Echoes: A Travel Thru Memories 5a4j3j

ALSO BY BERNIE KEATING:

Strike Vote Unpublished, 1957

The Holy Grail was a Paper Cup Unpublished, 1971

When America Does It Right AIIE Press, Atlanta, GA, 1978

Riding the Fence Lines BWD Publishing LLC, Toledo, OH, 2003

Buffalo Gap Frontier Pine Hills Press, Sioux Falls, SD, 2008

1960’s Decade of Dissent: The Way We Were AuthorHouse Publishing, Bloomington, IN, 2009

Songs and Recipes: For Macho Men Only AuthorHouse Publishing, Bloomington, IN, 2010

Rational Market Economics AuthorHouse Publishing, Bloomington, IN 2011

Music: Then and Now AuthorHouse Publishing, Bloomington, IN 2011

A Romp Thru Science AuthorHouse Publishing, Bloomington, IN 2012

Riding My Horse AuthorHouse Publishing, Bloomington, IN 2013

Searching for God AuthorHouse Publishing, Bloomington, IN 2013

Chasing Tumbleweeds AuthorHouse Publishing, Bloomington, IN 2014

Ebenezer Sackett’s Christmas Carol AuthorHouse Publishing, Bloomington, IN 2015

They Rode with Custer AuthorHouse Publishing, Bloomington, IN 2016

ECHOES

A Travel thru Memories

BERNIE KEATING

AuthorHouse™ 1663 Liberty Drive Bloomington, IN 47403 www.authorhouse.com Phone: 1 (800) 839-8640

©

2016 Bernie Keating. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/28/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-4190-0 (sc) ISBN: 978-1-5246-4191-7 (hc) ISBN: 978-1-5246-4189-4 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only. Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. The Novice Author Strike Vote The Holy Grail Was a Paper Cup 2. Exploring My Roots Buffalo Gap Frontier: Crazy Horse to No Water to the Roundup Riding My Horse: Growing up in Buffalo Gap Chasing Tumbleweeds 3. Historical 1960’s Decade of Dissent: The Way We Were They Rode with Custer 4. Science A ROMP THROUGH SCIENCE : Plato and Einstein to Steve Jobs 5. U. S. Navy Career Sea Stories 6. Owens-Illinois Career When America Does It Right My Fifty-Year Career With O-I

7. Investing Rational Market Economics: A Com for the Beginning Investor (published in 2011) 8. Music Songs and Recipes: for Macho men only Music Then and Now 9. Novels Ebenezer Sackett’s Christmas Carol 10. Religion Riding the Fence Lines: Riding the Fences that Define the Margins of Religious Tolerance Searching for God Pivot to Asia: Ethel: A 20th Century Woman 11. Some Final Thoughts Epilogue

With fading echoes In twilight hours When day is done And shadows fall, I think of all The joys we knew.

T HESE ARE MY TWILIGHT HOURS and echoes fade, so now is time to look back. Happily, I am able to capture memories from the dozen books I have put to pen, or more precisely, scribbled with pen on yellow pad and typed into computer. Why make an effort at this particular time? I learned, surreptitiously, that my children were plotting a party for my 88th birthday and it made me realize that some others, certainly not me, think I am getting old; so, in deference to them I will take a moment to listen to some of the fading echoes from my past. I when I was a teenager hiking into Calico Canyon west of Buffalo Gap and standing at the quarry looking into the dark canyon beyond and gave the traditional yell: “hall al al ow”, the echo returned to me but with less gusto than I had delivered. I would feel the same again in the quiet moments of twilight hours as the evening sun slowly ceded its dominion to the night and I realized my day was unfilled. Such is life. Writing a book is a complex enterprise. I began each with enthusiasm as I pursued the theme I felt compelled to triumph over, but somewhere along the way the process of putting words on paper did not reach the ion I felt. Long ago (six decades hence) when I was taking a course in fiction writing in night school at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, the professor taught us that the most important thing in writing fiction was to relate to the reader. That might have been true for the “horsey” books he was writing for teenage boys, but over the years I have learned there is much more to writing than that, for instance: what about the author – is he only chopped liver?

After I got my master’s degree at U.C. Berkeley and wrote a thesis that was accepted by my graduate committee of three professors, I thought I knew how to write; after going to work on my first job I decided to write a book. When I reached page ten, on serious reflection, I realized I did not know how to write a good sentence or paragraph, let alone a book; hence, the night courses I started taking in how to write. My literary pastime started with that and eventually replaced the time I spent on golf and skiing. Writing books is cheaper than golf and, at my age, safer than skiing.

PART ONE

THE NOVICE AUTHOR

Learning to dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s”

STRIKE VOTE (1957, Unpublished)

I WROTE THIS FIRST BOOK based on my real life experiences in the Oakland glass factory and completed it after transfer to the Portland factory. The book was true to a popular theme at the time of conflict between management and union, and superimposed on top was the agony of a manager tussling for the quality of his product. Yes, believe it or not, there were even popular books on that theme. Mine, however, never made the cut. It remained unpublished and all the pages became lost and forgotten during my subsequent company relocations, of which there were six with one roughly every five years during a long career. Oh well, anyway, it was not a very good book. I wrote most of the text sitting at my desk in the Portland glass factory. My office was located in a glass enclosure above the production floor. A glass curtain softened the noise from the clanking of thousands of bottles that flowed over conveyor belts below in round-the-clock operations, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week; the factory never idled. As manager my jobs were to keep the product flowing and underwrite the high quality of each and every bottle. The responsibilities never ceased and were the same during normal working hours at 2 pm on Tuesday afternoon, 4 am in the wee hours of early Friday morning when I was home in bed, and all day on Sunday even when I was in Church – or on the golf links; the responsibilities never halted around the clock: my job was endless. The writing of this first novel occurred at the end of long afternoons when the normal bustle slowed but my continued visible presence was needed in the factory. I remained at my desk in evidence to everyone through the glass window and hard at work. My obvious presence filled a factory leadership role that was desirable during shift changes and into the evening. Those who saw me at my desk never realized that I was busy writing my novel. This tough job in the factory was a challenge despite my previous three years’ experience as a naval officer in combat on a destroyer in Korea followed by two years of graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. My biggest problem was providing leadership to my untrained foremen who had never been

properly schooled in making decisions. It was not so much a problem during weekdays when I was present as on the weekends when non-decisions by the foremen were not taken, and I often arrived in the factory on Monday morning to a scene of Chaos. Of all my jobs during a fifty year career, the one in the Portland factory was the toughest one I ever had because there was no one below me capable to delegate anything to, hence, everything ended up on my plate. My next job was in the Oakland Plant, which was many times larger than Portland, where I had responsibility for a crew of a thousand workers but it was easier to handle because I had a competent staff. Many year later, my ultimate job as corporate manager of the quality function for the entire company was even easier than that job in the Portland plant. When the drafts of Strike Vote were completed my wife, Aurdery, volunteered to type the manuscript on the manual Remington typewriter I still had from my graduate school days. I needed a perfect copy of the seventy five pages plus two carbons. Even though she had experience as a secretary prior to marriage, the painstaking job was a lot to expect from a mother with four children underfoot. I’m sure part of her motivation was the hope that her husband would someday become an esteemed author. Alas, the rejection slips kept pouring in; I could have wallpapered her kitchen with them. I was to learn this was the curse of a Novelist God. I no longer have left any pages of Strike Vote. Perhaps that is just as well, because it was not a treasured benchmark.

