Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 52

Just for Fun: A Story & Some Obscure & Generally Trivial Information

Today I am sharing some obscure knowledge with you, as well as a short and dubious yarn. Just what’s needed for a Friday morning. Enjoy!

Yesterday I got my permit to carry a concealed weapon. So, today I went over to the local gun shop to get a 9mm handgun for home/personal protection. When I was ready to pay for the pistol and ammo, the cashier said, “Strip down, facing me.”

Making a mental note to complain to the government about gun control wackos in California running amok, I did just as she instructed. When the hysterical shrieking and alarms finally subsided, I found out she was referring to how I should place my credit card in the card reader!

I do not get flustered often, but this time it took me a while to get my pants back on. I’ve been asked to shop elsewhere in the future. They need to make their instructions a little clearer. I still don’t think I looked that bad! I just need to wear underwear more often.

 Knowledge is Power

‘A SHOT OF WHISKEY’  – In the old west a .45 cartridge for a six-gun cost 12 cents, so did a glass of whiskey. If a cowhand was low on cash he would often give the bartender a cartridge in exchange for a drink. This became known as a “shot” of whiskey. Hmmm. Son of a gun. Who knew?

BUYING THE FARM – This is synonymous with dying. During WW1 soldiers were given life insurance policies worth $5,000. This was about the price of an average farm so if you died you “bought the farm” for your survivors. Sounds plausible.

IRONCLAD CONTRACT – This came about from the ironclad ships of the Civil War. It meant something so strong it could not be broken. It seems logical.

RIFF RAFF – The Mississippi River was the main way of traveling from north to south. Riverboats carried passengers and freight but they were expensive so most people used rafts. Everything had the right of way over rafts which were considered cheap. The steering oar on the rafts was called a “riff” and this transposed into riff-raff, meaning low class. I’ll buy it.

COBWEB – The Old English word for “spider” was “cob.” Really? Okay, I guess.

SHIP STATE ROOMS – Traveling by steamboat was considered the height of comfort. Passenger cabins on the boats were not numbered. Instead, they were named after states. To this day cabins on ships are called staterooms. Are they ranked by the relative wealth of the states they are named after?

SLEEP TIGHT– Early beds were made with a wooden frame. Ropes were tied across the frame in a criss-cross pattern. A straw mattress was then put on top of the ropes. Over time the ropes stretched, causing the bed to sag. The owner would then tighten the ropes to get a better night’s sleep. Seems very plausible. I have slept in beds like this all over the world.

SHOWBOAT – These were floating theaters built on a barge that was pushed by a steamboat. These played small towns along the Mississippi River. Unlike the boat shown in the movie “Showboat”, these did not have an engine. They were gaudy and attention-grabbing which is why we say someone who is being the life of the party is “showboating.” Seems credible.

OVER A BARREL – In the days before CPR a drowning victim would be placed face down over a barrel and the barrel would be rolled back and forth in an effort to empty the lungs of water. It was rarely effective. If you are over a barrel you are in deep trouble. Okay. I’ll accept it.

BARGE IN – Heavy freight was moved along the Mississippi in large barges pushed by steamboats. These were hard to control and would sometimes swing into piers or other boats. People would say they “barged in.” Is that like a barge in a China closet?

HOGWASH – Steamboats carried both people and animals. Since pigs smelled so bad they would be washed before being put on board. The mud and other filth that was washed off was considered useless “hogwash.” I remember hosing down pigs on the farm. The pigs loved it because it made mud which they quickly rolled around in. Our pigs had a permanent layer of hogwash.

CURFEW – The word “curfew” comes from the French phrase “couvre-feu”, which means “cover the fire”. It was used to describe the time of blowing out all lamps and candles. It was later adopted into Middle English as “curfeu” which later became the modern “curfew”. In the early American colonies homes had no real fireplaces so a fire was built in the center of the room In order to make sure a fire did not get out of control during the night it was required that, by an agreed-upon time, all fires would be covered with a clay pot called a “curfew.” Sounds reasonable to me.

BARRELS OF OIL – When the first oil wells were drilled they had made no provision for storing the liquid so they used water barrels. That is why, to this day, we speak of barrels of oil rather than gallons. Seems like I heard this somewhere before, so I’ll give it a thumbs up>

HOT OFF THE PRESS – As the paper goes through the rotary printing press friction causes it to heat up.  Therefore, if you grab the paper right off the press it’s hot. The expression means to get immediate information. I always thought it referred to the hot type the old letterpress presses once used. But hey, after 25 years as a working journalist who am I to argue?

There, don’t you feel smarter now?

Here’s something I learned in Vietnam: The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for Blood plasma.

