas for projects, work bullshit, money bullshit, family bullshit, and Lisa. Always Lisa.

The cavalcade of hits eventually becomes tiresome, like the endless loop of Christmas carols at the department store during the holidays. The cacophony of intrusive thoughts and earworm tunes eventually subsides and the mighty Wurlitzer of deliberate thinking gives way to a Zen-like state of mind as you pick up your feet and put them down on the Camino path. Under your feet the texture of rocks, gravel, grass, mud, and asphalt is ever changing. One advantage of the Camino being so long is that you have time to bleed off the intruding thoughts and spend hours in silent meditation. You are stripped to your core. When thinking relents, the quiet voices can be heard. The Way, the universe, your smallness and bigness, and the overarching power of love. Peace, finally. The Camino is powerful.

There were indignities. Being in my sixties, the three AM urge to urinate imposed on me a requirement to navigate a nightly labyrinth to the bathroom. The journey started with trying to remember the location of the toilet in each new alburgue, then writhing out of my sleeping bag, climbing down from my squeaky bunk (often involving a wood or metal ladder from the top bunk) and feeling my way in the darkness through a maze of beds, boots and backpacks strewn throughout the maze. “Sorry,” I whispered when I smashed my toe or tripped on an unseen obstacle. “Ouch, sorry.” “Fuck, sorry” was part of my nightly ritual as I navigated each mysterious new alburgue floorplan to relieve my bladder. Stairs added an extra element of difficulty. Thank God for my headlamp.

Showers and toilets in alburgues are mostly communal and Spartan. Pilgrims wash their stinking socks and underwear in the shower, usually with the same soap you use on your hair and body, then squeeze as much water out as possible before hanging their soggy garments on their bunk or outside windows to dry. Some alburgues required masks for COVID, which was an empty gesture in light of the fact that you were sleeping cheek to jowl in a closed room with scores of snoring, snorting, sneezing, hacking, and farting pilgrims. Bring earplugs.

Before dawn you wriggle out of your cozy sleeping bag and roll out of your creaking bunk. After doing your morning business, most pilgrims tend to their blisters before gathering their gear and heading out the door. All pilgrims discover the miracle of Compeed, a specialized band-aid for blisters. There’s no time to fuss with hair or skin products, no yoga stretching routine, no newspaper with coffee. You gather up your shit and go. In the monastery at Roncesvalles they started the classical music at 6:45, and transitioned to Pink Floyd as they turned on the lights at seven sharp. Most alburgues are located right on the Camino, so you are up and out the door and walking within minutes. “Where is the fucking coffee around here?” It was never far, thankfully, and always good. “Café con leche, por favor.”

Every pilgrim has his/her reasons for walking the Camino. Some are eager to share their inspiration, others are more reticent to discuss their motivations. Many, like my walking buddy Claudio, an Italian science teacher, are devout Catholics who are there to drink deeply from the fountain of their faith. Claudio stopped at every church and shrine to pray and attend services. Ultimately, I had to leave him behind because he was slowing me down, but we shared a special Camino moment when we were walking one morning beside a river and our path was suddenly blocked by a car speeding along the dirt road straight at us before it fishtailed to a stop in a cloud of dust right in front of us. WTF?

The driver was the proprietor of the alburgue where we had stayed the previous night. He leaped from the car and confronted Claudio, face to face. “I found this in the bed you slept in last night,” he declared, and thrust forward an open palm with something shiny laying flat in the middle of it. It was a medallion that Claudio’s long since passed father had given to him to remind his son to be guided by his faith. Claudio clutched the medallion to his breast, dropped to his knees and wept in gratitude. I stood there like an idiot. Camino magic. Claudio also dragged me to a church service where the priest didn’t show up. As the Philippine and Nigerian nuns scurried around and whispered to one another about the missing cleric, one of the local women in the congregation, middle aged, handsome, dressed in Levis, T shirt and Birkenstocks, got tired of waiting and marched to the front of the church and delivered the service herself, even offering communion. Nobody complained. When I asked Claudio, a devout Catholic, what he thought about a woman delivering the service, he said it was a wonderful experience.

Every day on the Camino is a cavalcade of humanity. Gunnar from Iceland planned to complete the Camino in under three weeks by averaging over 25 miles a day. I met several competitive long distance runners who barely slept or ate to save time. They ran at night with head lamps. Biking pilgrims in fluorescent colors often whizzed past, making you wonder if going so fast on the Camino obscures some of the spiritual benefits. The chunky Earth goddess from Lithuania told me earnestly that she was seeking the meaning of life. “Wow, let me know if you find it.” Mr. Ahn, an anguished bureaucrat from Seoul, was soul searching for a way out of the judgments and expectations that burdened his existence. Alcohol seemed to give him at least some temporary comfort. Nico the bagpipe player was going to visit his family in Santiago and was funding his trip home by playing the pipes in the public squares along the way. Kerstin from Lichtenstein was fleeing her boring bureaucratic bondage, as were the Swiss couple who quit their jobs as tax collectors and walked through France to the Camino with no intention of ever going back. Unhappiness with bureaucratic mediocrity drives lots of pilgrims to seek a better life. “There must be more to life” was a common refrain. It’s true. There is more to life.

Another category of pilgrims were the young international drifters and adventurers who come to the Camino to hook up and party. I hung out with these morphing affinity groups a few times and was envious of their lusty, carefree existence. Some were taking a gap year from college. Others were just exploring the world. My artist friend So Young Kim came from Korea for artistic inspiration. Benjamin was homeless and walked from central France with his guitar, rolling suitcase, and four dogs. One of his rambunctious puppies scratched me so bad that the gash bled profusely and took weeks to heal. Benjamin was oblivious. Every time I re-encountered him on the trail, additional pieces of his guitar were missing, until I saw him after a few weeks and there was nothing left but a single flat piece of the back of the instrument that he was still carrying. “Les chien mange le guitar.” The dogs ate the guitar? The wheels on his suitcase were ground down to nothing, so he was dragging what was left. The alburgues wouldn’t allow dogs so he slept in church doorways and begged for food and cigarettes. At first Benjamin annoyed me, but I came to see him as a bumbling St. Francis figure. St. Francis is my favorite saint.

Gerard was a crypto currency trader from Dubai whose next trip was a motorcycle tour of Chernobyl. I wonder if he made the trip before the Ukraine war. Layla was a butch lesbian from Israel, on the Camino by way of Alaska. Carmen survived the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland and lives on a boat not far from my house in Alameda. I walked with her for two days but got up extra early one morning and ditched her because all she wanted to talk about was herself. Back home, I spotted her yellow sailboat bobbing in the Oakland estuary channel, and had the good sense to stay away from her. Bernie was a British engineer from Guernsey contemplating a run for Parliament. My best friends on the Camino were a pair of Dutch doctors, Agnes and Hans, who were sailors planning to sail around the world. Agnes told me to get grief counseling, so I did. The list goes on and includes all the pilgrims over the centuries, each with their own reasons for being there.

A lean, Don Quixote looking Catholic priest stopped me on a sidewalk as I was approaching Pamplona (for the second time) and asked me if I’m Catholic. “Nope.” “How about Christian?” he averred. “Not really.” I replied. “Are you on a spiritual journey, then?” “Yes sir, I am.” “Are you walking the Camino as a true pilgrim? “Yes. I am a pilgrim.” “Well then my son, let me give you a blessing.” “Sure, couldn’t hurt” I said, and he took my hands in his and rattled off a prayer in Spanish or Latin and seemed quite satisfied with our interaction. I heard later from other pilgrims that he’s out there every day after being sent home from his parish in Japan for cancer treatment in Pamplona. He greets pilgrims entering the city, doing his part to serve the Camino.

Joe was a stud hiker with long, wavy brown hair and a swimmer’s V shaped upper body. He would pass me during the day and I would see him hours later holding court over beers in a village café as I dragged my sorry ass into town. I decided I didn’t like him because he was so much stronger and more handsome than me. But then I met a Canadian guy recovering from an injury in an alburgue who told me Joe saved his life. At first glance, I thought the Canadian guy was dead, laying there in his bunk. But it turned out that he was heavily drugged. When he woke up he explained that he had collapsed of heat stroke on the Camino, and his blisters were so infected he couldn’t walk. Joe carried him on his back for miles, took him to a doctor, then waited overnight to make sure he was okay. I saw Joe having a beer by the pool, waiting to make sure the Canadian guy recovered. Turns out he was a really good dude. I’m trying to be less judgmental.

Serving the Camino is a life’s work for some people, who return to volunteer in the alburgues or along the trail. The most magical encounter I had on the Camino was with Alexandra, my Camino angel. I had been walking alone for a few days and was feeling low. My feet hurt and I was lonely despite the Lord of the Rings greenery of the Celtic Galician countryside. As I rounded a downhill turn in the crushed rock trail and crossed a small stone bridge made of three giant flat boulders, a vision appeared before me.

Standing behind a picnic bench in a patch of grass next to the stream stood Alexandra, a dark eyed, raven haired beauty, with hands on her hips and radiating a calmness like dusk in the desert. An oval, hand-made sign sitting on the bench read “Foot Massage.” I froze. We locked eyes. I said to her, “Really?” She replied softly and reassuringly, “Really.” I dropped my pack on the ground, and as I strode toward her she took my hands in hers and said in her lilting French accent, “But first let me wash your feet in the river.” I told her my feet were ugly and blistered and she said, “Your feet are beautiful. Come, let me take care of them.” When she peeled the bandages off it felt like she was ritually undressing me for carnal pleasure. In a way, I guess she was. As I stood in the stream she lovingly lifted and dried each foot with a towel. Then she guided me to the picnic bench under the trees where she laid out a blanket for me to lie on and placed another blanket over me. As I lay there cozy and befuddled, she applied rosemary and mint infused oil warmed by her hands to each foot as she probed the tendons and muscles from the toes to the heels and up my calves and finished by enveloping each caressed body part between her high Gallic cheekbones with the ringlets of her dark hair cascading over her shoulders and tickling my toes. I gazed up dreamily through the canopy of leaves and watched the clouds stream by, wondering if this was really happening? Did I die on the Camino and Alexandra was an angel welcoming me to heaven? I must be dreaming. Pussy Galore.

Alexandra sensed my grief and asked why I was on the Camino. I told her about Lisa and how I was starting a new chapter of life and trying be a better person. “How can you be a better person?” she asked through her delicious mop of curly brown locks. “I’m trying to be less judgmental of people,” I confessed. Her response surprised me. “It doesn’t matter if you judge people,” she said, with a mischievous look of Zen playfulness. My Camino angel massaged my feet and my soul. A former pilgrim herself, Alexandra was serving the Camino in the best way she knew – by massaging the aching feet of weary pilgrims. Groggily pulling myself up from the bench, feeling a chilly breeze as the sun shone low through the trees, I asked her, “How much? Quanto?” “Payment is voluntary,” she said earnestly, looking straight into my eyes. “There is no price.”

Many places along The Way operate on this principle. You pay what you want, without judgment or expectation. I sincerely believe that Alexandra would have been equally satisfied if I had walked away without paying anything or if I had dropped a thousand euros in her little basket. I clumsily crammed two 50 euro notes into the basket (about a hundred bucks), replaced a couple of band aids, put on my shoes, donned my pack and said goodbye to my Camino angel. Did that really happen?

I can’t talk about the Camino without mentioning the Catholic churches and cathedrals that have served Camino pilgrims for centuries. They are, in many ways, the main attraction. These gold and silver encrusted stone carved behemoths were built for contemplation. Of course, the gold and silver was brutally stripped from the native peoples of the New World and the churches were built to impose Catholic rule, but I found them to be welcoming, non-judgmental and helpful to my wounded psyche.

The architecture, stonework, wood carving, sculpture, and of course the paintings are intended to inspire awe, and they do. Their mammoth structures are visible for miles and stand out from the surrounding countryside, like hulking beacons of human incomprehension. Maybe the hope was that building such awe inspiring structures would please God and inspire us to understand the meaning of life. The gargantuan carved wood and metal encrusted doors are generally open and the great halls mostly unattended. Upon entering, it’s dark and cool and quiet. My footsteps reverberated as I meandered through the alcoves and prayer stations. I usually lit a candle for Lisa and sat near the front with my head bowed and eyes closed, more meditation than worship but still contemplating the mysteries of the universe. I don’t pray to any specific deity but I try to open myself to feelings and ideas that transcend my usual logic-based thought processes. I especially appreciate Saint Francis, the patron saint of animals and practitioner of compassion. At Lyon, Burgos, and Santiago, the cathedrals are so spectacular that pilgrims are outnumbered by tourists who line up for tours and daily mass. Pilgrims get a discount on the entrance fee and are offered a special pilgrim mass. Along the Camino, pilgrims are afforded a special status and respected for their devotion to the revered spiritual quest. I liked being a pilgrim.

Santiago is the Big Kahuna, the ultimate destination of The Way and the final resting place of the bones of Saint James. You enter the city a bit giddy and wind your way through the ancient passages into the grand courtyard in the heart of the city. Arriving in the plaza in front of Compestela de Santiago, pilgrims reunite with one another amidst much hugging and congratulatory exuberance. In the plaza you see people you haven’t seen in days or weeks who may have been walking in front or behind you all along. Tourists and families mingle with scruffy, haggard pilgrims and groups of fair weather pilgrims who only walked the last few miles to get the sensation of being a pilgrim entering the plaza. No judgement, right? Everyone has their own Camino.

After milling around for a bit, pilgrims report to the official pilgrim office to present their credentials for validation and issuance of their certificate of Camino completion. It’s a fancy document, gold embossed and engraved, suitable for framing. Impassive church officials sitting behind glass enclosures like at the DMV make a show of inspecting your pilgrim passport stamps and approve them with a flourish. Congratulations. You passed! With your certificate in hand, pilgrims quickly disperse to the four winds. Those with the means can take a four-star hotel in the ancient city where they can bind their wounds and enjoy Galician food and hospitality. The local specialty is octopus, pulpo, which is both delicious and a bit creepy if you believe the movies and stories about how intelligent they are, as depicted in the documentary film My Octopus Teacher. I don’t eat them anymore – it’s too much like eating a dolphin, dog or a monkey. Some travelers remain in pilgrim mode and report to an alburgue to plan their next move. Some prepare to keep walking to the sea at Finisterre, where the bones of Saint James came ashore. I got a nice hotel and went to dinner with my Dutch doctor friends.

Another important ritual is the pilgrim mass at the Santiago de Compestela basilica, with all the pomp and ceremony that the Catholic church can muster for special occasions. The mass starts with solemn singing from various locations around the majestic cathedral, adorned with chanting, incense, orchestrated movements of old men in different colored silk robes and wearing a variety of silly hats, nuns and black-shirted minions scurrying about, scary security guards with automatic weapons lurking in the shadows, all in preparation for the special pilgrim service that is delivered daily in five languages. (Latin, Spanish, German, Italian and English).

Arriving in a moving cocoon surrounded by his colorful entourage, the sincere priest in charge of the event delivered a classic sermon about the poor, starving and displaced people throughout the world and the need to care for them as Jesus taught. He spoke of the desperate, bedraggled refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea in makeshift watercraft. A sun-bleached orange life vest lay ominously against the large wooden cross behind him. A special group of burgundy clad fellows ceremoniously unfurl ropes and start swinging the botafumiero, a Fiat-sized metal pot of smoking incense that swoops ominously over the congregation. It’s quite a show.

Crouched at the base of a stone pillar in the front row of the overflowing basilica, my British colleague mumbled under his breath that all the attention given to the plight of the global poor stood in stark contrast to the litany of church scandals, including “all the buggering of young boys by priests and years of covering it up. Charity starts home, don’t you think, mate?” But at that moment I chose to take a positive view of the whole experience and take the words of the pilgrim mass at face value. I already have enough cynicism. I’m trying to take inspiration from my favorite Saint, Francis. I’m trying to be a better person. Kindness and compassion are my aspirational guides.

The Camino opened the doors of perception for me to see a way forward from the ruins of my bombed-out life. I was stripped to the bare bones, sandblasted, and forced to look inward without delusion or deception. The life I knew was gone, but I could see clearly now, as the Jimmy Cliff song says. I didn’t know how or where, but I knew there was a way. The Way.

Routes of the Camino de Santiago. I returned to bike the Portugal route.

My Camino guide, artist So Young Kim.

I had to modify my shoes. Foot care is a top priority.

Nico, playing bagpipes at an alburgue in Galicia

My walking buddy, Antonia from Germany.

The wine wall. Your choice, white or red?

I spread Lisa’s ashes across the vineyards.

Lithuanian dude playing Hotel California in an alburgue.

Benjamin the dog man with his shrinking guitar and roller bag. “He’s St. Francis.”

Message on a rock in the river, cooling off my feet.

Cosmic message in the middle of the Camino.

Self reflection.

Saint James’ beheading inspires interesting art.

Local politics

Alexandra, Camino angel foot massage.

Arriving at Santiago de Compestela.

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

The Beatles

Eleanor Rigby

Love in the Twilight

After Lisa died, I did not believe it would be possible to love again. I was wrong. Lots of people fall in love in their golden years, even after experiencing devastating loss. But it’s tricky. Finding love in the twilight of life, especially after losing a spouse, follows unfamiliar contours that require emotional dexterity to navigate. I’m on that path now.

On her death bed Lisa made me promise that I would try to find love again. She did not want me to be alone. I lied and told her I would try, keeping to myself the feeling that love would never happen again for me. About a year later, my therapist, Janine, urged me to try going on a date. I rejected the idea. I felt like dating would be a betrayal of my lost love, sort of like cheating on a ghost. Hell, I was still wearing my wedding ring. One thing I discovered, however, was that I could still ask Lisa for advice and she seemed to answer.

I asked Lisa if I should give dating a whirl, and she answered in the affirmative. I was simultaneously mortified and excited. “She really would want me to be happy,” I told myself after channeling her spirit. We were married for 20 years. I was out of practice, not to mention angry and wounded. What would I even say to a woman if I were interested in her? I have no pick-up lines, no game. Where do you even meet older women? Pickle ball? Yikes! No thank you.

My therapist suggested I peruse some internet dating sites, just to scope the market and see who is out there. I was appalled, but curious enough to give it a try. I never imagined I would be in this position. Reading the bios and scanning the photos of the age appropriate women on the dating sites, however, did not inspire me to continue my search. It made me sad. To see so much loneliness and yearning for companionship was depressing. Dating sites for older people are brutal reflections of unfulfilled hopes and dreams, the aftermath of divorce and death.

The honesty is what killed me. “I’m looking for a great guy who shares my interest in scrapbooking and animal rights in Ethiopia.“ “Here’s a picture of me and my girlfriends in floppy hats at the Trevi fountain.” “These are my fur babies, Jaque and Paris.” Dogs and cats help fill the void left by lost love. I have a dog, but he’s not featured in my dating profile. I swiped through thousands of photos of women on cruise ships, posing with grandchildren, playing pickle ball, and clutching their four legged companions. It was depressing, because their chances of finding the love they are looking for are so slim. I learned to play Eleanor Rigby on my guitar. “All the lonely people, where do they all come from?” From internet dating sites, that’s where!

Nobody likes it, but where else do you meet people at our age? Bridge tournaments? Senior centers? Blind dates arranged by well-meaning friends? Our options are limited, and I’m not a joiner. You won’t find me looking for love at church or at the ballroom dance studio. At least swiping through profiles on the internet is easy and non-comital.

At the risk of offending many well-meaning members of the fairer sex, I offer a few snarky but sincere remarks from a male perspective about how mature women present themselves on internet dating sites. I understand that men are stupid and could use similar advice from a female perspective, such as, shirtless workout photos are a turn off and pictures of fish are nauseating. (I’m still not sure if a dick pic is what I think it is.) Nevertheless, here are my unvarnished reflections on the profiles I saw.

First, if you look angry in your photos, even for good reason, men shy away. We scare easily. Warnings to “players and liars” to “swipe left” tell me you’ve been hurt, but don’t entice me to want to meet you. Group photos with your grown kids, aging parents, ex-husbands, relatives, girlfriends, or other unknown people are confusing. We understand that you have a full life and love your family, friends and pets, but you don’t want us trying to sort out who is who in your profile pictures, or comparing you to your female friends or daughters. Take a good picture. Selfies in your bathroom or in your car usually don’t put you in the best light. Be careful about big hats, stylish sunglasses, costumes, Christmas decorations, and political messaging. Action shots of you skydiving, zip lining, or posing in front of a Ferrari can be off-putting. Not all guys golf.

On the positive side, I was intrigued by profile photos where a woman is seated at a table set for two inviting me to join her. Sports, travel, music, art, outdoors activities, and humanitarian causes are all appealing. In my case, as a surfer and kayaker, affinity for water sports is important, and my background as a scholar and writer puts a premium on intellectual pursuits. I’m sapiosexual. Finally, I felt an immediate connection with women who had been widowed, which is very different from being divorced. The emotional scars are not the same. Nobody my age enjoys internet dating, but we have adapted out of necessity.

When my therapist asked if I had dipped my toe in the water of the dating world I told her it was awful, worse than I feared. “I’m fine being alone.” She scoffed, “So your plan is to play sad songs on your guitar, watch TV, drink whiskey and go surfing for the rest of your life?” “Yes, that’s exactly right” I said, defiant like an eight-year-old kid digging into a preposterous lie. “That is my plan, and it sounds pretty damn good to me. What’s wrong with that?” Janine wasn’t having it.

“Didn’t Lisa tell you to date?” “Yes, but she didn’t say anything about cruising for women on the internet.” “Didn’t you see anyone interesting on the dating sites? “Yes, I saw lots of interesting but unappealing women, and reading their profiles just made me sad.” Janine was stunned. “You’re reading their profiles? Why?” “Because I don’t want to be superficial and judge people on their looks alone. It doesn’t seem fair. It’s a meat market.” Janine almost rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Zack, you don’t need to read their profiles. It’s fine to look at pictures to see if anyone sparks your interest. You’re just getting back in the game. Their loneliness is not your problem.” Half honestly, I replied, “I feel like a pig, judging people on their looks alone.” Of course, I do it all the time, but I feel guilty about it.

Janine almost scolded me. “The women on the dating sites don’t know what you’re thinking and you don’t owe them anything. It’s not your job to worry about their feelings. It’s fine for you to be a pig at this stage while you heal your scars and learn to live and love again. We’re trying to see if you can find your groove and rediscover a romantic spark. You’re just surveying the market to see who’s out there. You don’t have to read their profiles.”

After years of caring for Lisa and our kids and worrying about my dying parents, I had fully embraced my role as caretaker. With all of them gone I was worrying about people I didn’t even know. My friends will tell you, I was a not a particularly empathetic guy before my string of losses, but now I worry about everyone. I get choked up easier and angered by cruelty, especially towards children. I never cried before, but now I cry all the time. I understand grief, loss and loneliness on a deeper level. I was sad about those lonely souls hopefully reaching out into the ether.

Following my therapist’s orders, I embraced my inner hound dog instincts and cruised more women on the internet dating sites. I chatted with a few women via text and phone conversations. At first, nobody sparked my interest, but I was over the hump and on the hunt. Then I got lucky and struck gold. Alison appeared to be everything I hoped for: beautiful, bold, sexy, accomplished, and cultured. We talked for hours. She quickly broke the rules of internet dating by inviting me to her home to watch a Forty Niners football game. I love the Niners and I was worried about missing the game for this date. Now I got to do both. Lucky me.

Not knowing what to expect, I drove to her home perched on a hillside in an upscale neighborhood near Stanford University. Meeting for the first time is always a fraught moment for internet dating. What if the photos are misleading, or the person is weird and you want to escape as soon as possible? How do I get out of there if I want to leave? What if the person is a psychopath? Women are wise to have their friends call to check and see if they need to escape from a bad date. I didn’t tell anyone.

When Alison opened the door, I was smitten. She was drop dead gorgeous, with a bright smile, luxurious strawberry blonde hair, and warm hazel green eyes. And she was open about Lisa and my experience with grief. Walking in the hills behind her home after the football game, she took my hand and told me it was good to go slow, then reversed course and accelerated the pace of our intimacy. She went pedal to the metal. I was hanging on for dear life, but I was ready to fly.

Alison was a lioness who knew how to give and receive pleasure. She had been dating for a few years since her marriage had ended and had a few tricks up her sleeve. I was starved for affection and devoured her like a man eating his first cheeseburger after being stranded on a desert island. We enjoyed and respected one another’s intellect and professional accomplishments. Alison was a highly-respected professional who carried the load for her family through a difficult marriage, raising two children who still relied on her for emotional sustenance, similar to my sons who were grieving the loss of their mother. We were both nearing retirement and talked about our plans for travel, family, and spiritual growth. I was writing a book and she wanted to try living in Europe. I wanted to surf and she wanted to ski. I wanted to write and she wanted to read. We were a perfect match, or so it seemed.

Over the next year, we grew closer. We travelled, attended concerts, hiked, biked, skied, swam, went to Giants and Warriors games, and relaxed at her mountain cabin. We cooked and drank wine and discussed politics. She did yoga and I practiced my tai chi. I lived on the waterfront in the East Bay and her house was in an exclusive development in the hills above Stanford University. I happily drove over the San Mateo bridge to spend time with her, but Alison was hesitant to visit me in Alameda. She expressed concerns about crime and noise and homeless encampments near the freeway off ramps. She was afraid her car would be stolen or vandalized. She couldn’t sleep. She wasn’t comfortable in my home.

At first I didn’t mind the commute, but I gradually grew resentful of her judgements about my lovely home on the waterfront. Alameda is not as upscale as Woodside, but it’s a cute little island city perched in the San Francisco Bay, with beaches, restaurants, marinas, sunsets, and spectacular views of the San Francisco skyline. It’s funky and diverse and has great schools and cozy neighborhoods. Real estate prices are skyrocketing as wealthy tech workers are fleeing city life to buy homes and raise families there. Lisa and I raised our kids there and called it home for twenty years. There’s nothing scary about Alameda, but Alison wanted to stay in her comfortable surroundings, on her side of the Bay. It was a sign that we would have difficulty finding the balance between being together and being apart.

Our differences started surfacing, like the hidden underwater parts of a tipping iceberg revealing its icy crevices. It’s hard at any age for couples to distinguish between small irritants and major disagreements. Some things are readily accommodated, such as longstanding eating and cleaning rituals that are easily adjusted to fit your new partner’s preferences. Other things, however, are harder to reconcile. I’m not going to change the way I look or speak, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to change those things for me. Opinions about parenting can be a minefield. Love at twilight requires latitude and grace to allow your partner to be themselves while making room for both souls to freely express their evolving desires. Having your own space provides a buffer against the friction of small annoyances, but also limits the intimacy that comes with commitment. We took a leap of faith and decided to try living together.

The next logical step in our love story was to combine our lives, including our homes and families and possessions -- but not our money. Finances are especially sensitive. We were both downsizing and getting rid of stuff that had accumulated over a lifetime. We gave things away and took unwanted junk to the dump. We both had storage lockers crammed full of boxes and furniture and memories from our previous lives. Where to put it all? I needed a place for my tools, guns, surfboards and guitars. Alison wanted to be part of a community of like-minded, spiritual seekers. Our plan was to rent a house at the beach that would be neutral ground for us to create a home together. We even discussed buying a house. It soon became apparent, however, that we had very different ideas about domestic tranquility. Our neutral turf became contested territory.

The puzzle of life gets bigger and more complex as you age. There are more pieces to contend with and more intricate patterns to decipher. As we tried to put our lives together, pieces of our puzzle did not fit. My kids, your kids. My friends, your friends. My house, your house. My stuff, your stuff. My time, your time. My money, your money. My vision of the future, your vision of the future. We tried to combine our lives to create a shared vision. We even crammed a few pieces puzzle pieces together that obviously did not fit in the hope that the gaps would somehow heal over. They didn’t.

If dating and cohabitation are different in old age, breakups are the same as when we were young. It’s just as painful, awkward, confusing and scary as it was when we were teenagers. We were both hurt and angry. We argued. A bunch of little annoying things accumulated to overwhelm the good things, like gangs of ants besieging a much larger creature, or the Lilliputians toppling poor Gulliver. We tried to make it work, but failed. We were not quite a match. Almost, but not quite. It was nobody’s fault.

When you are dating, you usually know right away if a person is a good fit for you or not. The big pieces are easy. Is your prospective mate attractive, intelligent, kind, active, healthy, financially stable, and emotionally mature? Those things are necessary but not sufficient to sustain a long-term relationship. Even if you check all those boxes, however, you might not solve the Rubik’s cube of love. Alison and I checked the big boxes, but could not reconcile the gaps and crevices that blocked our path to living in harmony. To our credit, we tried to go beyond living separate lives to build a future together. That’s where the road ended.

Janine, my therapist, nodded knowingly when I told her about the break up. She said she was proud of me for overcoming my grief and learning to love again. The Alison experience ignited a spark and brought me back to life. Janine asked if I was back on the internet dating sites? “Yes,” I sheepishly admitted. “I’m going to keep trying. You know, we need the eggs.” This time she visibly rolled her eyes at my reference to the Woody Allen line from the movie Annie Hall, but I could tell she was proud of me for surviving the break up without retreating to my comfortable isolation. I graduated from playing Eleanor Rigby to Here Comes the Sun.

Dating in your golden years requires extra measures of tolerance, patience, and forgiveness. At this age, we all come with lots of baggage and many scars on the inside and out, like grizzled old trees that have survived through storms, draught and fires. We bring with us our aches and pains, our triumphs and failures, and our hopes for the future, but we’re still here, looking for love. Alison was a beautiful person, inside and out; I don’t regret a thing about our time together. I wish for her a life filled with peace, love, joy, and happiness. We shared many special moments and cared for one another as we transitioned from lives centered around work and family to the era of retirement and self-care. Most importantly, she helped me learn to love again. We almost made it, but our dream didn’t come true. It was heartbreaking.

Now I’m on my own again, in a new city, surfing, dreaming -- and dating. Am I lonely? Of course. I’m not the lone wolf I once thought I was. Would I like to fall in love again? Sure. Will the pieces fit? Who knows, but I’m ready to try before the twilight fades.

And if I’m there for you, would you be there for me too

And we can do the sunset promenade

Elizabeth Cook, Sunset Promenade

Love is a burning thing
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell into a ring of fire

Johnny Cash, Ring of Fire

Chapter Nine

Arrested in My Kitchen on Sunday Morning

I had an affair with a wild French woman, something most red-blooded American men would find appealing, especially after being separated from a dying marriage that ended in divorce. Veronique was a Fulbright scholar, sexy and witty and crazy as a loon. I met her while we were both working for the US Congress on Capitol Hill. The affair helped me heal after years of a loveless marriage through marathon therapy sessions of sweat drenched fornication and a wild weekend in Paris. Just what the doctor ordered.

But, as affairs often do, it turned bad. Really bad. As I belatedly came to the realization that my French fantasy girl was manipulative, untruthful, and clinically nuts, she had started to move her belongings into my house. First a toothbrush, then some clothes and make up. She got an immigration lawyer and invited family members in France to come stay at my house. She started receiving phone calls and mail there too. By the time my brain finally regained control over my dick, it was too late. I was in too deep. I should have paid more attention when I discovered her stash of Lithium, a medication for bipolar disorder.