The Holy Grail Was a Paper Cup

1971 (unpublished) I wrote this second book after my company, Owens-Illinois, transferred me back to the Oakland plant. The Bay Area was in turmoil at the apex of societal change that swept the nation and could be likened to “springtime” after a winter of the previous 1950’s decade of the “silent generation”. The horrific Vietnam War body bags were featured nightly on TV; the nation had already seen several years of an uprising against the unpopular conflict that now was the “cause’s celebres” of protest marches and street violence. Many of the foundations of existing social infrastructure were being challenged: desolate and underpaid Hispanic field workers of the Central Valley were striking and in turmoil; disenchanted Catholic Clergy were revolting against dogma changes coming from the Second Vatican Council; and non-violent Negros were conducting sit-in’s against racial discrimination. In addition to the protest marches against the Vietnam War, all these elements of public conflict were active with riots on East 14th Street, two blocks from the factory; they also found their way inside my glass factory where I had to deal with them. The components for a novel were evident to me. I wrote most of it at home after long days at the factory. It gave me a quiet outlet from the turmoil I encountered during a day in the workplace. As the Finish Product Manager I had five supervisors reporting to me with twenty foremen and one thousand hourly workers. The huge factory was the ultimate example of modern mass production. A majority of the workforce were women who inspected the bottles and packed them into corrugated boxes. The factory produced three million bottles a day on twenty six production lines, each producing a different design of bottle and packed into a corrugated carton that was also manufactured in the factory. The workforce ebbed and flowed with the seasons. With the first rain in September on the tomato fields, the dozen production lines making catsup bottles were immediately shut down and I had to give layoff notices to four hundred workers; then in the spring all these workers

must be recalled and new hires trained. The hero of my novel was a young, naïve priest who was struggling with issues of faith. He became convinced the cause of the grape picker strike needed his . He ed the protest march of grape pickers and their widespread ers, which included celebrities such as Joan Baez and the President’s brother, Bobby Kennedy. The climax came with the celebration of Mass with a motorcycle group on the steps of the State Capital in Sacramento. The cyclist had ed the grape pickers in their revolt. During the celebration of Mass, a motorcycle seat became the altar and a paper cup was improvised as the chalice (Holy Grail); hence, the title for the novel. After arriving back in California from Portland, I took a course in writing fiction at the University of California, Berkeley Extension. It was taught by a retired U.C. Berkeley professor who was also moonlighting by writing for Encyclopedia Britannica and was also a literary agent. He was an excellent teacher and helped me with the “King’s English” that is essential for any aspiring author. When the novel was completed, it was again typed by my wife with the mandatory two carbons. The professor serving as my literary agent helped me in submitting it to publishers. We were almost successful in getting the novel accepted for publication and got past the first two layers in the approval process, but there it died. I got the usual rejection letters: “good, but not our genre.”

PART TWO

EXPLORING MY ROOTS

Everyone comes from somewhere

Buffalo Gap Frontier: Crazy Horse to No Water to the Roundup (published in 2008)

F ROM THE OPENING PAGE:

“The Buffalo Gap frontier was a caldron during the 19th century when Indian and white men clashed, and it gradually became a melting pot where the three cultures of Oglala Indians, cattlemen, and white pioneers, came together in a tenuous peace. This was the last frontier of the American West.”

Becoming author of this book was one of the most pleasant and significant accomplishments of my writing career. The book has already been hailed by historians as one of the most authentic histories of that last frontier in Western Dakota because it comes from us three who reach back to those times through our parents, pioneers, and warrior friends. Writing it was an enjoyable experience from the comradery again with the two co-authors from my childhood. The following is from the book:

“The grandparents of our trio: Pat Cuny, Tom Norman, and Bernie Keating, had come to the frontier during the tumult of the 19th century. Pat Cuny’s Oglala grandmother was one of the first to live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. His grandfather was a French fur trader who lived on the western frontier when it belonged to , married a Lakota, and was absorbed into the Indian culture. Pat spent his life ranching on the reservation. Tom Norman’s grandmother became a single parent raising her son alone in a dug-out cabin along the banks of the Cheyenne River. Tom was raised on a Cheyenne River ranch where he and his Dad rode the fenceless territory onto the Indian reservation where their cattle pastured. My grandfather came to the Black Hills to work in the Cuyhoga Gold Mine before the turn of the 20th century. My Dad was raised as a hillbilly who hunted to put food on the table, worked in a few gold mines, and became a frontier banker.

“Pat, Tom, and I were boyhood friends in the early 1930’s. We lived in the three different cultures of Indian, cattlemen, and townspeople sharing the same landscape, and we three boys rode our horses together as saddle pals across the plains and down the buttes to the Cheyenne River.”

We three were among the last survivors living among the elderly white pioneers and Sioux Indian warriors who had occupied the frontier. We relived those days and told the stories of the pioneers in our book. I am the only one of us still alive. The book was well received on the Indian Reservation, particularly because of the popularity of Pat Cuny, who had become a living legend. The final page contains an of a revisit of us three to our boyhood scene:

“Entering Buffalo Gap, I drove past my Dad’s vacant bank building and down the street of tumble-down reminders of yesterday. The little post office still had its doors open, but all the other buildings were abandoned. The roof had caved in on my old home and the ranch house next door fared little better. The Sewright barn and corral was now an empty, weed-covered field. To my mind, Buffalo Gap had truly become a ghost town. “Stopping briefly at the cemetery to pay our respects at the grave of Tom’s late wife, we walked among the headstones of our old friends. Then we headed out of town, driving up through the Buffalo Gap that had seen thousands of migrating buffalo in better days. North of Custer City the mountain carving of Chief Crazy Horse came into view. We parked the car and found a granite ledge to sit on. “Why Crazy Horse?” I asked. “Yeah, hell, why him?” asked Tom. “It could have been Sitting Bull or Red Cloud, or many others. Why, if they only wanted a symbol, they could have used our old friend High Eagle. Why Crazy Horse?” Pat did not respond for a while. Then he began slowly. “That man up there riding a horse across PAH-ha SAP-ha is made of stone. He represents our culture, the emblem of a brave people who struggled here. They may have lost,

but they fought for their land. Maybe someday they will see their White Buffalo. Why Crazy Horse? Because he is our promise of hope for better times to come.”

One of my thrills as an author was to visit Mount Rushmore with my daughter’s family and grandchildren and find my book featured in the bookstore and lining the shelves with the front cover looking out at the four President’s faces on that famous mountain. My grandchildren were in awe. It became been one of the most popular books for tourists in the bookstores of the Black Hills region, is still on their shelves, and is now in its second printing.

Riding My Horse: Growing up in Buffalo Gap (published in 2013)

“Daddy, is that Scott?” asked Claire, my three-year old granddaughter of her father when she saw the family picture hanging on the wall with me on a horse. “No, Claire, that is your grandfather when he was a little boy and riding a horse.” “Oh, did he ride a horse like Scott when he was a boy?” “Yes, he did. He rode a horse in Buffalo Gap just like Scott.”

Confusing? Yes, it is not easy to explain to a little girl that Scott in the book her father was reading to her at bedtime was a fictional person who was really me, her grandfather, when I was a little boy. My Son, Deke, told me about reading the book at bedtime to his three-year old daughter. It happened quite by accident. One evening they ran out of the usual children’s books from the library, so he reached for one of mine from the shelf, which was this one. Claire immediately bonded with the hero, Scott, and lived through his many adventures as the story developed. I don’t know if she has yet made the connection that the story about Scott is really a story about me, her grandfather. When I decided to write this semi-biographical memory of my youth living in Buffalo Gap, I decided to use a fictional hero, Scott. The story is essentially true as I it with a few embellishments that are permitted when one reaches an age in the eighties and is looking back. Buffalo Gap was, indeed, a unique historical town from the last frontier, so there is a thin line between historical fact and a fond memory. This is a story with the hero, Scott, a young boy who lived in Buffalo Gap with a summer playmate that came with his family from the nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to work on a neighbor’s ranch, where they pitched a teepee alongside Beaver Creek. The following is from the book:

“Scott wanted to be a cowboy like his friend, Rex. For another thing, he wanted to be a Sioux Indian like his friend, Swallow, but knew that was not going to happen because a guy cannot change from being a white kid into an Indian like that. But he could wish, anyway.”

