Michael Ludden's Blog, page 2

Interview with a dictator…

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So I’m heading down to Haiti to interview Baby Doc Duvalier, dictator son of a dictator. He’s been interviewed before, but this is 1980 and tons of Haitians are piling onto anything that floats these days and heading for Florida, so I’m not alone. Mebbe three other writers and a photographer show up. It will be the Doc’s first ‘group’ session.

We’re escorted way outa town to a mansion overlooking the harbor at Port au Prince. Hollywood has nothing on this place. It is staggering. Marble, crystal, lush woods. Lot of money.

Along the perimeter, there’s a guy with an Uzi every 20 feet. Sounds like an exaggeration. Take my word. There are a ton of guys standing guard here.

I ask the ranking guy around, who turns out to be the Finance Minister, if this is where the Prez lives. I’ve seen the palace downtown, which looks like a French chateau and runs for blocks, separated by a fence and another army of guards from the starving islanders who beg for handouts across the street.

He laughs at me, says it is for weekend entertaining of “very unimportant guests.” About this time we hear the Doc heading up the winding one-lane that climbs the mountain to this little shack. I’ve just been up this road, moving at about 5 mph to snake through the throng of people and tiny homemade carts lugging firewood.

The reason we can hear Duvalier‘s on his way: Sirens, dozens of motorcycle cops and the fact that he’s got his big Benz screaming. As for all those poor people crammed onto that little road, they can jump out of the way or they can be dead poor people.

Duvalier arrives. Before he steps out of the car, it is surrounded by machine-gun toting guys standing shoulder to shoulder. The Doc runs this place with fear and murder and torture. He is never exposed.

We go inside. Begin to talk. There’s a delay as his guy translates in both directions. It is obvious from second one that Duvalier has nothing to contribute, is an inarticulate slob and has so much disdain for this moment that it’s oozing out his pores. His three-word responses turn into paragraphs of lofty prose in the hands of his translator.

And it is during one of these moments, amid the palms and the cool island breezes and the chandeliers, as the dictator continues to spout, that one of the uncouth American swine journalists gathered there on his marble porch decides to interrupt with another question.

It happens so quickly it takes a moment to fully register. The guard standing just behind His Eminence has whipped that little Uzi waist high. He’s either about to cut loose or he’s doing a real good job of intimidation.

The clue might be the fact that my new best friend, the Finance Minister, has grabbed the barrel and yanked it to the floor.

Nobody interrupts Baby Doc.

A few hurried comments later, the interview is over. There are no refreshments.

This teacher is going to tell the truth, the whole truth….

We want to look at how teaching school these days is like pushing that big rock uphill. We do a bunch of stuff in the classroom. With kids.

The piece de resistance is gonna be a diary. An anonymous diary, from a teacher telling it like it is. We spend a lotta time finding someone who’s mature, but idealistic. Young, but savvy.

Take her to lunch. She talks for hours about the frustrations. Every question sparks a litany.

All the kids do is memorization. The course work is relentless, stupid. They get to bring their notes to exams. Day after day, they won’t pay attention. They don’t care. They get drunk. They get stoned. They have sex in the bathroom.

They fight. She’s not allowed to do anything about it.

Nothing.

For most of the tests, they get a copy in advance. (They get a copy in advance.) Half of em, still flunking. Bottom line, she is not supposed  to flunk these kids and they are flunking in droves.

Don’t ask what happens when she tries to visit with mom and pop.

The lunch crowd has shrunk down to us. Nobody else. Except the waiter, who has stood just off to the side for the last two and a half hours while we talked.

Finally, the guy comes over.

I hate to do this, he says. I never eavesdrop. I never interrupt. But I’ve been listening this whole time.

I taught for 12 years, he says. I’ve got a master’s degree, a bunch of awards, job offers.

I just want you to know, he says, everything this woman says is true.

Everything.

So I wait tables.

Are you some kind of witch doctor… ?

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I’m sitting with the old sheriff, his big desk between us. He’s cheerful, smiling, telling stories… back in the day.

Behind him and along the walls, rustic paintings, shields, masks. On the desk behind me, a collection of dolls, stuff for potions.

This is his office.

He downplays his reputation, but as we’re talking, there’s a spark, a flash of light.

Something just flew through the air. A tiny bolt of lightning? A visitor will flinch when something unseen collides in the corner of a room.

He smiles. He’s amused, keeps talking.

Ed McTeer was a South Carolina sheriff when Beaufort County was still a patchwork of islands populated by shrimpers and netmakers, basket weavers and root doctors.

McTeer, something of a medicine man himself.