Veronique came to America to study the American political system. A graduate of the elite Ecole de Science and Politics in Paris, she used her creamy breasts, ravenous flaxen hair, dark chocolate eyes, and her double and triple entendres to charm, lure and entrap men. I wasn’t alone. Throughout my downfall, I watched her hunt down several other trophies, including celebrity member of Congress and doomed former mayor of Palm Springs Sonny Bono. Their affair was reported in the National Enquirer, which somehow got hold of a picture I took of Veronique on the Capitol steps. I still have the ring he gave her. I was hoping Sonny would take her off my hands. No such luck. Maybe the ring is worth something. I should sell it on EBay.

I wanted her to leave. I told her to go home to France. She was enraged, and tried to make me jealous by seeing other men. Veronique loved volcanic emotional confrontation, with lots of yelling and plate throwing and threats of violence. One Sunday morning, as I was pouring myself a cup of coffee in my kitchen and cruising the Sunday talk shows on TV, she became angry and started taunting me about her dalliances with various guys. I told her it was probably good for her to see other men as our affair was winding down. “You are cold and unfeeling!” she screamed, as she clawed at my bathrobe and started pelting me with rabbit punches to my chest. “You are not man enough to fight for me! You are a typical bloodless American, afraid even to slap my face!” I told her it was not manly to hit women, but I was getting irritated. I peeled her fingers off my robe and stepped back. She grabbed the telephone and declared, “I am going to call your stupid 911 and tell the police you are beating me, like a real man would.” In my calmest voice I said, “That would be a really bad thing to do.” But it was too late. She called 911 and said “My husband is beating me. Please help me!”

The Arlington Virginia police were banging at my door in five minutes. I let them in and the two officers immediately pushed me against the wall and cuffed my hands behind my back. “Are you alright ma’am? Are you hurt?” the officers inquired respectfully. Veronique was stunned. This would never happen in France. Never one to throttle back an emotional roller coaster, she told the officers that she had evaded my blows but was scared for her life. “He is beating me!” I knew I was in big trouble. I didn’t talk. I put my head down as they frog marched me in my pajamas and bathrobe across my front lawn and loaded me into a paddy wagon as my neighbors watched and David Brinkley opined from the kitchen on the week’s political news.

I was booked and fingerprinted in the Arlington County Courthouse, then released with the proviso that I was forbidden from returning to my house. Veronique had told the police that we were living together and that she was afraid I would return in a rage. To protect her, they banished me from my home. Still in my pajamas and robe with, no shoes, and no money, I looked like Steve Martin in The Jerk, when he wanders the streets with “just this lamp, and nothing else.” I had nowhere to go.

I walked across the Memorial Bridge into Georgetown, along the Potomac River, and found my way to a friend’s house. What a pathetic sight I must have been. He offered me Martinis and a place to stay for the night, but I still felt like walking. I crossed back over the Key Bridge from Georgetown to Virginia and made my way back to my South Arlington neighborhood, where I surveilled my house from the trees to determine if Veronique had left (she never stayed alone anywhere for long). I jimmied a window and grabbed some clothes, car keys and my wallet. I sought refuge at my buddy’s home. A professor, diplomat and a CIA case officer, he and his wife put me up until I could persuade the police that it was my house, not Veronique’s, and that she did not live there. They authorized me go home after a few days.

On Monday morning, I had to report being arrested to the security office in the State Department where I was on assignment. Thankfully, security officials are not drama queens. Calloused from a steady diet of hearing about misdeeds and indiscretions, they take your information and direct it through the correct channels to the appropriate authorities. No lectures. They would investigate and get back to me.

I got a lawyer, who explained that Virginia law required the police to make arrests for all spouse abuse calls. Spouse abuse? “There was no abuse, and she’s not my spouse.” He advised that the best way to resolve the issue would be to plead guilty and take a court-ordered anger management course which would be offered at my court appearance. If I took the course, the charges would be reduced or dropped. There was no fucking way I was going to agree to that, I told him in a voice that must have made him wonder if I might actually need help with anger management. He told me it would all hinge on which judge I got – one of the older men or the young female judge who had made her reputation advocating on behalf of battered women. She would send me to jail, for sure.

Luck was not with me on my court date. I got the female judge my lawyer warned me about. When the charge was read, she immediately launched into a pro forma lecture about the seriousness of the crime and the range of punishments at her disposal. No presumption of innocence here. In my most diplomatic and respectful voice, I told her “Your honor, I fully understand and appreciate your words, but I am not guilty. There was no assault. The woman is not my spouse and does not live at my house.” My lawyer blanched. The judge eyed my coldly and set a new court date for my case.

A few weeks after my arrest, Veronique was ready for reconciliation. I avoided her. She stalked me. It was all a big joke, she said. She would tell the judge the truth. I told her to go home to France, and that I never wanted to see her again. She went ballistic. She broke into my house while I was at work and systematically destroyed every picture I had of any other women, then smashed every object she associated with females in my life—pottery, artwork, picture frames, household goods. She called at odd hours, sometimes screaming insults, other times hanging up as soon as I answered. She stole my mail, and before long I realized she had stolen my credit cards and was racking up huge bills. The coup de gras came when I arrived home one day to discover my dog, a hulking white, fluffy Pyrenees mountain of sweetness named Lena, gone – dog-napped to France. She stole my dog and shipped her to France.

At my next court appearance, my lawyer provided proof of Veronique’s insanity and falsehoods to the judge, along with proof that she had vanished with my dog and credit cards after overstaying her visa. It was hard for anyone to see her as the victim. The judge reluctantly dropped the charges. But I still must report on my security forms at work that I was arrested for a despicable crime that I did not commit. It is deeply embarrassing every time it arises, even though I didn’t do anything wrong.

After a divorce, followed by this disaster, I was ready to give up on love. But this love story has a happy ending. On a tour of duty with the (now defunct) Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), I met a like-minded California girl who headed a Department of Energy task force whose mission was to channel technology and expertsise from the US government to help the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) make sure that countries are not using civil nuclear power plants to make nuclear weapons. I was the ACDA representative to her committee. On a flight to examine nuclear inspection equipment at Los Alamos National Laboratory, I told her about my situation and how I was thinking about returning to California to teach and surf and get out of the Washington whirlpool once and for all. She too was weary of the grind and was dreaming of sunnier pastures. Smart, pretty, funny, and athletic, Lisa was the best thing that had ever happened to me. My luck had changed. We were married for twenty years, raised two wonderful boys, and lived the life we imagined was possible. Sometimes you have to go through hell to get to the other side.

A picture that I took that somehow ended up in the National Enquirer.

The ring Sonny Bono gave to Veronique. I still have it.

The Arlington County jail, where I spent a miserable Sunday morning.

This is how I felt, walking around Washington DC in my bathrobe after getting out of jail.

Miles Davis

Chapter 13

The Amazing Lisa Owens Davis

I can tell Lisa’s story because we were, as she told me as she died, “two souls in a bowl.” We spent our 20^th wedding anniversary in the Kaiser chemo ward before driving off the cliff together like Thelma and Louise. Please allow me to share some thoughts about her amazing life.

Yin to my yang, Lisa was a joiner and rule follower. Where I was a fringe player – good at getting close enough to see the inner workings of things, but never becoming a credentialed member of any tribe, Lisa always made the team. Whether it was student council, marching band, soccer, track, or team mom for our kids’ football, basketball and baseball teams, she always stepped up. She was the chairwoman of the government committee where we met, fought for diversity and inclusion wherever she went, and won meritorious service awards from the Department of Energy, the State Department, and the CIA. Where I sampled and dabbled on the margins, Lisa put skin in the game. So, it made sense that the one thing I totally committed to, where I pushed over the ledge and took the big drop, was with Lisa. Not a girl to trifle with, it was all or nothing with her. She could be stubborn.

Lisa was born in Santa Barbara in 1966 while her parents were attending UC Santa Barbara. They described her as a perfect child, and she was pretty damn close to perfect. In addition to being a beautiful little blond haired, blue eyed, straight A, beach bunny, she was deeply empathic about other people’s feelings and quick to help with their problems. She was a natural born diplomat who negotiated family peace accords long before she represented our country abroad as a government official. Finding common ground was one of her special talents.

At Mission Viejo High School Lisa Owens was on student council, ran track, served on committees and clubs, played the flute and marimbas in the marching band, and even found time for bible study. She was a joiner, but not a follower, a beach girl but not a surfer like her brother Billy, studious yet fun and very silly, unconventional but never confrontational. Lisa was popular with all of the usual high school factions – the jocks, the surfers, the nerds, and the Christians. She wasn’t a stoner and only smoked pot a couple of times in grad school, which was always hard for the government security background investigators to believe. She was, however, a cheap drunk who got tipsy on her second glass of wine. When she did drink, she was hilariously entertaining for the brief period of time before she passed out. Lisa was shy, but somehow became the life of the party.

Perhaps her most notable characteristic was her adventurous spirit, which led her to Spain as a college student majoring in Spanish literature and from there launched her into a life of world travel. Lisa had a gift for languages and in addition to being fluent in Spanish she spoke passable French, German, Italian, Portuguese and somehow muddled through Russian, Polish, and Czech. It was amazing to watch her transform into a different person when she spoke foreign languages. It was a bit unsettling for me at times. “Who are you in this moment?” I often marveled at her chameleon transformations when she was bantering and flirting in foreign languages. When we went to study martial arts in China, Lisa picked up enough Mandarin to get by. Her brain just worked that way. I learned to let her do the talking, not just in foreign countries. She had a way with people.

After graduating cum laude (of course) from UC Santa Barbara, Lisa taught English in the newly liberated Czech Republic. Taking advantage of the freshly fallen Berlin Wall, she and her friend Patty ventured from western Europe to explore the former Soviet bloc countries – Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia and Slovakia. They bribed Turkish border guards with cigarettes, lounged on Greek island beaches, and ditched an illegal roadblock by escaping through the rear emergency exit of a cross country bus. Incredibly, Lisa and Patty made their way into Russia, camping, hitchhiking and riding trains from Moscow to Siberia. Lisa loved to share the story of the ghoulish, under-the-bunks and bathroom peasant cooking on the train and all the putrid smells and unholy sights she experienced on the Russian railways.

The two attractive, young American women camped alone on the shores of Lake Baikal where they hitched a helicopter ride with a newly liberated gang of former Soviet, now Russian troops. Joyriding with boys, in helicopters, in Russia. Their visas expired in Siberia so they negotiated/bribed a holdover Communist official to get them extended at a Communist Party outpost adorned with a faded photo of Vladimir Lenin. Reaching Vladivostok on the east coast, they flew Aeroflot home to America. Our perfect girl had brass balls.

Back in California, she used her language skills working at the Spanish consulate in Los Angeles and volunteering at a women’s shelter. She went to graduate school at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and soon returned to Europe as an intern at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria. Affiliated with the United Nations, the IAEA helps countries safely use nuclear energy while making sure they don’t divert it to make nuclear weapons. Soon after, she returned to Vienna to work at the US embassy supporting the IAEA and building her knowledge of nuclear technology and diplomacy.

I met Lisa Owens in Washington DC when she was a Presidential Management Fellow serving in the Defense Department and the Department of Energy. She came to my office on Capitol Hill to discuss nuclear technology policy. We sparked. A sexy, savvy California girl with her own unique sense of style, full of passion and ambition, whip smart, with her Picasso nose, blue-green ocean eyes, tight round ass, perky tits and full pouty lips, Lisa was my dream girl.

My first marriage was on the rocks. Lori was a good-hearted and attractive girl from Santa Cruz who had twice rejected my marriage proposals but finally relented. I should have taken no for an answer when I proposed to her on a moonlit night in the Blue Ridge Mountains and she said “Let me think about it.” She was still searching for her own identity when we were married on the beach in Santa Cruz and then caravanned off to Washington DC in my Ford F150 pick-up truck with everything we owned crammed in the back and surfboards strapped on top. We had fun pioneering the East coast-West coast culture clash as displaced Californians living in a black DC neighborhood near the White House, but grew apart and separated without rancor. My post-divorce affair with an unhinged French Fulbright exchange student I met on Capitol Hill landed me in jail, so by the time I reencountered Lisa I was not in a good place. While on an assignment to the (now defunct) Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) I represented the agency on a government committee created to provide technology and expertise to the IAEA. Lisa was in charge of the committee, more accomplished and more beautiful than ever.

Long plane rides to Vienna and the national laboratories where the nuclear technologies were developed gave us time to talk. I finagled to get seats next to her and told her the truth about my situation – divorced, arrested, under investigation… Not a great catch. But we fell madly in love and were soon inseparable. For me it was a thrilling renaissance of passion and devotion, the love of a lifetime. Our protective barriers eroded, a bubble of trust formed around us, we walked around DC with that glow of people who have been up all night having wild sex, or snuck off at lunch time to get some afternoon delight.

My boss at the State Department got us tickets to a performance at the Kennedy Center and Lisa agreed to meet me there. She arrived wearing a long, form fitting, glittery gold dress, a black flouncy low cut blouse, with classy black boots. “Holy shit,” I thought as she breezed under the dangling crystal chandeliers, down the red carpeted VIP entrance, surrounded by the diplomats, politicians, and social elites attending the event. My brain was frazzled. Hips swaying, flowing waterfall of long blond hair, shimmery gold ear rings, cherry lips, and her characteristic warm, genuine, slightly pursed smile, a vision of unbelievable beauty. My boss, dressed in his tuxedo, looked at her and leaned over and said to me, “Don’t fuck this up Davis. She’s as good as it gets.”

We tried to hide our romance by sneaking around hotels and restaurants to protect her credibility with the other members of the committee she chaired, but they all knew. They were happy for us and respected Lisa’s leadership and negotiating skills within the government and with foreign officials. While leading a delegation of US nuclear experts touring nuclear reactors in Japan, she had to share the men’s locker room with her middle aged male colleagues and eased the tension of the moment by commenting on each fellow’s underwear. “Tidy whitey, skimpy bikini, plaid boxers, nice undies boys.” They loved her. She was unflappable. Back in Washington her career was taking off. She took a job at the State Department where she traveled the world with a delegation to preserve the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which was due for an historic international review conference. My career got back on track, divorce settled, charges dropped, clearances restored, and Lisa moved out of her DC studio apartment to my house in Arlington. It was a sweet little cottage in the middle of a woodsy county park, perfect for us to start our life together.

I proposed to her in our backyard under a grape arbor at one of the big parties we were known for hosting. My male friends rolled their eyes and the women swooned as I played the guitar and sang Elvis’ version of Fools Rush In. She said “yes” and we got married in the calm between two September hurricanes at the Jefferson Memorial with a hundred guests gathered on the steps of our favorite Washington landmark. The National Park Police showed up as her dad walked her through the cherry trees along the tidal basin in front of the memorial and told us that we were not allowed to hold our ceremony there, but I had the permit in hand, so the park rangers just shrugged and joined and watched as Lisa’s mystic yoga teacher Annette conducted the ceremony and we exchanged vows that we adapted from a song we heard on a Sunday afternoon DC jazz radio show. Her brother Bill sounded the giant gong we rented to mark the occasion, for no good reason.

Our wedding reception was a major blow-out held in our back yard in Arlington, with dancing and drinking and multi-generational mayhem. My brother Rol came from Canada and showed up at the wedding with gashes on his face and arms after a night of carousing bars in the black neighborhoods of DC, where everyone told him not to go. “Best night ever,” he proclaimed as he regaled us with stories about the new friends he had made that night. The band stayed for hours after their contract was fulfilled and joined the party. Oh yeah, that girl could dance. Lisa had moves, like swirling cirrus clouds that lit up to the sound of her favorite tunes by Marvin Gaye, Kool and the Gang, and Nirvana. Her musical tastes hovered between Soul Train and Grunge. Our wedding song was “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher,” by Jackie Wilson. People still talk about our wedding as the best ever. The thought of it still brings a smile.

Visiting Lisa in New York while she was at the United Nations working for the State Department, we brushed shoulders with Jerry Seinfeld, Isabella Rosalini, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Sam Waterston, the guy from Law and Order. But we spent most of our leisure time having sex at the Kimberly Hotel, where the US delegation was staying. A few weeks later, we had planned a summer bike trip around Umbria, in central Italy. On the morning that we were preparing to leave for Italy, I was mowing the lawn when Lisa called to me from the deck. “Zack, you might want to sit down for this,” she advised, and pulled the pregnancy test stick out and placed it in my hand. We said in unison, “Can we still go on the bike trip?” We called her doctor, who told us that she just needed to avoid drinking too much Italian wine, so we went.

In Assisi, as we walked our bikes through the courtyard near the cathedral, a bearded, barefoot, Franciscan monk in his iconic brown robe greeted us with a mischievous, knowing smile. We veered to avoid him but he made a beeline toward us, hands extended to grasp Lisa’s hands in his. “My dear, you are with child,” he said in English. “Congratulations to you both on becoming parents. I’m so happy for you.” We were flabbergasted. How did he know? She was 13 weeks along, still fit and trim and not showing any outwards signs of being pregnant. We went back into the basilica and thanked Saint Francis. Since that day, we held a special place in our hearts for Saint Francis of Assisi.

We returned to Assisi twenty years later, not knowing the end was near. With our kids nearly grown, we pondered our next chapters together, still madly in love and thankful to be back in this place that held special meaning for us. We hiked in the blazing heat from our hotel near the train station up the brick pathway to the basilica, half expecting to see our clairvoyant monk greeting us again. Neither of us are religious, much less Catholic, but there’s something deeply satisfying about bowing your head and contemplating the great unknowns of the universe. What we didn’t know is how little time we had left. Exiting into the grand sloping courtyard with its view of the Tuscan countryside, Lisa shared an insight about the art and frescos inside the church, all of which depict the struggles and hardships of humanity, and don’t advertise for the promised rewards that Christianity claims are waiting for us in their imagined afterlife. “It’s about the struggle, Zack” she said, pressing close to me and looking straight into my eyes. ”Do you understand?” Was it a premonition?

Lisa was a rock star, respected and loved at work and the centerpiece of our family. We escaped Washington DC with jobs as intelligence analysts at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the San Francisco Bay Area. Max was born in 2001 soon after 9-11. The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, North Korea, Libya and elsewhere kept us busy at work. Lisa, of course, rose through the ranks to become a program manager and started her own consulting business. We raised our two sons on the shores of the SF Bay in the funky little island city of Alameda where we fussed and worried as parents do and attended PTA meetings, school carnivals, and a seemingly endless stream of football, basketball and especially little league baseball games, as parents do. We were a sporty family who went to SF Giants and Oakland Athletics baseball games, kayaked and surfed and skied and practiced yoga and martial arts and traveled the world for work and play. It was a blessed existence.

As a mom surrounded by a house full of boys, Lisa was the centerpiece, lynch pin, keel, and quarterback of our clan. She had perfect Beyoncé mom curves while pregnant and regained her slinky shape within months of giving birth. Max, who never made anything about parenting easy, took close to twenty four hours of pushing before entering the world with his fluorescent blue umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. First, he quacked like a duck. I cut the azure hose connecting him to Lisa seconds before the nurses whisked him off to make sure he was ok, an omen of things to come. Max is half genius, talking and walking before he was a year old, but doing everything his own weird way. Sam was more like his mom, who told the nurses he was coming fast but they didn’t believe her. Within two hours Sam was swaddled and resting in his mother’s arms.

Sam’s fast at everything – fast runner, fast learner, always looking ahead to the next challenge. Both boys were rambunctious, physical, defiant, smart and fiercely independent. Their teen years gave us pause: Max is ADHD and hated school, despite his high test scores. He started skipping classes, getting stoned and hanging out with the wrong crowd. Like father, like son. Sam was so competitive that he would fight with his best friends over any playground game - kick ball, wall ball, football, basketball, baseball, anything. He hated losing even more than he liked winning, like Tom Brady and Michael Jordon. We were often summoned to the principal’s office. With both boys facing their own challenges, Lisa quit her job at the peak of her success to take care of Max and Sam.

Lisa, of course, built a huge network of friends in her poker group and book club where she would astound the other women by actually reading the books and sharing insights about current issues in foreign and defense policy. Her friends were agog that she had traveled the world as a diplomat and worked at the CIA. Like I said, Lisa was a joiner. Putting aside her reservations about our boys playing football, she joined the regional board of Pop Warner football and routinely fetched and fed teammates from the rough and tumble neighborhoods of Oakland in her mint green Prius. She took charge of the Pop Warner scholarship program and found ways to document the accomplishments of the deserving kids whose parents and schools had given up on life. Always the softy, I think she may have put her finger on the scale for a few of her favorites. (I’m talking to you Chucky!)

She was a committed Democrat and social do-gooder. On the day of President Obama’s inauguration she invited a group of kids who were on court-ordered work release and cleaning up trash on the seashore by our home to come watch it in our living room. “You guys are going to want to remember this moment,” she told them. She volunteered for the Kamala Harris presidential campaign and advised on national security issues. Senator Harris sent a heartfelt note when she heard about Lisa’s diagnosis, as did Senator Feinstein and other high-ranking officials from various government agencies. We contemplated a move back to Washington if Kamala were elected, but it was not to be. Our blessed life was cut short.

We were vacationing in Italy when Lisa complained that she was feeling full, probably due to all the rich food. Back in California, her Kaiser doctors dismissed her symptoms as heartburn or gallstones, but when they finally got around to doing an MRI, it turned out to be stage four pancreatic cancer.

It came fast, out of nowhere. I don’t want to focus on her dying, but suffice to say that she did it the way she did everything – with grace and beauty and courage. We sang Tom Petty and Beatles songs, and read poetry and joked as she lay dying. Friends came from near and far to sit with her. Her mom and dad joined the vigil. True to form, she was more worried about us than herself. As her beautiful brain and body began to fail, her extraordinary intellect hijacked her for entire days through which she issued mysterious but elaborate instructions about people and places, known and unknown. “Take the babies, and make sure they have the proper arrangements. The plans are in the place where we put them. Inform the people that we have to move to a safe place. Did you do that yet? “ “Yes honey, we did that.” Lisa was making sure everyone was taken care of, because that’s what she did. She assured me, Max and Sam, her mom, dad, sister and brother that everything was ok. But it wasn’t.

For those who have experienced it, my heart goes out to you. Pancreatic cancer is a scary demon. Lisa was in good company as it took RBG, John Lewis and Alex Trebek in the same year. Lisa left us as COVID arrived. Me, Max and Sam spent the dark days of the lockdown like wounded animals huddled in our cave, watching Tiger King and the Sopranos and enduring the awful onset of Zoom-based school and work. We escaped to go surfing in Mexico as the world was shutting down and came home as the virus strangled what was left of our lives. Our braying jackass President trolled us daily as we retreated inward and Donald Trump shredded our fraying, wounded world. Then, simmering racial injustice boiled over into the streets with the racist murders of George Floyd, Amhad Arbury and Breonna Taylor. It was dark.

California wildfires blocked out the sun and annihilated whole towns like the maladroitly named community of Paradise. Overseas, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea took advantage of our domestic disarray while Afghanistan degenerated into chaos and thousands of migrants swarmed the southern border, risking their lives to escape the even more horrific conditions in their home countries. Online school was a shit show for us as it was for many families. Sam was applying to college and Max came home from university to be with his mom, but then couldn’t return when the schools shut down. Disinformation, toxic social media and widespread stupidity on both sides of the political spectrum about masks and vaccines poured gas on the fire. It was a bad time for me, but even worse for Max and Sam to lose their mother, their confidant, confessor, advocate, and guiding light, and then be thrust into the fucked up, pandemic diseased, Trump polluted, wildfire torched, upside down world of 2020 and 2021. It was dark.

Before she died, Lisa warned me not to stay alone. She didn’t want me to fill my life with projects and whiskey. She wanted me to find love again and she made me promise that I would try. I promised, but with no intent to follow through. I started a scholarship to honor her legacy by promoting diversity in our field of national security – the Lisa Owens Davis Scholarship for Diversity and Inclusion at her graduate alma mater, the Monterey-Middlebury Institute of International Studies. A friend at work painted two portraits of her, one for me and another that hangs in the Lisa Owens Davis conference room in Z Program, the intelligence organization at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. It’s a beautiful portrait of her in Italy that will never be seen by anyone who does not have the top secret clearances required to get into the building.

But I was a broken man. Such sadness I never imagined possible, every day overflowed with gut wrenching, agonizing, all-encompassing misery. Why go on? If you want to know what it’s like, watch the Ricky Gervais show, After Life. But my boys needed me. I had work to do. I had to finish the mission we started. I wasn’t going to check out. I was angry and alone, but I always do my job. I finished writing a book about technology for the Special Operations Command and got both boys off to college. I went on the Camino de Santiago. Lisa guided me there.

When we both got our heads around the fact that there was no way out, that Lisa was going to die and I would be left behind to live in the world without her, we purchased a redwood tree in a memorial grove near Santa Cruz where her ashes would be placed and her essence would become part of the forest. Of course, the memorial forest shut down for COVID, then on the day we were finally going to gather for the ceremony to place her ashes around the tree, I got COVID and we had to cancel. Lisa loved the idea of the tree, where her ashes would mix with the soil and be absorbed upward into the forest canopy. We held a memorial with a couple hundred people at our home, with her favorite taco truck, endless margaritas, and a mariachi band. Her high school prom date, Cameron, and his best friend Chuck sang the Beatles classic In My Life and we all cried our eyes out. Me, Max and Sam sang the Muppets song, Sing, with me and Sam on ukuleles and Max on bongos. It didn’t give me much comfort but it had to be done. Tributes came from the vice president, the CIA, the Department of Energy, the State Department and Senator Feinstein. A few months later the memorial forest reopened and we took her ashes to her redwood tree in the Santa Cruz mountains, where she rests now among the birds and flowers. We go there to visit her sometimes. I’ll be there with her someday.

Quite often I feel her presence. I ask her advice on many issues, especially when I don’t know how to help our boys. She’s there in some way that I don’t understand. Friends and family all say the same thing, that they feel her spirit and communicate with her. Her beautiful soul lives on in our hearts.

Lisa was good at sports and a team player.

Lisa, age 6

Graduate school, Monterey Institute, 1994

Our wedding, Jefferson Memorial, September 18, 1999.

Canadian Rockies, 2016. Yes, that’s a fifty year old mother of two teenage boys.

With presidential candidate Kamala Harris, 2018.

Lisa was a runner and yogini.

Giants game, 2017. Lisa loved the Giants. A true gamer babe.

Self-described fair weather surfer, North Shore, 2015.

Picture from her government ID badge

Waikiki, painting by Steve Taylor, 2020.

Max, me and Sam at Lisa’s tree in the Santa Cruz mountains.

Missing America in the New World Order

Zachary S Davis

The world will soon regret the passing of the American Century. A new world order is taking shape, and it looks nothing like the American-led, post World War Two international system. As the hopeful idea that “the arc of history bends toward justice” joins Communism on the ash heap of history, a new system of liberal democratic alliances can still save the world from its decent into chaos.

What will the new political map look like without the American Leviathan to impose order on anarchy? The United States was a largely benevolent ruler that used its power to promote values such as democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. No other country has the will or power to impose those values. What will fill the void? Here are four likely characteristics of the new world order.

We have already heard talk of “might makes right” being a guiding principle. China and Russia already subscribe to this way of thinking and other states are sure to follow. Democratic nations will have no choice but to contend with a world that does not subscribe to Western values. Appeasement of Xi and Putin’s aggressive designs is just the beginning. Challenges to sovereignty in Ukraine and Taiwan will not be the last. It will be open season on sovereignty.

Corruption grows in the absence of democratic institutions to oversee systems of law and justice. Instead, the Russian and Chinese systems of pay to play for favor and influence will prevail. We already see signs of this devolution, with oligarchs using their power to curry favor with corrupt governments – including our own. The devolution of legal institutions and oversight mechanisms will undermine the global economy by forcing businesses to comply with corrupt practices. Controlling media outlets and crushing dissent is a sure sign of decay.

Alliances are being reimagined. Strange bedfellows are emerging. Economics combined with the unreliability of the US as a partner is driving more countries to accommodate Beijing. Even the Europeans, who would rather preserve Western values, will be hard pressed to oppose China’s growing dominance. Our Asia-Pacific partners Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia are forced to hedge their bets. Economics will induce more Arab countries to make peace with Israel, and if Trump and his acolytes have their way, the US would trade its NATO partners for closer relations with Russia as part of a spheres of influence arrangement that cedes Europe to Russia, Asia to China, and the Americas to the US. India will try to establish itself as the predominant power in South Asia, and Africa will “suffer what it must” to survive. Nuclear weapons are back in vogue.

One missing ingredient of the emerging order will be international institutions to solve global problems such as climate change, migration, proliferation, disease, and poverty. International organizations such as the UN and its affiliates (WHO, IAEA, WTO, UNHCR, ICJ, etc) are viewed by the mandarins of the new order in Beijing and Moscow as spoiled leftovers from the era of American idealism, with flagging power, authority, resources and legitimacy. Without American backing, international organizations are dying. Those that survive will do so after an ugly Chinese makeover. The result will be more starvation, disease, refugees, proliferation and climate degradation.

Some things never change. The political theorist Hedley Bull described the international system as an “anarchic society,” meaning that even in anarchy there is some order and cooperation. Power, in all its forms, will always be the main currency of international relations. It will be more dispersed in a multi-polar world order, although not in a more egalitarian manner as some imagine. Military power will still be the ultimate decider of disputes, and diplomacy will be the main conduit for negotiating agreements. As always, those who integrate new technologies faster will amass military and economic power. Deterrence will continue to be a primary means of defense, and gray zone warfare has already become a permanent feature of international competition. Hard power remains the source of soft power, and America is quickly squandering its reserves of both.

Without US leadership, Thucydides’ dictum that “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must” will prevail over Western notions of sovereignty, human rights and justice. Our diminished role in the new system will unleash the worst instincts of human nature. To those who cheer the end of the American Century, you’re gonna miss us when we’re gone.

It’s not too late for a new generation to reimagine and restore the liberal world order. Previous generations have risen to the challenges posed by a radically changing world. My generation must encourage and support young Americans to overcome the recent insults to public service and embrace the task of repairing our military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic and cultural institutions, which are the pillars of American power and the precursor for power projection. Let us celebrate America’s 250^th anniversary as the beginning of a new era of reimagined American leadership, led by a new generation of patriots.

Zachary S. Davis is a retired national security expert and professor who served in Republican and Democratic administrations.

Theory and practice: The continuing relevance of international relations theory

Hedley Bull was a friend of my mentor Kenneth W Thompson and lectured in our international relations theory class.

The Beach Boys, Surfin USA

Chapter 10

Surfing Dreams and Disasters

Instead of surfing perfect waves in warm water, I was slumped in a chair at the citizen services counter at the American consulate in Hong Kong. Twenty-four hours later I was skittering across a ramshackle dock in the pre-dawn Sumatran drizzle, trying to hitch a ride across the 100-mile span of Indian Ocean separating me from my buddies who were already aboard our surf charter boat. It was going to take more than money to make this dream a reality.

The troubles started early. At check in, we discovered that Kelly’s passport was valid for another five and a half months; but Indonesia requires six months for entry, no exceptions. Kelly’s dream surf trip was smashed on the rocks before it even started.