This narrative is an actual depiction of a small boy in a cow town on the edge of the Sioux Indian Reservation. I should know the story because it was me and I lived there. How can you describe the unique environment of this picturesque pioneer town and make it believable? A fictional story may be the only way. Here is an authentic scene from my boyhood:

Swallow’s sister approached Scott after he dismounted. “You’re riding my pony,” she declared in a threatening voice and stood with a hostile hands-on-hips posture face- to-face directly in front of him. He was startled! How to respond to this angry girl? “Gosh! I wouldn’t have ridden the pony if I knew you’d be upset. Swallow said it would be okay.” “Well it’s not,” she retorted angrily. “No one rides my pony without asking, and me saying so.” She was a pretty girl about the same age of Scott with long uncombed black hair that fell loosely to her shoulders, high cheekbones, the light colored skin of a mixed-blood Indian, attractive dark piercing eyes, and a wide mouth that would look great with a smile; but she was not smiling. She wore a brightly colored blouse that seemed to Scott to be over-dressed for a tipi Indian encampment.

The life of a boy in Buffalo Gap was filled with many such encounters in that exceptional milieu. Meadowlark became a classmate of mine, sitting in the desk in front of me where I could tease her and pull her pigtail, but she moved away

during the eighth grade. She was, indeed, a beautiful girl with the combined ancestry of Lakota Indian and French Canadian fur trapper. That portrayal from the book, still eighty years later, seems to me just like last summer.

Chasing Tumbleweeds (published in 2014)

The following is from the back cover of the book:

“The sagebrush prairie ed by outside the bus window and the landscape grew dim in the fading sunset, leaving his hometown far behind. Maybe the tumbleweeds swirling in the wind alongside the bus were an omen; time would scatter bad memories just like wind chasing tumbleweeds.”

That is exactly how the theme for the book developed. When revisiting the hometown recently, I found our home gone and the vacant lot covered with weeds. I parked beside the abandoned church and said a prayer of thanksgiving for sending me to college and delivering me from the heartbreak of that town’s dreary environment. Perhaps it was the environment of World War Two that cast pallor over my high school years. The war started in 1941 with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor when I was in the 8th grade. My high school years were spent during the nationwide draft, rationing of gas, sugar, meat, and other essentials, shortages, blue stars hanging in windows for family in the service, and all the other privations of war. These things never became accepted as normal. Then peace suddenly arrived as described in the book:

“The war ended two weeks after dropping the two atomic bombs on Japan. It happened so quickly it left Americans in disbelief. The war had gone from Kamikazes diving planes into American ships, fierce fighting on Okinawa, and suddenly the unconditional surrender of Japanese forces, and peace. Peace – what was that? I had been in grade school in Buffalo Gap the last time there had been peace; it had been too long in coming. After four years of continual war in Europe and the Pacific, how would Americans adjust- how would I?”

Then the post-war recession arose and had a personal impact on me. During the war through my teenage years, I always had a well-paying summer job on the nearby U.S. Army Ammunition Depot. When I was a freshman during the summer, I worked as a ditch-digger for the City of Edgemont and earned $0.85 per hour. In my sophomore year I worked on a survey crew for the U.S. Geologic Department walking through the unexplored prairie of Wyoming. As a Junior I worked on a concrete crew laying sidewalks on the Ammunition Depot and as a roofer building covers over racks of bombs on the prairie. I worked 10 hours per day, 7 days a week, and with substantial overtime earned a paycheck bigger than my Dad’s. Suddenly the war was over, the post-war recession began, and there were no longer any summer jobs available. Consequently, I obtained a job as a working cowboy on the 7/11 ranch near Buffalo Gap and earned room and board and a dollar a day. Fortunately for me, I had already received the NROTC scholarship to the University of Colorado with assurances for a paid college education. Such was not the case for the three returning GI’s who worked on the ranch alongside me also for room and board and a dollar a day. Yet, memories of high school have a special place. Psychologists tell us that in the twilight of our years, the most cherished thoughts are usually found during the pleasant periods of childhood. Maybe that was not quite true for me in high school; I could not wait to get out of my hometown and head to college. Ten zillion tumbleweeds have blown against the fences leading out of town in the years since, so the metaphor on the back cover of the book is well-founded – memories swirling in the wind.

PART THREE

HISTORICAL

The way we were

1960’s Decade of Dissent: The Way We Were

(Published 2009) A LTHOUGH THIS IS A NOVEL, it is actually an accurate historical of that decade of the 1960’s when the societal framework in American was nearly turned upside down. How do I know? I personally experienced the trauma. The social infrastructure of our nation was challenged by conflict: protest marches and street violence against the unpopular Vietnam War; boycotts and strikes by underpaid field workers in the vineyards of the California Central Valley; a near-revolt of traditional Catholic clergy against the new dogma of the Second Vatican Conference; and the nationwide sit-ins of American Negros against racial discrimination. All these elements of public conflict were being fought in the streets with riots on East 14th, two blocks from my glass factory, and found their way inside where I had to deal with them. Here are the opening lines of the book:

“There she was on the late night news: Ginny Kruger, a member of the violent Weatherman organization of the 1960s, who went underground into hiding after an abortive bank robbery in Berkeley at which a police officer and another Weatherman member were killed, surrendered this morning at the FBI office in Oakland with her lawyer and a ten-year-old son at her side. She fled into hiding over twenty years ago after many years on the FBI’s most wanted list with her whereabouts during that time remaining unknown.”

I personally knew Ginny, but gave her a fictitious name in the novel to hide her identity. I became aware on her in my job as a factory manager after being alerted by a CIA organization that a violent underground revolutionary had

infiltrated the workforce in my factory. The hero of the novel is Montana who arrives on campus as a naïve new student who becomes engulfed in the tragic events of that era:

“If you arrive in Berkeley along Telegraph Avenue, as I did on the bus that fall day in 1959, you come to a dead end on Bancroft Way at the edge of the University of California and walk across Sather Gate onto campus. It’s all changed now, but that was the way it was then. Sather Gate, an ornate rock bridge with an overhead arch, crosses Strawberry Creek, a meandering little stream that tumbles down the steep Berkeley hills to eventually flow into San Francisco Bay.”

I personally walked that entry. An escalating group of student activists had staked out their territory at Sather Gate, shouting vitriolic epithets, usually against some new university policy or an aspect of the government. Some drew crowds of students who listened, chuckled, and then walked on. Other activists stood on wooden box platforms, blatantly preaching. They seemed harmless enough -- only students talking to other students -- who provided an amusing diversion as one ed from the educational pursuits inside the ivy-covered university and poured out through Sather Gate into the outside world. Sather Gate was a festering caldron.

“Then I met Ginny. It was a Friday while walking through the Sather Gate that I saw her standing on the sidewalk ing out leaflets and making cat-calls to students strolling past. She was an attractive girl -- the kind that caught your eye -- but in an offbeat Berkeley sort of way; not the classic sorority beauty with combed blonde hair and turned up nose, but more like someone who had come from a street scene in Athens or Algiers. Long, flowing uncombed hair tied back with a bandana framed a Mediterranean face full of ion. She wore layers of clothes like some street urchin, but these were well put together and coordinated in complimentary colors, projecting the image of an activist with resources and

good taste.”

This nationwide trauma began with a riot inside the City Hall of San Francisco during a congressional hearing of the U.S. House Un-American Affairs Committee. A mob of students and citizens protesting against the actions of the committee were waging a sit-down protest inside the building. The ensuing riot in which police used fire hoses to quell the riot made national headlines:

“The possible eruption of violence appeared to have been averted with the crowd now safely self-immobilized on the floor and singing, but I was wrong. An officer picked up the nozzle of a fire hose and pointed it across the barricade. “You want some of this?” he shouted. “Well, you’re going to get it!” A trickle dripped from the nozzle, a spurt, and then the hose stiffened with the full pressure of water which blasted into the group of seated demonstrators. The rotunda erupted into a melee and I watched in shock as a sheet of spray glancing off one of the granite pillars flashed through the air in front of me then lowered against the bodies of those sitting nearest the barricade. It was impossible to comprehend the confusion. Several tried to stand as if to run; the hose was turned at them and they were knocked over by the force of the water, tumbling head-over-heels onto those still on the floor. I pulled Ginny tightly against me and we turned our backs to the torrent about to hit us. The force blasted like a sledgehammer on my back and propelled us forward, tumbling over each other, landing in a tangled heap on other bodies. My forehead hit the granite floor. Still the powerful stream raked us again and again. We lay face down, hands over our heads, for what little protection that gave, and waited -- surely they would stop.”