Hard to imagine people today could enforce law and order as he did then. He’d drive out some sandy road, pull over to chat with some folks. If you see Aaron, he’d say, tell him I’d like him to come in.

And he would. Even if it meant jail.

Fair amount of respect.

A tall man, thin, comfortable with his life. They built a new bridge out to Lady’s Island and named it after him.

His daddy had been sheriff. Ed grew up around former slaves and learned the ways. And he learned it’s what people believe that matters.

When his father died, Ed took over his job. He was 22, mebbe 23, still a kid, really. Those were Model-T days, back in the late 20s.

And for nearly 40 years, McTeer would run things. A lifetime. As the years passed, the legend grew. The man had a power. It was best to comply. Others might use that power for darkness. Not Ed.

He would say it was just a matter of understanding people, getting to know them.

He could have felt alone. This was a place said to be full of haunts. But the thing about Ed, he was confident. He learned some conjuring from the old men, he said. And he was born with a gift.

He tells more stories, but it’s all about the same thing. His kind of lawman was gentle, easy, respectful. But he was tough. He didn’t step away from a challenge. He kept the peace. Didn’t carry a gun.

But he could cast a spell.

I walk to the door. There’s a sudden crackling and I can smell smoke. I look, but there’s nothing there.

We try to skip a bar tab… and go down in flames…

Many years ago, there was an old bar across the street from our newspaper office. Grungy place. Cheap beer, greasy burgers, jukebox. Tables so wobbly you’d have to put a brick under one leg.

Place was fabulous.

One night, bunch of us are over there telling war stories. The clock winds. Finally, there’s nobody left but me and another guy. Alex Beasley… good storyteller.

We figure our boss is still working late. So we get the bartender to call the newsroom, ask for Jim Toner.

He dials the phone.

Is this Toner? he says. Coupla guys were in here. Drank up half the place. Then they left, said to call you for the tab.

Hangs up. Turns back to us.

It’s not gonna fly, guys.

Why? What did he say?

He said: “Tell Ludden and Beasley it won’t work.”

Looking for a ride into space…

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I’d been covering prison breaks and politics and refugees and killers and dopers. And then lately I’d done some work on the space program.

Science stuff, explanatory stuff. What makes the shuttle go. The cooling system that keeps the auxiliary power boosters from overheating tends to ice up. So it’s got a heater. But that gets too hot, so it’s got a cooling system. And so on.

One day I get a call from a long-time space writer. Wants me to know NASA has just published a book of what it thinks is some of the best writing about the program.

Some of your stuff is in there, he says.

Well I think that’s pretty cool and we talk awhile about the book and how NASA has a portion of its funding devoted to education, how it may be the only federal agency that takes the public relations job truly to heart.

Great people, the folks at NASA.

In the midst of this chat, he mentions there’s going to be a seat on a shuttle set aside for a journalist. He’s telling me about it. (This is the same program that will soon put schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe on board the Challenger, the ship that blew up just after launch on Jan. 28, 1986.) First, a teacher, then a journalist.

I interrupt.

Call em, I said.

There’s no thinking about it in my case. I’m there. Right now.

I go on to say I run about 20 miles a week, play tennis, don’t smoke, eat the occasional salad. Be happy to take a leave of absence. The truth is, I would give just about anything to fly into space

Do me a favor. Call em.

Now it’s his turn to interrupt. And he tries, but I keep talking. If they need me to do some kinda program, be happy to do it. I’ve already done some stunts in a Blue Angels fighter and that thing pulls a bunch more Gs than a measly shuttle. I’ll shave the beard.

Settle down, he says. There’s a sign-up thing.

Not interested, I say. Call whoever it is and tell em I will sign whatever they need.

The word is already out on this, he says.

I can hear it coming. So… somebody got there ahead of me?

Thousands of people, he says.

Terrific.

Surrounded by elephants…

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I’m heading out to find a circus taking a break. It’s winter time. The Clyde Beatty show is hunkered down out in the middle of nowhere, waiting for spring. I drive a couple hours, find the place. There are lots of old buildings and sheds and clusters of cages stacked high, some old railroad cars. You can hear lions roaring, which is pretty cool. But there aren’t any people. None.

I start hiking across this field. Way in the back there’s a big barn. Still nobody. I get to the barn. Knock. Nothing. I go in. From bright sunlight into total darkness. It’s gonna take days for my eyes to adjust.

I start shuffling slowly into the room, then stop, realizing I can’t see my hand in front of my face. Just the slightest sense of creepy. Probably a better idea just to wait a minute.