We were seven old guys in our 50s (I was the oldest) who had been dreaming of perfect tropical waves our entire lives. We were the guys who doodled waves on our school books, ditched class to surf, drove for days chasing swells, and slept in our cars to find good surf. We grew up to be middle age surfers with good jobs and understanding wives, the combination of which enabled us to realize the dream of luxury surf charters to the ultimate waves in the Mentawai Islands, off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. But before hitting the waves we faced the prospect of having to abandon Kelly because his passport. I offered an alternative Kelly and I would peel off in Hong Kong and go to the US Consulate to beg for an emergency extension of his passport. I’ve spent decades working in government, with tons of international travel under my belt. I knew we could get the extension if we just showed up. Our band of brothers parted ways in the Hong Kong airport with one request from me: “When you get to the boat in Pandang, wait for us. We’ll be one day behind you.”

The American consulate fixed Kelly’s passport in under an hour. Now all we had to do was get to Padang and catch our boat, the Freedom III (F3). From Hong Kong we flew to Jakarta and made the messy transfer from Jakarta’s international terminal to the domestic flights terminal several kilometers away. Leaving the main terminal at Jakarta, however, was something I had vowed never to do again. The previous year I was kicked out of the main terminal in the middle of the night by the security guards who said I couldn’t wait for my morning flight in the terminal and would have to find a hotel or wait outside the airport with my boards and bags until morning. Thus began a creepy night of scary cab rides through the outskirts of Jakarta with my driver/guide/savior Joseph, whose repeated reassurances about his good intentions only fueled my suspicions. Declaring his Christian faith as if it were proof of his membership in a secret society, (which it is in a majority Muslim country), Joseph drove me to a seedy, flea-bitten little dump of a motel. What a shithole. I refused to pay him until/unless he returned in the morning to take me back to the airport in time for my flight. I barricaded the door with my boards and slept in my clothes. Joseph did return before dawn and I was airborne as Islamic terrorists bombed the Marriot in downtown Jakarta. I made a mental note to avoid long layovers in Jakarta in the future, but here I was again.

This year I selected Job from the swarm of drivers, guides, hawkers and porters offering their services at the airport. Job’s sales pitch involved yelling the names of famous surfers. “Kelly Slater, Brad Gerlach, Shane Dorian, Andy Irons! I am the best guide for surfers!” It worked. We threw our gear in his worn, gray mini-van. “I am Job,” he declared. “Great,” I muttered under my breath. “Another fucking Christian. His name is Job, no less – the guy who God tortured to test his faith.” Is God testing me, I wondered? Job, however, had a wicked sense of humor. “You guys must be really good surfers, because you’re so old!” he quipped. His mean streak paid off when he bulldozed his way through the mosh pit of humanity that suffices for lines in much of the world, with us in tow. Who better than Job to impress on everyone the unfairness of life? We were making good time.

Upon arrival in Padang, our hopes were dashed by the news that our boat, Freedom III, with our friends aboard had left without us. The captain, we were told, didn’t want miss the new swell and reassured everyone that Kelly and Zack would find a way to catch up to the boat in a day or so. What an asshole. We needed a new plan to get from Padang to the Mentawais, and a way to find Freedom III once we got there.

In Padang we hooked up with Ketut, one of the enterprising fixers who tend to the needs of travelling surfers. He had an idea. We would catch the overnight ferry to Siberut island, from there take a local speedboat to one of the surf camps, and from there signal for a rendezvous with F3. The only catch was that the ferry was scheduled to leave in an hour and we were about an hour away. We would have to drive like hell. While Ketut negotiated on the phone with the ferry captain about how much it would cost to delay his departure, we careened through torrents of driving rain and crushing humanity. The bribe would buy us a little time, but no guarantees. But it wasn’t enough to prevent the ferry captain from pulling anchor before we got there.

Ketut soon had another idea. We could hitch a ride on a local speedboat that was taking supplies to a surf camp early the next morning. F3 could pick us up at the surf camp. “What kind of boat?” we asked. “The kind the locals use to do everything; they make the crossing all the time,” Ketut reassured.

After a restless night in the Spice Homestay hotel, and first being woken up by a woman’s screams (that turned out to be a TV crew filming an Indonesian soap opera) and then a man chanting a sweet tune like a child’s lullaby outside our door, we set off though the pre-dawn drizzle to find our boat – a 13-meter traditional jukung-style wooden canoe, with a prominent prow and a make-shift blue plastic sheet for a cabin. The narrow beam helps these boats cut through rough seas. No electronics, planks for seats, no communications, but it was our only option. We knew it was sketchy, but we had seen lots of surf movies where traveling surfers plied these waters with local boatmen. The captain decided to wait a few hours for the wind and waves to calm before attempting the crossing. If things went well, we could be surfing perfect waves by sunset.

At 11:00 am the captain decided to go. A gaggle of skinny guys in dirty shorts and flip flops loaded supplies for a surf camp called Pit Stops, including a dozen cases of Bintang beer and five 20 foot lengths of 1 3/4-inch aluminum pipe laid along the bottom of the boat. We threw our stuff on top of the beer and made ourselves as comfortable as possible on the planks that spanned the narrow boat, in front of the plastic jug gas tanks on which the captain sat, chain smoking clove cigarettes. “How long to cross,” we asked. He spoke no English, nor did the helmsman who fired up the twin 40 horsepower outboard motors and cast us off toward the harbor mouth.

The water was still choppy and the sky was brooding, but the conditions didn’t seem unmanageable when we set out from the harbor. It’s about 90 miles across the Mentawai Straight to Pit Stops, which should take about five hours in moderate seas. For the first twenty minutes the Indian Ocean sloshed and gurgled like a cauldron of boiling soup as we motored west. The northern horizon, however, began to glower with greenish-gray vertical swirls that should have set off alarm bells. The area is famous for quixotic, fast moving storms that stampede through the Straights like a sounder of wild boars. We were caught.

The swell increased and waves started breaking in every direction. Frothing whitewater bashed the boat broadside. Rogue rain squalls rampaged across the water surface, pounding it into submission. Land was nowhere in sight. We plowed through a floating river of plastic trash, strands of which got caught in the propellers and forced the crewmen to pull up the engines to remove the offending pollution. The helmsman began navigating through the troughs of the larger waves to avoid the rolling walls of whitewater that were breeding in the seas around us. How bad would it get? Should we turn back?

We knew we were in real trouble when our Indo crewmen started to look scared. You could see it in their eyes. We powered up the faces of the swells, launched the skinny canoe airborne over the peaks, and slammed down hard into the troughs between waves. The aluminum pipes and cases of beer crashed against the sides and bottom. The smell of gas sloshing around in the plastic jugs was sickening. The boatmen’s languid eyes were now wide open. Their fear accelerated the rate of their chain smoking, which was an amazing feat under the circumstances. Kelly and I stood up in surfing stances to ride the swells, knees bent, feet apart, and grabbed the rails of the boat to take the impact as we navigated the brawling breakers. The little bilge pump gurgled its disapproval. Kelly vented his anger: “I didn’t pay that much money for this shit! I want to see my wife and kid again.” All four of us knew the boat was in serious danger of capsizing.

Needing to focus on something other than terror and misfortune, I formulated a survival plan. I would take four steps to the front of the boat where my two surfboards sat atop the bouncing cases of beer. The boards were inside a surfboard carrying bag, secured with a long zipper and padded inside with strands of bubble wrap. When the boat capsized, I would grab the board bag, which would float with the boards inside, and jump into the water. Then I would tousle with the zipper and extract the two boards – one for me and one for Kelly. (Kelly’s boards were already on Freedom III.) Step over the first crossbeam, second step over the next crossbeam, third step through the blue plastic covering the makeshift cabin, fourth step lunge for the boards, get a good grip, dive into the water and don’t let go. Once in the water, get the boards out and paddle for shore.

We were about 25 miles out, so I figured we would be blown by the storm in a southeasterly direction back toward the Sumatran coastline. It might take all night to make land, so hypothermia could be an added danger, even in 75 degree water. I made a mental note to pull the two rash guards out of the board bag to provide a little extra warmth for our overnight swim. Every time a big wave crashed over the boat and threatened to sink us I ran through the escape scenario. I told Kelly, “I’m not fucking dying out here,” and ran through the plan with him. Step one, step two, through the plastic, grab the boards, splash, float, unzip, pull out the boards and rash guards, drift to shore. Kelly nodded his agreement with the plan.

At this point, we faced a moral conundrum. What about the Indo boatmen? They are notorious for not being able to swim. If the boat sank, should we try to save them? Should we share our surfboard life rafts with them? What was their plan for survival? What if they clawed at us in desperation, like drowning people do? The boatmen were clearly aware of the danger of sinking and most likely entertaining similar life and death thoughts. There were no other floatation devices on board, no safety equipment of any kind. Would they try to get to the surfboards first? Would they fight us for the boards, or share them with us? After another round of me and Kelly grunting and pointing at the sky, the boatmen decided to turn back, a long overdue decision. But the storm had blown us many miles south, and the way back was even longer and more terrifying. Now we had to fight against the swells coming down the Straights to get back to the Padang harbor. With no compass and white-out conditions obscuring any sight of land, how would we find our way back?

Maybe not being able to swim inspired the boat driver. He threaded the needle through the battlefield of crashing waves. Swells smashed into one another at high speed, sending plumes of water skyward. At times the rain was so intense it beat the water surface into submission and made it appear almost calm. Raindrops like fists pounded down the waves, which still delivered their pock-marked fury as roundhouse kicks against the boat. The boat driver sat stoic, exposed to the wind, waves and rain, operating the controls on the two outboard motors like a classical guitarist. He motored into the 10-12 foot waves and carved along their faces at top speed, both motors wide open heading in a northeasterly direction. Our progress stopped when one of the motors stalled and left us helpless against merciless broadsides of whitewater. I ran through my survival plan again and reminded Kelly of the sequence: One step, two step, three step, grab boards, into the water…

The narrow boat tipped sideways, burying the starboard rail in the gooey green water and leaving us clinging to the sky-ward pointing side, goggling up at white-grey nothingness. The beauty of these boats is their ability to ride the waves, so it soon jerked upright again, allowing the boatmen a chance to assess the reason why the engines kept dying. The captain wiggled the gas lines sticking out of the plastic jugs to see if there was water or air in the lines. He crammed the lines deeper into the sloshing fuel and got the engines running, but one died again a few minutes later, leaving us adrift and exposed to repeated pummeling. The captain rummaged through his gear bag and produced a package of new sparkplugs, which he installed by removing the covers from both engines, extracting the old plugs, and wrenching in the new ones while the boat swiveled 180 degrees on its longitudinal axis. We were on our way again. Those boatmen may have been reckless to set sail in the first place, but there was no doubting their emergency navigation and repair skills.

We glimpsed sight of land through the white haze after about three gut wrenching hours of playing death tag with the marauding waves. It was one of the offshore islands we had seen to our south on the way out. Kelly and I acknowledged with a glance our increasing odds of survival; if the boat capsized here we could swim to the island no matter what happened. But a new problem crossed both our minds. How would we get through the raging surf breaking across the harbor mouth? How the hell the boatman had found his way back to the harbor remains mysterious. With no landmarks and no means of navigation, he must have found it by instinct alone, like one of those lost dogs that shows up on its owner’s doorstep thousands of miles away. But the mouth of Padang harbor was ringed like the entrance to Mordor with murderous waves spewing dragon breath across the shoals.

The swells marched like evil sentries blocking our path to safety. Approaching the harbor, the color of the water turned from puss green to chocolate milkshake brown. How would the boat driver navigate through this malicious chaos? Shouldn’t we try for the beach rather than shoot the rapids into the harbor? The boatman lined the boat up in the middle of the harbor mouth and gunned both engines. Surely he didn’t intend to power straight up the gut of the ugly chocolate hell? I revisited my escape plan, this time looking for a spot on land to swim to when the boat flipped end over end. Kelly pointed to a crag off the rocky headland on the starboard side as a possible abandon ship destination. We could see calm waters ahead. The waves broke with intensified fury as they felt the shallow muddy bottom and vomited their peaks forward. The breaking waves fueled the entropy choking the narrow passageway. Churning whitewater piled up, not able to get into or out of the channel, thus creating rapids and whirlpools. We would not survive long in that maelstrom. Swimming to shore increasing looked like a bad option.

The captain perched on the prow to direct the steersman. We picked up speed, caught a 10 foot set wave, and powered down the face as it broke over the back of the boat. We stood up to ride this wave to oblivion. Pointing down into the trough, the prow of the boat skewered the wave in front of us. Brown water washed over both ends of the boat as the stern rose higher and the nose tilted downward. It appeared certain we would plunge straight down then tumble end over end. But the stern descended gracefully as if it were riding a down escalator and the prow pushed its way up through the wave in front. Once the boat flattened out, the driver gassed the engines full throttle and repeated the process by catching another wave, burying the nose doggie style into the wave ahead, plunging downward, see-sawing precariously between two waves, then shooting forward through the rapids. We eased into the filthy black water of the harbor and lashed up to a dilapidated wooden ferry boat. Kelly and I grabbed our gear, scrambled onto the greasy deck of the ferry and tippy-toed across the rotten ladder that sufficed as a gangplank. No good byes, not even a look back at our fellow survivors.

As we stumbled across the earthquake-mangled cement of Padang port we received a text message from the captain of F3 instructing us to catch the wooden ferry berthed next to the half sunken one we had just scrambled over to reach land. This ferry was scheduled to make stops at an island south of where Freedom and our buddies were surfing. From this island, we were told, we could hire a local speedboat to take us to where F3 was anchored. “Those ferries never sink,” he wrote in his text. This suggestion really pissed me off. Not only was I not in the mood to hop aboard the dilapidated wood hulk that would deliver us to the general vicinity of F3, and from there locate (and pay for) another Indo speedboat to search the high seas for F3, but the storm was still raging. It was not clear the rickety old ferry would depart as planned. A group of Aussie surfers on the pier debated whether to board the ferry, if it sailed at all.

A charter boat captain friend of mine who I saw at the Spice Homestay told me later that he had heard about our plan to cross the Straits in a local speedboat and hoped we had not followed through. He recalled that an identical speedboat with three Aussie surfers sank in similar conditions a couple of months earlier. The surfers were rescued after many hours in the water, the Indo boatmen died.

We expect experiences like that to teach us something. What did we learn from our brush with death? Life is precious? We already knew how much we love our families and how good we have it back home. Just a reminder? I was mad at myself for taking such a risk, but we still needed a boat to cross the Straits and catch up with Freedom III.

We made our way back to the Spice Homestay to regroup. The former doctor’s office, now a bed and breakfast type hotel serves as ground zero for information about local surfing. Not unlike the coral reefs that surround the islands, the Spice Homestay hosts an amazing array of colorful characters who arrange services, change money, fix visas, provide transportation, and entertain the surfing travel community. The previous surf headquarters survived the 2009 earthquake, but not the breakup of Christina - the queen bee of Sumatran surf business - and her drunken Aussie boyfriend. Christina reigned supreme for years as chief negotiator between the insurgent surfing community and the local authorities. Whether you were a victim or a perpetrator, Christina was the one call to make if you were in trouble in Padang. Fluent in the local language and practiced in the etiquette of bribe paying, she came as a backpacker from Ohio in the 1990s and stayed. She set up shop in a Dutch colonial bank building down by the harbor, serving as midwife to the emerging surf charter business.

But things change quickly in Padang. With Christina and the old headquarters gone, the Spice Homestay became the base camp for the surfers, boat captains, crews, guides, surf camp operators, and local entrepreneurs who make a living serving the Mentawai surf charter industry. Surfers from everywhere – South Africa, Uruguay, Brazil, Israel, France, Chile, Hawaii, the US and lots of Aussies and Kiwis- gather to make connections, fix boards, heal injuries, discuss weather conditions, eat, drink, and trade stories about the legendary waves on the western edge of the Mentawais. There is constant talk of storms brewing, swell direction, tides, wind and bottom contours. Which surf spot is oriented to pick up the swell in the best possible way? Will the wind blow offshore and make the waves hollow or will it blow onshore, causing them to crumble instead of peel? The hunt is on, but there are too many of us seeking the same grail, even out here. The captains listen, but they keep their cards close to the vest, not revealing their trade secrets. How many boats are heading out today? Where are the other charter boats headed, and where are they now? The captains all surf too, so they share our enthusiasm for the finding the best conditions. Despite their competition for customers and waves, there is strong comraderie among the charter boat operators. Several boats were heading out the next day, and two captains offered to take us out to the Freedom III.

By morning the ocean had completed its Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde transformation. The vicious killer had been replaced by the alluring temptress. We would sail that day on calm seas with a professional boat and crew. The Tengiri is a 45 foot all metal catamaran built in Australia specifically for Mentawai surf charters. Other charter boats have more checkered histories. There are former ferries, tugboats, fishing boats, and a variety of traditional Indonesian vessels that have been dragooned into service as surf charters. The same goes for the captains, who should have their own reality TV show. It’s the warm water edition of Deadliest Catch, but instead of fishing for crab in the Arctic they are searching for waves in the tropics. The Captain Cook of the Mentawais is Martin Daly, a frontiersman and entrepreneur who ran the first surf charters in the early 1980s. Today, the sight of one of his four large vessels coming over the horizon usually means the spot you are surfing is about to get really crowded. Many of the captains and crewmembers, like my friend Moose, came to the Mentawais in the 1970s and 80s looking for perfect waves and never left. Moose hired local fishing boats to poke around the uncharted reefs along the western rim of the islands and spent months with no provisions except the fish he could catch and the rice he could buy from the locals. The surf pioneers spent years out there discovering which reefs are rideable and which are too dangerous. Today, if you get hurt help is available. Back then, if you gouged your head on the reef and lost too much blood, good luck.

We caught up with Freedom III at dawn. After sharing our nightmarish detour with our friends, we checked out the boat. F3 is a sleek, powerful 60 foot catamaran built in South Africa. We met Captain Lee and Chief Engineer Chris, who were the opposite of grizzled old sea dogs. Lee and Chris are chiseled athletes, totally ripped and equipped with the confidence that comes with knowing you are the toughest motherfucker in the joint. They met at the Australian maritime academy and bonded over the shared dream of becoming consummate watermen. They are expert divers, fishermen, navigators, spearfishermen, ocean swimmers and of course surfers. They know everything about boats and sailing. They adhere to a rigorous training routine that includes running in soft sand while carrying huge logs. They are as alert as eagles and definitely in command of the boat. Either could pass the notorious Navy SEAL BUDS training with ease. Both surf like mad-men.

After a fun warm-up surf day at a long right hand break called Batcaves, Captain Lee steered the boat to an infamous spot called Greenbush, known for its humongously thick tubes that explode on the reef like a suicide bomber in a nightclub. It’s a place where people get hurt. Even experienced professional surfers who shred the biggest, gnarliest waves around the world say it’s a scary place. When we arrived the sky and water were brooding, and the waves were macking. It was double to triple overhead. Big. Loud. A lone bodyboarder took off recklessly deep on a giant set wave, dove head first down the arching 15 foot face, crash landed as the wave heaved over, and disappeared under tons of frothing water. Watching from the deck, we were stunned when he came flying out of the wave’s churning guts, legs fluttering behind like a kite tail. We could see into the tube, all the way to the foam ball where the hollow section was being obliterated. The lone body boarder shot out of the chamber like an artillery shell as the wave detonated on the reef. Captain Lee announced, “Time to put your nuts in the vice laddies and get out there!”

We looked at him blankly. There was no fucking I way was going out there. We all agreed, it was too dangerous. Except Heath, who mused quietly on the day before his 44^th birthday that he “feels compelled” to paddle into a few. And he did. Lee, Chris and Heath took turns paddling into some of the steepest, hollowest, and most unforgiving waves any of us had ever seen up close. Captain Lee launched himself over the lip, airdropped down the face, and executed a vicious bottom turn that squirted him under the lip as the entire wave blew itself to pieces with him inside it. Chris followed with reckless abandon and was hurled onto the reef, which gashed the left side of his face. Our friend Heath, mild mannered father of two darling little girls, turned out to be a certified big wave hell master. He attacked like a true warrior and paid the price when his new board was snapped in half by the impact of a Greenbush bomb. Armed with a bigger board, he stroked downward into another wave and stood as the great wall collapsed. With perfect timing, Heath crouched, grabbed his inner rail, and glided into a tube big enough to shelter a bull elephant. He didn’t make it out. We hooted and hollered from the deck, reassuring one another that we made the right decision not to surf that spot. Near the end of the session Lee muscled his way under the lip of a beastly green abomination of a wave and got barreled for eight seconds before emerging unscathed, perfect.

We welcomed our gladiators back onto the boat. Fuck! But we regard Heath a bit differently now, having seen the depth of his skill and courage. He is one of them now, an honorary member of the waterman brotherhood. Lots of surfers expect they will someday become all-around watermen. My hero growing up was Duke Kahanamoku, the great Hawaiian swimmer/surfer who shared the aloha spirit with the world. We revere icons such as Eddie Aikau and modern chargers like Mark Healy and Laird Hamilton who followed in their footsteps to master the full suite of ocean arts – surfing, diving, sailing, windsurfing, paddling, swimming – to build a life focused on the ocean. Most of us fall off that path. The guys on our boat trip are husbands and dads with white collar professional careers. Most of us have advanced degrees and work in office buildings. We fit surfing into our lives around our family and professional obligations instead of the other way around. Our jobs, however, enable us to go on luxury surf safaris to exotic places and get a taste of the ocean-centric lifestyle. It is both satisfying and bittersweet to spend time with guys like Lee and Chris who are living the waterman dream. Trips like this help balance out the work-family-fun equation, but there are no shortcuts to ocean mastery. That ship has sailed.

Captain Lee took pity on those of us who didn’t have the balls to surf Greenbush and drove us to an easy right-hand break called Malakobak. It was barely overhead, glassy and fun. I built my confidence over the next few days surfing famous reefs such as Macaronis, Thunders, and Bintangs. On our return visit to Malakobak, however, a couple of local tribesmen demanded another payment for surfing their reef. Our captain told him we had already paid a couple of days ago: “One payment per trip.” But things got ugly.

The population of the Mentawai Islands inhabit small villages perched near the sea and make their living fishing and foraging in the jungle. Hundreds of years of minimal contact with outsiders was shattered by international logging operations and surf tourism, both of which are taking a toll on the environment. The main interaction that surfers have with the locals is through bartering, mostly for souvenirs like carved wooden bowls, boxes and masks. A favorite is the canoe paddle which makes a convincing artifact of exotic travels when mounted on a wall back home. The locals typically paddle their dugout canoes laden with carvings out to the charter boats and hawk their goods while bobbing persistently for hours shouting “Hey boss, come on!” Bargaining is not as sophisticated as it is in some cultures. The guy in the boat whose eight teeth are pointing in eight different directions yells out a price, you offer half, he says “come on boss,” you throw in a tee shirt and a box of juice and the deal is done. And although the carvings depict local flora and fauna, they are recent innovations for the surf tourist market and not representative of longstanding cultural traditions. We loaded up on our share of paddles, bowls and masks.

Not all the tribes make things to sell. Some simply demand a “donation” to surf the reefs near their village. Who is authorized to collect the donations, and how often they can collect, sometimes gets messy. At Malakobak, we had already paid a different representative of a nearby village for the right to surf. When the little thug and his two bedraggled sidekicks paddled out to F3 and hopped onto the deck demanding another payment, Captain Lee told him to go speak with the guy who had received the earlier donation. With his gangsta-style baseball hat on backwards, homemade tattoos, and brutal piercings, the shakedown artist got angry and threatened to cut the rope to our small launch craft. Our captain and crew remained unperturbed and let him continue to make demands until he stormed off and returned with two large canoes full of a dozen clansmen. Although we could have easily beat the shit out of them, to keep the peace the captain agreed to pay half the original fee and provide juice boxes for the entire war party.

Some villages sell fish and coconuts, others offer trash removal services (which they simply burn on the beach) and a few are notorious for stealing things off the boats at night. Sometimes stolen items such as surfboards are ransomed back. Village rivalries occasionally flare into real battles fought with traditional weapons – spears, clubs, and bow and arrows. Those of us who feel a sense of responsibility to compensate them for the use of their home as our playground can join SurfAid International, an organization that provides clean water, latrines and medical services to the Mentawai people. But the Mentawai natives are not a central feature of the surfer’s quest. We go there to surf, not to worry about the cosmic fate of the people who live there.

The waves were epic at the other five-star surf locations we visited. Once again, only Heath braved Lance’s Right which was breaking double and triple overhead and very heavy. Lance’s Left was also huge, but a little less imposing except for the set waves which darkened the horizon and sent most of us paddling frantically out to sea to avoid getting caught inside and eaten alive by the reef. It was our last day, our last session before heading home, so I resolved to man-up and paddle into a big wave. I have the skills to ride waves like that, so what was holding me back? What am I afraid of? The steep drop? The reef below? Being held under water without air for a long, long time? The physical discomfort associated with those things is really not the main fear. I can handle getting pitched over the lip, smashed in the pit, held down and dragged across the reef. Happens all the time. The greater fear is not living up to your own expectations. Falling short of your image of yourself forces you to confront your limitations. At age 60, I can’t do what other guys are doing. I can’t do some things I used to be able to do. And I have more to lose – my wife and kids. There are lots of good excuses: the crowds, the conditions, your equipment. But it’s all bullshit. The most important thing is having the confidence to see yourself making the drop and pulling into the barrel.

The previous year, I had made good progress so that by the end of the trip I was pulling into some good barrels and feeling confident. When we arrived at Lance’s Left for our final session, the pressure was on. Either surf one of those big scary monsters and feel good about it all year, or wuss out and wrestle with my failure until the next chance to redeem my surfing credibility. What happened was somewhere in the middle. I didn’t succeed, but I tried. After dodging a few set waves and watching the guys catching them in the darker blue water on the outside, the wave I was waiting for charged straight at me. It was big and lining up just right. I was in the perfect position. It had my name on it. I whipped my board around and paddled hard. This is the moment when you have to overcome the messages going to your brain that are trying to stop you from doing so obviously life threating. I felt the mass of water lift me up and I paddled like hell. I caught it, and it caught me. I hung in the lip, stroked a couple of extra paddles to make sure, pushed the nose down, and popped up. If you stand up too late you get crushed. If you stand up too early you either get left behind by the wave or you teeter in the lip a split second too long as it gets steep and hollow and pulls you down into the imploding maelstrom.

I took the drop down the face as the lip was frothing up and over. To my right the behemoth was spawning the undulating tube that I was trying to infiltrate. A last-second crack of the whip from the feathering lip, however, launched me forward into free space, flying, disconnected from the wave, dangling in mid-air like a puppet, my feet barely touching the board, toes extended and straining hopelessly to land the board as the torrential fortress caught me from behind and crushed me like an aluminum can being stomped. As I fell forward and flattened to break my fall and maybe even body surf the whitewater, the exploding forces drove me down, where I collided with the reef and I was pinned there by the turbulence so long that I ran out of air. After an eternity, I could not fight the involuntary urge to breath in a lung full of saltwater.

I’ve been held down plenty of times – big days at Four Mile north of Santa Crus and Blacks in San Diego come to mind. You tell yourself to relax, and not struggle because it expends precious oxygen. Be still. Don’t panic. Zen mind. But dire thoughts creep into your mind. “Am I drowning?” “How bad is this?” “Am I going to die?” “Will I see my family again?” There’s not much you can do, except wait until the downward energy of the wave dissipates and lets you swim to the surface. One thing you can do is find your leg leash that leads to your board, which should be tombstoning in the whitewater above. I gathered myself and climbed the leash, breaking through the frothing foam into the light. I sputtered and gasped for air like a Shop Vac. But all surfers know what comes next.

The next wave of the set is always bearing down on you as you flounder in the impact zone. You suck in as much foam-laced air you can and dive for the bottom, where you just escaped from, hoping to avoid another demonic massage on the bed of nails below. I topped off the air-water mixture in my lungs and dove down as another Mentawai blue bomber detonated in front of me. The whitewater dragged me across the reef as I appreciated the shifting shades of blue through my pinched eyelids. Dark blue is down. Light blue is up. I barely noticed my flesh being shredded by the reef. At that moment, I had bigger problems to worry about, like survival. Surfers and astrophysicists know that time is relativistic in the tube, but time is also suspended when you are fighting for your life. It felt like forever, even if it was only a few minutes until I drifted into the shallows, dismissed from the impact zone and shunted into the channel between reefs. I had failed, and I was out of chances.

Wisdom comes when we learn from our mistakes. I made mistakes on that trip. It was good to help Kelly fix his passport, even if we missed the boat. It was bad for the captain to leave without us, but everybody wanted to surf. No sense holding a grudge. Maybe I shouldn’t have trusted Joseph or Job or Ketut, but they helped us salvage the trip. I should have known better than to risk crossing the stormy Straits in a funky boat, but we survived. I regret not making that last wave at Lances, but I faced my fears and took the drop. At least I tried. Keep trying. Push through adversity. That’s the best we can do in life.

Indo boatman preparing to cross the straights.

On the dock preparing to cross the straights.

Kelly, recognizing danger.

Our boat captain, also recognizing danger.

The Mentawai gangster crew, demanding payment to surf their reef.

Me at Batcaves, where there are no bats.

More my level.

Bintangs, sucking reef break.

Easy bottom turn and set up for soft barrel.

Easy backside lines at Macaronis

Tucking in.

KB with house board collection, Santa Barbara, circa 1981.

Saladita, Mexico, 2016.

Santa Cruz, the Hook, 2022.

Well I guess if you say so

I’ll have to pack my things and go (That’s right)

Hit the road Jack

And don’t you come back

No more, no more, no more, no more.

Ray Charles, Hit the Road Jack

Chapter Ten

Fired From the White House

Sitting in my office at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2005, I received an unusual phone call. An acquaintance with whom I had worked on Capitol Hill years earlier called out of the blue to ask if I would consider joining the staff of the National Security Council at the White House as a director of counter-proliferation strategy. I told him I was not a registered Republican and did not support some of the Bush administration’s policies. He assured me they were interested only in my expertise in nuclear proliferation issues, and would not be expected to support policies outside of my areas of responsibility, which would focus on Iran, Pakistan and North Korea. I told him I would discuss it with my wife and my bosses at the lab.

I met my wife in government; she was the senior official on an inter-agency working group that oversaw technical support to the International Atomic Energy Agency. I represented the now defunct Arms Control and Disarmament Agency on her working group. We bonded as Californians with similar jaundiced attitudes towards political conniving, fell in love, and hatched a plan to get back to California. We had had our fill of DC and had escaped to create a great life for ourselves. We had two young boys, a dog, good jobs and a house by the San Francisco Bay. Neither of us longed to jump back into the DC fray. But the call to public service is compelling. My colleague at the White House told me “the president needs your help.” How could I refuse? We packed our belongings and headed back to Washington.

I hit the ground running. The NSC coordinates the actions of government agencies to advance the president’s policies. My issues were hot: Iran, North Korea, Pakistan. I had worked on Capitol Hill and at the State Department, so had a pretty good idea of how government works. Like everyone else at the NSC, I worked nights and weekends and missed my family. I stayed overnight in the situation room when North Korea tested a nuclear weapon in October of 2006 and I championed the administration’s efforts to interdict illicit transfers of nuclear technology. From my office in the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB) I could watch the comings and goings of VIPs visiting the White House, and I could feel the whooshing blades of Marine One landing on the south lawn. I was a good soldier. I faithfully executed White House policies, at least as I understood them. Those were tough times. The Iraq war was going badly. There were lots of grim faces in the halls of the OEOB, where the NSC offices are located. The meeting rooms smelled of stale sweat after tense meetings. The Global War on Terror was lagging, the economy slowing. The world was pretty fucked up, and the president’s popularity was down. Liberal friends tried to be supportive, but couldn’t hide their dismay with my tight-lipped support for President Bush. Only my wife and other public servants understood. It’s our country and our government. We have to help.