Here’s another bit of little-known and possibly useless information: No piece of paper can be folded in half more than seven (7) times.

Oh, go ahead. I’ll wait…

MORE USELESS FACTS

Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes or shark attacks. (So, watch your Ass)

You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television. (That’s especially true if you walk or jog in your sleep!)

Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty (50) years of age, or older. (I guess growing old does have its benefits!)

The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley’s gum. (And there is a lot of Wrigley’s gum stuck under the bar too!)

The King of Hearts is the only king WITHOUT A MOUSTACHE (I think the Queen of Hearts has one though!)

American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one (1) olive from each salad served in first-class. (Today, they are saving millions of dollars by eliminating everything–including service.)

Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise. Because Venus is normally associated with women, what does this tell you? (That women are going in the ‘right’ direction.? Hmmm)

Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning. (And also keeping the witch doctor at bay.)

Most dust particles in your house are made from DEAD SKIN! (Yech!)

The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer. So did the first ‘Marlboro Man’.

Walt Disney was afraid OF MICE! (I wonder why he never drew cats?)

PEARLS DISSOLVE IN VINEGAR! (That’s why I couldn’t find my wife’s pearls when they fell into my salad and I had a strange case of indigestion later.)

The ten most valuable brand names on earth:  Apple, Coca-Cola, Google, IBM, Microsoft, GE, McDonald’s, Samsung, Intel, and Toyota,  in that order. (What happened to Amazon?)

Geez, what’s THAT say about people who live in Louisiana?

It is possible to lead a cow upstairs…But, not downstairs. (That is “udderly” amazing!)

A duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no one knows why. (Could it be that there’s a quack in the sound barrier?)

Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush be kept at least six (6) feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush. (I keep my toothbrush in the living room now!)

 Turtles can breathe through their butts. (I know some people like that, don’t YOU?)

And there you have it, a litany of useless information that you can wow friends and strangers with at a bar, a wedding, or a funeral–even your own!

California Dreamin’ or California Leavin’?

California is in trouble. For the first time since a prospector struck gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1849, California has recorded an annual net loss in population.

The state’s population, which has for years been inching toward the 40-million mark, actually dipped by 182,083 people last year as Californians packed up and headed for more business and taxpayer-friendly places like Texas, Arizona, Idaho, Nevada–and even Florida on the other side the continent.

And the exodus is not finished. More are expected to flee the tarnished “Golden State” in 2022.

I’m not surprised. California’s ultra-leftwing government, led by an inept, out-of-touch Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsome, is driving businesses and a frustrated electorate out of the state with a barrage of higher taxes, onerous regulations, and skyhigh prices for everything from gasoline and housing, to food and clothing.

The Golden State was always a beacon that attracted people from across America and the globe. The state was synonymous with opportunity and prosperity–where the sky was the limit if you were hardworking and creative. Of course, that was before the state became a political monopoly controlled almost exclusively in Sacramento by leftist Democrats.

  The Joads Arrive in the Golden State in “The Grapes of Wrath”

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, California had the highest poverty rates in the nation based on the Census Bureau’s cost-of-living-adjusted standard.

And here’s more news I never expected to hear about California. It ranks 50th; dead last; at the bottom of the heap, of all American states when it comes to quality of life, according to a recent ranking by U.S. News & World Report.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this revelation. After all, I live in California and I have witnessed what has happened to a state that once was the envy of the other 49.

California today is a terminus for the homeless, illegal aliens, MS-13 gang members, welfare cheaters, and clueless socialist politicians determined to transform the state into an abortive political and societal hodgepodge somewhere between communist Cuba and the impecunious wilds of Northern Mexico.

But let’s get back to the U.S. News analysis. The magazine’s quality of life rankings considered two sets of metrics for every state:

The natural environment, comprising drinking-water quality, air quality, and pollution, and industrial toxins.Social environment, comprising community engagement, social support, population density, and voter participation.

And guess what? California ranked near or at the bottom in each of those categories.

Gov Newsome: “Feckless & Out of Touch”

Little wonder. California is a mismanaged behemoth controlled by a mob of far-left zealots led by Gov. Newsome, the state’s supreme leftist potentate.

Democrat lawmakers are quick to remind us that California remains the world’s fifth-largest economy and that California’s tech industry is booming – as evidenced by an astounding $75.7 billion budget surplus in the midst of the pandemic.

They fail to point out, however, that the state still has a debt to GDP ratio of 15.6 percent. That means the debt for every one of California’s 39 million people is $10,818 and growing.

What they also won’t tell you is that median home prices are approaching $750,000 statewide and are actually above $1 million in some metro areas. They won’t tell you about the exploding homeless crisis; crumbling infrastructure; water shortages; lousy public schools; growing crime rates; and various governmental scandals. Then there are the annual wildfires caused by poorly managed, drought-stricken forests.