So I stand there. Not sure if it’s my imagination, but I think I can hear something. A faint… touching. Mebbe it’s a mouse tiptoeing across a bed of hay. I’m concentrating now, hard. Another touch off to my left. I wait. I still can’t see.

Another, but I’m not sure. But now there’s something else. A sense. I feel something – in the air around me. Take my hands outa my pockets. I’m just beginning to be able to see. I’m in a room, a smaller room than I expected, with high walls. There’s that sound again. Now it’s coming into focus, the wall. And it seems to be coming closer. It’s more of a circle. It’s becoming a circle.

Elephants. A bunch of em. Every one of em, staring.

I walked into their barn. They surrounded me and I barely heard squat. They’re stepping feather-light. How do they do that?

Closer now.

At the same moment, this is perhaps one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced and mebbe not so cool. You start wondering if the small human has done anything that might aggravate the pachys. It’s not like I had permission.

I can see the door behind one guy. I walk up to him.

Up to his thigh.

I give it a slap. Not a hard slap. Not a stupid slap. But a firmish, confident slap, the kind you use when you move elephants aside on a regular basis. Coming through, I say.

Big Boy ain’t movin.

I’m committed. So I squeeze. It is not easy. He stands firm. I get skinny.

Shut the door behind me.

The jet went down in a residential neighborhood…

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It was Kenner, Louisiana, outside New Orleans. July 9, 1982. At the time, it was the second worst air disaster in U.S. history. All 145 on board died, along with 8 killed on the ground.

You could never walk around the wreckage these days. Somebody would have roped it off. Back then, it was just a matter of following the smoke.

Pan American Flight 759 dug a trench three football fields long when it came down. Some said it flew too low and hit a tree. Later, they decided it was wind shear.

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Sudden fire. The jet spewed blazing fuel all along its path. It smashed everything to bits. In the branches of trees above the smoking fuselage, you could see tattered pieces of clothing. Just short of where the jet came to rest was another tree. High up in a crook was a stuffed bear. At first, I thought I’d spotted the body of a child.

Early on, it was just rescuers, cops and firefighters and airport safety crews. They showed up with bags of ice and gloves and body bags and masks.

Mute, staring. Doing everything they could. At first they hurried. But then it sank in. This would take days, weeks. They gathered up scorched shoes, tires, twisted bits of metal, parts of suitcases, anything that looked like it could have been human.

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Dignity, gone. Families, gone.

Impossible angles, trees snapped off, blasted into kindling, a burnt-out car, a slab without a house on it, the slab split in two. A refrigerator.

I was there all day, and all day long I heard people scream, “there’s a child in that tree!”

This was the neighborhood so close to the runway a little kid got famous one day.

He threw a tennis ball in his back yard. Threw it up into the air and hit a plane.

 

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You are now leaving the United States…

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I’m heading out to the Yoruba Nation. This place is off a rural two-lane south of Yemassee, South Carolina, where you pass a sign telling you when you’ve left the confines of the U.S.

This is still the U.S., to be truthful about it. But you are in the middle of nowhere.

Some law enforcement types are real interested in this place. They think it’s a hideout for a bunch of guys robbing banks up and down the east coast, collecting food stamps on their off days. I don’t know about that, but I can tell you, I only see a couple of women in the whole place, very young. Everybody else is male and ripped.

Could be just the time of day.

It’s basically a camp in the woods at the end of a dirt road. Some buildings made out of plywood, under the trees. Metal roofs. Not much to it. Music playing on a loudspeaker someplace. You can pay a few bucks to see the place. Or you can say you’re a newspaperman looking for the head guy.

I get directed to a small building where we sit on some mats. It’s a dirt floor. One of his wives brings us some water in a jelly jar. Colorful rugs and African art on the walls. A broom made of straw.

Charming guy, funny, articulate. He’s actually from up north, but he spent some time in Nigeria and started this place to be about religion, getting back to your roots, disavowing materialism, being authentic, connected with the ancient culture.

They live pretty simply out here, drive into town once a week for necessities. We talk awhile about what people believe, how they choose to live, what’s important to them.

This place is still getting its start. In a few years, there will be more people. The tourists will come to see dancing and sculpture and festivals.

Right now, it’s in the 90s and we’re sitting on the ground. The air is not moving. I swat at some flies.

He smiles, cocks his head. We push open a little door, duck through an opening.

Aahh.

Much bigger room. You can stand up in here. Air conditioning. Stereo, big TV. Stretch out the kinks, drop into a nice, soft chair.

“You want a beer?”

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You want to take the stick?