So, it came as a surprise when I was summoned to a meeting in a conference room on the second floor. I was busy and told the official who told me about the meeting that I only had a few minutes to spare. “No problem,” he said. “It won’t take long.” I entered the dimly lit conference room and found the official accompanied by a uniformed Secret Service officer – the guys who guard the White House. “What’s up guys?” I asked. “You no longer work here. As of this moment you no longer work for the President. Empty your pockets and place everything on the table.”

I was dumbstruck, gobsmacked, flabbergasted, utterly confused. “What’s this about?” I asked. “Empty your pockets and place everything on the table. Do it now.” The armed Secret Service officer leaned forward. I reached into my pocket to get my White House issued Blackberry. “Let me call my boss,” I said lamely. “No. Put the Blackberry, your White House identification badge, parking pass, and anything issued to you by us on the table. You no longer work here.” “Decided by who? Who determined that I no longer work here? I should call my boss, the senior director of my office.” “No. Put it down and take a step back. You work here at the pleasure of the President and can be relieved of that privilege at any time. The decision was made at a high level. I can inform you that it has nothing to do with security issues. Your clearances are unaffected and you can return to work with any other agency of the government, including the intelligence community. You are not banned from visiting this building, but you do not work here. The decision is irreversible.” It was finally sinking in. I was being fired.

“Can I go up to my office and get my pictures of my wife and kids?” “No. Arrangements will be made to transfer your personal effects to you. Walk with me as we escort you from the premises. We are going now.” We left the conference room and turned down a familiar hallway with the administrator flanking me and the uniformed officer following close behind. Was that necessary? We went down the nearest marble stairway, out the doors into the area between the Old Executive Office Building and the West Wing of the White House, where only security vehicles and a few cars with Texas plates could park, past the encampment of White House reporters on the West Wing lawn, though the metal barriers and turnstile by the bullet proof guard station, and onto Pennsylvania Avenue. “You will be contacted regarding your personal effects.” I was out on the street.

Standing there blinking in the late November sunlight, amidst the shadows of the bare trees in Lafayette Park, surrounded by tourists gaping through the White House fence, hoping to get a glimpse of someone important, my first thought was: What would I tell Lisa? I had dragged my family here for this. What now? And then a flood of other thoughts. What the fuck happened? Did I fuck up, or did somebody frag me? They knew my background already, my checkered past and weak Republican bona fides. Some friends assumed it must have been Vice President Cheney, but I got along well with his staff. Had I crossed someone? Had I sent an indiscreet email to a Democratic friend? I never found out.

When I reached my boss at the NSC, he was completely blindsided. “What are you talking about? Get your ass in here and we’ll figure it out,” he instructed. “We have tons of shit to do. I need you.” I called other high ranking officials and asked for advice. Nobody knew anything. Nobody even knew who to call. The faceless functionary who fired me was right. There was nothing anybody could do. My colleagues at the NSC were outraged, partly because my absence put my portfolio of issues in limbo, and partly because it made no sense. We were a tight little team. What the fuck happened? You don’t just disappear from the White House without people noticing.

Lisa understood. This was the reason we left Washington in the first place. If you are going to play in the big leagues, you have to expect big league politics. It was a few weeks after the 2006 mid-term elections in which the Republicans had taken a drubbing. I kicked myself. I should have known better than to think that I could sit in my nice office overlooking the West Wing and be exempt from White House politics. My predicament coincided with the White House firing of several U.S. attorneys. Maybe after the election the White House political directors were circling the wagons and found me in an important job, an outsider, not a registered Republican, who had worked for two Democratic Senators, now unprotected by any powerful insider. Who the fuck is this guy? I was an easy target. Did I really think my expertise would protect me? What an idiot. I should have known better. You want loyalty in Washington? Get a dog.

Why did I get fired and unceremoniously escorted out to the street? I honestly don’t know, but there are several possibilities. First, it could have been the mid-term elections and a loyalty sweep by White House political operatives. “This guy isn’t even a Republican and we have dozens of our own people looking for jobs. Move him out.” Another possibility is that some political idiot read my security files and my polygraph history and arrest record, and decided that I was unworthy, despite the fact that both of those things had been extensively investigated and dismissed. A third possible explanation is that I pissed off a notorious political operator, a former CIA case officer and chief of station who was running the intelligence shop at another agency. When I got to the White House, he warned me not to call my colleagues at the national labs for advice. “You call me, I’ll get your answers from the labs. Got it?” I told him, with all due respect, that I would call the labs any fucking time I felt like it.” He was a feared political operator who might have pulled strings to have me removed. Many people suspected that it was Vice President Cheney, who notoriously wielded undue influence over White House politics, but I was on good terms with him and his staff. The most likely reason, however, is that I may have inadvertently crossed Condolezza Rice, who had moved from her position as the President’s trusted National Security Advisor at the White House to be the Secretary of State.

This last explanation requires a bit of policy wonk background. I came to the White House as a nuclear proliferation expert, and North Korea was part of my portfolio. My policy guidance was to prepare to get tough with North Korea if they tested a nuclear weapon, which would signal a serious advancement of their covert nuclear program and the end of our efforts to get them to the negotiating table. I had prepared a package of sanctions, diplomatic statements, and military actions to be rolled out if North Korea tested. When North Korea tested its first nuclear device on October 9, 2006 I spent the night in the White House situation room with a team of experts assessing the incoming information. I reported in the morning to the National Security Advisor who had replaced Condoleeza Rice, her protégé Stephen Hadley, that the package of sanctions and statements we had prepared was ready to go. His office instructed me to proceed with implementation, which means I called around to the various agencies of the government and instructed them to execute the policy change that we had prepared in the previous months. But when I called the State Department, my point of contact on Condi’s staff said, “We are reevaluating next steps.” “What do you mean?” I replied. “We are reevaluating our response to the North Korean test,” she told me. “But we already have the response ready to implement,” I said. “We are reviewing our options Zack, so just hold tight for a while.” she instructed. I was confused.

Over the following days, I discovered that Condi had decided to heed the advice of State Department diplomats to rejoin negotiations with North Korea, and to ditch the package of sanctions and more punitive measures that I had been responsible for preparing. My boss and his boss had resigned. Apparently, there had been a change of policy that had not been communicated to me, and I had been plowing ahead on a doomed mission. I might have been fired for being on the wrong side of a policy dispute. These things happen all the time in DC.

A few days after being frog marched out of the White House I got a mysterious call from the NSC personnel administrator. “Is this Dr. Zachary Davis?” “Yes,” I answered. “We would like to exchange your personal belongings in exchange for the secure White House telephone installed in your home.” Many government officials have a secure phone in their homes so they can discuss sensitive issues and events with colleagues outside of work hours. “OK,” I replied. “Bring the secure phone in a cardboard box to the Safeway parking lot in Mclean Virginia at 12 pm. Park and stand outside your vehicle. We will contact you.” I thought one of my friends must be pulling a cruel prank on me. Are you fucking serious? What is this, a bad spy movie? We’re doing a hostage exchange in the Safeway parking lot, exchanging my family photos for the secure phone?

I put the phone in a cardboard box that was left over from our recent move to DC, tossed it the back of my Volvo station wagon, and drove to the Safeway a few blocks from our house in Mclean. The circumstances were surreal. I didn’t know what to expect. I circled around the parking lot, navigating through the housewives, nannies, and Washington has-beens shopping in the middle of a work day, parked in an open area, popped the rear hatch and sat on the blue plastic rear bumper next to the box with the secure White House phone in it. I assumed I was being watched. A few minutes after 12, the NSC official arrived and backed his white government Chevy sedan up to my car. He got out, popped his trunk and took out a sealed cardboard box. He placed his box in the back of my car and took the one with the phone and put it in his trunk. Wow, I thought, just like a real hostage exchange. With our business complete, he said without the slightest trace of irony, “So, how’s it going?” Standing there blinking with disbelief in the sunny Safeway parking lot, I didn’t know what to say. “Fine,” I sputtered. “Good,” he said breezily and got in his car and drove away.

My career was a train wreck. My bosses at Livermore Laboratory wanted to know what I had done to get fired, and how it would reflect on them. Friends and foes wondered what the hell had happened to me. There were rumors that I had recklessly crossed swords with powerful interests, and lost. Some thought it was political, others suspected my arrests or polygraphs were the cause. A well-connected friend advised me to control the narrative by issuing the standard statement about “resigning to spend more time with my family.” Should I put my tail between my legs and run home to California? By this time, Lisa, a respected expert in her own right, had landed an exciting new job at the CIA where she was very happy and making big contributions. She didn’t want to beat a hasty retreat, not yet. Our kids were in excellent schools. We had bills to pay. I needed a job.

This was my third experience being discarded as damaged goods in Washington DC. The first time was after a polygraph, when I was temporarily blackballed after being deemed as untrustworthy. The second time followed a false accusation from a psychotic ex-girlfriend. Now this. There’s nothing like a little scandal to ferret out who your friends are. While the people who should have come to my aid – the people who brought me into the White House in the first place – left me to twist in the wind, others rallied to help me. Old colleagues on Capitol Hill, ardent foes of the Bush White House, offered me opportunities to take revenge. “We’ll investigate the shit out of those motherfuckers!”

In one of the vexing ironies of my life, my friends in the intelligence community provided a safe harbor. Hearing about my predicament, a weightlifting, former military, special ops, ex-football player in charge of interdicting illicit nuclear trade lined up an assignment in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Big Joe set me up at the National Counter Proliferation Center as a special advisor to the director. It was a good job. He didn’t have to do it, and there was some risk that he could be tainted by helping a guy who had just been 86ed by the President. But it’s things like that that help keep my cynicism in check.

My kids still joke about how I was fired from the White House. They tell their friends and teachers, “My dad got fired by President Bush.” They still ask me, “Dad, why did the president fire you?” I tell them the truth. “I don’t know. It could have been a few things.” My friends and family view it more as a badge of honor than anything to be ashamed of. Most of them couldn’t understand why I agreed to work for the Bush administration in the first place. Nevertheless, I was embarrassed and ashamed that for reasons unbeknownst to me I was fired from an important position that I took seriously. Maybe for something I did a long time ago, maybe for something more recent, maybe for political reasons, maybe, maybe, maybe... Whatever the reason, for a guy who takes pride in working hard and doing a good job – whether it be driving trucks, building houses, or intelligence analysis, getting fired from the White House was a bitter pill to swallow.

D.C. is the lode-star where national policies are formed and reformed like the white-hot gases swirling inside the Sun. People get burned. I’m not the first or the last. Many good public servants got scorched by Trump. However, one of the great things about America is that you can pick yourself up and try again. You can reinvent yourself. Keep going. I picked myself up, mended my wounded ego and stayed in the game. I may even get another shot at the big leagues, someday.

View of the White House West Wing from my office in the Old Executive Office Building, 2006

Bowling at White House, 2016

Back at the White House, 2025

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
‘Cause none of them can stop the time

Bob Marley, Redemption Song

Chapter Eight

From No Nukes Protester to Government Nuclear Expert: Nuclear Technology and World Politics

Bugs Bunny and NASA made me a technology optimist. I wanted to be a physicist, but the political and social aspects of science and technology turned out to be more interesting than quarks and string theory. Perhaps not surprising in light of my youthful indiscretions with pyrotechnics, I was drawn to the study of warfare. I studied nuclear weapons, nuclear technology, and nuclear proliferation. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan (It was justified.), and my doctoral thesis on Eisenhower’s nuclear strategy (Historians still underestimate him). I was going to be a professor of international relations and write about nuclear history, technology and warfare.

I was also a California surfer, and I was pissed off about the problems with the construction of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant near San Luis Obispo, which was built atop a major earthquake fault. Attending college in Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz, I roamed the Central California coast searching for waves like a feral dog looking for fast food leftovers. It was my territory. When I read about structural mistakes in the reactor’s cooling system, I was concerned, because I frequented the beaches near the plant.

In 1981, I drove down highway 101 from Santa Cruz to protest against the reactor’s construction record, but the experience unexpectedly became a major milestone in my education. As a student of nuclear history, I shared the belief that the arms race between the US and the Soviet Union had gone too far, and that nuclear arms control offered a sober-minded way to manage Cold War competition. I also subscribed to an orthodox interpretation of Cold War history, which included support for Truman’s decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan to end World War Two and for US policies to contain Soviet expansion. I was not a peacenik or a Luddite. I believe in deterrence. It’s human nature. Tragic, but human.

I viewed the problems at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant as bad technology management. I wouldn’t stop surfing near the Diablo reactor, or near the other California nuclear power plant at San Onofre, also perched near a suite of premier surf breaks, including Trestles. I also understood that all energy choices have risks. An oil spill in 1968 from an offshore drilling platform scarred Santa Barbara’s beaches and politics for decades. The spill also put globs of oily tar in my hair, which I routinely removed with lighter fluid. Coal kills people in mines, pollutes the air and hastens climate change. Natural gas can explode, as it did in San Bruno, near San Francisco in 2010 when a natural gas explosion killed a dozen people and incinerated an entire neighborhood. Our dependence on foreign oil supplies supports dictators in Saudi Arabia and Russia. Solar and wind can’t meet the demand, at least not yet. Hydrogen and fusion are still in development. When it comes to energy, we must choose among imperfect options. But my fellow protesters at Diablo Canyon were afraid of nuclear energy. And they made no distinction between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, which they viewed as equal parts of a hydra headed monster created by sinister forces to enslave and poison innocent populations. The eco-hippies were full of shit.

A surprising number of my fellow anti-nuclear protesters at Diablo Canyon subscribed to a vulgar, simplistic Marxist theory of capitalism, the purpose of which they believe is to perpetuate wars, which in turn ensure corporate profits. The self-proclaimed protest leaders adopted pretentious noms de guerre, wore San Francisco Mime Troupe T-shirts, and talked (and talked, and talked…) about anarchism and patriarchy and Che and Hiroshima and hemp, and sang old-fashioned civil rights protest songs like We Shall Overcome. They wore feathers in their hair and reeked of patchouli oil as they chanted “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric, the public utility that owns Diablo Canyon) has got to go!” They spoke in apocalyptic terms about nuclear wars and meltdowns, but knew nothing about risk analysis or engineering or radiation health physics. Moreover, they viewed our elected political leaders as demonic pawns willingly ensconced in a sinister conspiracy to enslave and exploit the unknowing masses. And it wasn’t just nuclear issues that got their dander up; it was the CIA and the World Bank and Macdonald’s and anyone who disagreed with their wacky worldview. The anti-nuke activists I met at Diablo Canyon were pathetic 60s holdovers, revolutionary wannabes leading a coalition of mostly well-meaning students and grandmothers. They reminded me of the self-righteous assholes I spurned as a teenager, and saw again on the fringes of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street protests. They were ridiculous.

Rag tag groups of protesters gathered in front of the main entrance to the power plant around 10:00 AM, where lines of forest green uniformed local sheriff’s department and California Highway Patrol officers had assembled. It was chaotic, with small bands of protesters breaking out of the crowd milling around in the street and running around the end of the police lines toward the fence before being apprehended and arrested. Some laid down on the ground and went limp as a form of non-violent resistance, forcing the officers to drag their dead weight to the fenced temporary holding area they had constructed to secure the detainees. The police didn’t use hand cuffs or zip ties, but frog-marched each person who refused to leave into the chain-linked holding area. A few protesters hurled insults at the cops, like “fascist pigs!” and “stop killing children!” A chorus of John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” broke out among “the scruffy people,” as the San Francisco Chronicle described the protestors. Grandmothers in mom jeans and Birkenstocks pleaded earnestly with the police officers to wake up and see that they were on the wrong side of history. “I’m a mother! You don’t have to do this! Please join us!” One group of college kids climbed up on the adjacent hillside and raised a ragged unreadable banner while they hooted unintelligible admonishments to the melee below. A few protesters came dressed in elaborate costumes. There was Mother Earth, several Native Americans (appropriating culture!), assorted whales and dolphins, trees and flowers. You had to admire the talent, forethought and effort that went into the costumes and signs. The performance art was first rate.

After about an hour of pushing and yelling, a police commander addressed the crowd with a rasping bullhorn. “You are blocking the road illegally and will be arrested if you do not disperse.” The officers sullenly advanced, eyes forward, their batons held outstretched in front but not swinging them or confronting anyone. The crowd mostly yielded as the officers slowly herded us backwards, flanking the remaining people into the chain link holding area. If you wanted to escape you could get away through the crowd and up the street. But I hung around too long and was rounded up en masse. We were loaded onto yellow school busses that were parked along the road and housed overnight in the Cuesta Community College gymnasium, just outside San Luis Obispo.

Inside the Cuesta College gymnasium, Jackson Brown led a no nukes sing along, and Wavy Gravy from the Merry Pranksters kept everyone laughing with his clown nose and Santa Claus costume. We slept on cots in the main gym and used the locker room bathrooms. The hard-core activists urged everyone not to give our real names to the police, but to give the name Karen Silkwood, the heroine of the movie The China Syndrome about a nuclear power plant worker who was exposed to radiation. I gave my real name. The activist organizers also refused to eat the baloney and mustard sandwiches and Lays potato chips that our jailers provided, which I gobbled up happily. “Are you going to eat that?”

The next morning, we filed past folding tables where local officials in short sleeves checked our names and released us from the gym into the squinty central California sunlight. Free at last, free at last! Wavy Gravy was outside of the gym greeting the released protestors. I found a few Santa Cruz friends and we drove home up highway 101. We knew that we might get arrested, but I also recognized that it was a mistake. Belatedly, I realized that I didn’t agree with the cause, disagreed with the methods, and despised the protest organizers. Legally, I was never sure of the outcome, although I now know that it ended up in my FBI file. It turns out that the permanent record they always threaten you with as a kid is real. The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant opened and operated safely for the next twenty-five years, providing clean, safe, low carbon emission electric power to energy starved Californians. No amount of rational, scientific analysis would have convinced the scruffy folks who were arrested at the protest that the risks were manageable.

Back at UC Santa Cruz, I researched the distinction between nuclear weapons and nuclear power. I continued my studies of nuclear history and technology policy in graduate school and became a government analyst of nuclear security issues. My specialty is nuclear proliferation – the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations and, perhaps, terrorists. In my academic and policy writing, I examine how nuclear weapons provide their possessors with military, political, and symbolic power. I’ve studied North Korea, Iran, Iraq, India, Pakistan, Israel, Argentina, Brazil, as well as terrorist groups like al Qaeda, who express interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. You could say I’m an expert.

World Nuclear Order

After the Cold War ended, hopes were high that nuclear weapons would play a decreasing role in international politics, and they have. With the ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union moldering in the dustbin of history, excess nuclear weapons, materials, equipment, and expertise eclipsed Dr. Strangelove’s Cold War nuclear nightmare as the top challenge for U.S. and international security. Building on the accomplishments of the Post World War Two presidents, President Bush the elder closed the books on a major chapter in world history by moving quickly to contain the Cold War nuclear hangover.

His administration convinced Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus to give back the weapons they had inherited from the Soviet arsenal. Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar pioneered a set of U.S. assistance programs to help Russia and the former Soviet states safeguard their remaining nuclear assets, some of which were orphaned like unwanted puppies left by the side of the road. Soviet nuclear scientists, once among the privileged elite, were suddenly destitute, surviving off mangy vegetable gardens at former top secret nuclear laboratories. Would they sell the weapons, materials, or their knowledge to survive?

Throughout the 1990s, the Clinton administration institutionalized the Nunn-Lugar-Cooperative Threat Reduction programs that helped keep former Soviet nuclear, chemical and biological weapons out of the hands of bad guys. I was fortunate to assist Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar and their staff to write some of the legislation for those programs. It worked. And with nuclear weapons programs in South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Iraq, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan shutting down during those years, hopes grew that the world would outgrow nuclear dangers like a kid outgrows a favorite old toy, and spend the resulting “peace dividend” on more fruitful things like education, health and infrastructure. It was not to be.

The nuclear genie was not ready to squeeze back into his fission-powered lamp. Instead, he fragmented like the multiplying brooms in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. A slew of new dangers replaced the old familiar ones. The Pakistani metallurgist A.Q. Khan demonstrated the challenges of the new age of proliferation by selling nuclear technology pirated from Pakistan’s covert nuclear program, which he had helped to build, to countries labeled by the second President Bush as “rogue nations.” Far from abandoning nuclear weapons, North Korea, Iran, and Libya partnered with Khan and a growing array of illicit global trade networks to acquire the world’s most potent military instruments. Supporting the CIA takedown of the AQ Khan network was a highlight of my career.

I was honored to work for my childhood hero Senator John Glenn, who actually walked from his office in the Senate to my office at the Library of Congress to tell my boss how much he appreciated my work on his legislation to deter and punish proliferators who tested nuclear weapons. That was another special moment. In 1998, India and Pakistan took their bombs out of the closet and tested them, quickening the pace of their slow-motion arms race. I was on assignment to the State Department at the time and helped implement the Glenn sanctions that I had helped write to punish India and Pakistan. My duties included delivering the official list of Indian and Pakistani companies and government entities barred from receiving high-tech imports from the United States to New Delhi and Islamabad – a role for which I am still remembered in both countries.

With the Cold War in the rear-view mirror, the US, Russia, England and France decided to cut back their nuclear weapons for the new era of world history, but China and the nuclear wannabes were still determined to build up. Throughout it all, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), President Eisenhower’s idealistic brainchild for global atomic cooperation, struggled to keep pace with the evolving nuclear dangers. Hopeful efforts to strengthen the international nuclear watchdog to catch and punish nuclear cheaters were frustrated by North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya – all of whom had used legitimate civilian nuclear programs as cover for their covert efforts to acquire the bomb. I had a small role in helping to strengthen the IAEA inspection system, but my wife Lisa was one of the primary authors who negotiated the new arrangements.

The outlaws were not about to let a few lousy treaties and international agreements stop them. “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!” India rejected what it called “nuclear apartheid.” North Korea withdrew from the Nonproliferation Treaty and tested nuclear weapons. Iran portrayed itself as a victim - a poor developing country whose proud efforts to master advanced technology were being unfairly squashed by Washington (and Israel), whose goal, they cried, was to deny the fruits of modernity to beleaguered Islamic peoples. The nuclear challengers declared the old rules for world nuclear order, made and enforced by the former colonial powers, null and void. The market for nuclear weapons remained bullish, and increasing global access to fifty-year old nuclear technology meant that supplies would probably match the demands.

Life in the national security bureaucracy changed overnight when al Qaeda kicked us in the nuts. Our worst fears were realized. The new enemy had a face. Osama bin Laden said he wanted nuclear weapons to wage jihad against the modern-day Crusaders. Would he buy a bomb? Steal one? Or would he get nuclear materials from a vulnerable facility in the former Soviet Union, or Pakistan, perhaps by bribing a desperate or sympathetic insider? Perhaps the terrorists would be satisfied with spreading nuclear contamination by dispersing radiological materials without a big nuclear mushroom cloud?

The question of whether terrorists could get nuclear (or chemical or biological) weapons consumed the attention of our government. Even a low risk of such an event was deemed unacceptable. Vice President Cheney said even a 1% risk of nuclear terrorism was unacceptable. WMD terrorism eclipsed communism as the bête noir of American security policy. We went nuts trying to protect our crumbling infrastructure from mad bombers by decorating our country with classless cement barriers. Creation of the hydra-headed Department of Homeland Security provided little comfort. Entering the new millennium, we were rattled.

Global warming, however, gave nuclear energy a second chance. Despite its inherent risks, nuclear energy endured, like a zombie who refuses to die. Bogged down for decades by costs, regulations, and public fears, nuclear energy was on the ropes until fears of catastrophic climate change spurred renewed interest in alternatives to dirty, greenhouse gas producing sources of energy – mainly coal. When compared to the problems attributed to global warming – hurricanes, floods, disappearing habitat, extinction -- even longtime environmentalist critics were willing to take another look at nuclear energy. Green nukes would save Gaia from climate change! Maybe.

Partially to shift attention from their own pollution, India and China trumpeted their ambitious goals to build scores of new reactors. Pakistan, Egypt, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, and other nations declared their intention to build nuclear reactors. For those who studied the first nuclear renaissance, however, the second coming sounded a bit like “déjà vu all over again.” Would green nukes set off a new round of proliferation? Would the continued spread of nuclear technology create new risks of countries using peaceful nuclear energy as a cover for their covert military intentions? Some of the countries who were eager to jump on the atomic bandwagon also face serious regional and domestic security challenges. A few, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, also have large reserves of oil and gas. Why such enthusiasm for nuclear power? Are they acquiring nuclear latency to hedge against future threats? Even if they are not harboring secret nuclear desires, will they be able to keep growing stockpiles of nuclear materials safe from terrorists? Maybe.

And what about nuclear safety? The earthquake-tsunami knockout blows to Japan’s Fukushima reactors in 2011 raised familiar questions about an Atoms for Peace redux. Americans wondered anew about the safety of our reactors, including Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, both located on the beach, on fault lines, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean’s notorious ring of fire. If an advanced country like Japan couldn’t prepare adequately for known risks, how would less developed countries like India, Pakistan, Iran, or Egypt handle such emergencies? Maybe the protesters at Diablo Canyon were right. Like the boomers, nuclear technology is feeling its age, but neither is ready to call it quits. We are, after all, mostly techno-optimists. Maybe nuclear power is our best option. Maybe nuclear fusion will solve our energy dilemma. Maybe.

Nuclear technology has been good to me. My interest in the double-edged nature of technology created opportunities to learn, write, teach, prosper, travel, provide for my family and serve my country. Nuclear technology, materials, and knowledge are neither good nor bad; they serve both sides of man’s dualistic nature. Whether latent nuclear capabilities remain controlled is a matter of intentions, and that is a political rather than a technological issue.

Wavy Gravy encouraging protesters in detention.

Free at last. Released from detention, San Luis Obispo.

Protest at Diablo Canyon, 1980

Full circle. Vandenberg missile base, 2022.

Vandenberg, Minuteman ICBM test launch, 2022. Me in the middle.

USS Hornet, historic aircraft carrier, Alameda CA, 2020. The Dolittle Raid was a case study in Strategic Latency.

Pakistan, 2015 meeting with Pakistan Army’s Strategic Plans Division about nuclear strategy.

In my office, introducing my new book about technology innovation, Strategic Latency and World Power, 2016.

Guest lecture, Air Force Academy, B-52, 2017.

Other times I can barely see

Lately it occurs to me

What a long, strange trip it’s been

Truckin, Grateful Dead

Chapter Seven

Hit the Road, Zack.

It was not uncommon to find a carburetor in the kitchen sink or an engine block in the pantry. Somebody was always rebuilding an engine, bleeding their brakes, or scheming to get somewhere. There were cars in various states of disrepair in the garages, driveways, streets, alleys and lawns of the houses me and my friends shared over the years. We were car guys in a car culture who depended on our wheels for everything. But unlike our hot rodding, muscle car, four wheeling, and low riding contemporaries, our crew was mostly utilitarian. We just wanted them to go.

My chariots were pretty ragged. My swooping black 1948 Dodge sedan had running boards, suicide doors and enough room inside to fit eight people in the overstuffed bench seats. I drove a group of naked guys and girls through a Jack in the Box in that car. We ordered tacos. When I got pulled over by the Highway Patrol in Encinitas, my friend Tom and I had to lean with all our might against the rear bumper to keep it from rolling backwards over the officer, and us. It had no parking brake. My yellow 1964 Studebaker Champ pick-up truck could get rubber in third gear. Crossing the US-Canada border with the truck bed full of snow (extra weight for traction), a US border guard handed me a shovel and made me empty it, then he cut the heels off my cowboy boots, ostensibly searching for drugs. Fucker.

Nobody wanted to be seen anywhere near my 1966 International Travelall, let alone drive in it. With its saggy bloated, body shape and drooping white fenders, it looked and drove like a Beluga whale on wheels, alternately billowing greasy black fumes followed by clouds of white smoke. I rebuilt the carburetor a half a dozen times. When the suspension broke near the California-Oregon border, I just walked away. My Creamsicle orange 1957 GMC delivery van was the ultimate hippie dream machine, complete with the stove, sink and hammock I installed. The heat, smoke and noise inside the cab would leave you filthy and deaf after even a short trip to the store. But mostly me and my friends had Volkswagens. There were bugs, squarebacks, notchbacks, fastbacks, dune buggies, Karman Ghias, and every possible variation of Volkswagen bus.

The Volkswagen bus had everything a young guy needed: a mobile bed with room for surfboards, clothes, and tools. I lived in my brown1968 bus for a whole year in college. I wasn’t the only one living in the UC Santa Cruz parking lot either. I showered and shaved in the athletics department locker room, ate in the dorm cafeteria, attended classes and surfed during the day, studied and pursue romance in the college library at night, then retired to the parking lot with a million dollar view of the Monterey Bay to sleep in my van. When the campus police banged on the door and shone their flashlights through the aloha-pattern curtains to evict the car campers, I would stealthily sink down into my sleeping bag and hide until they left, like a kid crawling under his covers to hide from the boogey man.

Whether you were driving cross country, visiting friends, or urban street camping, the VW bus provided two essential ingredients of survival: shelter and mobility. Of course, keeping them running required skills. Every guy I knew (except Tom) could drop a VW engine and make major repairs on the side of the road. A friend once called me from a desolate strip of Arizona highway to ask if I would drop the engine from another friend’s bus parked at our house and drive it out to him in the back of my bus. We would replace his blown motor with the other one, drive back to Long Beach, then switch them back before our friend found out. It worked, but somebody blabbed and he found out. Acting on a last minute decision to drive to Canada from Santa Cruz, we combined two VW busses to build one reliable enough to make the trip; Martin’s body, my wheels, and an engine we constructed from both. Driving South on highway 101 near Portland I looked in the mirror to see an orgy under way in the back of the bus. Oh well, I got a blow job near Bellingham. We were socialists when it came to Volkswagen parts – each according to his needs was the rule – even if it meant pilfering parts from an unsuspecting donor.

The sad truth was that the four cylinder Volkswagen engines blew up with frightening regularity. You lived with the knowledge that you could be stranded by the side of the road at any time. For me it happened in Portland, Maine, New York City, and of course Santa Cruz – where tired old Volvos and Volkswagens go to die. The good news was that you had a place to stay in the vehicle while you made repairs. But you lived in constant fear of not reaching your destination, and instead being sidetracked into an unwelcome mini adventure.

Here’s the anatomy of a breakdown. 1) Hearing a weird noise, you acknowledge the likely onset of mechanical doomsday. 2) Quickly find an acceptable place to pull over on the side of the road. You might be there for a while. 3) Get out and figure out what broke. This part often required crawling underneath the vehicle. 4) Gather money, tools and parts. This stage can take days, and usually required old-fashioned telephones. 5) Fix the problem. Can also take days and may require assistance. We faced these disasters with tight lipped resolve, like it was cancer.