Jennifer Leach & family are heading for Colorado

The state has long been a lodestone for illegal immigrants, but since the governor declared California a “sanctuary state,” a tidal wave of illegals, many with criminal backgrounds, is sweeping over the state’s splintered social landscape.

It is interesting to note that California’s high cost of living and its rising illegal immigration rates were two metrics that did not factor into the quality-of-life rankings.

Yet both are among the most obvious and disturbing issues facing the state.

Sanctuary cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Oakland have opened their doors and coffers to illegal immigrants while American citizens are afforded the privilege of paying ever-higher taxes to pay for this foolish munificence.

Recently, I received a tongue-in-cheek story suggesting that Washington sell California back to Mexico for $10 trillion. A map depicted the new U.S.-Mexican border running from Texas all the way to Oregon. There are some who feel jettisoning California might be a good thing. After all, Mexico ceded California to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican-American War. Maybe it’s time to send it back. Ten trillion dollars would certainly offset a large portion of the U.S. national debt.

In any case, to watch California crumble before one’s eyes is disconcerting. But wait, you might ask, what about all of the millionaires living in places like Beverly Hills, Calabasas, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, San Diego, and the Orange County coast? How can California be disintegrating when you still have all that wealth?

  Number California’s Homeless approaching 200,000

The fact is, more than one-third of the state is now populated by immigrants, half of them illegal. Then, the state’s homeless population is growing at an alarming rate with some 30,000 in Los Angeles alone. In Orange County, thousands of homeless tents and hovels occupy miles and miles of land along the Santa Ana River. As a result, human feces, discarded hypodermic needles, and mounds of trash litter the bicycle path that runs between the fleapits and the river while expensive homes sit just a few hundred yards away. Census figures show that almost one-third of all of the nation’s homeless live in California.

To make matters worse, housing prices have gone through the roof, leaving only a minority of Californians able to buy a house. What about renting? In the Los Angeles area, including San Diego and Riverside Counties, rents for a one-bedroom apartment are running about $1,900 a month and for two and three-bedroom apartments and homes, rents are between $2,500 and $3,500 per month.

This is NOT the same California that I first moved to in 1976 or that former Governor Ronald Reagan oversaw between 1967 and 1975.

Yes, California is a state of incomparable wealth. The movie and music industries reside here as do enormously productive agricultural and high tech industries. In fact, California recently leapfrogged France and the United Kingdom to become the fifth-largest economy in the world with a gross domestic product of $2.5 trillion. Only Germany, China, Japan, and the European Union have higher GDPs.

So what’s the problem?

Let’s begin with the state’s water supply. It is unreliable and can barely sustain the current population and the needs of the state’s thirsty, drought-ridden agricultural sector. Then there is the crumbling infrastructure of freeways, roads, and bridges. To make matters worse, there is a wall of debt acerbated by an onerous and punitive tax structure, as well as a volatile budget system. Another recent study found that California ranked 49th in the cost of doing business and 50th in “business friendliness,” which translates into such things as onerous regulations, tax breaks, and quality of the workforce.

There are also missed payments and mounting debt for excessive public retirement benefits, rising healthcare costs and diminishing access to health care, unstable funding for K-12 education, and poor student performance compared to other states. In addition, there are new and harsh restrictions on gun ownership that many see as a direct assault on the Second Amendment. Add to that the state’s skyrocketing cost of living and declining homeownership and the welcome mat looks a bit soiled.

Finally, there is rising crime and an overcrowded and costly prison system as well as a lack of transparency and eroding public trust in government that is compounded by apathetic voters and consistently low voter turnout.

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All of that adds up to California’s 50th ranking when it comes to quality of life for its citizens.

Is it any wonder that hundreds of thousands of over-taxed Californians and hundreds of companies are bolting the state every year for places like Texas, Arizona, and Washington?

Meanwhile, California continues to be the nation’s leading nanny state for illegals, the homeless, criminals, and those who swill at the public trough.

A recent editorial by the Southern California News Group may have said it best when it wrote:

“Every one of these problems is the result of long-standing state policy. You’ll rarely hear a state leader talk about opportunity – or admit that California has been actively chasing people away. It remains a great place to live, but only for those who already have achieved their dreams. The weather’s nice, but the political climate is chilling – even if the governor remains in denial.

“Population statistics are now finally catching up with reality. So, sure, the state’s first population drop in a century doesn’t change anything of substance – but it should change the way Californians view themselves. We’ve gone from “California dreaming” to “California leaving” and all the budget surpluses in the world won’t fix it.”