That was the beginning of nationwide protests that nearly tore apart the social fabric of the nation. My unpublished novel written in 1971 at the height of the turmoil contained material used again for this one forty years later.

Like many of us who came through that turbulent era, I felt a deep emotional emptiness when it was over. This is from the final lines of the novel:

“How can someone judge what happened at midnight in the glare of the next morning’s sun? Many things happened during those dark years -- some that no one wants to -- and we must use care in how we judge those times. The next morning at the factory, I left for the warehouse and as usual, began to walk along the long aisle corridors, my habitual place for exercise and thinking. A hi-lift came down the aisle, pulled alongside me and stopped. It was Tony, my longshoreman friend, who was often my golf partner on the company golf team. “Say, Montana, did you see that article about the fugitive who turned herself in?” he asked. “Yeah, Tony, it was in last night’s paper.” “Sally up on the carton assembly balcony told me she was a girl who used to work up there before she went on the run. Is that true?” “Might be, Tony, I’m not sure.” “Someone like that is hard to figure,” he said, shaking his head as he drove on down the aisle.

That confused, understated response from Tony is an apt commentary on those turbulent times. In addition to chronicling an important era in our nation’s history, 1960’s Decade of Dissent is a darn good novel.

They Rode with Custer (published 2016)

I never realized the world-wide interest in the Battle of the Little Bighorn until an incident when my wife and I were travelling through Cornwall in England. Stopping at a café alongside the roadway and studying our map, we were asked by a local couple in an ading booth if they could help, announcing they had just returned from a visit to America. The spouse related that her husband’s lifelong ion was to visit the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. He had obtained a horse and spent three days riding over the field of battle, having had done the same in Belgium for the Battle of Waterloo. The interest in the Custer conflict is worldwide. For me, the interest is more personal. Having been raised in Buffalo Gap near the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, I knew a half-dozen elderly Indians who as teenagers had fought against Custer in that battle. I have read every book and even the Court Martial Proceedings; the misinformation about the battle in the mass media has always perturbed me. I determined to set the record straight, hence, this book. Many of the troopers who rode in the Seventh Cavalry were immigrants who ed the cavalry for a bed and meal during the recession after the recent American Civil War. I decided to use that perspective for this historical novel. This is how it begins:

“The fierce battle was fought in the greasy grass among teepees on a June day. The cup of many a wild flower was filled high with blood, insects crawling among harmless leaves were stained by dying men, the butterfly took blood into the air upon the edges of its wings, and the Little Bighorn River ran red. Trodden ground became a quagmire with sullen ponds collected in the prints of human feet and horse hoofs; the all-pervading red hue still shimmered at the sun. The moon coming up beyond the black line of distant rising ground rose into the sky and beheld the littered hillside strewn with upturned faces that had once sought mother’s eyes. Many a star kept mournful watch upon it.

Such is life that great events cannot be foretold to actors who are destined to perform in the crucible of the living stage. Two recently incarcerated young Irish men who had absconded with a trifling sum from a local merchant in Ballingarry, county of Kilkenny, Republic of Ireland, lounged in the local detention enjoying their days of enforced leisure. They decided to amble out the unlocked doors when they heard a work assignment would soon be forthcoming. The local elders could ill afford to feed hungry and glutinous local pests so made escape not only possible but promoted; in-so-far as the wretched forever left the county and relieved the local coffers.”

The Expedition of 1876 that carried Custer and his huge crew of several thousand troopers, officers, and civilians travelled for over a month, covering 260 miles across the Dakota prairie to the Montana line, then another 100 miles to the site of the battle. The encounter with Indians took only a day and a night. Stories about the final demise of General Custer are open to doubt, inasmuch that no witness survived. One of the survivor Irish troopers, Duffy, eventually settled alongside the Cheyenne River near Buffalo Gap. The saga ends in the following way:

“In the aftermath of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Indians were forced onto the eight reservations in South Dakota, some of the most desolate and impoverished regions of our nation. There they were ignored and forgotten. Sometimes Duffy could hardly wait for the end of the day riding over his ranch to get back to the ranch house where Suzy would be waiting with a pot of Irish stew. Whenever she made mention of the battle, Duffy would smile and ask, “Suzy, what battle are you referring to?” He regretted his role in that dismal undertaking but realized he had already spent his time in Purgatory.

PART FOUR

SCIENCE

What makes things tick?

A ROMP THROUGH SCIENCE : Plato and Einstein to Steve Jobs (published in 2012)

W HEN I WAS AN ENGINEERING sophomore at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a midshipman in the NROTC, I became a physics student on the recommendation of a counselor who looked at my intelligence test scores and told me I should go for a major in engineering physics. College sophomores are naïve and easily influenced. As I thought about it, I decided it would be fun to really learn how the physical world works, so I jumped in and still find physics fascinating as I learn more about this world we live in. This from the back cover:

“Why Science? We are fascinated by discovery: who discovered what, and how? This ranges from a look outward at the night sky with scientists like Kepler, astronauts like Neil Armstrong, to physicist like Einstein, chemists like Marie Curie and Linus Pauling, an inward look at psychologists such as Skinner and Maslow, and philosophers like Plato. “Keating explores the pursuit of scientific discovery from his background as a physicists and a long career in the margins of the academic world.”

Fascinated? Yes, but I remain ambivalent about the decision with physics as a declared major because it burdened me with the most difficult course of study in the University and had a negative impact on my social life, which became virtually non-existent. The major in physics made the U.S. Navy happy because nuclear submarines were on their horizon; however, physics was not a good choice for how I was to spend the rest of my life after the navy career was over. I have received more compliments as a writer about this particular book, A Romp Thru Science, than any other. I think the reason is that many are scientifically illiterate and envy anyone who understands and can explain the meaning of E=MC², which is a mathematical expression for the equivalence of mass and Energy. I suspect some readers were more interested, however, in the chapter entitled Psychology and You”, or some of the other more personally

relevant areas of science. Here is from the Preface:

“Science is a marvel of modern life. We know how to fight disease, brighten-up our homes, communicate instantly around the world, and a host of things that have improved our quality of life. Most have been discovered during the past millennium. How did man accomplish this and who blazed the trail?”

In writing the book I did a considerable amount of research in all the many other aspects of science beyond physics such as solar energy, even philosophy, and in the process, at long last, finally became somewhat qualified to call myself a scientist – a moniker that had evaded me since graduation day. The following shows why I spent so many evenings during college in the library with my head buried in mathematical equations:

“No wonder I’ve always struggled with mathematics -- recently I learned why. I never knew what mathematics was. Now I know what I did not know, and that few others knew either. ‘It has no generally accepted definition.’ “Aristotle, Bertrand Russel, and others through the centuries have not agreed on what it was. The famous philosopher Henri Poincare said: ‘Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.’ Today, in the era of huge computers, the mathematician is a kind of zookeeper, making sure precious computers are fed and watered. “While mathematics is not well defined and a fixed body of knowledge, it does, however, pervade every aspect of modern life. It is a collection of tools that help us understand parts of the real world. … Albert Einstein stated: ‘as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality’. Does that statement by Einstein clarify everything? No: I think not!”

During my three-year navy career, I was encouraged to go into submarines because of my degree in physics with nuclear ships on the horizon. I resisted and got out after the end of the Korean War, and then went to graduate school at U.C. Berkeley. By that time my interests had changed to Industrial Engineering where I pursued a master degree. I filled in the enrollment paperwork to Berkeley while my ship was in combat on the North Korean coast and was able to mail the letter free without postage because I was in a combat zone. I have always wondered if using that franking privilege had something to do with the quick acceptance from Berkeley of my application for ission.