I was tuned into my VW bus engines’ whine like a first-time mother monitoring her newborn baby at night. Climbing up the Cuesta grade north of San Luis Obispo or the Grapevine outside of LA in an old Volkswagen was like running the bulls at Pamplona; your odds of making it were good, but not guaranteed. VW engines are cooled by air, not water. No radiator. You had to keep the revs up, but not too high for fear of overheating, especially the notorious third cylinder which was usually the first to go. On the steepest parts of the grade, you had to wind it out in second gear, shift into third without losing power (double clutch), careful not to lug it, staying as alert as a prairie dog for telltale tapping or knocking sounds. Before your engine blew, you would hear a light tap tap tapping, then a hollow wooden knocking, then the final metal bending clang and grind. Finding a good place to break down was an art form. During a long trip, you were bound to ask yourself at least once, “Should I risk it and keep going or pull over now?”

All of us fancied ourselves to be great drivers, whether it was trucks, tractors, trains, or anything on wheels. Our skills were honed by reckless experimentation. We drove with shitty brakes and bald tires, blown cylinders and busted windows. My friend Marty drove a bunch of us in his VW bus on Pacific Coast Highway from Long Beach to San Clemente and back – without brakes. None, just masterful gear-downs and fast right turns to avoid collision. Matt had to drive his VW bus barefoot, because the spring that popped the brake pedal back up was broken, and the brakes required vigorous pumping with your toes curled around the pedal to lift it back up from the floorboards. It was especially hard if you just got out of the water from surfing and your toes were frozen. That same bus also had a big hole in the floor through which you could see the road going by, like Fred Flintstone. Gordie replaced the busted gear shifter in his Bronco with a vice-grip.

We learned snow driving by doing donuts in parking lots and applied our knowledge on long sideways drifts in mountain passes. A particularly harrowing spin out in the Canadian Rockies left my pal Brent and I climbing gingerly out of the back of his VW bus as it teetered on a boulder, inches and ounces away from disappearing into a craggy abyss with us in it. The tow truck driver said, “Boys, it looks like this was your lucky day.” Good driving was a matter of survival, and I had lots of practice cheating death. Faced with a choice between taking terrible risks or not going anywhere, we all drove. Eddie would go.

We hit the road on a whim – up the coast to see friends in Vancouver, rock climbing in Joshua Tree and Yosemite, surfing in Baja, New York City just for the hell of it. I drove to Washington D.C. and toured the White House, the Capitol, and the Smithsonian, then drove home. Gas was cheap, and our lives were not dictated by commitments to work or family. Just pile in the car and go and decide later if and when to go home. Get work if you need money. A group of us set off one morning to go surfing in Santa Barbara where we lived and kept chasing the swell south until we ended up in Mexico by nightfall, four of us in my Venezuelan buddy’s rusted out 66 Oldsmobile. We slept on the sand, wrapped in towels, on Rosarito Beach, about 20 miles south of Tijuana, and pooled our money for tacos and cheap Mexican beer. The waves were fantastic, three to four foot greasy peeling beach break barrels at a spot called Baja Malibu, and we saw a pod of killer whales in the line-up.

Exploring remote hot springs in the Utah desert, I encountered a group of Mormon mystics who shared their meditation techniques. “Always practice alertness,” their patriarch counseled. This resonated with me, always hyper alert to the point of twitchiness, most likely undiagnosed ADHD like my dad and my son Max. I’ve always been twitchy. Road trips were the aperture through which we got information about the world, akin to what cable TV and social media provide today. We drove.

I idolized our patron saint of road literature, Jack Kerouac, and lamely tried to emulate his literary offspring Neil Cassidy. Drive, drive, double clutch, drive, handle any situation, fix what had to be fixed, read the classics, go wherever you want to go, do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it, just don’t fuck up. As a boomer latecomer, I was too young to run away and join Ken Kesey’s Merry Prankster circus, but me and my friends copied their antics, like a younger sibling trying to impress the older kids.

Fortunately, most people were tolerant and forgiving when my friends and I pulled stunts like clinging to the outsides of speeding vehicles, jumping back and forth between moving cars, dragging people riding skateboards, bikes, discarded couches, shopping carts, old surfboards, hunks of plywood, and sleds behind our careening cars. And then there were the normal transgressions like playing chicken, street racing, driving standing up with your head sticking through the sun roof, lawn driving, Chinese fire drills, and doing donuts (better in snowy Canada). I get the attraction of the modern sideshow, where drivers take turns doing donuts in the street while onlookers gather to hoot and holler, although that appreciation does not prevent me from cursing them and calling the cops when the do it my neighborhood. But I get it. Motorcycle antics deserve a separate chapter. All too often these feats of inexcusable recklessness were conducted under the influence of mind altering substances. I used up enough good karma for ten lifetimes, because somehow nobody in my group of friends got seriously injured. We were lucky. Really lucky.

Thumbing a Ride

People still hitch hiked in the 1970s, so hitting the road was still an option even if you didn’t have your own wheels. While it seems unthinkable today, Americans of all stripes and backgrounds actually picked up hitchhikers on city streets, freeways and country roads. It wasn’t just hippies who offered rides; I got picked up by traveling salesmen, truck drivers, and even families pulled over and invited strangers into their vehicles and their lives. The decision to pick up a hitchhiker had to be made quickly. Upon seeing someone with their thumb in the air on the side of the road, you had to assess their appearance (girls had it easy), then navigate through traffic and stop by the roadside. When hitching myself, I always kept walking. Even if my destination was hundreds of miles away, at least you were doing something to help your cause, not just standing there waiting for someone to take pity on you.

When I was driving, I favored hitchhikers who did the same. After pulling over, drivers still had one last chance to change their mind if the approaching hitchhiker(s) looked undesirable. (“Shit, it’s a dude! Gas it!”) A common hitchhiker trick was to hide extra passengers in the bushes until a car stopped, then jump out and pile in with the unsuspecting ride giver. Usually a girl would do the hitching and the guys would hide. Once in the car, everyone was stuck with each other until somebody decided to go a different direction. Some people wanted to tell their life stories, others rode in awkward silence.

Hitchhiking depended on social contracts steeped in the American experience when lots of people didn’t have their own cars, sprinkled with 1960s inspired egalitarianism. Drivers shared the wealth of wheels; their motorless brothers and sisters gratefully relied on the kindness of strangers. Today asking for free transportation seems a bit more like panhandling than communalism. You have to be really poor to not have a car, and nobody picks up hitchhikers anymore.

Thumbing a ride put you in the cross hairs for adventure. When we were sixteen, my friend Tom and I hitchhiked across Canada from British Columbia to Ontario, for no particular reason and with no destination in mind. Tom wrote a book about that trip. We started with thirty dollars between us. After being stranded on the Saskatchewan prairie without a ride for two days (by which time we were holding up signs saying “Mars or bust”), then being thrown in jail overnight by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Nipawa, Manitoba for no reason at all. In Wawa, Ontario we decided to cross to the other side of the Trans Canada Highway and head back west. We were nearly eaten alive by the demonic black flies before a newish Chevy pick-up truck with no less than fifteen souls in the back pulled over.

A wild-eyed, tattooed, rockabilly character wearing tight Canadian jeans, black cowboy boots, a sleeveless jean jacket, and a greasy blond pompadour hailed us from the cab, “Got any food or gas money?” “Not much of either,” we admitted. “What the hell! Get in and we’ll find someone who does,” he railed. We piled into the already jammed truck bed, where we learned that our benefactor and his thuggish square-headed, wife beater, buzz cut buddy in the cab with him had escaped from prison, stolen the truck, and had recruited all the hitchhikers in the truck to assist them in their dash for freedom. They were going all the way to Vancouver.

The friendly convicts picked up every hitchhiker they saw going westbound on the Trans Canada Highway. We stopped at gas stations, truck stops and convenience stores, where my friend Tom earned his keep by stuffing enough food into his jacket to feed everyone a steady diet of cheddar cheese bricks and candy bars. The escapees invited the pretty French Canadian girl in our midst in the back of the truck to sit up front with them, which she did, leaving her big, ugly, dyed blond afro haired friend to fend for herself with the rabble in the back. There was no place to sit, and the wind was ferocious. They drove 100 mph across the prairie.

I stood for hours peering at the road over the cab. When I looked into the front seat, the thuggish co-pilot was feeling up the pretty French girl. The wind made everyone’s hair look like the bride of Frankenstein. Desperate to stretch his long legs, Tom dangled them dangerously over the back of the extended tail gate, bouncing his Converse tennis shoes on the pavement as it whizzed by. Rooting down into the smelly tangle of bodies for a respite from the wind, I was horrified to see a clean cut college guy with his hand down the pants of the unattractive half of the French Canadian girl duo, both of them moaning. We raided a cabbage patch in Manitoba and shared several heads of raw cabbage, which produced horrendous farts from all of us. Fortunately, the wind whooshed away the stench. But we made it back across the prairie, through the Rockies back to Vancouver, where the escapees planned to ditch the stolen truck and disappear into the coastal rain forest. We got out near Coquitlam and walked the remaining few miles home, broke and bedraggled. “Oh, hi boys,” my parents greeted us after being gone for a couple of weeks without contact. “How was your little trip?” That was it. “It was fine. Is there anything to eat around here?” Our hair was so tangled that we just cut it all off.

I made friends hitchhiking. When my truck broke down and stranded me in southern British Columbia, I had to thumb a ride with my azure blue Gerry Lopez, Lighting Bolt surfboard that I was retrieving from Long Beach back to my home in Cranbrook, where I worked on the railroad. Stranded in rural BC, hundreds of miles from the ocean, the president of the Calgary Alberta Street Racing Association pulled over in his jacked up, tricked out, candy apple red Dodge Dart muscle car and offered me a ride. We stuffed the board in the back seat with the fins hanging out the window and drank Kokanee lagers (It was normal to drink while driving back then) while we traded stories about surfing and street racing for the two hours it took to drive through the mountains back to Cranbrook. He gave me a Calgary Street Racing Association t shirt. Back then, it was common for people to ask hitchhikers to take turns driving during long trips. A drunken sailor racing to get back to his ship in Long Beach let me drive his 65 Pontiac a hundred miles per hour down Highway 5 while he slept in the back seat all the way from Weed, the curiously named little town at the top of California, to the port of Long Beach. I was 16 and had a Canadian learners permit.

Speaking of weed, people often shared joints or other libations with hitchhikers. Typical kindness to strangers included offers of food and places to spend the night. A guy who picked me up in Portland Oregon had replaced the front and back seats in his hulking black, bullet bumpered 1955 Cadillac with a plywood platform and equipped it with pillows and hand controls so he could drive with his legs crossed in the lotus position. He offered me a floor to sleep on and in the morning made me breakfast before performing a five minute ritual to officially certify me as a Universal Life Church minister. I’ve performed three wedding services, one of which survived the test of time. I’ll never do it again.

An eccentric guy who had inherited a vast expanse of walnut and avocado orchards in the coastal hills north of Santa Barbara picked me up hitching in Ventura. He offered to let me stay in his barn if I helped him harvest the walnut crop. It took a few weeks to figure out, but me and some other hitchhikers got the nuts off the trees. We hired Mexicans to knock the walnuts off the trees with sticks onto tarps, which we dragged to the barn where we loaded them into huge drying bins where blowers circulate air though the nuts. You could jump into the walnut bins from the top of the barn and swim through their nutty depths without suffocating. It was probably dangerous.

When the walnuts were dry it was time to deliver them to a walnut processor in Camarillo, about 40 miles south, where they would be shelled and packaged. I loaded several tons of nuts into a rented International farm truck and drove down Highway 1, on the gorgeous stretch of Ventura highway made famous in the song by the band America. Unfortunately, there was a hole in the truck bed through which a steady stream of walnuts was spilling out onto the iconic road’s southbound lanes near Rincon, the legendary surf spot known among surfers as the Queen of the Coast. A few drivers pulled up to me in the passing lane and gestured wildly to warn me about the walnuts escaping from the truck and decorating the concrete in my wake. I pulled over near the oil drilling pier a mile past Rincon and tried to plug the leak by stuffing my flannel shirt in the gap between the tail gate and the sidewall of the truck bed, but nuts kept leaking until I arrived at the processing plant near Oxnard. I’m no businessman, but this escapade not appear to be a profitable endeavor.

While I was busy harvesting walnuts and cavorting in the barn with his niece who drove up from Hollywood, the guy who owned the ranch bought a dozen surplus police cruisers and several tons of plastic molding equipment at an auction with the expectation that I, along with some other guys he picked up hitchhiking between his home in LA and the ranch in Santa Barbara, would fix them up and use the cars and the plastic molding equipment to start a communal business on the ranch. When I asked him, “What do you want to make out of plastic?” he said he was hoping I would figure out how to make something that would be profitable. “How about combs, or kitchen utensils, or toys?” He was a good-hearted dreamer whose plan was to create a utopia out of a trust fund, a walnut ranch, a bunch of discarded old cars and industrial equipment, and a random collection of hitchhikers. That was the 70s. Me and the other hitchhikers drove the police cars back to the ranch, where we drove the shit out of them on the dirt roads, doing donuts and getting air like Steve McQueen in Bullet and the Dukes of Hazard. It was fun. Then we all drifted away in our separate directions. That was also the 70s.

Not all hitchhiking adventures were welcome. Sometimes the people who picked you up wanted to include you in whatever insanity they were chasing. “Hey man, you want to party?” I picked up a guy in downtown Long Beach who was out of his mind on PCP. Bob was paranoid and violent and alternately threatening and begging for help. My friends and I let him sleep it off on our couch, but he spent the night wandering through the house demanding to know “What are these walls are made of, man?” Hitchhiking in Calgary, Alberta during the Calgary Stampede Rodeo, cowboys threw beer bottles at me and Tom from their trucks. Luckily, it’s hard to accurately fling a beer bottle out the window while going 80 mph. On several occasions people swerved onto the gravel shoulder, as if they were trying to run us over, leaving us no choice but to dive into the ditch.

I got a good scare sleeping under a bridge on Highway 1, south of Carmel, California, where I bedded down for the night after giving up hope of getting a ride. The river was dry and I laid out my sleeping bag next to a log. At 3 AM I was awoken by voices and flashlights slashing through the river bed. I heard muffled voices coming my way, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Who else but criminals or crazies would be in this borrego at this time of night? A young British hitchhiker also seeking refuge under the bridge pulled out his golf club for defense. I grasped my Buck knife and crouched behind the log, straining to hear what the intruders were saying. Some sort of satanic ritual? Maybe they were looking for a human sacrifice. They turned out to be a club of elderly bird watchers hoping to glimpse a rare nocturnal owl known to inhabit the river beds. They were more scared of us than we were of them. “What are these men doing in the river bed at this time of night?”

When I finally got a ride the next day, it was with bunch of stoned hippies in a VW bus who sang Grateful Dead songs and laughed and smoked pot as we careened around the mind-bending S curves and 100 foot cliffs around Big Sur. I was terrified, and spent the entire ride preparing to wrench the steering wheel away from my bleary-eyed benefactor. “Relax brother, go with the flow,” he assured me as he casually taunted death. Hitchhiking exposed you to raw human interactions in ways that we now avoid. It was always a gamble.

American attitudes toward the road have changed. There are too many unknown variables. We don’t trust ourselves to be out there without GPS, Google maps, Waze, the Automobile Club, cell phones and the Weather Channel tracking our every move. The idea of striking out on a road trip in a funky old car, without a plan, using folded paper maps (or a Thomas Guide) – much less hitching rides with strangers— seems unthinkable in today’s America. We demand more certainty, protection, and tolerate far less risk. Freedom is out there, but our willingness to endure its rigors has waned. Still, I wouldn’t mind hitting the road again. Maybe I’ll buy an RV (I did.). And if I see any hitchhikers, maybe I’ll give them a ride.

Me and Tom with our 1948 Dodge, equipped with Fluid Drive and suicide doors, Long Beach, 1974

My 1968 VW bus, Santa Barbara, 1979

My 1958 GMC delivery van, Las Vegas, circa 1976

My 1955 Plymouth Belvedere, Charlottesville, 1987

Brent’s VW notchback, road trip in British Columbia.

Wrenching on a VW bug, Lake Tahoe, 1975.

My yellow 1962 Studebaker Champ, filled with snow for traction.

VW busses in the driveway, Santa Barbara, 1979

Ford F150, surf trip to Eastern Canada, 1984

Me and Matt, Norton Commando and Triumph Bonneville, Santa Cruz, 1982

On the road again in my new rig. Nevada, 2025.

Oh I, I got work to do

I got work baby

I got a job baby

I got work to do

Everybody’s got work to do

Isley Brothers

Work to Do

Chapter Five

Observations on Work, Race, Religion and Equality

Where I got such a large dose of Protestant work ethic, I don’t know. My mom and dad were happy if I didn’t hurt people and stayed out of jail. For me, the importance of being a productive contributor to society shaped my attitudes toward other people and their lifestyle choices. My concept of freedom combines the 1960s tolerance for individual expression, with high expectations for personal responsibility. You can let your freak flag fly and still pay your bills. Get a job. Do it well. Get paid. Reap the psychological and material benefits. Be a good citizen.

That hasn’t changed, although good opportunities are harder to come by these days. Working folks didn’t need food banks the way they do now. There were hobos, drifters, drunks and drug addicts in the 60s, 70s and 80s, but no sprawling homeless encampments with thousands of lost souls barely clinging to a shredded existence in makeshift societies of ramshackle RVs and scavenged building materials stretching for miles along our freeways. Where I live in the Bay Area you pass through a zombie apocalypse to get across town, teeming with gaunt, sad, dirty, desperate people wandering aimlessly among the sagging tents, sad shacks, junk cars, stripped bikes and rusted lawnmowers, some begging, many stoned, a few ranting about god knows what as they wander into traffic. That’s the real American carnage. What the hell happened to their pursuit of happiness? Did they fall off the lower rungs of the economic ladder into homelessness, get hooked on drugs, or suffer from mental illness? My endless summer of opportunity didn’t exist for them. Why not?

I left home the day after high school and went to work at gas stations, construction sites, restaurants, railroads, dumps, marinas, refineries, orchards and eventually the government. Work is still out there, but it’s harder to come by than when I was young. Like the dust bowl families in The Grapes of Wrath, the Okies in the Bakersfield oil fields, the black folk in the south who moved north to get factory jobs, the traveling salesmen, the Chinese and Irish immigrants who built the railroads, and the hillbilly highway in previous eras, work today requires people to pack up and move to where the job are. The Mexicans and Central Americans coming across the Southern border to find work represent the Woody Guthrie spirit that drives the American dream. I put the Afghan, Syrian and African refugees in the same category. If you want to talk about strong work ethics and family values, these are the people we want as neighbors, the ones etched on the base of the Statue of Liberty.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

We had it right. There is something about the dignity of work that builds character and instills respect for the toils of others. Life is hard. Get a job.

Of all the big American ideals that we have endeavored to keep alive– freedom, liberty, democracy, justice -- equality has a special appeal for the boomers. In America, it’s supposed to be a fair fight, a meritocracy where everyone is free to succeed or fail based on their individual actions. From Thomas Jefferson to Malcolm X, the prophets of egalitarianism got it right. The Declaration of Independence asserts that we are born with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s true, but you must grip them tightly or they can be taken away. Lately, that seems to be happening at an alarming rate. As Bob Marley cautioned, it’s our responsibility to stand up for our rights.

I have a libertarian streak. We are free to fight for equal opportunities, but nothing is guaranteed and nobody owes you anything. You have as much chance as anyone else to grab the brass ring. Sounds good, but my naive belief in the idea of equality led me to underestimate the potency of race, religion, and gender in shaping the world. I was raised to downplay ethnicity and culture, so I was slow to comprehend that for most people there’s more to their identity than what we scribe on the supposedly blank slate you’re born with. It’s not a fair fight. It should be, but it’s not.

Religious and ethnic differences were a mystery to me. My best friend was Catholic, but I had no idea of what it meant other than having to go to church on Sunday. My dad was a scientist who didn’t believe in anything that could not be proven through the scientific method. He was an unapologetic atheist. When I asked him if Santa Claus is real, he asked what evidence I had of his existence. I didn’t know my step-mother was Jewish until I was in my twenties, which in retrospect explained her horror-stricken reaction to the swastikas and Maltese crosses I scribbled on my yellow 5^thgrade school folders. I was dumbfounded in Hawaii when my schoolmates bullied me for being a “haole.” I used my dad’s razor to shave the blond hair off my arms to look more Asian, but they still beat me up, stole my marbles and crammed me in the trash can. In college, my black girlfriend had to explain her friend’s jokes about dating a blond surfer. (Shrinkage!)

I didn’t understand ethnic or religious stereotypes beyond what I saw on All in the Family. I was baffled by the hostility of the lesbians in Santa Cruz and black citizens of Washington D.C. toward my Labrador retriever-like friendliness. I didn’t give a damn about their race, gender or religion, so why did they treat me like I was their fucking colonial oppressor? “Hey, some of my best friends are black Jewish lesbians.” My blue collar working class buddies from Compton and Hawaiian Gardens didn’t seem to care so much about my race and I sure as hell didn’t care about theirs.

I discovered in my thirties that I have mostly Mayflower and Jamestown blue blood in my veins, but it means nothing to me. Nobody gives a shit. Character is built, not inherited. Nevertheless, idealistic notions of equality are easier to believe if you come from the white, middle class suburbs of Southern California than if you had to claw your way up through poverty and indifference. I had it easy, but forfeited a portion of my white privilege to work my way up through the obstacle courses of the American dream, sharing experiences with people who knew exactly what it meant to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. I learned from them.

Rather than claiming my free pass to join the educated elite, I chose to pay my dues with the working class. I left home the day after high school ended and didn’t go to college until I was twenty-three. Instead of college, I pumped gas, washed dishes, pounded nails, emptied trash, drove trucks, picked apples, worked on the railroad, and faked my way through any handyman job that paid five bucks an hour. I took jobs roofing, plumbing, landscaping, painting, and working in oil refineries. For me, the 1970s was a string of gritty days and nights on the job, mostly without breaks or benefits. I paid no attention to insurance and never went to the doctor or dentist. Not once. If you didn’t show up for work, you didn’t get paid.

As a working man, I saw firsthand how tough it is to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps -- and how the deck is stacked for the elites. It was the same thing in Washington DC. Stupid rich kids get good jobs and second chances. The working poor have to fight for every opportunity, especially if you’re black. My bosses and buddies at the oil refinery and the railroad all used the N word freely and called everyone faggots. Women faced brutal discrimination. Things have improved for lots of people thanks to the laws and protections championed by civil rights and boomer activists, but America is still not nearly as fair as lots of people like to believe, including me. Our more perfect union is still a work in progress. We need more of what the great John Lewis called “good trouble.” We have a big job ahead of us to rebuild the damage done by Trump and restore the American Dream for working people. I studied the tech bro billionaire mentality for a research project and interviewed a few of them. They don’t give a fuck about America. They are not patriots. It’s up to us to take it back.

Many so-called “golden boomers” (the first wave of post war boomers) pursued careers “inside the system” trying to make our country live up to its promises. Original boomers like Bill and Hillary Clinton, and even George Bush Jr., flirted with counter culture, but ultimately took up JFK’s challenge to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” In contrast to the self-centeredness that inspired so much of the 60s culture (If it feels good, do it!), boomers who joined the military or became cops, firemen, teachers, social workers, politicians, and just good citizens, rejected the hyper individualism of the times and found satisfaction in public service.

I eventually followed that path myself. I even worked for George Bush Jr. in the White House. But in 1969, at age 14, I was suspicious of all the major factions within American society: The Establishment (the government guys screwing things up), the Hippies (the heartfelt social do-gooders and their slacker cohorts), and especially the Radicals (the criminals and destructive assholes, like the Weather Underground). America allowed all of them to pursue their separate visions of happiness, however twisted and misguided they were. As a kid, I didn’t give a shit what any of them did, so long as they left me alone. I was more interested in freedom than obligation. The flip side of “Power to the people” is “Don’t tread on me.”

When you combine the founding myths of equality and freedom with 60s individualism and 70s opportunity, you get a weird mix of liberal, conservative, and libertarian attitudes. That’s why lots of people my age combine redneck and hippie values. We’re a mash up of Johnny Cash and Jimi Hendrix. Merle Haggard and the Doors. Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers, meet your Southern California outlaw cousins, the Flying Burrito Brothers and the Byrds. We embrace our obligations to society and we’re happy to pitch in, but we expect everyone who can to do their share. I pay my taxes and give to charity. I own guns, drink alcohol, and haven’t done anything illegal for over forty years, (except speeding, which I do daily). I’ve worked for the government long enough to be skeptical of big government programs, but I expect the government to enforce equal opportunity and equal justice for all. I don’t smoke weed but I respect the right of people to decide for themselves what they eat or drink or smoke. I’m a hawk on matters of national security because it’s a dangerous world and I believe that the government has no business telling a woman what to do with her own body. Conservative yet liberal, a combination of hippie and redneck values.

For better or worse, the sixties spillover effects allowed us boomer-latecomers to enjoy the acrid afterglow of the political and social changes that rocked America in the 1960s and 70s. In contrast to the Gen X slackers who whined about the lack of opportunities in the tough economy of the 1980s, or the Millennials whose childhood was supposedly scarred by 9-11, and now Gen Z with its self-righteous wokeness, coming of age in the 1970s was easy. Thankfully, my transgressions largely went undocumented – until now.

Like the older brothers and sisters who wore down their parents and cleared a path for younger siblings to push the limits of freedom, the first wave of baby boomers wore down the Greatest Generation and opened the doors for us Generation Jones boomer tag-alongs to enjoy unbridled freedom in a land of boundless opportunity. What I did with the gift of freedom is the subject of this book.

We were right.

This makes us special.

Consent of the governed?

Black power is American power.

Our gang of Generation Jones Boomers. Long Beach, mid 1970s.

Merle Haggard, Working Man Blues

Chapter Six

Oil, Apples, Trains and Trucks

I hitchhiked back to California the day after high school ended in June 1972, a week after my 18^th birthday, a week before the arrest of the Watergate burglars. Our family had moved from Long Beach, California to Vancouver, British Columbia, where my dad took a sabbatical at Simon Fraser University. Throughout my late teens, I bounced back and forth between my friends in Southern California and Canada. I had no plans for higher education, much less a career. Maybe it was my way of rebelling against my educated parents. I was sort of a drifter.

Oil

Back in California I pumped gas and washed dishes until I joined the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union and started working in the oil refineries you see belching fumes next to the 405 freeway south of the LA airport. I made good money for a kid, and I felt lucky to watch the burnt sienna sunrise over Los Angeles from atop the refinery’s lofty towers and clamber through the guts of its industrial innards. I also choked on toxic gas leaks (sulfur dioxide), and learned to evade work and supervisors on the graveyard shift by carrying tools and walking like you know what you are doing. Any implement, even a broom, makes you invisible to managers. These were important life lessons. We went on strike (I didn’t know why) and took shifts on the picket line where we hassled scab laborers crossing our lines and huddled around a fire burning in a 55-gallon drum, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes like a bunch of bums.

Working in the oil refinery was an education in manhood. I cashed my paycheck in the nearby biker bar in Wilmington, near Lions Drag Strip where my dad took us to the races as a kid, and hung out with mostly black and Latino oil workers from Compton and Torrance. Growing up just a few miles down the 405 freeway in white suburban Long Beach, I never met those guys from Compton except a few guys who were bussed to our school, but working and hanging out with them, we were all in the same boat and shared stories about our youthful antics.

We drank boilermakers in bars (beer with a shot of whiskey), smoked weed, and cranked Santana and Hendrix while cruising in their bitchen lowrider Impalas or my hulking white International Travelall. With my hard hat, steel-toe boots, Levis, lunch box, flannel work shirts, and blond ponytail streaming down my back, I was a full member of the working man tribe, all of us making a living producing gas to fuel the Third Industrial Age. I loved the big tools and the fact that I was allowed to operate massive pneumatic drills, hydraulic lifts, overhead cranes, and wrenches the size of my head.

The older tradesmen had families and went home after one beer, but most of the pipe fitters and riggers at the refinery shared their knowledge freely and advised us younger guys to go to college. One day while we were building a giant scaffold to remove a section of the catalytic converter, or cat cracker, one of the cool older dudes, a blond surfer and diver who looked like a grizzled Robert Redford, took me aside and said, “Zack, get the fuck out of here. You don’t want to spend your life in this shithole. I wish I had gone to college. I wanted to be an architect, but it’s too late now. Leave this place and don’t come back.” That got me thinking, but not about school.

Apples

One of my SoCal friends, lanky, earnest Ron Hogan, had run away from an abusive home during his senior year of high school and found his way to the apple-growing region of central Washington, where he built a life as a supervisor on an apple orchard. Inspired by Ron’s tall tales about the purity (we learned later about the chemicals they used) and rugged freedom (it paid shit) of orchard life, a few of us aspiring adventurers road-tripped our way up the coast to Wenatchee and joined the ranks of migrant fruit pickers waiting for the fall apple harvest. The pickers were a motley crew of Mexicans, hobos, hippies, and lost souls. We fit right in, and soon convinced a bunch of our friends to join us in the orchards.

Apple harvest begins in September, after the good kids are back at college. When the grower decides that the fruit is ripe he assembles his picking crew, who then take up residence in raggedy shacks, tents, and vehicles scattered throughout the orchard grounds. Most apple growers lead typical farm lives; they build hot rods, their wives cook and sew, and their kids play football and join the 4H Club. But around harvest time, gonzo gypsy villages sprout on their property, each one a mini Burning Man brimming with more drama than a Mexican soap opera.

Picture a mash up of the Grapes of Wrath and the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. In our camp, Gonzalo, a cosmic Mexican troubadour, serenaded us nightly with his rhythms and rhymes. The hobos and fruit tramps (there is a distinction) brewed homemade beer and cider, got smashed, and shared stories about hopping freight trains and scamming everything for free. The hippies spun their visions of universal peace and harmony. We played unruly games of stoner baseball and basketball. Inspired by Carlos Castaneda’s books, we ate psychedelic mushrooms and fancied ourselves to be a lost tribe of the Beat Generation. The girls were smart and sexy and hardworking and fun, except Tom’s girlfriend Lynn who was a brooding, spiteful, Mexican nymphomaniac who liked to fuck in public places. Usually the apple farmers stayed aloof from the picker’s craziness, but around harvest time the girls in short shorts and halter tops were difficult for them to ignore.

For a bunch of white, middle class, California city kids trying to escape what they viewed as the boredom of their bland culture, it was Eden. We learned to drive tractors, Caterpillars, and forklifts. Ron showed us how to keep them from tipping over sideways or losing control on steep hills. We encountered for the first-time diesel glow plugs, wood stoves, splitting axes, and homemade hooch. We dove off cliffs naked into to icy mountain pools, four-wheeled on mountain back roads, and ate the biggest, juiciest apples on Earth. You could barely get your mouth around them, and the when you took a bite they made a cracking sound like Indiana Jones’s bullwhip. We made applesauce, apple jelly, apple butter, apple juice, apple cider, apple muffins, apple butter, and dried apple leather. We lugged bags of apples up and down spindly wood ladders from dawn to dark, then drank and sang and tried to seduce girls at night. The girls, of course, did plenty of seduction of their own. I honestly don’t recall any consent issues, perhaps because all of us felt equally empowered to do whatever the fuck we wanted, and not do anything we didn’t want to do. Sex in the orchard was intoxicating, among the fruit trees, blossoms, under the northwest stars, rolling in the grass, chilly air on warm sweaty bodies, feeling like Adam and Eve at the beginning of everything. When you closed your eyes after a long day of apple picking, you still saw apples hurtling past like planets whizzing by in hyperspace.