What’s next for the Golden State?

It could fall into the Pacific Ocean, I guess.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Greatest Writing Advice

Today, at the request of several followers and subscribers, I am reposting a commentary I did a while back about the late Kurt Vonnegut. It is jam-packed with great advice on writing. Enjoy!

It’s been 14 years since the world lost Kurt Vonnegut–one of America’s greatest writers and writing teachers.  During Vonnegut’s 50-year-long career as an author, he published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction. Many more collections of his work were published after his death in 2007.

Vonnegut is most famous for his darkly satirical, best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), which was based on his own experiences as an American prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany when it was fire-bombed for three days by British and American bombers in February 1945. An estimated 25,000 civilians were killed during the raids. It was an experience he never forgot.

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Here is some of his no-nonsense advice on writing–along with a bit of Vonnegut’s wry humor tossed in now and then. These bits of wisdom are gleaned from some of his essays and his many interviews. When I was a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune I was fortunate to have interviewed Vonnegut. He was a self-effacing man who never took himself or life too seriously. Once, when he was asked about life, he said this: “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.” 

Here then, is some of his sage advice on writing for those of you who are writers and for those of you who love to read.

On proper punctuation:

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college. (From A Man Without a Country)

On having other interests:

I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak. (From “an interview conducted with himself, by himself,” for The Paris Review)

On the value of writing:

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. (From A Man Without a Country)

On the theory of teaching creative writing:

I don’t have the will to teach anymore. I only know the theory… It was stated by Paul Engle—the founder of the Writers Workshop at Iowa. He told me that, if the workshop ever got a building of its own, these words should be inscribed over the entrance: “Don’t take it all so seriously.” (From “an interview conducted with himself, by himself,” for The Paris Review)

On plot:

I guarantee you that no modern story scheme, even plotlessness, will give a reader genuine satisfaction unless one of those old-fashioned plots is smuggled in somewhere. I don’t praise plots as accurate representations of life, but as ways to keep readers reading. When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time. One of my students wrote a story about a nun who got a piece of dental floss stuck between her lower left molars, and who couldn’t get it out all day long. I thought that was wonderful. The story dealt with issues a lot more important than dental floss, but what kept readers going was anxiety about when the dental floss would finally be removed. Nobody could read that story without fishing around in his mouth with a finger. Now, there’s an admirable practical joke for you. When you exclude plot, when you exclude anyone’s wanting anything, you exclude the reader, which is a mean-spirited thing to do. You can also exclude the reader by not telling him immediately where the story is taking place, and who the people are [and what they want].

And you can put him to sleep by never having characters confront each other. Students like to say that they stage no confrontations because people avoid confrontations in modern life. “Modern life is so lonely,” they say. This is laziness. It’s the writer’s job to stage confrontations, so the characters will say surprising and revealing things, and educate and entertain us all. If a writer can’t or won’t do that, he should withdraw from the trade. (From “an interview conducted with himself, by himself,” for The Paris Review)

On not selling anything:

I used to teach a writer’s workshop at the University of Iowa back in the 1960s, and I would say at the start of every semester, “The role model for this course is Vincent van Gogh—who sold two paintings to his brother.” (Laughs.) I just sit and wait to see what’s inside me, and that’s the case for writing or for drawing, and then out it comes. There are times when nothing comes. James Brooks, the fine abstract-expressionist, I asked him what painting was like for him, and he said, “I put the first stroke on the canvas and then the canvas has to do half the work.” That’s how serious painters are. They’re waiting for the canvas to do half the work. (Laughs.) Come on. Wake up. (From The Last Interview)

On love in fiction:

So much of what happens in storytelling is mechanical, has to do with the technical problems of how to make a story work. Cowboy stories and policeman stories end in shoot-outs, for example, because shoot-outs are the most reliable mechanisms for making such stories end. There is nothing like death to say what is always such an artificial thing to say: “The end.” I try to keep deep love out of my stories because, once that particular subject comes up, it is almost impossible to talk about anything else. Readers don’t want to hear about anything else. They go gaga about love. If a lover in a story wins his true love, that’s the end of the tale, even if World War III is about to begin, and the sky is black with flying saucers. (From “an interview conducted with himself, by himself,” for The Paris Review)

On a good work schedule:

I get up at 7:30 and work four hours a day. Nine to twelve in the morning, five to six in the evening. Businessmen would achieve better results if they studied human metabolism. No one works well eight hours a day. No one ought to work for more than four hours. (From an interview with Robert Taylor in Boston Globe Magazine, 1969)

On “how to write with style,” aka List #1

Find a subject you care about

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way—although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

Do not ramble, though

I won’t ramble on about that.