PART FIVE

U. S. NAVY CAREER

Anchors aweigh

Sea Stories (not written)

T HE NROTC SCHOLARSHIP BECAME MY ticket out-of-town and elevation from a cowboy in a crude cattle town to a paid-for education at one of the nation’s heralded universities. At the close of World War Two, the U.S. Navy developed this program to obtain trained naval officers as a supplement to the program in the U.S. Naval Academy. Obtaining one of the scholarships became very competitive with a nation-wide test followed by interviews with naval officers. The number selected for the program from each state was the same as their number of congressmen, which meant two were qualified from South Dakota. After graduation from high school I had applied to the South Dakota School of Mines in Rapid City and I faced a future of working my way through a local college. I was at the state track meet when I received a telegram from my Dad telling me I had won the scholarship and was assigned to the University of Colorado – my first choice. He was obviously very happy to send me the telegram, and I was absolutely overjoyed. The navy paid for my tuition, books, expenses, and a salary of $50 per month as a midshipman. I would take summer cruises aboard ships. In return, I was commissioned as an officer upon graduation and became obligated to spend three years on active duty in the United States Navy. The alternative was to face the nationwide draft and spend time in the army if my lottery number was drawn. Inasmuch as World War Two had just ended and the nation was at peace it was a good deal: right? Wrong! Even before college graduation the Korean War started. I was on a senior-year midshipman cruise on a destroyer when the nation was suddenly at war. The destroyer was immediately ordered to head to Korea, and I was nearly commissioned and taken to Korea because the ship was short of officers. A Judicious God and the U. S. Navy Department intervened and I returned to Boulder to complete my senior year. One month after graduation, I found myself in the fire control turret above the

bridge on the U.S. Boyd DD544 and directing salvos from the 5-inch guns at targets ashore on the North Korean Coast. That was the sum and total of my orientation program. In hindsight, the most dangerous assignment for our ship was inside the North Korean port of Wonsan, which was similar in size and makeup to San Francisco Bay. Our ship sailed round-and-round, day- and-night, delivering salvos from our 5 inch guns in a continual bombardment of this port that was crucial to the enemy’s supply lines. The biggest danger was the floating mines that were dumped from small boats by enemy into the water under cover of darkness. If a ship hit one of these, it was curtains for the crew with an immediate one-way trip to the ocean bottom: the actual demise for three ships. Yo Do was a small island in the middle of Wonsan Bay. British commandos invaded the island and it was defended by the South Korean army. On the small hill on the island a searchlight was installed to provide a beacon for navy aircraft to find their aircraft carrier that was constantly on the move in darkness out at sea. Our destroyer sent a small shore party ashore each day to the island in a whaleboat with an officer, radioman, and three riflemen. By secret radio code, they moved the searchlight in a new direction each night to the new azimuth. I was often the officer assigned to that job. Since it was within range of shore batteries, we slept alongside the slit trenches near the searchlight. The happy part of the story is that I survived; otherwise you would not be reading this. I became acquainted with a weird guy on Yo Do Island who was a CIA operative with the code name: Bom-Bom English Junior. He used a small boat to go ashore at night to collect intelligence. He was eventually captured and paraded by the enemy through Wonsan in a bamboo cage. I have often wondered what his last days were like. I had two combat tours on the destroyer and a third tour on the USS Munro as a staff officer for an escort destroyer division staff. At the end of three years I was happy to be discharged to go to graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. My navy days were not yet over. The GI Bill provided meager financial existence, so I ed the active navy reserve and attended drill each Wednesday night to make money to a life-style in my small garage apartment near the campus. I received a full day’s pay as a Lieutenant for three hours of drill. In my second year I also became a teaching assistant on the engineering staff, so I was rolling in money. When I left the University with a

master degree and went to work for a private company, I actually took a cut in pay. There is more to the navy story to tell. Quite by happenstance from a fragment in an alumni magazine, four of us who came aboard the USS Boyd sixty-five years ago as new ensigns and shared a cramped 5-man stateroom were again reconnected. What a unique and wonderful reunion. After discharge we had gone our different ways and lost . Hamp Terry travelled the world in International Management and now lives in Valencia, Spain. Tony Ellis became an executive in Finance and Banking, and Partner in a Venture Capital firm and lives on the San Francisco Peninsula. George Baechtold became a Professor of Business Law at California State University Northridge, California, and now lives in Laguna Beach, California. We are all in our late eighties and still remain active. What a wonderful gift to be able to share experiences with shipmates from so long ago. Here is a brief sample of some Email “sea stories” that started when George forwarded an article to us about the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor.

1. From George to: Hamp, Tony, Bernie Subject: After the tourist leave for the day. “I found this very interesting and inspirational.” George 2. From Tony: “Thanks George, very moving.” Tony 3. From Hamp: “Yes, like Tony said, very moving.” Hamp 4. From Bernie: “After I left the Boyd, my next ship was an escort destroyer, USS Munro, with Pearl Harbor as home port. When in Port we usually docked directly across from the Arizona Memorial. Going in and out of port, I seldom gave any thought

to the hundreds of men encased below on the Arizona battleship. However, recently I was writing something about our time on the Boyd bombarding inside Wonsan Harbor and recalled our biggest worry was to hit a floating mine, which meant a quick trip to the bottom to become encased forever with fellow shipmates. Three ships ended that way and still lay at the bottom of the harbor. Isn’t it nice for us four guys to be able to send Emails to each other, rather than spending our time together at the bottom of Wonsan harbor? Maybe someday there may be a memorial in Wonsan Harbor to those Americans still lying there in those three ships. In the meantime, we’ll have to them in a special way on Memorial Day.” Bernie 5. From Hamp: “Thanks for that. I had a close encounter with a victim on the Arizona. Our mailman, of Italian stock, came on his rounds soon after December 7th and confessed to my mother, in tears, that his son was a sailor on the Arizona. Bernie, you are a great writer. Who else would imagine us on the bottom of Wonsan Bay, with respect for those of us who are there?” Hamp 6. From George: “Seems to me that I that we ran across a wayward mine off the Korean coast one time during the daylight and if my memory serves me correctly we shot at it with small arms until it finally exploded. Didn’t we lose our mail aboard a ship named “Sarcey” or something like that, a tug boat, I believe. It hit a mine and sank. Our mail arrived much later after having been dried out. I saved that letter I received for decades but I have no idea where it is now or if it still exists.” George 7. From Hamp: “I the sinking of the fleet tug by a mine. Korean guns had their range and we were called in to make smoke to hide the divers. I think it was the first time we had made smoke and it was a little like starting a camp fire with a match while the Captain was yelling from the bridge to the fantail to start it. I do not if we returned fire at that time but I some other good hits on

Korean caves with gun mounts firing at us. I also received some letters recovered from the tug with ink transferred to the inside of the envelopes and still have them. The correspondent ed away a few years ago.” Hamp 8. From Hamp: “I dug up my letter from the fleet tug Sarsi ATF11 that was sunk on Aug 28 1952. That was six months after I reported aboard! What a long way it was from Berkeley or San Pedro. I recall accepting everything in that crazy situation as normal. I may have sent on some of the letters that were recovered from the wreck. The remaining letter has a shadow of ink totally unreadable. The envelope has an ink drawing of central park. A shock of yellow blond hair is taped to the letter, unaltered by salt water or time. Hamp 9. From Tony: “Sorry I can’t tell my grandchildren the war stories. I wasn’t there. Oh, I do a midshipman cruise on the Astoria (nasty asty) when we were lined up on the deck and there was this mine floating by all covered with green slime. It was sunk by the ship I don’t how.” Tony 10. From Hamp: “Astoria. Tony, it is a coincidence you mentioned it. Just a while ago looking up my fleet tug Sarsi letter I saw some old photos of the Astoria, which we enjoyed with the Berkeley NROTC. My thoughts were, looking at a photo of the prow from above, what a big ship it was. But a number of CL´s and larger were sunk in the Coral Sea! During exercises I was in a 40mm mount. The guy assigned as gun director did not like being alone up there in the sun so he asked me to take his watch. When it came time to shoot he wanted it back but I refused and we were complimented by somebody on the phone for shooting down the drone. You recall we sunk the old battleship Nevada near Hawaii with other forces for practice. I wrote an that my parents got printed in the Salinas paper. You did not mention our adventure with the two Hawaiian girls. We picked them up at the Episcopal Church. One had a car and gave us a tour of the island. Some midshipman from Yale was with us. He wanted to marry one of the girls and called home but they shut him down. You can tell that to your grandchildren. I have many memories of that summer. Hamp Next week there will probably be another email exchange. It is a pleasure to be able to reminisce with lifelong

naval friends who went through a war together.