But picking apples is damn hard work. You get paid by the bin, which means you hustle your ass off to make any money. You work in pairs, and my partner and best buddy Tom, was a lousy apple picker. He was a philosopher and not driven by the o-mighty dollar. We hardly made any money, and spent whatever we earned within a few days. And when the harvest ends, it’s time to move on. The migrant workers move south to harvest other crops, like oranges and peas. The hobos head to the rail yard, and the hippies continue their search for nirvana. I stayed in Wenatchee to work in an apple packing warehouse for a few weeks, where the apples are washed and packaged. then hitchhiked back to Long Beach where I planned to start back at the oil refinery when my high school pal Brent from Canada came up with a better idea. We would be brakemen on the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

Trains

I know the railroad robber barons stole the land, gouged it violently, and used forced labor to lay the wicked tracks across the American and Canadian heartland, but I love trains. Always have, always will. All trains, everywhere I go in the world. My affection includes freight trains, passenger trains, commuter trains, even subways, trolley cars, and toy trains. My grandmother loved trains, probably because her dad was a travelling salesman who came home every Friday evening to Petersburg Virginia on the Southern Railway’s 4-6-2 steam locomotive. That very train is parked for eternity in the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History, like a prehistoric fossil. I used to take my grandmother there to visit the 1401, and she would weep.

How does one become a brakeman on the railroad? Brent and I drove to the Rocky Mountain regional headquarters of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, in Cranbrook, British Columbia, where we got an appointment with the boss. Mr. Bay was a crusty old, pock-faced, white haired, fat fisted railroader who sat behind a massive wood desk in front of grimy windows overlooking the Cranbrook rail yard. He was bemused but impressed by our audacity. A pair of hippie upstarts. Brent and I both had hair down to our butts (we tucked our ponytails down the backs of our flannel shirts) and no relevant experience, but we convinced him to give us a chance. We told him we were competent and reliable and destined to ride the rails. He smiled to himself and nodded. We would have to take a qualifying exam on railroad rules and practices. If we passed we would have to go through a month of training at minimal pay. We would have to cut our hair, take the lousy assignments that nobody else wanted, and prove ourselves. We got our chance.

Brent and I rented a farmhouse on the outskirts of town, joined the union, bought our railroad-approved steel toe boots, leather gloves and gold pocket watches, and studied our asses off for the brakeman exam. We passed, of course, and within days were highballing through the Canadian Rockies, waving at kids from the lead engine as we sped through towns like Revelstoke, Nelson, Fernie, Golden, Michel, and Kimberly. Within a couple of weeks, we were fully qualified front end brakemen, responsible for putting trains together in the yard, equipping the lead engine with supplies, briefing the engineer on the route and our travel orders, switching tracks, picking up and dropping off rail cars (mostly at lumber mills and coal mines), and communicating with the conductor and the other brakeman who rode in the caboose at the end of the train. The latter was especially difficult if the conductor was drunk, asleep, or both.

Trains have changed since the early 1970s. We still got our orders on slips of yellow carbon paper pinned to a hoop at the end of a ten-foot pole, the same way trains got their orders a hundred years ago. Radio operators at remote outposts along the route received the orders from headquarters directing trains to pull into a siding (to avoid a head-on collision with an oncoming train), slow down for damaged track, or stop at stations, via telegraph and phone. When a train approached one of these outposts, the message operator clipped the rolled-up orders to the pole and held it up while standing next to the track. The brakeman had to lean out the window, sometimes at high speed, and put his arm through the hoop, then remove the orders and throw the pole down near the tracks where the telegraph operator could retrieve it.

Missing the pole was a cardinal sin that required the engineer to stop the train, which could take up to a mile for a heavy coal train. If he was in a good mood, the engineer, or “hogger,” might back up the train to recover the orders. Otherwise, he would make the guilty brakeman walk back to get them. The disgusted hogger would radio the conductor to report, “The fucking greenhorn kid missed the orders, we’re stopping.” It was even worse if you bobbled the pole and dropped the orders somewhere along the tracks. Then you had to walk back along the track searching for the orders and the pole, a difficult task at night, on a mountain pass, a bridge, along the edge of a cliff, or in a Rocky Mountain blizzard. My mantra was: Don’t fuck up.

Catching the orders was one of many tests of manhood on the railroad. Another was maintaining air pressure in the train’s braking system while connecting or disconnecting rail cars. After the couplers synch two cars together, you have to connect the air hoses. If you open the air cock too fast, the air from the whole train blows out and you have to re-pressurize the entire system. This takes time. If you blew the air out, you would hear the engineer and the conductor cursing you on the radio: “Fucking greenhorn, blew the air!”

Another test of manhood was switching the track quickly so the train didn’t have to slow down or, god forbid, stop. When approaching a switch, the brakeman jumps off the engine and runs out in front of the train, unlocks the switch with the key hanging from his belt, throws it to direct the train to a different track, then signals the engineer to proceed. You then light a flare and stick it in the ground to confirm the switch was correctly thrown. To prove ourselves, Brent and I would jump off the train while it was still going eight to ten miles per hour and run like mad on the track in front of the engine to throw the switch quickly, thus allowing the engineer to roll through without delay. Running on the rail bed was not easy. Rail ties are spaced too close for a full stride, yet too far apart for an easy gait. Plus, the fist-sized rocks that constitute the rail bed are natural ankle twisters, always unstable and ready to shift when you step on them. So, we looked like idiots run-skip-hopping along the tracks, doing our Monty Python silly walk impressions, trying to impress our elders.

We earned respect for our efforts to impress the old railroaders, but they also warned us that if we tripped while running on the gravel and railroad ties in front of the train we would be crushed under the wheels. That was the first time I heard the story about the old bull and the young bull, in which the young bull runs up to the old bull and says “Let’s run down into the meadow and fuck one of those cows,” and the old bull replies, “Let’s walk down and fuck em all.” The old timers didn’t want us to get hurt. Injuries caused delays and generated lots of paperwork. Besides, they were more impressed with my answer when they asked if I was “getting a bunch of that hippie pussy?” “Ab-so-fucking-lute-ley, sir.”

Even small mistakes can have big consequences on the railroad. Lots of railroaders were missing fingers. Although you might be tempted to save yourself a long walk around the end of the train by squeezing between two rail cars or scooting under them, if the cars moved even a little while you were between or under them you would be pinched in half like a baby seal in the jaws of a Great White shark. This image was even more vivid after seeing scores of cows ground into bloody hamburger under the wheels – a sight made even more gruesome in slow motion when the train was going one or two miles per hour. I would stand on the front platform of the locomotive, yelling and throwing cans of soda water and emergency flares at them, but the stupid cows wouldn’t move. We once crushed over twenty cows in a one-mile stretch after they trampled a fence separating them from the fresh grass growing next to the tracks. Some railroaders complained that the ranchers let the cows onto the tracks because they got paid compensation at top dollar. The trains hit other wildlife too: lots of deer, the occasional coyote, beavers, bears, and even a moose. I felt bad about it, but didn’t say anything for fear of sounding like a pussy.

The work was hard but lived up to my fantasy. What a feeling, all that power and unstoppable momentum, rolling along like a steel wave tsunami. I got satisfaction from coupling and uncoupling cars, directing the engineer to back up and pull forward using hand signals, flares, walkie-talkies, and my railroad lantern. I had an official Canadian Pacific Railroad switch key that worked in every railroad lock from BC to Prince Edward Island. (It’s on my keychain even now.) My Hamilton gold pocket watch never lost time. Like in the refinery and truck driving, the job came with heavy responsibilities. I loved hanging off the sides and tops of boxcars, tanker cars, grain cars and coal cars. Sometimes the brakeman had to cut a section of cars loose from the engine and ride them alone down a rail spur or siding, cranking down the manual brake to stop them and keep them from rolling backward once they reached their destination.

When dropping off or picking up rail cars at local mines and paper mills, the front half of the train had to shuttle back and forth between local deliveries without the caboose, so the brakeman had to ride the lead car to direct the engineer when to slow down, stop, back up, and proceed. Local deliveries were sometimes miles apart, which meant you had to cling to the ladder of the lead car and watch the tracks for long stretches of time, holding on for dear life with one hand and giving directions to the engineer via the radio in your other hand. You measured distance in car lengths, so you would tell the hogger he had “ten cars, eight, six, five, four cars, three, train number 979 prepare to stop, one car, half a car, stop.” If you misjudged or the engineer didn’t slow down enough, the impact of slamming into stationary rail cars or loading docks could easily send you flying. If you saw you were going too fast, you either had to hang on for dear life or jump off. If the hogger fucked up, best not to mention it.

At night, clinging to the metal ladder of the lead car hurtling through the bitter black Rocky Mountain nothingness, with no signs of civilization visible from the trundling train, I felt like I was balancing on the edge of the expanding universe. You could barely see the rails ahead, only stars. Lots of stars. Yet sometimes I would catch glimpses of life floating by in the wilderness void, tiny outposts of human feeling. Storybook log cabins, tucked into the brooding snow frocked evergreens, warm orange light oozing from tiny windows, smoke wafting from their chimneys. What the hell were they doing out here? It must be lonely. I imagined a beautiful, blonde, longhaired girl on a bear skin rug by the fireplace, in a white embroidered nightgown, weaving or playing a dulcimer, waiting for me to come to her for the night, or forever. One night, in a heavy snow storm, clinging to the frigid metal ladder of a coal car at the end of a string of cars we had picked up at a mine near Kimberly, I saw a white wolf loping along in the snow next to the track, like the wolf scene in The Polar Express. I felt a connection to the only other sentient creature in that lonely place, but gripped the ladder tightly.

There were a few duties that were not in my training, like driving the train. Sometimes the “hog head” (engineer) would order me to take over driving while he slept. He would chase me out of the brakeman’s seat on the left side of the cab because on the older model engines there was still a chair for the obsolete firemen, who lost their jobs when the last steam engines were retired in the 1950s. The union demanded that the remaining firemen still have chairs on the new diesel locomotives, where they sat uselessly until they faded into railroad history. The brakemen could put their feet up on the empty fireman’s chair, so the hoggers would switch seats on a long trip to sleep more comfortably and make the brakeman drive the train. The caboose had actual beds where the conductor and rear end brakemen could sleep. Driving the train was a dream come true, but also terrifying. “There’s no way I should be driving this fucking freight train,” I thought to myself. But with one hand on the throttle and the other waving out the window as we highballed through crossing signals and mountain passes, blue kerchief around my neck and long hair whipping in the wind, I felt like I was king of the world.

As much as I loved blowing the horn, I learned to show restraint. Not only to avoid waking up the engineer if he was sleeping, but also to watch out for other trains who might hear your steel rail serenade. Every hogger has his own signature horn blast. Other railroaders could identify which engineer was driving the train by the sound of the airhorn. WHA WHAAAAAA WA WA OOOAAAHH might be Joe Nelson, signaling his wife that he was on his way home in time for dinner as he passed their house on the outskirts of town. AAAAAAAA OOOOT OOOOT WOW WOW WOWOWOOOooo would be Knut Swenson greeting his fellow engineer waiting in the siding as he barreled past on the main line. It was amazing how much control those guys had over the tones of the air horn, even though their blue collar sonatas paled in comparison with the symphonies that were conducted during the bygone era of steam engines. According to the old guys, the whistling steam enabled a much richer palette of sounds. Whenever I got hold of the horn, everyone within earshot must have wondered what the hell was going on when they heard my John Coltrane, acid-jazz air horn honking and screeching echoing through the canyons.

When a train crew had an overnight layover, and had to wait for an assignment to bring a train back home, we – the hog, the conductor, the head end and rear end brakemen – would go to the pub. These small town pubs were nothing like cozy, dark American taverns. They were large public drinking rooms filled with small, round, red terry cloth covered tables, where working men would go to drink good Canadian beer. Molson, Labatts, and our local Kokanee Lager were the favorites. The waitresses would bring sprawling trays brimming with glasses of draft beer, and keep them coming for hours -- round after round after round. There were no designated drivers for cars, much less trains. The conductor phoned the dispatcher periodically to find out if we had a train to take home.

We stayed at the pub playing pool, darts, shuffleboard, and drinking beer until we got a train assignment. Sometimes the dispatcher would tell us no train was coming, so we had to get a hotel room. The pubs had shabby rooms upstairs. Remote outposts had stark bunk houses next to the tracks or work trains parked on the siding that had a bunker car with beds. When the dispatcher gave us a train, the four of us would stagger to the rail yard and drive the sucker back home to Cranbrook, no matter how much beer we had consumed. I once carried the feet of a passed-out conductor while the rear end brakeman carried his arms. We accidentally dropped and slammed him on the tracks before heaving his fat ass into the caboose, where he stayed passed out for most of the trip home. The rail companies eventually got rid of cabooses and conductors to reduce the costs and risks of dragging a box full of drunkards behind every train.

The pub was the only game in town for the miners, loggers, and railroaders whose jobs brought them to the scruffy towns on the western slopes of the Canadian Rockies in Eastern British Columbia. There weren’t many pretty women, at least not ones who were interested in long-haired hippie railroaders. Brent and I persuaded our girlfriends to come visit our Rocky Mountain home from Vancouver, Seattle, and California, but still spent many evenings getting hammered in the pubs. Fights were a regular source of amusement, but at about nine PM the strippers would take the stage.

The strippers were a nightly ritual in every pub in every town in British Columbia. They were mostly good looking and young, and we soon discovered they were often the smartest and most interesting people in town. Strippers traveled a regional circuit from town to town, pub to pub, like traveling salesmen, making enough money to travel, study, or support their kids. Like us, they were doing a job. Hanging out in the pubs in Cranbrook, Brent and I occasionally invited strippers to come home with us to our farm house outside of town – not for sex or romance, but to give them a break from the stale beer and drunk barbarians in the pub. At our home, we talked, played cribbage, cooked dinners, and watched Canadian TV. I fell into a comfortable routine that revolved around riding the rails, going to pubs and exploring the mountains around us. I thought of myself as a real Japhy Ryder, the mystic mountain man in Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums. But after a year, even the spectacular scenery and manly adventures of the railroad lost their allure. I was ready for a change.

Trucks

My childhood friend and apple picking partner from Long Beach, Tom, proposed an idea. His sister lived in Las Vegas and could get us jobs at United Parcel Service (UPS), loading packages and taking care of the iconic brown trucks. Vegas, baby! Fuck yeah. Back in Long Beach I bought a pristine 1966 Dodge Polara station wagon from Matt’s parents and we bombed from SoCal across the desert. Living in Vegas, I often drove 100 mph, windows down, gliding over the undulating contours of the desert highways. Tom and I crashed on his sister‘s floor and started work within a few days of arriving. Tom was assigned the job of tracking lost packages and I got a job parking and washing the brown trucks. I was proud to join the Teamsters, and took pride in whipping the trucks into their assigned loading spots. I was good at driving backwards through the busy lot, using the big mirrors to navigate through the incoming and outgoing truck traffic. The pay was great, especially for a young castabout with no education, on the eve of his 21^st birthday.

I loved the trucks, especially the big rigs – Peterbuilts, Macks, and Kenworths. The UPS long haul drivers would pull their trailers into the yard and park anywhere they pleased. Part of my job was to put the rigs and trailers in the right place – the regular brown trucks got washed and backed up to the loading docks. The big rigs went to the maintenance area after their trailers were aligned with the correct loading docks. In Nevada, it’s legal for trucks to pull triples – three trailers behind one rig. Backing up a single trailer is tricky, doubles are like pushing a rope uphill, triples are impossible. But it was fun to try, and great training. I wasn’t supposed to use the slick, modern Peterbuilts and Kenworths to pull trailers around the lot.

For that job, there was a beat-to-shit, cranky old yellow White Freightliner nicknamed “the Mule.” Ripped seats, grease smeared, jerky brakes, cracked steering wheel, stiff clutch, sticky accelerator, no air conditioning; The Mule was a real mean son-of-a-bitch. Me and the Mule got to know each other real well. I ground pounds of metal off its stubborn gears and cursed it to hell. In return, the Mule frustrated and embarrassed me at every opportunity. The professional drivers would tease me whenever I stalled, or got a trailer wedged into an impossible angle, or slipped the clutch and slammed a trailer into the loading dock. But it was another chance to prove myself and master a skill I admired. I loved driving, so I took pride in lining up those trucks and trailers in the right order like crayons in their box.

The Las Vegas Teamsters were good to me. When John, my ex-Army loser of a boss on the night shift made me re-wash and re-park trucks for no reason, I told Tony, my union shop steward – a hairy-chested, pompadoured, gold chain wearing, Italian songster who wore his tight brown UPS shorts no matter how cold it got. John had a punchable face to begin with, and wore short sleeve dress shirts with a tie, a squared off buzz cut, tight khakis that hugged his buns and dick, and were so short you could see the tops of his black dress socks. There wasn’t much for managers to do on the night shift, so my uptight, asshole supervisor John liked to fuck with me because he was bored. “You did a shitty job on the trucks Davis. Park em again.” “There’s dirt on that truck. Go wash it again.” I could put up with all kinds of crap, but accusing me of doing a shitty job hit a nerve. Maybe I didn’t have much else to be proud of, but doing a good job was a matter of pride. I was in the work club. I care about doing a good job. The trucks were all clean and parked in the right place.

I don’t know what the Teamsters said to John, but after I reported him to Tony, that prick never spoke another word to me. He never even looked in my direction. And Tony, my Sinatra singing Vegas Teamster shop steward cheerfully checked in regularly to make sure nobody fucked with me. “Hey kid, how’s it going on the night shift? Everything copasetic?” “Yes sir. Thank you!” My Teamsters union dues were $13 a paycheck – best money I ever spent. Good guys, taking care of their own tribe. For lots of reasons, I would never cross their picket lines. I was a union man.

I turned twenty-one in Las Vegas. My game was blackjack. I learned how to count cards and even got kicked out of a casino for doing it. They sent a pretty girl to distract me by bringing me drinks, then the pit boss just told me to leave and never come back. I spent many happy hours at the Horseshoe and Mint downtown, and at Caesars Palace, the Tropicana, the Flamingo and the Sahara on the Strip. Vegas in the 1970s was pure old school. There were still mobsters and hookers and Rat Pack headliners in their sunset years like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Jerry Lewis. From my little ranch house off of 95 North, the Las Vegas skyline lit up the empty desert with promises of money and sex and weird human behavior. I had plenty of it in Vegas. Years later I learned that the UPS manager who got us our Vegas jobs, Tom’s sister’s husband, ran off with his secretary and was arrested for embezzlement.

My buddy Tom had had enough of Vegas and decided to go to college to be a writer. He drove the Volkswagen bug that a hitchhiker had “given” us back to California to attend Sonoma State College. We had picked up a guy hitchhiking on the freeway near the Strip, stranded next to a clean, white 1967 Volkswagen bug. When I pulled over, the guy got into my Dodge Polara station wagon and declared with a flamboyantly gay, exasperated swish of the hand, “I’ve just had it up to here with that darn car! I never want to see it again. It’s yours if you want it. Can you please take me home?” We dropped him off at his house near Sunrise Avenue and went back to check out the VW bug that was still sitting on the freeway shoulder. I got it running in three minutes. The coil wire was shredded. But it turned out the car belonged to Angel Blue the Heavenly Body, a husky Vegas stripper who had loaned it to her friend while she was on a stripping tour of Japan. Angel Blue reported the stolen when she returned home to Vegas.

We had found a packet of her promotional photos in the front trunk and wondered about her connection to the car. Why did the gay guy who gave us the car have a stack of glossy pictures of Angel Blue the Heavenly Body in his trunk? The police tracked the car to Sonoma, California, where Tom was going to college. They pulled him out of his English class and threatened to arrest him. He explained how the guy had “given” us the car and that the VW and its contents were unharmed, even the sexy photos of Angel Blue. Tom become a writer and wrote a book about our childhood exploits, including our Vegas adventures. It’s called Sticky Fingers. Check it out.

The UPS drivers were shocked when I gave my 30-day notice. I wanted to recite that Johnny Paycheck song, “Take this job and shove it,” but the truth was that I had nothing to complain about. “You can’t just walk away from a job like this. You have a career here!” one of the supervisors yelled at me in the rippling 110 degree heat of the UPS parking lot. It was true. I had a great life full of friends and fun. I met a perfect woman – she was pretty, smart, funny, reliable, and a spectacular cook. We explored the desert empires from Death Valley to Bryce Canyon together. A real Earth mother. She became a geologist. But I was a selfish asshole who didn’t deserve her. Wanderlust trumped love. I missed the ocean. I wanted to surf. I sold my cars and went to Hawaii, where I squandered my small fortune.

The working people I knew were smart and honest. Back then, you didn’t need a college degree or special training to get a good job, and regular working guys could make a good living. Pride in workmanship defined them individually, and as contributing members of American and Canadian society. We talked openly about race and prejudice and injustice. In many ways, the social contract was stronger in the 1970s than it is today. Each job had clear standards of conduct and milestones of achievement. There was less automation and more danger. Unions were stronger. You worked your way up to greater responsibility and bigger rewards. Even slackers cared what other people thought about them. I worked hard to show my respect for their labor. I still do.

Recent photo of the oil refinery where I worked the swing shift, Wilmington, California, in 1972. I watched the sunrise over LA from the top of the towers.

The refinery where I worked was near Lions Drag Strip, where my dad would take me and my brother to the races.

Picking apples, Wenatchee, Washington, 1973. Photo from Matt.

Apple picking is hard. Wenatchee, 1973.

My nemesis, The Mule. United Parcel Service, Las Vegas, 1976.

Pulling triples, Las Vegas, 1976. Impossible to park.

Me and Brent, studying for the brakeman’s exam.

Canadian Pacific brakeman certificate, Teamsters identification. I lost my Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union card somewhere along the way.

Riding the rails in the Kootnay mountain range, head end brakeman view. The engineer would sometimes kick the brakeman out of our seat because it reclined and make us drive the train. Train photos from Brent.

Unit 4559, Canadian Pacific Railroad, Cranbrook, British Columbia,1978.

Actor, teacher, musician, brakeman, postman, videographer, renaissance man, Brent, Cranbrook BC, 1978.

Railroad brakeman, trucker, apple picker, refinery worker, surfer, martial artist, and government nuclear expert, Z.S. Davis.

John: 8:32

Chapter Seven

The Polygraph and Me

I probably took more polygraphs as a kid than anyone in human history. The reason was my dad’s research. He was a psychology professor and conducted experiments to measure physical responses to external stimuli. My dad followed in his father’s footsteps, my grandfather Roland Clark Davis, who advanced polygraph technology while pioneering the new field of psychophysiology in the 1940s and 50s as a professor at Indiana University. Granddad did some of the first studies for the US government on the prospects of using polygraphs to determine if people were lying or telling the truth. He concluded the machines were unreliable.

The polygraph machine in my dad’s laboratory measured physical reactions to flashing lights, loud noises, heat, cold, visual images, and unexpected sensorial bombardments. Dad would connect electrodes all over my body and afterwards explain the green, blue, and red ink graph printouts indicating my heart rate, breathing, and muscle movements. It wasn’t hard to understand the correlation between a loud noise and a big spike in my heart rate. Dad would hook up my brother and my friends to the equipment in the insulated test room fitted with speakers and fans and lights with a big cushy lounge chair in the middle. He would let us push the buttons to produce flashing lights, weird noises, or rushes of hot and cold air. We learned a lot about electro-physical recording. It was fun.

The fun ended when I started taking polygraphs for the CIA. While I was a graduate student at the University of Virginia I accepted an invitation at an academic conference to interview with the agency. I had written a research paper about the nascent Soviet computer industry that caught a recruiter’s attention. After my years of self-centered freedom, I liked the idea of performing public service and giving back to the country that had provided me with such opportunities. Freedom isn’t free.

A career in intelligence seemed like a good fit for me. In addition to my Ph.D. in international relations with a minor in Soviet studies from the University of Virginia, I had a black belt in Okinawan Uechi Ryu karate, experience operating all sorts of tools and heavy equipment, decent foreign language skills, and had easy rapport with people from diverse backgrounds due to my blue collar background. I was game for just about anything. My interview visit to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia consisted of two days of substantive conversations with managers and analysts from the Soviet division and meetings with a psychologist and a doctor. Everything went great and I received an offer of employment, pending the results of the security background investigation and the polygraph examination.

I was honest about my hippie exploits on my application and in my interviews. I never obfuscated about the drugs and mischief in my past. They could take it or leave it. The recruiter assured me they didn’t care about my past, only if there were current issues that would make me vulnerable to blackmail. I hadn’t touched drugs for many years and had grown disdainful of those who did. I had nothing to hide.

The government uses the polygraph in two ways. The first is most often associated with law enforcement, where the subject is being tested to verify the truthfulness of their account of particular events. For example, “Did you buy a gun?” The polygraph machine is supposed to register elevated heart-rate, sweating, or twitching that the examiner might interpret as indications of uncomfortableness and perhaps lying. Believing it futile to lie, a criminal who believes in the truth-telling power of the polygraph might spill out the truth, maybe even without taking the exam. Investigators have been known to get a confession by hooking up an uncomprehending suspect to a copying machine or some other phony gadget. “We all know you’re lying so let’s just make it easier for everyone. The machine doesn’t lie.”

Actual polygraph results are much harder to use than the immediate results of the “rubber hose” effect which is essentially an empty threat. Short of encouraging confessions, polygraph results have not been embraced by the legal community and are not sufficient by themselves to convict someone of a crime. In court, polygraph evidence is more often accepted as proof of innocence than guilt.

In the second application, the polygraph is used to vet candidates for sensitive jobs. In this case, the examiner goes through an applicant’s answers about a wide range of topics to determine if they are lying, hiding something, or they are involved in activities that would disqualify them from some positions. A “full-scope” polygraph is wide ranging and can include questions about friends, family, money, property, sex, and drugs. The goal is to assess the applicants’ overall character and trustworthiness for access to classified information. Government agencies sometimes require a full-scope polygraph examination of a person’s entire life to determine their reliability for certain types of assignments. The polygraph results are part of an ongoing evaluation that includes a background investigation to verify the accuracy of your answers to security related questions. In the intelligence community, periodic polygraphs and background investigations are used to ensure that foreign governments have not discovered information that the applicant or employee has hidden that might make them subject to blackmail. Fair enough.

In both cases, law enforcement and intelligence, the subject must believe that the machine will detect untruthfulness. A good liar who is psychologically and physically at ease and feels no guilt about lying can pass with flying colors. Aldrich Ames, for example, the notorious Soviet spy who served in the CIA for decades, had no trouble passing his periodic polygraph exams. Conversely, bad liars, especially people who are prone to feeling guilty or nervous, may set the machine off when asked about topics they find offensive or uncomfortable. For example, people with strong religious or moral convictions may become agitated when asked about controversial issues such as abortion or homosexuality. Grilling a devout Mormon about sexual improprieties is likely to evoke a measurable response on the polygraph, like the flashing lights and sudden noises in my dad’s lab. But why? Does an elevated heart rate indicate hidden sexual desires, or merely discomfort with being grilled about morally questionable behaviors? If I ask you, “When are you going to stop beating your wife/husband?” you would most likely get flustered, but it doesn’t prove that you are doing it.

In all cases, the measurements of a person’s physical responses to questioning must be interpreted by the polygraph examiner, who tries to figure out why their subject sweats, twitches, or pants during the exam. Experts like my grandfather, my dad, and almost all of their scientific and legal colleagues have concluded that the polygraph cannot distinguish truth from lies. Attributing specific physiological reactions to specific thoughts is pure guess work. The courts have mostly agreed.

I reported for my polygraph to a benign brick building in the northern Virginia suburbs outside of Washington DC and joined a sweaty waiting room full of nervous fellow candidates for jobs requiring top clearances. I was relaxed and confident. I sat down next to an Air Force pilot who told me they were going to nail him for cheating on his wife. When my turn came, I met my examiner and followed her down the cinderblock hallway to a cramped, white-walled room where the beige padded polygraph chair sat in the middle. It looked like my dad’s lab, with worn grey carpet, industrial ceiling tile and fluorescent lights.

The examiner, an almost pretty, olive skinned woman in her late 30s with heavy caked on makeup, tight khaki skirt, white silk blouse revealing a dusty rose colored lacy push-up bra, home dyed mud red hair and tinted Tom Clancy aviator glasses, sat behind a small, gray government-issued metal desk on which sat the old-style polygraph in its shiny metal briefcase, its scratchy little claws poised to start scribbling. She was superficially friendly, but all business. She leafed through my file and gave me a superficial explanation of the inescapable accuracy of the polygraph. At first I kept my mouth shut. She explained how the exam would proceed, then hooked up the electrodes on my fingers, arms and chest. “Are you ready to begin?” She moved through the usual questions about associations with communists, anarchists, deviants, and foreigners. No problem. We covered my sexual preferences, marital fidelity, stealing, and cheating. No problem. She asked if I was lying about anything and I truthfully said no.

After the first session, my polygraph examiner left the room and returned with a long paper readout sheet like the ones in my dad’s lab, which she knowingly held up in front of me. She pointed to one set of squiggly lines that she claimed proved I was lying. The issue was marijuana. How many times had I smoked weed? On my application form I had calculated that over a period of fifteen years, from age 15 to age 30, (5,475 days) I had smoked it several hundred times. But I didn’t clarify if that meant how many days, or joints, or puffs, or encounters I had had over that period. In fact, there were weeks, months and even years I didn’t smoke pot it at all, as well as periods when people seemed to have it all the time. I tried to give an honest estimate, but got pinned down about my counting methodology. I had bounded the high and low estimates and selected the mean, but had no way of knowing the exact number of times I had smoked marijuana over a fifteen-year period before stopping altogether nearly a decade prior to my CIA application, well within the stated limits and the assurances of my agency recruiters. “Ten years ago, not a problem,” they told me. And what about the cocaine and LSD and I had admitted to in my application? “No problem,” they assured me.

I knew questions about drugs would come up. I grew up in Southern California and Vancouver, Canada in the 60s and 70s, for god’s sake. The truth was that my drug use was actually moderate compared to my contemporaries, but then again, none of them were being recruited into the CIA. “You are lying,” my fake ginger polygraph dominatrix declared. The more I tried to explain, the worse things got. “The machine doesn’t lie, so you must be lying,” she snapped. Rather than argue, I offered her an alternative. “Go ahead and try a bigger number if it helps with the exam.” The difference between 300 and 400 encounters with marijuana over a period that ended ten years ago seemed like a moot point. “So, you admit you lied?” she replied, triumphantly. “No,” I answered. “As I told you several times, it’s hard to know exactly how many times I used marijuana over a period of fifteen years, which began when I was 15 and ended when I went to graduate school. I’m 35 now. It’s an estimate. It’s the best I can do.” “But you admit that you lied,” she blared.

I answered her smug and insinuating questions for several hours, with the polygraph accurately registering my increasing agitation – elevated heart rate and heavy breathing when she repeatedly accused me of lying, then flat-lining when I calmed myself with breathing techniques which I had practiced throughout my years studying martial arts and holding my breath under water. Breathe in through the nose, down to your center (dan tien), exhale slowly through the mouth. By mid-afternoon I stopped taking it seriously. My crime busting inquisitor clearly had no clue about the science behind the polygraph, but I realized that she was either using it in the rubber hose mode to bully me into admitting dark secrets, or she was just wielding it as a hazing ritual.