Keep it simple

As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. “To be or not to be?” asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story “Eveline” is this one: “She was tired.” At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.

Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

Have guts to cut

It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

Sound like yourself

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad’s third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.

All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens to not be standard English, and if it shows itself when your write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.

Say what you mean

I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable—and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.

Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

Pity the readers

They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school—twelve long years.

So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient readers, ever willing to simplify and clarify—whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.

That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited.

For really detailed advice

For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, in a more technical sense, I recommend to your attention The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. E.B. White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced.

You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say. (From “How to Write With Style,” published in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ journal Transactions on Professional Communications in 1980.)

On how to write good short stories, aka List #2:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first; great writers tend to do that. (From the preface to Bagombo Snuff Box)

On ignoring rules:

And there, I’ve just used a semi-colon, which at the outset I told you never to use. It is to make a point that I did it. The point is: Rules only take us so far, even good rules. (From A Man Without a Country)

  On the shapes of stories:

Here is a real treat. Click on this URL and you will see Vonnegut himself giving a waggish four-minute talk on The Shapes of Stories. You won’t be sorry!

https://youtu.be/oP3c1h8v2ZQ

A Note to ForeignCorrespondent Subscribers, Friends, and Visitors

Hello, subscribers and friends of ForeignCorrespondent.

You may have noticed a few changes on our blog in the past week or so.

Here’s what has happened.

First, we have simplified the method by which you can comment on posts. In the past, you were required to comment through the Facebook interface. That is no longer the case.

Now, all you have to do is register by creating a free account. You do that by clicking on the red “Create a Free Account”  link at the bottom of every post, such as this one.

This is a ONE TIME exercise and once you have created an account you are automatically registered as a subscriber/member of the growing ForeignCorrespondent community and can comment quickly and easily.

Next, if you go to the main page of the ronaldyatesbooks.com website, in addition to a couple of book trailers you will see under the heading “The Latest From My Blog” short previews of twelve of my most recent blog posts. Just click on any of these and you will be taken to the ForeignCorrespondent Blog page where you can read the post you ticked.

That’s it.

But before I go, please feel free to share any of our posts or content with your friends or the public at large.

Cheers!

Ron Yates

CDC says no more masks or social distancing indoors & outdoors for fully vaccinated people!

Boo Hoo. Millions of mask-loving leftists and other human-sheep must be bawling their eyes out at this news.

I have never seen so many people dedicated to wearing face masks in my life—unless of course, we are talking about people who admire Spiderman, Darth Vader, Hannibal Lecter, Leatherface, or Doctor Doom—sometimes known as Dr. Fauci.

 

Hannibal Loves His Face Mask

Yes, folks, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Center for Disease Control & Prevention announced unequivocally Thursday during a White House COVID-19 briefing that people who are fully vaccinated against coronavirus no longer need to wear masks while indoors or outdoors or physical distance in either large or small gatherings.

That seems pretty clear to me, folks.

        CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky

STOP WEARING FACE MASKS INDOORS AND OUTDOORS & CEASE SOCIAL DISTANCING IF YOU’VE BEEN FULLY VACCINATED.

So now what? Here’s what I think is going to happen when it comes to COVID-19, aka, the Wuhan China Virus.

Because fully vaccinated individuals were still advised to wear masks while taking public transportation or in places like hospitals, prisons, and homeless shelters, the terrified bleating sheep among us will still demand that everybody continue to wear face masks in other indoor venues such as grocery stores, restaurants, gyms, and offices.

Just wait and see. What do you want to bet that signs like “Face Masks Required” will not disappear on entranceways anytime soon—despite the CDC’s new pronouncement.

Why? Because apparently, mask-wearing has become as American as apple pie and baseball. And if you refuse to slap that mask onto your mug, why you are just downright unpatriotic—or worse, you’re a domestic terrorist, white supremacist, or an evil Nancy Pelosi-hating insurrectionist.

Mask wearing is now an explicit political statement, like driving an electric car or being a vegan, or refusing to buy goods made by Uighur slave labor in China.

No, wait. That last item can be ignored. After all, Americans still need to buy stuff.

So what else did Dr. Walensky say Thursday?

“We have all longed for this moment when we can get back to some sense of normalcy. Based on the continuing downward trajectory of cases, the scientific data on the performance of our vaccines, and our understanding of how the virus spreads, that moment has come for those who are fully vaccinated.

“I want to be clear that we followed the science here. While this may serve as an incentive for some people to get vaccinated, that is not the purpose. Our purpose here is as a public health agency to follow the science and to follow where we are with regard to the science and what is safe for individuals to do,” she said.