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I’m getting what they call an orientation flight. With the Blue Angels. Public relations. Who cares? I would cut off my arm to get in this thing.

Friend of mine drives me out to the airport, a smallish place south of town where they can do stunts and not be in anybody’s way. She’s gonna watch. From the ground.

Safety lecture first… parachutes, etc.

I sit in the back. We’re getting ready to hammer it and he says… “What I like to do to start is called a performance climb. I’m gonna lift the wheels off the runway, put the jet on its tail and hit the burners. We’ll go straight up, very fast. Are you cool with that?”

Are you kidding?

We do the climb, we run around up there, sitting atop a jet engine that can knock down a house, destroying the clouds. He catapults, stunts. And I dunno if the jet jockeys do this for everybody to make em feel special, but at one point he says, “I’m gonna put it into a high-G turn. We’ll see how you tolerate it. If it’s too much, call out on your mic.”

I watch the meter roll up to about 6 and half Gs. I’m flexing my stomach hard, to keep it where it’s supposed to be. You do not see this flying Delta, but in turbulence, these wings rock like whitecaps in the wind.

“How was that?” he says.

Do not stop on my account, I say.

At which point, he says… “It seems like you’re real good with it. I was supposed to practice today and ran out of time. If you don’t mind and you got no place to go, we could run through the show. Take about a half hour.”

I was figuring my flight would be 10 minutes, at best. I tell him it sounds something along the lines of spectacular.

We are booming a pirouette into the sky when he says… “You wanna take the stick?”

Three guesses, pal.

So I get to climb and dive and spin and bash my frickin head against the sides of the cockpit from pushing the thing too hard. We go into a steep climb and he tells me to level it off, at which point we go weightless.

“You need to be a little more sensitive with the stick,” he says.

“I am available for more practice,” I say.

I am flying with a guy who spots a smokestack miles in the distance, says we’re gonna stick our nose in it (after a few intermediate steps). Proceeds to hammer inside loops, outside loops… a whole lot of stuff where I cannot see the ground and, in fact, have no idea where it might be at that particular moment.

We are screaming out of a high speed turn when I see our nose is now pointed straight down, dead center on that smokestack.

Finally, we gotta quit.

I am trying to find some way to thank the guy.

Can I buy you a house?

We float lightly onto the runway, climb out. My friend and chauffer runs outside, wants to know if I threw up.

Hell no. Are you kidding? That was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.

Wish I could say the same, she says.

But that thing you did, going straight up off the runway. That was bad.

 

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And then it ignited…

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One of the great perks of Florida journalism was covering the space program during the heydays. Back in the day, people used to line up along the beach in Cocoa to see a launch.

And when it was time for the first shuttle to go up, a million people crammed in, shoulder to shoulder. Got there early.

That was as close as the public could get, but it was miles away.

If you had the right creds, you could get to the press site, 3.5 miles across Mosquito Lagoon from the launch pad. Now, if 3.5 miles sounds like a long way to be from a rocket launch, you’ve never been that close.

Let’s just say whatever you see on television is a ridiculous imitation of the blinding light, the roar, the thunderclap-pounding, chest-bruising barrage that is about to wash over you like a tidal wave. The folks who wanna stand lean into it.

The first launch had been a ticking clock for years. Delays… safety concerns… debate… fixes.

Money.

More delays. Like a lot of folks, we went and came home, went and came home, camped out in the parking lot with buckets of fried chicken and large quantities of unauthorized sustenance. Always waiting for Go.

Generally, the countdown’s gonna run down to mebbe nine minutes and some change, even on a bad day. It’s when you start getting into those final-minute checks that you’re most likely to see red lights start to blink.

Well on April 12, 1981, the lights stayed green. The clock kept ticking. And in the concrete bleachers, under that galvanized roof, a sea of reporters and tv guys from all over Florida and the U.S. and the world started to get out of their seats, started walking, quickly, down toward the water.

Stopped talking.

And then it ignited. Main engines hammering so hard you could see the frickin engine nozzles shaking like they were about to fall off and even the damn tail was shaking. (Something else to fix later.) And then it started to lift off the ground.

Slowly at first, as if it were too big, too heavy to compete with gravity. And then unimaginable acceleration… glorious, stunning, violent. The flames underneath, so brilliant it was painful to watch. And yet it danced into the heavens as if it weighed nothing at all. Disappearing all too quickly.

Look around at all the hard-case journos. Screaming, tears flooding down their faces, sobbing, arms raised, hands clasped. Somebody’s hanging on to a railing. And then the shouts.

“Oh my God!”

“God bless America.”

“Brezhnev… kiss my ass!”

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