An hour into the afternoon session, my examiner dramatically left the room in a huff and returned with a supervisor, a slight, school-marmish woman with gray hair in a tight bun wearing a high necked white frilly blouse and calf-length gray skirt, who informed me that evidence of my controlled breathing indicated intentional manipulation of the polygraph. Moreover, in her judgement, I was using “standard counterintelligence methods,” to obscure the polygraph readings. I laughed out loud, which pissed them off. “You need this job, you’ll do anything to get it!” my dominatrix polygrapher barked at me, as I sat squirming in the evil electric lounge chair. “Not really,” I replied defiantly. “I got a Ph.D. to be a college professor, not a spy. If this is how you treat your own people, I don’t want anything to do with you. This is bullshit!” “Mr. Davis, you are free to leave at any time” she snidely hissed. So, I stood up, unclipped the electrodes attached to my fingers and chest, threw them onto the chair, and marched defiantly down the squinty, linoleum hallway. I said goodbye to the black ops pilot who I had joked with in the waiting room, who told me he had admitted that he cheated on his wife and was waiting for his second session. I drove my rental car back to the hotel and flew back to California. What a bunch of fucking idiots.

It wasn’t long, however, before I returned to that sad, stark waiting room. Shortly after bailing out on the CIA polygraph, I accepted a job at another government agency, where I did analysis and wrote reports on nuclear technology for members of Congress and their staffs. I was proud of my record of public service to the nation, I still am. I take pride in supporting our elected and appointed government officials, intelligence services and our military forces. I’ve served in several agencies and was involved in a variety of sensitive national security policy issues, so it was no surprise when I was invited to participate in a project that required me to return to the little brick building in Northern Virginia for another polygraph exam. I agreed, thinking that my excellent record of public service would count for something. At the very least, I didn’t think that they would continue to obsess about how many puffs of marijuana I had imbibed decades ago. I was wrong.

My second official polygraph was just like the first, only worse. The waiting room was eerie like an episode of the Twilight Zone, frozen in time with the same manikin-like people fidgeting in the same tired government issued furniture. I glared at the chair I had sat in five years earlier and waited for my name to be called. My new examiner was in his mid-thirties with close cropped mouse brown hair, wearing a yellow short-sleeve dress shirt with a stained brown tie, also wearing Tom Clancy style aviator glasses, and reeked of stale cigarette smoke. He gave the same phony speech about the polygraph’s amazing powers, and picked up right where I left things five years earlier, when I had stormed out of the building. We breezed through the questions about foreign contacts, homosexuality, infidelity, dishonesty and disloyalty. He still didn’t care about any of the other drugs I had told them about, but zeroed right back to how many times I had smoked pot as a kid. It was absurd and surreal. Were they testing my patience?

I resolved to stay calm and not argue with him about the science of the polygraph, but once again staying calm also had the effect of flat-lining the readings by dampening my breathing, sweating and heart rate measurements. On cue, my examiner accused me of intentionally controlling my breathing. I explained that I had an unusual history with the polygraph dating back to my childhood, plus I had practiced martial arts for many years and had trained myself to calm my breathing in stressful situations. He instructed me not to control my breathing. “How do you want me to breath?” “Just breath normally.” “What I’m doing is normal for me.” He grew increasingly frustrated. After his second smoke break, he brought in a supervisor who followed the script about detecting “suspicious use of standard counterintelligence techniques.” I shrugged and resigned myself to what I knew was coming next.

The results were deemed “indeterminate,” which means they couldn’t get the data they needed to determine whether I was trustworthy or a big fat liar. This time, however, the examiners concluded from the indeterminate polygraph results that I was an untrustworthy person and notified the other agencies that held my clearances. This triggered a suspension of all my clearances and caused multiple agencies to launch re-investigations of my background. My career was in jeopardy. The letter to my security office said I was dishonest and should be stripped of my access to all classified information pending a complete review of my employment. Because the letter itself was classified, and I was no longer allowed access to classified information, the security officer at my agency read it to me. As I listened to the awful pronouncement on my character, I struggled to fight back tears. Then I decided to fight.

I talked to many leading polygraph experts, including my dad, my cousins, and their psychophysiology colleagues. They provided historic and recent studies of polygraph use and abuse. I got copies of my dad’s and grandad’s publications. Then I talked to the lawyers, including several former chief legal counsels for the main intelligence agencies and a former Director of Central Intelligence. I was prepared to pay whatever it took to clear my name. I did my research, compiled the documentary evidence, including proof of my unusual family history, and filed a request for a formal review of my case. In an act of unforgettable compassion, the former director of the CIA, who was a lawyer, took my case pro bono and offered to accompany me to the hearings.

It’s true that nobody knows you when you are down and out, but it’s also a great opportunity to find out who your friends are. This is especially true in Washington DC, where the slightest whiff of scandal can make you a pariah. A few people politely kept their distance, but it touched my heart to see how many people stood by me throughout the ordeal. One colleague chronicled the Alice in Wonderland nature of my situation through a series of limericks. A senior US diplomat wrote a letter to the serving director of the CIA vouching for my character. A former director of CIA clandestine operations invited me to his home to discuss my predicament, then made calls on my behalf. A prominent United States Senator read through my FBI file and quizzed me about every drug I had ever taken as I stood in front of his desk, mortified, (“And about this cocaine, son, you say this all ended a long time ago. No addiction? Is that correct?”) before offering me a job. A notorious congressional investigator, known for rooting out corruption, also offered me a job.

Instead of destroying my faith in humanity, the assault on my character strengthened my resolve. But it also prompted me to reflect on my life in Washington. How did a hippie surfer redneck like me become a US government national security bureaucrat, now falsely accused of dishonesty? Why the hell would a free spirit like me subject himself to so many controls on my life? Maybe this was an opportunity to try a different career path. Maybe it was time to move on, as I had done so many times. Maybe I should go surfing.

Adding insult to injury, as part of the formal CIA review of my case, I had to take a battery of psychological exams to determine my state of mind. I resisted the temptation to provide goofy answers to questions like: “Do you ever have strange thoughts?” or “If you were invisible, what would you like to do?” In addition to written tests, I was required to meet with a psychologist, who asked if I was angry. “Yes,” I told her. “The accusations against me are unfair and groundless, but are nonetheless destroying my career and my reputation. I’m angry about that.” “So, what do you want to do about it?” the doctor gently prodded. “Do you want revenge?” They were trying to figure out if I was a nut case planning to avenge the assault on my dignity. But I took the tests and submitted to the medical exams. I provided total access to my home, finances, mind and body, believing the truth would win out and the unfair judgment against me would be retracted.

Word of my situation reached anti-polygraph activists, who invited me to join their crusade against the polygraph, but I turned them down. A couple of journalists wanted to tell my story, but I knew that going public would be a career killer. I put my faith in the system and followed the process. A year after receiving the letter attacking my character, I received a thin, triple sealed letter that would determine my fate. In two short sentences the letter stated that the previous determination of unreliability due to indeterminate polygraph readings was rescinded and my clearances were restored. The other agencies completed their re-investigations and fell in line with the CIA determination. It was over, sort of.

I never refused to take a polygraph. I’ve taken them (and regular drug tests) many times since my ordeal. The government has reformed the way it uses polygraphs for security screening. I learned later that my case was used in an internal review that helped fix some of the problems. It’s still unpleasant, and only tolerated by people who are so devoted to their careers in national security that they submit to such intrusions into their private affairs. They disclose their failings, indiscretions, and frailties. Friends, relatives and neighbors ask why FBI agents came to their house asking questions about me. “Are you in trouble?” I reassure them: “Don’t worry. It’s part of my job.”

I took my last polygraph on my last day of work before I retired. When I explained that I was leaving my job and would no longer require access to classified information, the security department insisted that I take it anyway. “Why?” I asked. “Because it’s been scheduled,” the officer replied. It was stupid, but I did it anyway. Three hours wasted on the same old nonsense.

Why do we do it? One might think that my family history with the polygraph and my rebellious nature would lead me as far away as possible from Big Brother’s bureaucratic intrusions into my personal life. Instead, it led me – like others in the government - to serve the country that had afforded me boundless opportunities to decide for myself my place in the world. Instead of hating the government and minimizing contact with it, I joined it. Given the choice of being a loner or a joiner, I opted to enlist in the defense of our nation. I cherish all those who choose to protect the American dream – the soldiers, spies, cops, firemen, and bureaucrats who make the pursuit of happiness a reality. Not even the stupidity of the polygraph could stifle the call for me to serve my country. I’m proud to be an American. Even now.

Me with my grandfather, pioneer of psychophysiology, Roland Clark Davis, 1955.

Article in the Indianapolis Star about my grandfather’s research, 1953.

Roland Clark Davis, Bloomington, Indiana, circa 1960.

Book on psycho-physiological recording co-authored by my dad, Christopher M. Davis.

RC Davis in his lab at Indiana University

1. A Quiet Voice: Roland Clark Davis and the Emergence of Psychophysiology, Journal of Psychophysiology, Frances H. Gabbay and Robert M. Stern, 31 January 2012

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2011.01339.xDigital Object Identifier (DOI)

I would not feel so all alone

Everybody must get stoned

Bob Dylan, Rainy Day Women

Chapter Four

Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll in America

The sixties and seventies were a fun time to be alive. Who could argue with the basic peace and love tenants of the Age of Aquarius philosophy? Rock and roll thrilled, inspired, and soothed our souls. My first concert was The Doors at the Long Beach Arena. Jim Morrison tore his clothes off and the police dragged him off stage. Jack Keroac read from On the Road on the Steve Allen Show. Elvis visited Nixon in the White House. Things were getting weird.

Wild-eyed exuberance overwhelmed mainstream media, much like the internet and social networking did again four decades later, when the boomers started joining AARP and their millennial kids got addicted to Aderol and Iphones. The sixties sexual revolution served up a frothy feast of forbidden fruits, especially for young guys like me, whose formative little lizard brains were zombified by the sight of bikinis, miniskirts, hot pants, bra burning, and clothing optional beaches. Our only porn were the Playboy magazines that we pilfered from households where dads were still allowed to look at pictures of naked women. Nobody ever subscribed for the articles. There was no cable TV, no Pornhub, and no sexting, but reality was pretty fucking great.

There were excesses, of course. Streaking was a common practice. Running naked in the streets of Long Beach on New Year’s Eve, me and my buddies thought it would be funny to greet passersby sans clothing. Unfortunately, we accosted our elderly landlords who were out for a New Year’s stroll in the neighborhood and they evicted us on the spot. We drove naked through the Jack in the Box drive-through, surfed naked (while high on mushrooms) and skinny dipped everywhere. At the time, it did not feel like we were rebelling against social conventions, but I wouldn’t do it again. Nobody wants to see that.

Nudity was pervasive in the California beach towns where I lived. Men and women frolicked nude on beaches, at pools, rivers, and in hot tubs. Gidget really had gone wild. Everybody had pubic hair, nobody shaved. Bushy, aromatic, sexuality infused our ranks. The Volkswagen busses that me and my friends drove served as our personal, mobile Playboy mansions. I know there were many unforgivable sexual transgressions that I didn’t recognize or understand. After all, scumbags like Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were busy building their evil empires and using their power to get the things that most men want most of all. I don’t think we were more sex-crazed than any other generation, but there was an air of sexual liberation and free expression that permeated the culture. “Sock it to me, baby!” “If it feels good, do it!” “Love the one you’re with.” Everyone was doing it.

Instead of Ozzie and Harriet or Lucy and Desi sleeping in separate beds on black and white TV screens, by the late sixties Captain Kirk was seducing hot, black, mini skirt wearing Lieutenant Uhura, in living color – in outer space! Inter-racial sex in space! Dig it! Captain Kirk even had sex with a green alien chick on Star Trek, leading the way for Chris Pratt to hook up with the gorgeous green-skinned Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy. I think Martin Luther King would agree, that’s progress. Sex has a way of transcending barriers.

When I was a student at the University of Virginia, I gave tours of the campus grounds and I included the story of the university’s founder Thomas Jefferson’s long affair with Sally Hemmings- a slave he owned and had children with. Listening to my spiel, the proper southern lady who managed the tours gently suggested that I stop talking about Jefferson and Hemmings because their relationship had never been definitively proven, despite the generations of green eyed, red haired black people living near Monticello who knew perfectly well the facts of their family lineage. A few years later, DNA analysis confirmed what black families knew all along. The civil rights movement busted down the barriers to inter-racial relationships which became increasingly common in the 1960s and 70s, especially in California.

Women’s liberation, of course, was the key that unlocked the kingdom of carnality. Men are always horny. When country music icon Loretta Lynn’s sang about “The Pill” she spoke for generations of American women who were sick and tired of patriarchal attitudes that unfairly controlled their lives. No more chastity belts. “I am woman, hear me roar” was no threat to me. It all made sense in the context of equal rights. The women I knew and loved were very much in command of their minds and their bodies. Consent was not optional – they demanded it. Their power was equal, especially when we were all young and equally broke and struggling. Skinny dipping did not signal promiscuity, no matter what thoughts popped into my evolving lizard brain. Among my contemporaries, women’s equality seemed like a done deal. It was never even debated. Maybe my experience was limited to coastal California, my circle of friends, our upbringing, or the broader feminist movement, but the women in my world didn’t take shit from anyone. They still don’t.

Nevertheless, a female friend who reviewed this manuscript warned me that my stories suffer from a lack of sensitivity for female perspectives, including the events I recount from my life. It’s true, of course, and I can’t deny that the sexist attitudes that have tainted the American dream sometimes crept into my worldview. All I can say is that I have tried to faithfully convey the experiences of a young American male in the latter half of the twentieth century, warts and all. The memoir expert Mary Karr argues that authenticity is the cornerstone of the genre, and that even well-meaning efforts to smooth over the rough edges to avoid insulting people undermines effective storytelling. If I was an asshole, which I was, I take responsibility for it. I have evolved with the times and I’m trying to be a better person, but I can’t erase the sexism and racism that has always been present in our country. And, I’m not trying to sell books.

Barrier-busting ideas and imagery penetrated deep into the silent suburbs, where swinging and cheating and divorcing gave the boomers and their parents a piece of the action. Even the working-class factory workers, the real Archie Bunkers, were drawn into the merrymaking made possible by the intoxicating cocktail of sexual liberation and birth control pills. It wasn’t just the hippie fringes of society who wanted to cut loose. Americans on all sides of the boomer sandwich, younger and older, black and white, rich and poor, wanted in on the action. And party they did, in their bell bottoms, hot pants, halter tops, permed hair and mutton chop sideburns. TV shows like Laugh In made it all seem normal. Frosted cougar moms lusted after Elvis and The Doors bad boy front man Jim Morrison, gyrating in tight pants on the Ed Sullivan show. “Come on baby light my fire.” Puffing a Virginia Slim cigarette, slurping her third martini, smeared lipstick, oblivious to the thirteen-year-old boys watching Rat Patrol in the next room, suburban moms slithered with their own sexuality. “Oh honey, what I’d like to do to that naughty Morrison boy, mmmmm.” Dads had Playboy magazines and nasty cologne, although my own father had neither. He was content to flirt with his graduate students. Johnny Carson brought the whole silly circus of sex and frivolity into our living rooms, which we kids could hear from our beds over the reassuring hum of the refrigerator.

Taking the handoff from black artists like James Brown and Little Richard, Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis opened the floodgates by showing white America what black folk already knew. Dirty dancing is fun! We learned a lot from Soul Train and other popular TV dance shows, like Hullabaloo, and prepared to be liberated from the confines of formal dance steps. No more cha cha or square dancing; we felt free to make up our own moves which usually involved a lot of twirling, swaying and jumping up and down like a bunch of whirling dervishes. It helped to be stoned.

Hippies practiced their free-spirited dance moves alone and in groups, often inspired by psychedelic drugs like LSD and magic mushrooms. The Grateful Dead spawned its own brand of hippie sub-culture, with loyal Dead Heads tripping and twirling their way across the country like migrating butterflies. RIP Jerry, Phil, and Bob.

True democracy meant sex, drugs and rock and roll for everyone, baby! I loved the psychedelic San Francisco bands like the Dead, Quicksilver, Jefferson Airplane, Cream, and Santana, and I was an early adherent to the lonesome L.A. cowboy sounds of the Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers, Little Feat, and the New Riders of the Purple Sage. I scrutinized every song and album by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Allman Brothers, the Who, the Beach Boys, the Band, Led Zeppelin and many others. We weren’t Springsteen guys on the West Coast, but respected his music. The beat rolled on the 1980s with New Wave, punk, and grunge bands such as X, Elvis Costello, the Police, Taking Heads, Clash, Pretenders, Cars, U-2, Oingo Boingo, Nirvana, and the B-52s. Shut up and dance! I was not an eighties hair band guy but I enjoyed the progressive rock sounds of Pink Floyd, Genesis and Yes. And, who could resist the pure rocking energy of Metallica, Black Sabbath (RIP Ozzy), ACDC, Kiss and Guns and Roses. Long live rock!

I grew up with country music. My dad listened to Hank Snow, Johnny Cash and Marty Robbins. He also liked musicals, which I hated. Over time, the outlaw Americana country music genre that started with Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings and expanded to include country and folk icons such as Bob Dylan, John Denver, Jackson Brown, Joni Mitchell, Emmy Lou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, Neil Young, John Prine, and Ry Cooder became my main listening choice, but I still love almost all forms of soul, R&B, Motown, jazz, classical, world, and reggae music. Jah! In graduate school I played drums in an African dance troupe, until I was kicked out because some of the dancers didn’t think having a white drummer contributed to their message of black empowerment. I guess they never heard of Sly and the Family Stone. I’ve even made my peace with disco, largely due to the influence of my wife Lisa who loved it and had dance moves that convinced me. I’m working on rap. My kids love it. Fight the power!

Rock and roll provided the soundtrack of our lives in a way that I don’t think exists today. Music put a time stamp on our lives, creating sign posts and waypoints for our journey through adulthood. Songs are like smells in the way they trigger memories of times and places. For me, the Beatles’ song “She Loves You” transports me to a red, faux leather booth in the Red Robin diner near the University of Washington, where I was eating a burger and fries from a red plastic basket with my dad and younger brother. It was February 1964, the night of the first Cassius Clay vs Sonny Liston fight. I can still smell the French fries. The Moody Blues song “Nights in White Satin” transports me to my lonely teenage bedroom in Vancouver, listening to FM radio as snow piled up against the window. I serenaded my future wife Lisa with “Can’t Help Falling in Love” when I proposed to her on a warm summer night in Virginia. As a kid, I tuned into the hits on my transistor AM radio, made the transition to album rock on FM stations (including Dr. Demento on Sunday nights), and fumbled through the evolution of technology from albums to eight tracks, cassettes, CDs, and wireless streaming. The moments of our lives were captured in song.

Concerts were an essential part of life: at big stadiums, dingy dive bars, in city parks and recreation halls. If I had to choose my favorite concert, it was Little Feat at the Santa Barbara bowl, although Prince with Santana in Oakland was a close second. If me and my friends didn’t have tickets to a show, we went anyway and snuck in through back doors and windows. We all bought albums and poured over the liner notes. We knew the names of all the band members and all the lyrics. We had long discussions over the meaning of the words.

Nearly everyone played guitar and knew how to play songs from our favorite bands. After fifty years of being a lousy guitarist, I still play the same old Neil Young, Beatles and Grateful Dead songs. Me and my friends would bang away at I Know You Rider for hours, but were not good enough to make the transition to harder songs like China Cat Sunflower. Most of our jam sessions eventually degenerated into a basic John Lee Hooker, ZZ Top, Canned Heat boogie in E minor. Music was ingrained as the steady heartbeat of our lives. It’s different now, with streaming and subscriptions and the deepening divisions in society. Rock and roll may never die, but I think it’s on life support.

Friends have warned me not to share my experiences with psychedelic drugs, at least not until I retire from the government. I’m retired now, so here it is. I tried LSD a few times, and it did open the doors of perception to reveal how the world can look very different from alternative perspectives. I’m not saying that reality is relative, or “constructed,” but the intricate, swirling fractal patterns that hijack your brain on acid gave me an appreciation for the idea that people can perceive the world very differently. I still believe in the existence of a core, provable, objective, scientific truth, but it’s also true that people are deeply entrenched in their separate, lived realities. I can see how psychedelics could have therapeutic value. Peyote, I recall, added a spiritual feeling of being connected to the world around you, especially plants and animals. Magic mushrooms were good for surfing, hiking, or anything involving nature. None of it was debilitating.

Surfing my favorite surf spot, Rincon point, just south of Santa Barbara, at sunrise after taking mushrooms was so enjoyable that I tried it again on a full moon. The waves and sea foam caressed me like a dreamy, pink bubble bath. Cocaine made you feel like Superman – for a few minutes - and inevitably left you craving another snort to restore the original high. I never encountered heroin or any of the terrible drugs that came later like meth or fentanyl, but I knew people who did.

I told the CIA all about my drug experiences in my interviews and polygraph exams (Polygraph examiner: “Was it orange sunshine?” Me: “Yes, in fact it was.”) but they surprisingly only cared about my marijuana use. I had a long conversation about it with a US Senator in his office, but that’s another story.

Drugs did not make me feel scared, crazy, or incapacitated, although the loss of control was disconcerting. I never had a flashback. My drug use was casual, social, and occasional. I did not spent my money on drugs or sell them or go out of my way to get them, except maybe pitching in for a bag of weed. I did, however, lose friends to addiction.

Despite my eventual reservations about the ultimate costs of too much self-centered indulgence, much good and tons of raw pleasure came from unleashing the boomers’ appetites. I was part of it, but remained one step removed from letting go and cutting loose. I clung to control, like a running back gripping the football. No carefree twirling for me. Still, the whole country was swept up in the carnality of the times. It didn’t matter if you were a Democrat or a Republican, rich or poor, young or old, black or white; sex, drugs and rock and roll were as American as baseball, hot dogs and apple pie. If there were voices calling for restraint, I didn’t hear them. Maybe I wasn’t listening. All the conservatives I knew were just as stoned and horny as me.

My role models, the inheritors of the Beat Generation legacy, the Merry Pranksters.

What we believed. I still do.

Even though I’m a law and order guy, I thought the Black Panthers were cool.

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll on Laugh In

Woodstock nation

Inter-galactic sexual desires on Star Trek

Elvis and Nixon. What?

Streaking

Playboy was our only pornography.

Updike revealed the secret desires of suburban America

I did not understand bra burning

Gender bending is not new.

Burning down the Bank of America in Isla Vista was confusing.

Flower power, also confusing.

My first concert. The Doors, Long Beach Arena

White kids learned so much from Soul Train.

Thank you Don Cornelius.

The Beatles, Ticket to Ride

Chapter Three

Kidnapped in Hawaii

My biological mother left us when I was seven years old. My dad raised me and my brother while completing his dual Ph.D. in psychology and physiology at the University of Washington. We played in the shadow of the Space Needle and went to the Seattle World Fair in 1962. Since we were flat broke, dad entertained us with adventures to railroad switchyards, ship docks and airport runways. We ate pancakes for dinner and watched boxing on TV.

Whenever we saw a searchlight sweeping the sky, dad would drive us in one of our beloved vintage/junk automobiles to track down its source. We must have had twenty classic cars growing up. Dad would buy them cheap and drive em till they died. They had huge back seats with no seat belts, and there were no rules about climbing over the seats or sticking your head out the window while we cruised the train yards and houseboats of downtown Seattle. My favorites were the 1951 Willys that died en route to the State Fair in Puyallup, the 1949 Anglia with the pop out turn signals, and the dreamy puke-green 1950 Pontiac with its brooding front window visor, whitewall tires, and chrome police spotlight mounted on the driver’s side door. We got right up close to airport runway lights and booming fog horns, and we car camped right on the beach. Dad gave us brutal haircuts on a stool in the front yard, and expected us to take care of ourselves from the time we got out of school until he got home from his research laboratory around dinner time. I learned to be self-sufficient, albeit somewhat feral in those latchkey years. My dad took care of us. I never felt abandoned or resentful about my mom leaving.

When my dad remarried, our new step mom, Aida, took it upon herself to re-civilize my brother Rol and me. She enforced tough new standards for table manners and hygiene and whipped us into shape as a fully functioning family. My dad took a teaching job at the University of Hawaii and we moved to Honolulu in 1964. It was a good move for me; I took up surfing in the days after we arrived and have been doing it ever since. The move was good for our family too. My new mom was pregnant.

We had been in Hawaii less than a week when Sandy, my biological mother, confronted me and my younger brother Rol while we were hacking on coconuts with a knife on a Waikiki side street, near the Ala Wai canal. “My boys!” she exclaimed as she pulled her white Ford Fairlane convertible over to the side of the road. Peroxide blond, buxom and outrageous, we had not seen Sandy in years. She said it was a coincidence, but nobody believed her. After a few weeks, my dad and step-mom begrudgingly agreed to let Sandy take us for occasional weekend excursions. She let us drive her convertible (I was 9, Rol was 7), ride horses, surf, dive, see Elvis and Beatles movies, and hang out in beach bars with her Hawaiian boyfriends. She was a cocktail waitress at the Queens Surf on Waikiki where she introduced us to the local surfers, musicians, and beach bums. We met Don Ho and guitarist Gabby Pahanui while sitting at the beachfront tiki bar drinking endless Shirley Temples – Coke with extra cherry juice. It was every divorced parents’ nightmare, the full-on charm offensive intended to lure a kids’ allegiances away from the responsible adults to the fun-loving, carefree party-girl alternative.

Sandy convinced my dad and step-mom to let us stay with her overnight. Rol and I knew it would be fun. When she picked us up on Saturday morning, however, she drove to the airport instead of home to her cottage up on the hillside behind Honolulu. Sandy explained that we were going to Maui to meet her boyfriend, Pat. Pat was a wildman. He was a stunt double for Elvis Presley who later founded the famous Big Island bar and restaurant which bore his name, Dorian’s. After he split with Sandy he fathered one of the greatest big wave surfers of all time, Shane Dorian. I admire him and track his career and would love to meet him, but I’m embarrassed because his dad left money and property that should have gone to his family to my crazy mom. She still lives there.

Pat had a white, wood plank cottage perched on an isolated point north of Lahaina, on Maui. There were surfboards, spear guns, snorkel gear, dirt bikes, and no rules. Free diving by myself on the reef next to the house I shot a big eel through the head. It lunged and scared the shit out of me. I dropped the spear and swam away with my heart pounding like a pile driver. It was paradise.

After a day of unsupervised watersports, Sandy delivered a bombshell. “We want you boys to live here with us. You can surf and dive and drive like you did today. What do you think? It’ll be fun.” I asked about going to school and seeing our dad and step-mom, and she said that it was up to us to figure out those things. I liked having the freedom to decide such big life issues for myself, but I sensed there was something amiss. Our step-mom, Aida, was nine months pregnant. She was going to deliver a new baby brother or sister any day. What about that? When I mentioned my concern about missing the birth of our new sibling, Sandy replied airily that she and Pat would make us a baby brother or sister if we wanted one. Simple. I told her we would have to think about it a bit more, so Sandy and Pat drove me and my brother to downtown Lahaina, past the big banyan tree full of yakking Mynah birds, and dropped us off on the steps of the historic Lahaina Inn with these instructions: “You guys decide what you want to do and we’ll pick you up in an hour.”

We sat there and cried. Tourists gave us piteous looks, and a couple of kindly mom types stopped and asked if we needed help. Rol cussed one out. “Fuck you lady, get away from me.” He always had a bad temper. We seriously weighed the costs and benefits of staying on Maui, but concluded that we had to return to our parents in Honolulu. I sensed there was something hinky about the deal we were being offered. You don’t just switch families, right? When Sandy and Pat picked us up on the steps of the Lahaina Inn I told them our decision. Sandy recounted the advantages of staying: No wearing shoes ever, surfing every day, driving cars and riding motorcycles, diving, easy schools, and as many new brothers and sisters as we wanted. Pat said nothing. “No,” I told them. “We have to go home.”

Sunday morning, we swam and dove on the reef out front. I recovered the spear but was too scared of the eel to hunt any more. After lunch I asked Sandy, “When are we going back to Oahu?” “Soon, if you want,” she replied. “Does our dad know where we are?” “Oh sure, honey. We have plenty of time. Don’t worry.” But I was starting to worry. By nightfall I was wondering about school on Monday and whether our step mom had delivered the newest member of our reconstituted family. How were we going to get out of there? Should I steal Pat’s car, grab Rol and dash for the airport? At about 8:00 pm there was a knock at the door of the cottage, and before anyone could answer, my dad was striding through the living room like an alpine hiker. He didn’t say a word to anyone. Without drama, he clasped my wrist with one hand and Rol’s with the other and calmly ushered us out the door, into a rental car and straight to the airport. We were home in a couple of hours, where we learned that our new mom had delivered a baby brother – Emile Adlai Davis. The three brothers have since become estranged, but that’s another story.

I didn’t hear from Sandy again for years, but I visited her once in Burlingame, south of San Francisco where she lived with her fifth husband, his daughters from a previous marriage and their young son Tony. Sandy was in fine form, still outrageous, now a self-proclaimed artist supported by her new husband, Russel, struggling again to be somebody’s mom. Her 18-year-old step daughter Lizzie was a sex bomb ready to explode - a buxom, dark eyed, dark haired, dangerous girl just aching to outrage her dad and step mother. What better way to tweak your parents than to seduce your sort-of step brother?

Lizzie came to visit me in Santa Cruz and wasted no time executing her mission. All she wanted was sex: at my house, in my van, on the beach. Driving my VW bus along West Cliff Drive to check the waves at Steamers Lane, she leaned over and administered road head that reached its conclusion near Natural Bridges State Beach. Not Lizzie’s first rodeo. She was technically my step sister, although neither of us considered Sandy to be our mom, and Russel and his daughters were in no way related to me. Still, it felt wrong. Lizzie was working out some sort of emotional battle with her parents and I was happy to play my part. She stayed the weekend and I never saw her again.

Sandy, however, showed up at my home near Washington D.C. decades later in 1994 – with Pat Dorian! Pat had lost part of his arm and was battling cancer, but was still fun and outrageous. We drank beer and pissed off the back deck. He died shortly thereafter, and he left Sandy his house on the Big Island of Hawaii. His famous big wave surfer son Shane Dorian must have hated that Sandy showed up at the end of his dad’s life and wheedled her way into his will. They must hate her. She’s on her sixth husband now, a big Trump loving, Catholic family man in Michigan, with a sweet vacation home in Hawaii.

Nobody in our family ever talked about what happened that weekend in 1965. I’ve always wondered if, and how, being kidnapped shaped my psyche. I wasn’t angry or upset about it. Who can complain about being wanted by multiple competing families? Still, it’s hard to be your own shrink.

Seattle World’s Fair, Century 21, 1962

We moved to Hawaii from Seattle. Waikiki, 1963

Me and Rol with Sandy, Honolulu, 1963.

The Lahaina Inn, Maui, where Sandy made us choose.

Sandy and Pat Dorian, my house in Arlington, Virginia, 1994.

Pat’s son Shane, who I wish I knew.

What are you rebelling against?

Whaddaya got?

Marlon Brando, The Wild One

Chapter Two

Rebels Without a Cause: The Juvenile Delinquent Years

Me and my friends were not joiners. None of us were on the student council or in the marching band. We dropped out of Cub Scouts and either didn’t make the sports teams or got kicked off. No clubs, no pledges, no uniforms, no leaders, no rules. We started off like the other kids playing basketball and baseball but gravitated to individual sports like surfing, skateboarding and martial arts. We wanted to do our own thing, not what our parents, coaches or teachers wanted us to do. We weren’t the loners or outcasts who got bullied and didn’t brood about our second-rate social standing at school, but we were not “in with the in crowd.” We were outsiders.