She added that individuals with weakened immune systems should consult a physician before giving up masks.

Now, do you get it, sheep people?

Not wearing a mask is SAFE. You will not get the China Virus and die if you brush against a mask-less fully-vaccinated brute in your local Safeway store or Costco, or Walmart.

Just think of it. You will survive innumerable brushes with these mask-less cretins, despite what millions of whining and panicky sheep people no doubt will tell you.

“You can’t believe the CDC,” the sheep people will bleat. “They have been wrong before. Please put your mask on. Be respectful of others. Don’t be unpatriotic.”

Maybe they will change their minds if they hear our stumbling, mumbling, bumbling president say it’s okay not to wear masks once you are vaccinated.

But wait! Biden did say that Thursday, echoing what Dr. Walensky said.

Never mind that good ole fully vaccinated Joe walked to the outdoor podium all by himself, wearing HIS mask.

A reporter asked what kind of message that sends Americans?

Joe flashed a big smile and said he wanted the cameras and media to see him take his mask off: “and watch me take it off and not put it back on until I got inside.”

But Joe, YOU NO LONGER NEED TO WEAR A MASK INSIDE!

“Never mind! Nothing to see here,” as the Scarlet Lady, aka press secretary Jen Psaki likes to say.

That’s just good ole stumbling, bumbling, mumbling Joe, being Joe.

 

 

 

American History: Twisted by Socialist Teachers & Professors

George Orwell once made this prescient statement: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

Guess who was listening to the author of 1984?

Joe Biden was. So were the leaders of the American Federation of Teachers Union, the bogus wannabe historian named Nikole Hannah-Jones who created the fallacious 1619 Project, and the fatuous and Marxist Critical Race Theorists.

Apparently, they were all listening.

And now millions of America’s children are paying the price.

Instead of learning that the United States was created out of the 1776 Declaration of Independence by men and women seeking to break away from a tyrannical British Empire, they are learning that our nation was actually created in 1619 when a foreign ship carrying a few dozen African slaves arrived on the shores of what someday would become the United States of America.

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The 1619 Project, which is being rammed down children’s throats in countless schools administered by a growing cadre of socialist/Marists, says the following:

“American colonists fought for independence from the British Empire on the grounds that an America untethered from Britain would allow the institution of slavery to flourish”

That allegation is so wrong, so factually inaccurate, that leading historians (BTW, Hannah-Jones is a journalist, not a historian) of both conservative and liberal persuasions, systematically went through her research and found no evidence supporting her contention. They did, however, find a trove of historical inaccuracies and distortions.

But hey, Joe Biden and the American Federation of Teachers Union, to whom our stumbling and mumbling president is beholden, are not letting that little fact get in the way of their plan to indoctrinate children to the point that they grow up despising the country they were born in.

And never mind that for most of its 230-plus years America has been a beacon of hope and freedom for millions of the world’s politically and socially oppressed people. What does it say on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor?

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

No, slavery is what defines and has defined America from the time the first Europeans arrived at Plymouth Rock—not what is inscribed at the base of Lady Liberty.

After all, we fought the Revolutionary War to preserve slavery, right?

Wrong.

But we actually DID fight a brutal and bloody Civil War TO END slavery. That was a war in which more Americans died (a majority of them white Americans) than in any other war in our history—620,000.

And by the way, the United States is the ONLY nation EVER to fight a war to END SLAVERY!

The Critical Race Theorists and Hannah Jones would have our children believe that somehow slavery was “unique” to America, when in fact, slavery has been a fact of human existence for millennia. The Roman Empire enslaved millions of people, as did the Egyptians, the Greeks, Arabs, the Chinese, and even the tribes of Africa.

In fact, slavery existed in the New World among the native populations in North and South America when the Spanish and Portuguese arrived to pillage and plunder in the 1500s.

It didn’t begin in 1619 with the arrival of a ship carrying African slaves. It was already here, and flourishing, thank you very much.

Next in the erroneous and specious history curriculum created for young and malleable American minds is the preposterous and outrageous notion of Critical Race Theory which insists that America is a systemically racist nation, always has been, and that white people are inherent and irredeemable racists by virtue of their birth.

Rather than me arguing against this patently absurd notion, I will turn to Dr. Carol Swain, retired professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, who is also a scholar in the areas of race relations, immigration, representation, evangelical politics, and the United States Constitution. Dr. Swain also served as vice chairman of the 1776 commission, which President Biden abolished on the first day he took office.

Dr. Carol Swain

God forbid that a President of the United States should allow children and others to learn about the TRUE founding of our nation. Instead, let’s make sure they drink the poisonous Kool-Aid of the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory.