PART SIX

OWENS-ILLINOIS CAREER

Earning a paycheck

When America Does It Right

(published in 1975) I MADE GOOD MONEY WHILE writing this book – I was on the company payroll. When the President of O-I was asked to do the task, he announced: “Let Keating do the job.” I had become more –or-less, the designated company legate of unwanted jobs. Owens-Illinois had been identified by Fortune Magazine as one of the “Most ired Companies” in America. An executive in the American Institute of Industrial Engineering (AAIE) decided to focus on these companies with a book to describe how each accomplished the quality function within their companies. The O-I president’s hand-me-down approach was typical whenever such a request needed someone to write an article or deliver a speech. The top executives already had more on their plate than could be handled, hence, would often delegate it to someone at the bottom of the totem pole – and that was me. I did not become the designated person to deliver speeches because I was so good, but because no one else wanted to do it. With considerable speech-making experience in Toastmaster, I was also effective. In addition, as the Corporate Manager of the quality function, I was a suitable spokesman on almost any subject. As a consequence, I was asked to deliver the company’s folktales an average of more than a dozen such undertakings per year. All this, of course, on top of my normal job of managing the quality function for twenty-five factories, thirty-five sales branches, and delivering quality merchandise to hundreds of domestic customers everywhere in the United States. Oh, by-the-way, I was also the designated quality expert for our associates and s in the thirty-five oversea companies of our International division. I was busy and took home a briefcase every night and weekends that I opened while engaging in family activities. I also travelled a lot and had a tolerant wife and children.

In my usual manner of writing dialogue, I provided the following five-point strategy in the book, which I had developed to lead our company’s quality programs:

(one): Start with high quality incoming raw materials. (two): Insure the quality of product design. (three): Identify the key places in the manufacturing process that must be monitored, and effectively control these parameters. (four): Maintain effective communications with customers. (five): Make every employee a contributing member of the quality team.

There was no earth-shaking surprise about this strategy; we were the top quality supplier in the industry because we made it work. My contribution to the book received no acclaim and went unheralded in all quartiers – but I was well paid. I received my one free copy from the publisher, and that was the end-of-the-line. My copy collects dust somewhere in the attic.

MY FIFTY-YEAR CAREER WITH O-I

(1955 – 2005) My company career actually began during the time I was in graduate school. The company and its employee union had agreed to a t project at the University to investigate various issues involving the inspection of baby food bottles. Working on Saturdays at the Engineering Field Station in Richmond, my job was to keep bottles flowing over conveyor belts during the testing. This experience was to lead upon obtaining my master degree to a fifty-year career: thirty-five years until semi-retirement followed by another fifteen years as a part-time consultant. Owens-Illinois was a huge company that produced more than half of the glass containers in the world, and was the world’s largest supplier of plastic bottles, pharmaceutical ware, Libby tableware, one of the two largest suppliers in the world of scientific laboratory glassware, and manufactured various kinds of corrugated materials. During most of my career I was involved with glass containers, but later as a consultant became involved with all the other company’s products. I had a demanding job. My direct responsibilities were for domestic operations but I and my organization was also called upon to provide services to our company’s extensive oversea s. I had a large staff at headquarters in Toledo and a team of two dozen engineers located in the field at different places around the United States. My responsibilities involved considerable travel domestically and overseas when assisting the International Division. During my years at headquarters, I personally provided on-site consulting visits to fifty factories located on five continents around the world in addition to the twenty five domestic factories. With an education in engineering physics, a career as a naval officer, graduate school at Berkeley, and twenty years of factory experience before going to headquarters, I was well prepared for the tough job as Corporate Manager of Quality Assurance.

When the time for retirement arrived, I was asked by the company president to continue working to assist all the other parts of the company in becoming quality leaders. There was a shortage of experienced, capable managers with my proven credibility. My new role was a part-time consultant to help factories in need of assistance with their quality programs. I did this for another fifteen years. It was the frosting on the cake at the end of a long career.

PART SEVEN

INVESTING

Managing resources

Rational Market Economics: A Com for the Beginning Investor (published in 2011)

T HIS BOOK WAS NOT AN academic undertaking for the reader, but rather a personal, pragmatic game plan on how I have handled my own personal investments and will continue to do so in the future. Few people can retire with adequate funds for retirement based solely on a paycheck and must have other investments. Fortunately, I did and now enjoy the rewards. I can credit some of the education in economics I received in graduate school. Economics is a complex social phenomenon with many dimensions. The focus of this book was on investing and the stock market Very early in the process I learned the importance of having some simple principles to guide my investment strategies so I did not have to start from “ground zero” every day. I keep returning to these ground rules for assurance that I’m still on track. I obtained these from investment experts and then put them in a simpler form that I could understand and use.

(#1) Know the Market: Understand what drives investments. (#2) Know My Resources: know the details of my financial resources. (#3) Have An Investment Strategy: Develop and use a game plan. (#4) Understand My Investments: Invest only in things that I fully understand. (#5) Have a Termination Action Plan: Understand under what circumstances and how I may terminate the investment. (#6) Set Up Accurate ing: Maintain accurate records.

(#7) Analyze Results: Conduct periodic reviews. (#8) Maintain Perspective: React with changes in accordance with the game plan. (#9) Learn and Grow: Ask questions and listen. (#10) Be Decisive: Act - or not act - whether it is to charge ahead, or to stand at the barricades and hold the fort.

I have converted these ten principles into action and they have served me well for several decades. In maintaining a conservative approach, I have missed some opportunities for greater gain, but my investment portfolio remains intact. The final conclusion: if you want to be successful in investing, you’d better understand economics; doing the research and writing this book was extremely important in preparing for my own retirement.

PART EIGHT

MUSIC

If I’d had the talent, I’d been a singer or songwriter

Songs and Recipes: for Macho men only

(published 2010) I WAS SURPRISED TO LEARN that a favorite book of a grandson, Zackary, was this one. Don’t ask me to explain, since he grew up in the computer environment of Silicon Valley, which is a far cry from the theme for this book. Perhaps it was a touch of absurdity (for “macho men only”) with a reality that appealed to him. The following is from the preface:

“Why songs and recipes? I was raised during the last frontier of the West and while we may have lived a crude life in Buffalo Gap by today’s standards, we did have a fine culture. We loved to sing songs. In later life I became a successful executive in a major corporation, but if I had my life to start again, and had the talent, I would have become a singer or song-writer. Unfortunately, God did not give me a good voice, nor could I master the ukulele or piano beyond the tune Chop Sticks; but I loved to sing. Melodies and lyrics have always made a big impact on my psychic and in my life. “If people think cooking a meal was a job given only to ladies, they should have lived in the rural West where life was a shared experience. She learned to help outside on a horse or in the barn when required, and every cowpoke and rancher I knew could cook his own meal, when required, and do a damn fine job of it. He learned it by osmosis soon after he learned to walk. It started as a means of survival and then as he grew older it became a hobby for many, even for the macho man. “Some of my fond early memories are of a Sunday afternoon with the family in the old Model A Ford and all the windows rolled down for fresh air. Dad would drive and lead the family singing, while Mother attempted to maintain control among us five children in the back who were jockeying for a seat by an open window. When it was my turn, I’d stick my face out into the fresh open air and sing to my heart’s content.

“Yes, we had a fine culture.