Our little gang of misfits came together due to proximity. We lived on the same block. Tom was a funny nerd with wild wirery brown hair and perennially broken glasses who memorized the dictionary and spouted sports statistics like a slot machine spurting out quarters. My dad nicknamed him the Galloping Crud, because of his hurky-jerky basketball moves. His older brother Rick was tall, quiet, skinny and the best athlete among us. You didn’t want to get hit with one of his dirt-clod fastballs; they left a throbbing welt. He got drafted and went into the Army. Matt was a latchkey, parental afterthought kid crowned with a shock of white hair and sleepy reddened eyes. He had a pool and access to Playboy magazines. I was short, with long blond hair and round, wire-rimmed John Lennon glasses that invited teasing, especially when I wore a hippie headband. We went barefoot everywhere, a practice that many adults found disgusting. I still do it. Sometimes my little brother would tag along. Over time we added to our cabal as our reach extended beyond our neighborhood nestled between the 405 Freeway and California State College Long Beach, where my dad was a professor.

We all hated school, although we were each reasonably intelligent. Tom was different because he read literature and knew big words. What really brought us together in our adolescent years, however, was our shared belief that it was our mission to terrorize our neighbors. Against the backdrop of Vietnam, Neil Armstrong’s moon walk and the Summer of Love, our little gang of hornets dedicated ourselves to creative, industrious, and semi-malicious mischief. While older teenagers across the country were protesting and smoking weed, and the cool and smart kids were competing on teams and going to summer camp, we spent our time designing and executing a series of not-so-well-meaning pranks.

The Space Age imparted to us a “can do” attitude that was fostered by NASA, the Jetsons, Star Trek, and Disney’s Tomorrowland, where I planned to live someday. We embraced technology. Playing hide-and-seek in our Southern California neighborhood in 1967, children froze in the middle of the street to admire the colorful streaks raking the night sky left by the Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) that were test-launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, a hundred miles up the coast. It was our own poisonous version of the Northern Lights. “Duck and cover” nuclear war survival drills never gave me nightmares. I liked atomic air raid drills at school because they disrupted class and required us to crawl under our desks.

Curled up in a fetal position on the scuffed brown and white swirled linoleum floor under my desk was always preferable to schoolwork. In my imaginary world, I pretended I was hurtling through space in my rocket ship, like Buck Rodgers. From under the desk I gazed out the classroom windows, ignoring the teacher’s warnings to look away from the windows to avoid being shredded by flying glass from an incoming atomic attack. Like the blanket forts and cardboard boxes that kids use as sanctuary, my cozy cocoon under the desk was a wonderland of imagination. I picked at the gum stuck under the desktop, imagined lava flows and monster faces in the linoleum patterns, and maybe even spied a glimpse of white cotton panties peeking out from under the dresses of the girls huddled under their desks across the aisle. What were they thinking about, I wondered? The world of imagination under the desk was far superior to math or English lessons, especially if the drill lasted until recess. Nuclear air raid drills were almost as good as fire drills, where we actually got to evacuate the building.

It was the height of the Cold War. Faced with the abstraction of nuclear annihilation, all the kids I knew took it in stride. We never talked about it. My early interest in explosive technologies, however, might explain my career focus on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, often called weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. I loved rockets and robots and flamethrowers. At age 12, nobody my age was worried about the arms race or fretting about the falling dominoes of Communist aggression. Our focus was closer to home. We had a captive audience for our special brand of explosive performance art.

In retrospect, we probably went too far – especially with fire. We built incendiaries from beauty aids, cleaning products and anything flammable we could scavenge from under kitchen sinks, bathrooms, and garage shelves. Nothing was ever locked up, because who would ever think of using everyday household products to make firebombs? What kid would do that? Most boys, it turns out. We predated the Anarchist’s Cookbook, although we had no political motivations. We just wanted to blow shit up. We explored the flammable properties of spray paint, hair-spray, nail polish, nail polish remover, lubricants like WD 40, many solvents and of course our parent’s booze. Pilfered vodka, for example, could be mixed with Orange Crush soda to get you drunk, or lit with a match to produce a slow burning Molotov cocktail. Many hours of patient, collaborative experimentation yielded valuable insights into the dual-use nature of technology. The rockets that took the astronauts into space were the same ones ready to deliver nuclear weapons, and the nuclear power plants being built at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon produced plutonium that could be used to make nuclear weapons. It all made sense.

Matt’s dad had run for elected office in the Optimists Club and had thousands of packs of matches with his campaign slogan printed on the covers stored in their garage. “Vote for Big Al!” We spent hours covertly cutting the heads off matches to recover the phosphorus for our experiments. We tamped the match heads into metal film canisters with wooden dowels (also pilfered from Matt’s garage) to make little bomblets, although they didn’t work as well as we hoped, even with a fuse or ignitor. We learned the laws of thermodynamics through experimentation. Pressure and temperature were key. Compressed match heads were a bust. However, with a well-aimed hammer strike (kinetic energy in, chemical energy out) you could explode an entire roll of cap gun ammo on the curb, which often served as our devil’s workbench. You could also scrape the gunpowder from roll upon roll of red cap-gun ammo and torch it for a flash effect, or use it as a fuse. We hoarded fireworks and connived to get forbidden firecrackers, especially M-80s and cherry bombs from Tijuana. Some lucky kids got hold of the yellow seal bombs that fishermen used to keep seals away from their nets. Those really packed a punch.

Like in the Toy Story movies where Andy outgrows his beloved companions, I outgrew the model cars, ships and planes that consumed so much of my devoted, meticulous, solitary, childhood attention. All of my weekly three-dollar allowance money that I didn’t spend on candy I spent on Revelle and AMT model kits, Testors glue, and model paint. I lovingly built and customized classic cars, historic ships, and legendary airplanes. With my dad’s help, I displayed them on shelves and suspended them from the ceiling of my room. But instead of finding a new home for my childhood companions, like Pixar did for Woody and Buzz, I used homemade ordinance to blow them to smithereens.

My custom candy apple red 1953 Chevy lowrider, kablooey! The classy 1934 Duesenberg with its bad ass chrome exhaust pipes, annihilated with a cherry bomb. My all-time favorite, electric blue 67 Mustang, lovingly equipped with custom mag wheels and fat drag race slicks, taken unsentimentally from its display shelf in my room and blasted into a rain of plastic shards on the manhole cover/launch pad in front of our house. It was an ignoble end to the biggest creative accomplishment of my youth, and there are no pictures, no awards, no selfies to commemorate any of it. All gone. The glue and paint from our model building days probably killed a few brain cells, but it was also flammable. Same for the surfboard resin I used to build my first surfboard, which I named the Snail and Slug Killer after encasing the label from the Ortho insecticide box I found in the garage into the deck of the board. I was an early believer in better living through chemistry. The cycle of life requires creative destruction.

We blew up everything we could find – trash cans, mail boxes, watermelons, lawn ornaments. I went fishing with a kid who stuffed firecrackers down the throat of a frog and blew it apart. The guts went everywhere. I felt bad but said nothing. Bags of green army men became blobs of dripping, molten goo, transformed into our own toxic homemade napalm that could be dripped like candle wax onto other doomed toy targets. Like the real napalm that was being used against real people in Vietnam, our DIY WMD also boiled your skin. Of course, lighter fluid is hard to beat for immediate satisfaction. But for our more public performances, gasoline was king. We eventually gave up on small-scale, contained pyrotechnics in favor of good old fashioned, cheap and abundant gas.

You could get more bang for your buck from a gallon of gas than from any other flammable material. And nobody stopped us from filling up milk bottles or buckets at the corner gas station. Nobody ever said “Hey, what are you kids going to do with that gas?” Whether you were launching gas-soaked tennis balls out of a homemade cannon, torching discarded Christmas trees, or simply lighting the neighborhood streets ablaze, nothing beats good old gas for adolescent mischief.

Our gas-powered mini-bikes, on which we marauded through the sprawling expanses of Southern California suburbia, provided perfect cover for possessing ample reserves of our favorite combustible. Mini bikes powered by lawn mower engines, usually a Briggs and Stratton one and a half horse power motor, replaced our Stingrays as our primary means of expanding our striking range into adjacent neighborhoods. The system of flood control ditches that crisscross the Southern California landscape provided the main arteries of our ecosystem, running for miles in every direction, from the San Gabriel mountains to the Pacific Ocean, from Santa Monica to Huntington Beach. With angled cement sides and a few inches of slimy, green, polluted runoff water at the bottom, you could ride from our neighborhood near California State College Long Beach as far as your legs or gas tank would allow. The cement ditch network connected us to the world beyond our neighborhood. There were oil fields and orchards, and you could even reach the beach.

Me and Matt once paddled our surfboards in the flood control ditch near our house through the sad remnants of the once respectable Los Angeles river all the way to Seal Beach, which was our closest surf spot. Our family lived in Seal Beach when we first moved to California from Hawaii, so I regaled my landlocked buddies about my surfing exploits. Seal Beach was where the flood control ditch emptied piteously into the Pacific Ocean next to a power plant that added insult to injury by dumping its used cooling water into the scraggly remnants of the river as it dribbled into the sea like an exhausted triathlon competitor pathetically crawling on blistered hands and knees to the finish line.

The surf spot was called the Peehole because the warm water that discharged from the old power plant felt like you had wet the bed or peed your pants. It also attracted sting rays. The waves broke in a narrow channel between two rock jetties before turning into mushy blobs as they pushed upstream into the ditch water. It wasn’t a great spot to begin with, plus people often got stung on their feet and legs by the sting rays. Our big problem on the day we paddled and walked there was that by the time we reached the Peehole and surfed for a couple hours, we had no energy left to paddle back upstream and we had to carry our heavy longboards the whole five miles back home. It was our Bataan Death March, a miserable, freezing, barefoot, arm numbing trek that lasted well past dark. We never did that again. The ditch, however, was an ideal place for our thermodynamic experiments. For example, a dirt clod soaked in gasoline, when “served” with a tennis racket, makes a fiery star-scape of small burning bomblets, sort of a homemade cluster munition. And no adults ever ventured into the flood control ditches -- until lately when they became ground zero for homeless encampments. I understand the attraction.

One of our favorite gas-capades involved pouring a line of gas down the middle of a neighborhood street, lighting it, and watching the residents react in horror and confusion as orange flames warmed their picture windows and rousted them from their living rooms to investigate the glowing inferno. Once lit, we would retreat into the shrubbery to observe and giggle as the residents opened their front doors to discover their street frightfully ablaze. The display didn’t last long, however. After less than a minute the flames died and the bewildered homeowners returned to their couches and televisions, shaking their heads, wondering why the hell anyone would light the street on fire? Good question.

We were damn lucky nobody got hurt. And we never got caught, despite being chased on many occasions by the angry victims of our shenanigans. The Christmas tree fire was a sight to behold, with flames reaching 50-60 feet before being doused by multiple fire trucks in full emergency mode, with lights and fire hoses and scores of spectators. But such heedless and reckless behavior makes me wonder why we dedicated so much time and energy to pure mischief rather than doing something more constructive. We made a dummy newspaper delivery boy who we hanged, knifed, threw into traffic and staged horrible dummy bike crashes for passersby to witness. A man in a Porsche spun out and chased us screaming “It’s not funny!” He was right, but we howled with laughter. A truck pulling a trailer sped away after hitting the dummy. I wondered if the driver was haunted by that bogus hit and run?

Our discovery of the cadavers at Cal State Long Beach was a highpoint, although we were too creeped out to do more than show our grisly secret to some other kids. We didn’t even charge them for it. We had a fire extinguisher that we sprayed at people from cars that we “borrowed” after mom and dad went to bed. Tom threw a chocolate milkshake on an unsuspecting pedestrian who just stood there dripping with incomprehension as we sped away laughing. Why? Good question.

From ages 12 to 14 we knocked on doors, climbed on roofs, snuck into buildings, made hundreds of prank phone calls, dangled booby-trapped money, set traps, water-bombed innocents, egged, soaped, sprayed, launched, toilet papered, joyrode, and pilfered our way through puberty, all to amuse ourselves, mostly at others’ expense. We learned that a golf ball hit with a baseball bat can strike indiscriminate targets blocks away, and if you cut open and unwind the rubber band inside a golf ball, it can be strung across a street so securely that it will strip mirrors and antennas off cars whose drivers unsuspectedly venture through the elastic web. There’s also the oldie but goodie prank of having a few people visible on either side of the road who all pretend to pull a rope tight across the road, causing cars to jam on their brakes. Then we ran, laughing our asses off as we dive-rolled into the nicely trimmed landscaping. Old style glass Christmas lights would emit a satisfying pop when you smashed them, so we stole Christmas bulbs to explode them in the street. We even invented a “low price bulb snatcher” that consisted of an adjustable hose clamp taped to a broom stick for hard to reach lights. If there’s a hell or some form of karma, I know I have some heavy dues to pay.

We did even worse things to each other – painful stunts that left scars. Being stuffed into a laundromat dryer, being beaned in the head with a dirt clod, or forcefully contorted into a folding couch all hurt. When Tom found the clip to his dad’s 22 rifle while searching his sock drawer for cash, (Yes, we stole money from our parents.) he loaded the gun and chased us down the street with it, shouting “I took the safety off so you guys better run fast!” My brother was so impressed with this display of power that he went into our house and got the biggest kitchen knife he could find to chase me up on the roof, where I stayed until dark. I was genuinely scared of him. We had BB gun wars with trash can lids and winter jackets for protection, but it still stung when you got hit. We had to hide injuries from our parents. I never told my parents when I got run off the road by a car on my mini bike and went down hard on my hip. I hid the hamburger rash on my thigh and the deep bruise on my hip bone that still hurts. When I was 15 we moved to Canada, where kids had even easier access to fireworks, and happily engaged in close range combat with Roman candles and bottle rockets. My new Canuck comrades in arms

were just as reckless as my SoCal homeboys.

Without leadership, direction or organization, we were anarchy’s Boy Scouts, a combination of Lord of the Flies, Candid Camera, Jackass and Impractical Jokers. The creative energy we spent thinking up and executing devious mischief could have been directed to more productive activities. We should have felt more guilt, but we didn’t. I feel guilty now, but what good does it do? I also feel a little proud of our initiative and ingenuity.

Society didn’t make us do it. We were not “depraved on account of being deprived” like Officer Krupke’s juvenile delinquents in West Side Story. All my SoCal friends came from caring, successful, middle class, suburban families. Our parents probably thought we were outside playing sports, which was true much of the time, but parents in those days did not micromanage kids the way they do now. Kids were expected to make their own fun. There were no soccer moms in mini-vans, no community pool, no parades, no contests, no neighborhood watch, no fundraisers, no block parties, barbeques, no church, no community fundraisers, no charity events. My parents never came to my little league games, much less give me a ride to practice. You walked or rode your bike. I hid my mini-bike in Tom’s garage to prevent my parents from knowing about it. There was no “it takes a village to raise a child” mindset amongst our elders, nobody checking to make sure we stayed out of trouble.

Our parents hardly knew each other, despite living a few houses away, some of them for decades. They were all busy doing their own thing with their own friends. When people talk about the way all the grown-ups in their neighborhood would look out for all the kids, I can’t relate. Nobody paid much attention to us. Maybe that’s why we demanded their attention.

Our group of misfits was thrown together by happenstance, not because we bonded over shared interests, but because we lived on the same the street. The kids who lived on the next blocks over formed their own clans, and we seldom mixed. In fact, we viewed them with suspicion because they were probably normal, popular kids who were doing normal popular kid things. We were weirdos, not popular or good looking, just amiable fringe characters making our own rules beyond the reach of parental or societal control. We knew there must be others like us nearby, but we shunned them. My dad was friends with a fellow professor at Cal State Long Beach who lived a couple blocks away and was always trying to get me to make friends with his colleague’s son Nick, who I shunned because he was a weird kid. He turned out to be Nicolas Cage, nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, and a cool guy I wish I knew. I’m not saying I made good decisions.

Although the adults were not watching us, we were watching them. We viewed the neighborhood clinically, as our experimental laboratory. The kids knew the neighborhoods far better than the parents who lived inside the low slung, middle class, two and three bedroom, ranch style, post World War Two homes that gradually choked out the orange groves, dairies, and oil fields that previously defined the topography of Los Angeles and Orange County. We knew who lived in our neighborhood: the drunks, insomniacs, gardeners, bikers, churchgoers, hobbyists, and overwhelmingly private people in our midst, even if they didn’t know each other.

We surveilled our territory carefully, conducting regular reconnaissance missions via the network of rooftops and ivy covered fences that enabled us to scramble through the modestly landscaped grid like Taliban insurgents, spying on the backyards, swimming pools, and lawn furniture hidden behind the veiled SoCal habitat. Fence walking was an art that gave us covert access to every backyard in the sprawling grid of humanity, safe from dogs but cohabited with fellow traveling cats and possums. We knew more about what was going on in our neighborhood than anyone. We were dedicated students of California suburban culture.

For some places in America, post World War Two suburban prosperity translated into a sense of community and kinship, but in our part of Long Beach, California in the late 1960s and early 1970s, an attitude of “good fences make good neighbors” outstripped notions of shared destiny. Among our parents, Greatest Generation WWII veterans who supported the Vietnam War, like Tom and Matt’s parents, lived side-by-side in discreet harmony with left-leaning college professors like my parents. Tom and Rick’s dad was known as Sarge from his Army days, a square jawed, lifelong Ford auto plant worker. Their mom was a part-time waitress. Matt’s dad was a lawyer. We were best buddies and yet our parents never spoke.

My next-door neighbor was a sad, angry drunk who looked like a beat up, alcohol drenched Lucille Ball. Diane lived alone and would harangue us from her porch with drunken gibberish that provoked us to respond with cruel taunts. We thought it was funny to answer her back with faux drunken nonsense, which angered her and sometimes escalated into violent fits of rage with Diane stumbling from her porch, onto the lawn to chase us down the street. She didn’t get far. “You kids need to learn respect for your elders, dammit,” she would bawl. Not quite Boo Radley, but a source of cruel entertainment for our gang of misfits. One time while she was ranting, Tom’s friend Denny snuck into her house and snagged a bottle of her Jim Beam. Sometimes the cops came and took her back inside. All of this was going on within a few feet of my house next-door and within spitting range of scores of disinterested homes and families. Even my anxious, overwrought mom didn’t react to the mayhem unfolding a few feet away from her front door. Live and let live.

Our neighborhood was a demilitarized zone amidst America’s cultural and political battles. Neighbors didn’t talk much, especially about things they felt strongly about. Like now, people were tired of the turmoil and just wanted to be left alone. After living in our house for five years, my parents didn’t even know who lived on the other side of the fence, let alone knock on the door to borrow a cup of sugar on a Sunday morning. Fences were wood slats or cinder block, six to eight feet tall, too high lean over for friendly gossip sessions. Barbeques and beers were strictly back yard affairs – no street parties. Ours was the freedom from entangling alliances. Privacy trumped community spirit. And while the kids emulated their parent’s devotion to personal liberty, they bonded with one another to rattle the public and private spaces that constituted our fractured community. Our mischief, however, got people out of their houses and forced them to talk to one another, even if it was to ask, “Should we call the police?”

Duck and cover

Civil defense drills were more fun than fearful.

Hairspray flamethrower. A favorite.

Mini bikes extended our range. I still have a bone chip in my hip from a crash.

Long Beach and Belmont Shores suburbs, circa 1970.

Seal Beach, early 1960s. We moved there from Hawaii and lived on the beach.

The flood control ditches were our gateway to adventure.

Perhaps a second element of redemption is to be honest about my actions. My hope is that the first chapters will establish for you and for me a baseline of honesty that will carry through the whole story of my life. So here it is, the first chapter, with apologies to everyone I might have harmed.

Atomic Waves:

From Hippie Surfer to Nuclear Security Expert

Zachary S. Davis

Atomic Waves:

From Hippie Surfer to Nuclear Security Expert

Zachary S. Davis

Contents

Chapter 1 It’s My Life and I’ll Do What I Want

Chapter 2 Rebels Without a Cause: The Juvenile Delinquent Years

Chapter 3 Kidnapped in Hawaii

Chapter 4 Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll in America

Chapter 5 The Pursuit of Happiness

Chapter 6 Working Class Hero: Oil, Apples, Trains and Trucks

Chapter 7 The Polygraph and Me

Chapter 8 Hit the Road, Zack

Chapter 9 How I Evolved from No Nukes Protester to Government Nuclear Expert

Chapter 10 Fired from the White House

Chapter 11 Arrested in My Kitchen

Chapter 12 The Expanding and Contracting Universe of Family Life

Chapter 13 Revenge of the Nerds

Chapter 14 Surfing Dreams and Disasters

Chapter 15 The Amazing Lisa Owens Davis

Chapter 16 Walking the Camino in the Time of COVID

Chapter 17 Surfing into the Sunset

It’s my life and I’ll do what I want

It’s my mind and I’ll think what I want

Show me I’m wrong

Hurt me sometime

But some day I’ll treat you real fine

The Animals

Chapter One

It’s My Life and I’ll Do What I Want

Why would anyone want to read a book about me? What makes my stories more compelling than what’s on Netflix or your social media scroll? After all, who wants to read about an old white dude who came of age amidst the frothy turbulence of the sixties and seventies, drove trucks and trains, surfed around the world, practiced martial arts, became a professor and a nuclear weapons expert for the US government? Did I mention that I’ve been arrested (several times), polygraphed (many times), kidnapped, worked on classified projects, got fired from the White House, lost the love of my life to cancer, walked across Spain, and nearly drowned off the coast of Indonesia? Along the way, I met my heroes John Glenn and Duke Kahanamoku. Is my life interesting and adventurous enough, or do we need a deeper connection to make my stories worth your time? What would make reading about me worth your time? Sex? Romance? Spies? Drama? It’s all here.

I started as a free-wheeling hippie surfer and ended up as a nuclear weapons expert for the US government. There’s still lots of classified things I can’t tell you. However, as a seasoned national security expert, I can tell you a lot about weapons of mass destruction, military technology, and great power rivalries, and I know a lot about the government, politics, surfing and martial arts. I know what it means to find the love of your life and lose her. My stories span the arc of my life from growing up in the turbulent 60s, my rebellious adolescence in the 70s, the middle years of school, work and family in the 80s and 90s, success and tragedy in the 2000s and growing old in the 2020s.The question is, does anyone care about my interesting life?

Puberty arrived for me between Vietnam and disco. Some call us Generation Jones, the second wave of screaming brats to grace the Post World War Two American landscape. Born on the trailing edge of the baby boomer generation in the 1950s, as toddlers we took our first steps as Sputnik launched humanity into the Space Age while Captain Kangaroo and the Three Stooges molded our understanding of the social contract. We were savvy little connoisseurs of popular culture. Armed with candy cigarettes and Twinkies, I pursued my budding desires for girls, cars, and adventure with fantasies from AM radio, TV, and comic books. Before trading our GI Joes and Hot Wheels for Marlboros and Buicks, I watched hungrily as the original boomer teenagers who were only a few years older reveled in the sex, drugs and rock and roll that permeated American culture in the1960s and 70s. I didn’t know how to get in on the action, but I was working on it. In the meantime, I made lots of mischief and got into more than my share of trouble. Mischief and trouble became the albatross that followed me throughout my life. I guess that makes me an ancient mariner, spinning my tales to anyone who will listen. OK boomer.

Although I came from a family of Ph.D. scientists, I didn’t go directly to college. Instead, I joined the blue collar working class. I rode the rails as a break-man in the Canadian Rockies, worked as a Teamster in Las Vegas, picked apples in central Washington, and labored in oil refineries. I took a lot of risks, made a lot of mistakes, earned plenty of money, learned valuable lessons, and encountered amazing people from all walks of life. My stories about work illustrate how much things have changed for working people in America – not for the better.

My generation thrived on road trips. I have always loved cars (and trucks, and motorcycles, and trains and boats). I owned a dubious lineup of funky, classic and notoriously unreliable vehicles that delivered the adventures I sought and the freedom I craved. If you didn’t have a car, hitchhiking was still a popular means of travel. I drove across America a dozen times and shuttled between California and Canada more times than I can count. Me and my buddy Tom hitchhiked across Canada for no particular reason and found ourselves jailed in Manitoba and riding with escaped convicts on the way back to Vancouver. We were road warriors, hoping for something good around the next bend. I recount some of the highlights and low points for your amusement.

You might think that getting a PhD and working for the US government would quell some of the more outrageous aspects of my circuitous journey. Not true. Mischief and trouble followed me into guts of the national security bureaucracy. Polygraphs were my albatross, largely due to my unique family history with electrographic recording instruments such as the polygraph. Both my dad and my grandfather were psycho-physiologists who specialized in measuring human responses to external stimuli. I took dozens of polygraphs as a kid messing around in my dad’s laboratory. My government jobs required special clearances for classified information including polygraphs. You might think that knowing more about how polygraphs work that the people administering them would be an advantage, but that was not the case. It did not help that I had a torrid affair with a French exchange student who had me arrested, which triggered more investigations and more polygraphs. Then I got fired from my White House job on the National Security Council for reasons that are still unknown to me. That’s a good story.

My career in government service as a nuclear expert was deeply fulfilling and never boring. I covered the nuclear programs of Pakistan, India, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and many other countries and worked at the crossroads of policy, diplomacy, intelligence, military operations, law enforcement and illicit finance. I travelled the world in support of government policies and programs. The mission is to protect America from nuclear proliferation and terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction, WMD. Yes, we discovered a covert nuclear weapons program in Iraq during the first Gulf War, but didn’t find anything in the second Gulf War. It’s a long story. In Washington DC, I served on Capitol Hill, in the State Department, with the intelligence community and had the privilege of teaching courses on nuclear issues to special operations soldiers at the Naval Postgraduate School. At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory I analyzed foreign nuclear weapons programs and wrote books about the effects of future technologies on national security. My books on Strategic Latency ^[1]pulled together top experts to assess the effects of AI, biotech, materials science, and other leading technologies on the future of warfare. My last book, Above Scorched Skies, ^[2]was a novel about a future war in space. I hope you will enjoy the chapters recalling this part of my unusual life.

Everyone has stories about their family, and I have a few too. My mother abandoned me and my younger brother when I was six, but kidnapped us a few years later in Hawaii. My half-brother was born the weekend we were abducted. My step-mom was Jewish but concealed that her mother was pureblood German from an industrial family that had fueled the Nazi war machine. Her dad was a Polish Jewish refugee who escaped the Nazis to relocate in British Palestine with his German bride, where my step mom was born. There was apparently some tension between my step mom’s family who had helped to murder everyone on her dad’s side of the family. They came to America from Palestine in 1946 and settled in Richland Washington where my mom’s father worked for the top- secret Hanford nuclear facility that was part of the Manhattan Project. Strange, don’t you think?

On my dad’s side, my aunt married an Iraqi Jew who was attending Indiana University where my grandfather was a professor. Uncle Jacob was warm and loving. All my cousins are Jewish. When my mom died, I discovered that not only was she probably not technically Jewish, but she had an extensive secret life involving worldwide travels and undisclosed friendships, primarily with a network of gay artists. Who knew? My dad was a professor, scientist and free spirit who became an actor and artist in Mexico. I wonder how these events shaped my outlook on life and I’m hoping that my family experiences are relatable and not so far off the rails that they sound crazy.

I was fortunate to be married to the amazing Lisa Owens Davis for twenty years. Lisa was my best friend, soul mate, and professional colleague until she died suddenly of pancreatic cancer in 2020. The chapter about her recounts her roundabout path to government service and how we navigated Washington DC together and eventually escaped back to California where we settled down and raised our kids. I miss her every day. It’s a story about love and loss, courage and grief, and facing death.

My adventures continue into my golden years. My kids are grown. I went on an exotic surf trip to Indonesia and nearly died at sea off the coast of Sumatra. I walked the Camino de Santiago across Spain during COVID. I found love again, then lost it, and got it back again. I wrote a poorly selling novel about space warfare and the collapse of world order. I’m still surfing, skiing, hiking, practicing tai chi and playing guitar. I bought a camper van and I roam the countryside, still seeking truth, but no more polygraphs. I hope you enjoy my stories.

Inspirations and Influences

John Glenn, who I worked for in Congress

Duke Kahanamoku, who I met

Muhammed Ali and Bruce Lee, who inspired me to practice martial arts

Eisenhower. I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation about his nuclear strategy. I like Ike.

Kerouac and Cassidy

Johnny Cash

Willie Mays

I was a brakeman on the Canadian Pacific Railroad. I love trains.

Staffer on Capitol Hill. Nobody escapes unscathed.

Surfing in Indonesia, where I almost died

The amazing Lisa Owens Davis

View of the White House West Wing from my office in the Old Executive Office Building, 2006

My book about space warfare

Observing a missile launch at Vandenberg Space Base

Arriving at Santiago de Compostela after completing the Camino

Saint Francis, who reminds me to heed the better angels.

^[1] The idea of Strategic Latency is that some technologies have tremendous potential to shift the balance of world power. Examples include fire, electricity, atomic energy, rockets, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. Strategic Latency and World Power, Strategic Latency Unleashed, books, See CGSR link https://cgsr.llnl.gov/research/book

^[2] Above Scorched Skies, available at https://www.amazon.com/Above-Scorched-Skies-Zachary-Davis/dp/1962210162

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My Unusual Journey

I’ve been a brakeman on the railroad, a truck driver, an oil worker, and a dozen other jobs before going to college and earning a PhD and a black belt in karate. Along the way, I took scores of heated polygraphs, got kidnapped, was fired from the White House, and surfed many good waves around the world. I was also a juvenile delinquent and a professor of international politics. I’ll share with you what I learned from my adventures and their relevance to American culture and politics.

1. Why this, why now?

I’ve written my memoirs about my long strange trip from carefree hippie surfer to national security technocrat. I waited until I retired from the government to tell my stories. Now I’m free to share my personal history.

2. Does history Repeat?

As a late stage boomer, my generation trailed behind the OG boomers who led the rebellion against “the establishment.” Generation Jones, as we are called, watched the mayhem of the 1960s and 1970s with bemusement. We wanted to get in on the sex, drugs and rock and roll, but we were critical of the excesses of both the older boomers and the Greatest Generation that was trying to keep them in check. I did it my way.

As we endure another period of upheaval in America and the world, I want to share my stories and experiences with those who also came of age in the 60s and 70s and who have their own ideas about our current circumstances. While my expertise is in national security, nuclear weapons and South Asia, I am interested in the views of people from other backgrounds, specifically about the state of American society, culture and foreign relations.

3. The book is written

I have written a memoir. It unfolds in a roughly chronological order from my rebellious childhood, through my circuitous path to government service, and concludes with loss, tragedy and redemption. I will post the chapters with the hope of eliciting feedback and discussion.

I also wrote a fictional account of a war in space based on my work as a national security specialist in technology and warfare. I will post chapters from this book in tandem with the national security related chapters from my memoir. I am writing a follow on to this book that I will share on this platform.

I might also post some of my unclassified government publications about technology, war and diplomacy here if people are interested.

I don’t need money or book sales, so please subscribe for free and tell me what you think. I have thick skin and appreciate constructive criticism.

Walking the Camino de Santiago, October 2023

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