Here is what Dr. Swain has to say about CRT:

“Let me explain what critical race theory is. It comes out of Marxism. And it divides the world into oppressors and the oppressed, or the victims. Minorities are the victims. White people are the oppressors. It argues that all White people are racists. That they have a property interest in their whiteness. That they should divest themselves of their whiteness. And they divest themselves by becoming anti-racist.

“And you become anti-racist by actively engaging in the society in fighting racism wherever it appears. The problem is the left continually redefines what is considered racist. And the whole exercise of this diversity, equity and inclusion training focuses on making white people aware of their privileges that are undeserved – that is tied to the sins of their fathers and themselves.

“CRT argues that all white people are racist. It’s not enough to say that you are not a racist. You have to actively do something that proves that you aren’t. The problem in America, and the problem for churches, is that it’s like a whole new gospel because it requires every white person to confess with their mouths that they are racists.

“Because they were born with white skin color, they are required to become woke. And when they become woke, then they have to engage in anti-racist behavior to make themselves right on this issue.

“In America it is unconstitutional, I believe, it’s a violation of the equal protection clause to single out one particular race for shaming or for discrimination. It’s also a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits racial discrimination. And what takes place in those sessions, and in many orientation exercises, is a shaming of white people that would be inappropriate if it was being done to any other group.”

Well said, Dr. Swain.

And yet my grandchildren are learning that they are wicked and racist because of their white skin. They are being indoctrinated by a cadre of America hating socialist/Marxists who could just as well have been teaching American history in the old and now extinct “Evil Empire,” AKA. The Soviet Union.

So instead of listing to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s classic poem “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” perhaps children will listen to teachers read from the incantations of Critical Race Theory about how Revere and his disgusting white male cronies went to war against the most powerful empire in the world to preserve and sustain slavery.

They will learn that they are little racist oppressors while their fellow black, Hispanic, and Asian classmates will be told they are victims of oppression.

Way to encourage Americans to judge people by the color of their skin rather than by the content of their character, President Biden.

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Was Martin Luther King wrong to say that is the way he wanted his children to be judged?

I think not. What MLK said was brilliant and should be the guiding principle in ALL American schools.

Instead, they are being taught the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory.

I can’t help wondering if American children and students might begin to question the flawed notions of CRT and the 1619 Project when they recall that the United States is a nation of immigrants.

When they do, I hope they will ask their teachers this question: Why do millions and millions of people of all races, religions, and ethnicities continue to risk their lives every year to enter a systemically racist nation where they will be oppressed?

I wonder how their teachers will answer THAT question.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above: Detail from a watercolor of four American soldiers from the diary of Jean Baptiste Antoine de Verger, an officer in Rochambeau’s army, painted during the Yorktown Campaign, 1781. The African American soldier is an enlisted man in the First Rhode Island Regiment. Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University.

Is America a Nation of “Wussified” Men?

In an era where there is a lot of complaining about “toxic masculinity” (a bogus term as far as I’m concerned), Hollywood has apparently unilaterally decided that men in today’s films need to be “feminized” or cerebrally castrated in order to satisfy the “wussification factor” spreading throughout America.

What do I mean by the “wussification factor?” Simple. I mean the apparent strategy in our K-12 schools to turn little boys and adolescent young men into namby-pamby, effeminate geeks.

Boys are too often discouraged and berated by teachers for being “too assertive,” for “rough-housing,” for good-naturedly cuffing one another, and even arm-wrestling—in short, for behaving like boys have always behaved the world-over from time immemorial.

These “wussified” boys then grow up confused about their gender, their masculinity, and their role in a feminized society where girls and women are given special and preferential treatment when it comes to college admissions and hiring in the workplace.

You only have to examine the kind of trash Hollywood is turning out these days to see how this has manifested itself in our nation.

                     Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

In film after film men the size of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Tom Hardy, and Channing Tatum somehow are beaten senseless by 110-pound women.

Those who aren’t muscle-bound, cower when faced with danger and kowtow to those in power.

But more alarming than Hollywood and the entertainment media’s assiduous emasculation of men is what is happening in our military today. It is being “dumbed down” in terms of physical requirements in order to accommodate women and a growing transgender element.

As a result, I worry about unit and task cohesion, combat effectiveness, and the bonding of soldiers that is necessary for an efficacious fighting force. I don’t believe the military should be a laboratory for conducting societal and gender experimentation.

[image error]            Building Critical Unit Cohesion

The military has one purpose: to fight and win wars when and wherever needed. At least that’s what I was taught during my four years of active duty in the U.S. Army.

How many of you recall the 1978 Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings song, “Mamas Don’t let your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys?”

“Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.

Don’t let ’em pick guitars or drive them old trucks.