Music Then and Now (published 2011)

Shortly after Aurdery and I were married we took a night course in music appreciation at U.C Extension in San Francisco. It was taught by Johnathan Schiller, who was one of the top music critics San Francisco. During the first hour he explained the intricacies of the particular music we were about to hear, then the second hour he let us listen to the actual music. It was a delightful time and we loved the things we were exposed to. For me, a favorite was Ilyich Tchaikovsky and his Fifth Symphony. To this day, I still use it as background music on a quiet Saturday mornings with no TV. The motivation for writing this book was so I could recall all the wonderful music of the past. With Johnathan we explored the different periods of music: Romanesque, baroque (Bach – ugh), classical (Mozart), romantic (Beethoven & Tchaikovsky), and modern (Gershwin). Then I included the research for all the different kinds of modern music during my lifetime, including opera, jazz, swing, country, rock, folk, blues, and pop; then compiled the most complete, comprehensive list that exists for all the various big bands, crooners, sopranos, and vocalists of all genres that sang during modern times. To my mind, it is a historical treasure. In the wardroom of the USS Boyd during Task Force 77 in the South China Sea, we officers listened to the music purchased by the black stewards because we officers were too cheap to buy any records ourselves. That’s how I fell in love with the music of Sarah Vaughn and Billy Eckstine with the wind rushing past an open port as our ship speeded up to 35 knots during flight operations on the aircraft carrier, launching planes headed to North Korea. It was fun to recall the bands of Benny Goodman from the ballroom in Santa Monica where I danced in bachelor days, the bands of Duke Ellington and Les Brown in Las Vegas dancing with Aurdery, and listening to a half a dozen other big bands we have enjoyed. Lawrence Welk is still with us on TV every Saturday night at 6 pm, and my parents danced with his band during the 1930’s Water Festival in Hot Springs. He is the last of the big bands and one of the best. When my grandchildren visit on Saturday nights, they are fascinated by the music from his big band – the only one they have ever heard.

All of this music is more than just a fading memory; it is an important part of our culture

PART NINE

NOVELS

Having fiction skills also aids management skills

Ebenezer Sackett’s Christmas Carol

(published 2015) I N MY PROLOGUE, I EXPRESS appreciation to Charles Dickens for utilizing some of the prose from his novella , A Christmas Carol , written in 1843; and to William Shakespeare for quotes from his play, Julius Caesar , written over 400 years ago. My story is similar to Dickens’ and profiles a rancher, Bill Hudspeth, I knew in the Cheyenne River country east of Buffalo Gap. He was a cantankerous old cowboy who spent seven days a week in the saddle and only took a day off on rare occasions to come to town to do business with my dad at the bank and throw down a couple beers at Frenchie’s saloon. The novel begins thus:

“Christmas morning: Ebenezer Sackett hated the day. Twenty years ago – a morning like today - his angry son disowned him and rode away: all affection dead as a door nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, there is anything particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined to regard a coffin-nail as far more dead. But the wisdom of word mongers is in creating the simile; and my undisciplined hands shall not amend it, for something might be lost in the telling. You will permit me to repeat, emphatically, all affection was dead as a door nail. Ebenezer had never been much aware of friendliness. He lived in a solitary world of his own where there was no need for such superfluous things as esteem, either that incoming from others or that bestowed on outsiders. He was his sole perpetrator, his sole executive, his sole obligation, his sole beneficiary, his sole friend, his sole mourner. Even his spouse, Grace, seldom entered the inner

sanctum of his conscience. Oh! But Ebenezer was a tight-fisted hand at the cattle auction – a squeezing, grasping, clutching, covetous old reprobate! Hard and abrasive as a flint stone, from which no match had ever struck generous fire; secret and self-absorbed, and solitary as an oyster lying on the bottom of the sea. It was a frigid day, but external heat and cold had little influence on Ebenezer Sackett. No warmth could warm; no wintry weather could chill. Winds that blew across the Dakota prairie were never more bitter than he; no blizzard more intent upon its drifting snow, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather did not know how to test him. The heaviest rain, snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of advantage only that they came down copiously, and Ebenezer never did anything generously. Nobody ever stopped him on the street to say, with a friendly look, “My dear Ebenezer, how are you. When will you come to see me?” No solicitors implored him to bestow a donation; no children asked him what time it was, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to some destination. Even dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming, would crawl away and wag their tails as if to say, “Please me by, I will not bite.” But what did Ebenezer Sackett care! It was the thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning other humans to keep their distance, was his forte. Least of all, did he want to hear that greeting that chafed his ears: “Merry Christmas.”

I doubt that Dickens would be critical of my attempt to modernize his story from 175 years ago. Few people or children of today still believe in ghosts. When my modern Ebenezer got thrown from his horse, striking his head on a rock, the resultant mental delusions he experienced are more believable in today’s milieu than ghosts. Other than that, the behavior of a cantankerous, covetous old reprobate is the same today as they were in Dicken’s time. It did not require much fictional innovation on my part to place Bill Hudspeth in Dicken’s story. Although I enjoy reading the finish product of fiction, the writing process for a novel is much more demanding than for a non-fiction book; at least for me. I enjoy doing the research for the latter, but creating the fictional stuff that makes

a novel work is much more difficult. It also takes me back to my writing classes with emphasis on plot, subplot, conflict, crisis, and climax. I suppose writing a novel is comparable to a comedian telling us that comedy is hard work. Damn Shakespeare and his play, Hamlet, for creating all those required parameters of a gothic novel. (Yes, I have a lot of nerve to make reference to Shakespeare and me in the same sentence.) As I approach the nineties in age, I believe I have several non-fiction books still on my plate to write and look forward to conducting the research, but feel I can only tackle one more novel. Writing fiction is hard work. We will see what the future holds.

PART TEN

RELIGION

Is there really a God?

Riding the Fence Lines: Riding the Fences that Define the Margins of Religious Tolerance

(Published 2003) I FELT PRIVILEGED THAT FIVE religious leaders agreed to me as coauthors for a book about religious beliefs: an Islamic scholar, Jewish rabbi, Buddhist minister, Roman Catholic priest, and Episcopal rector. That sort of religious entourage is never found in the same country club, let alone in the same book – heaven forbid. Each came from their distinctive culture with differing religious beliefs, but all agree on a world-wide need to find understanding and tolerance among people of good well. Each of them described how they are “like cowboys riding the fence lines” of their pastures, defining their place in the religion that plays the major role in their lives. The book dispels many stereotypes and myths about religions based on assumptions or generalizations by the general public or media. The book is not the ultimate in ecumenical understanding among entrenched religious dogma, but it is a refreshing approach by these five friends of mine as an attempt to explore religious differences. How am I qualified to write this book about religion since I have no religious credentials? Perhaps each of these religious leaders agreed to me, seeing as I don’t start with an unreasonable amount of religious bias. I am a noncombatant legionnaire. In the book, I write a chapter on a particular religion as it is described in the secular encyclopedia, and then each co-author responds with a chapter on how they came to their own religious beliefs. My role was minor and I was provocative and sometimes irreligious. The Islamic scholar, Dr. Hussain, is a Muslim born in Pakistan. He is a Professor of cardiac surgery at the Ohio School of Medicine, a member of the Board of

Trustees of the University of Toledo, and one of the foremost spokesmen for Islam in America. He states the theme of the book in the following way:

“We each ride fence lines stocked with our own provisions and equipped with our unique tools. In the end our destination, I firmly believe, is the same. We all reach home even if through different routes and taking different paths.”

Searching for God (published 2013)

I had to open the book again to see what I had written on this controversial subject. The title of the book implies a search. If a genuine search is to be conducted, the outcome cannot be known at the outset, and that was the reality of my own search for a God. I have found previously in writing several of my books that the motivation for picking a specific theme was my own lack of knowledge and the need to learn more about a particular subject. When I conduct the research and digest the findings as I place them on paper, it is a means of self-education and a way to organize my thoughts. In the instance of this book, why did I need to conduct a search for a God if the existence (his, her, or whatever) is a foregone conclusion? In reality, it is not a proven fact, inasmuch that over half of the people in the world do not believe in a monotheistic God and even 15% of the people in America are atheistic. Since this book may be read by a wide variety of people, I felt it appropriate to provide a warning in the Preface:

“A genuine belief in the existence of God is treasured, and not something to meddle with by anyone other than a full-grown adult.”

My search was extensive and carried me through the many highways and byways of beliefs looking for a Monotheistic God. A look at the Table of Contents provides the itinerary:

1. Theories for existence of a God: Bible story of Creation; Creationism; Big Bang theory; Steady State theory; Chaotic theory; Multiverse theory; and Pantheism theory of origin.

2. Physical Laws of the Universe: is God somewhere in there masquerading as one of the physical principles of our world that control things? 3. Subatomic particles: is God found among the many subatomic particles such as a neutrino or boson? 4. Religious Faiths that believe in a Monotheistic God such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; or other religious faiths such as Buddhism and Hinduism that do not include any such belief: by what means can the existence in a God be established?

After the extensive search, I reached the following conclusion for the existence of a God:

Yes, there may be a God if you believe in the supernatural. No, if you are looking for a “Personal” God that exists in the scientific (natural) world.

Pivot to Asia: (Still a work-in-process)

Now, I will give you the opportunity to participate with me in the research for my next book. Last year President Obama announced a shift in our Foreign Policy to place less emphasis on things European and more on Asia. It came late in his istration so may never be implemented by a new istration; however, that is the theme for my next book. The following are some initial sketches from early drafts.

(One): What is the Foreign Policy of the United States for Asian affairs? In actual fact, the nation has never had one; the requirement for a Foreign Policy is not mentioned, per se, in our constitution. (Two): Our heritage as a nation comes from Europe. Our religion and culture are European based from across the Atlantic; we cut out teeth at home and in school learning what flowed from Europe, as if what lay west across the Pacific did not exist. (Three): The religious cultures between Asian countries and us are a pole apart, which creates a much different “state of mind” and is fundamental to things such as government, war, and economics. (Four): Religion is a belief in some philosophy or culture that relates people with each other. Even though most people in the West believe in a Monotheistic God, a vast majority of those in Asia do not; most are atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, or believe in some other religious concept. (Five): Religion is a factor in East-West relations because of our European inherited belief in a monotheistic God as differentiated from the religions of Asia. Buddhism is the predominate religion of the East, often in synergy with other religions such as Taoism and folk religions in China; Hindus dominate India; Sunni Muslims are the majority in Indonesia and Pakistan; Shia Muslims dominate Iran, and some Christians are in Asia as a result of proselyting by missionaries, traders, or colonists.

(Six): These variants in religious concepts create a different “state of mind” and affect how people approach government. In the West there is an emphasis on morality in government with a Christian/Judaic ethic; not true in Asia where the approach is more pragmatic and non-spiritual. (Seven): This difference in fundamental philosophies can be traced to two men: Socrates, who created the concept that man has a “soul” with commitment to a God; and Gautama Buddha, who stressed that a person must look inward and seek “enlightenment”. ¹ Each of these concepts evolved during history to the more complex religions and dogmas of today: Christianity in the West and Buddhism in Asia. (Eight): Until I did the research for this book, I never realized two important facts about religion: One: I was surprised to learn my Christian belief in a monotheistic God is embraced by less than 1/3 of the people of the world. Two: I never realized the major impact that two people, Socrates and Gautama Buddha, had in forming the two differing, alternative religious philosophies in the world.”

All of these are rough-draft sketches from preliminary research for my book, Pivot to Asia. I include them here as pertinent to this section relative to religion. Now you have become involved with me in my research process. We will find out later how much of this material makes the final cut to be included in the new book. What do you think?

Ethel: A 20th Century Woman

by Ethel O Keating (Published by my mother in 1992) My mother became a writer late in life after she approached the age of ninety. Before her autobiography was finished she experienced some dementia and I had to assist her with the final chapters. Her book never received any acclaim, but it was much appreciated by us children, particularly stories about her early life before we came along. My only criticism of the book was the failure to make any mention of Dad, her husband. They were married for 47 years until the day he died, and they were partners in every sense of the word. When he was the banker in Buffalo Gap and unable to open the doors of the bank due to some temporary illness, she took off her apron, left one of us kids in charge at home; and walked to the bank, unlocked the vault, and opened the doors for business. Together they became the legendary bankers of Buffalo Gap. Inasmuch as the protocol for an autobiography indicates it is appropriate to keep the focus on self, it leaves half of a life story unwritten when the partner of a lifetime is left out of the narrative. I do not want to make the same mistake, hence, the following reflections about the other half of my existence: Aurdery. I first met Aurdery on a dance-party cruise across the San Francisco Bay at the Corinthian Yacht Club in Sausalito. I saw this beautiful girl across the room, walked over and asked her for a dance, and we spent the rest the evening together. We became engaged six months later on a ski trip to Timberline Lodge in Oregon, and were married six months after that in Fresno, where her parents lived. We have had a wonderful life together and in 2008 celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary in a gala event hosted by our four children.

As I mentioned earlier in this book, she played a key role with my earlier writing attempts by producing perfect copies of manuscripts for submission on my old manual Remington typewriter, accomplishing this with four children underfoot. She has also diligently read and critiqued all of my books before I submitted them for publication. Now we are both in our late eighties, so our endeavors are limited by age. She still goes three times a week to the local fitness club to exercise on the machines and treill. Since I am limited in my exposure to the club environment due to illness, I do my exercises at home. Then I drop her off at the fitness club and spend the hour at Starbucks with a cappuccino and a yellow pad where I prepare the first draft of my current books. The Starbucks is a far more pleasant place to do my writing than that desk where I sat sixty years ago above the clanking of bottles in the Portland glass factory. As we approach sixty years of marriage together, I give thanks for my good fortune to share the sparkle of life with my wonderful wife, Aurdery.

PART ELEVEN

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

I BELIEVE I HAVE BECOME a fairly good writer by now as a result of many years of effort to become one. A practice I have employed going back fifty years is to look at something I wrote in the recent past such as a letter to a customer, column in the monthly newsletter to employees, or a speech written and then delivered to an industry group of customers. Rereading these things a couple weeks later in a self-critique is a revelation – sometimes a shock. By that time I am able to read with fresh eyes as if I were the recipient, gauge its impact, and determine if I accomplished the intended purpose. Gradually over the years the results have gotten better as I improved. I have found the only way to learn to write is to actually do it, then look at the results. It is possible to improve by the study of grammar and the workings of good writers, but that will only carry one part-way. Let me provide an example. How has the writing style of J. K. Rowling managed to grab the attention of her huge following that includes virtually every child and many adults on three continents? Or how do the books of Louis L’Amour, who received a medal from President Reagan for his writing, keep me turning the pages? Attempting to find the answer, I have deliberately made a study of their works to discover the answer and then emulate it, unfortunately, with scant success. Excellent writing is difficult to pattern yourself after. The closest thing to a Bible for a writer is the 1959 book, Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. My copy is in disrepair after fifty years of intense use, but new copies are still available from Amazon. Perhaps the most important lesson I personally utilize from their book, other than proper grammar and style, is to insure each sentence contains three things: a subject, a verb, and the active voice. Since I am not a writing expert, I shall give no further advice, except to enjoy the process of writing; few things are free that can provide a person with more pleasure. Also some advice for those pursuing their MBA in business school: learning how to write good fiction became one of my most valuable assets as a professional manager.

EPILOGUE

Why do I write?

I THINK IT IS BECAUSE I remain curious about this world we live in and want to explore and organize it in a way I can understand. Essentially, that process started when I was a boy in Buffalo Gap and wondered what was on “the other side of the mountain.” Today the curiosity encomes all aspects of life: history – what happened back then; psychology – why do they think that way; physics – what makes things tick; and economics – how best to use my available resources: many questions. Somewhere in that list will be my next book. Other people with different motivations and talents pursue things in numerous ways: Emails, Facebook, twitter, texting, letters to the editor, and sometimes, even the old fashioned way of talking to each other. Why do I write books? I’ll be darned if I really know.

ENDNOTES

1 “Enlightenment: In Buddhism, enlightenment meant ceasing to be preoccupied with one’s personal condition and attainment and to devote oneself to helping and teaching others; finally, a realization that true enlightenment is a matter of endless practice and comionate functioning, not something that occurs once and for all in one great moment”, Wikipedia, 2016