Let ’em be doctors and lawyers and such.

Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.

‘Cos they’ll never stay home and they’re always alone.

Even with someone they love.”

Today, the title of that song, at least in the minds of many, should be rewritten to: “Mamas, Don’t let your Cowboys Grow up to be Babies.”

Take a listen to Tony Joe White singing just that song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD8P2-Aw718

Men, for some reason—especially white men, are somehow considered an “existential threat” if they are determined, overtly masculine, decisive, resolute outdoor types who hunt, fish, drive pick-up trucks, enjoy contact sports like football, boxing, MMF, and hockey, and generally behave as most men have always behaved on this planet—like men.

But not in 2021 America. Here they are called “domestic terrorists,” and worse.

Hollywood deems those hearty souls “brutes” and “beasts” who are in need of some form of “comeuppance.” Intriguingly, it seems to be okay for Hispanic or black men to be masculine, but not white men. Why is that? Is it because we are being fed the ubiquitous and pervasive B.S. about “white supremacy” running rampant in our country?

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Possibly, but I confess, I don’t have the answer. However, Hollywood apparently thinks it does—especially when it comes to portraying elements of manhood in films.

But, hey, this is just me prattling on. I wonder what others think?

Here’s one individual who has examined and studied all of this through the lens of Hollywood and has arrived at some interesting conclusions. Take a look.

Educator and writer Jeff Minick says America is turning out a nation of male “snowflakes.”

“Recently, I heard a woman in the coffee shop where I sometimes write expressing her dismay and astonishment that one of her employees, a 20-year-old male, had sent his mother to work to discuss problems her son was having on the job,” Minick recently wrote.

“Not good,” he continued. “Most of us have heard of the “helicopter moms” who call professors or college administrators to protest a bad grade or disciplinary action earned by their sons. Some of these young men are old enough to buy beer, drive a car, and enlist in the Army, but rely on Mommy to do their fighting for them.”

“When we treat legal adults as children, we are creating what C.S. Lewis called “men without chests.”

On the other hand, Minick writes, history both ancient and modern reveals an army of mothers who raised their sons to enter into the fray of life.

As their sons marched off to war, Spartan mothers called out, “Come back with your shield—or on it,” meaning come back honorably alive or bravely dead.

Cornelia of Ancient Rome regarded her two boys as her jewels and reared them to be fighters and patriots.

Andrew Jackson’s widowed mother raised her son to be tough, telling him in the last words she would speak to him:

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“You will have to make your own way” and “Sustain your manhood always.” Later Jackson would say of her, “She was gentle as a dove and as brave as a lioness. Her last words have been the law of my life.”

Of course, today Andrew Jackson is vilified for his belligerent and assertive conduct, both as a general and as our seventh president. Never mind that “Old Hickory” defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 and survived an assassination attempt in 1835, beating senseless his would-be assassin with his walking cane.

Today, such a display of toxic masculinity would be condemned by the snowflakes who comprise the majority of our news media.

But when I look at President Biden, stumbling his way up a ramp to Air Force One and bumbling his way through a light sprinkling of fluffy questions from deferential and sycophantic reporters that behave more like caregivers in a nursing home than the watchdogs of government they are supposed to be, I am more convinced than ever that America is in serious decline.

When our president must be protected from an obsequious and feeble media, I find myself wondering if we will ever see another president with a spine like Andrew Jackson, or Teddy Roosevelt, or Ulysses S. Grant.

Then, I think, maybe it is time that a woman becomes President of the United States. Because I’m not sure if there are any men left in this country who are as tough, independent, and as gristly as some of the women I know.

And I know damn well they won’t be accused of  displaying “toxic femininity.”

 

 

TOOLS OF A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, THEN AND NOW

Back in 1975 B.C. (Before Cyberspace), I lugged a 17-pound Olivetti Lettera 32 portable typewriter from the jungles of Cambodia to the central highlands of Vietnam as I covered the fall of both countries to communist forces.

That Olivetti never failed me, though it took a severe pounding as I jumped on and off helicopters, bounced down rutted roads in jeeps and trucks, and exposed it to 110-degree temperatures and monsoon rains.

Its solid, blue metal shell behaved like armor plating. No matter how much I threw that typewriter around or how often I dropped it when I unzipped the vinyl case and pulled it out, the platen always held my paper in position, and the keys always worked.

In 1975, this was state-of-the-art technology. Tough. Dependable. Cheap. Easy to maintain.

Today that Olivetti resides on a shelf in my garage. And I am sure if I cranked a sheet of paper into it and began banging on the keys, those low-tech black letters would start marching, albeit haltingly, across the page, just like the old days.

          My Olivetti Lettera 32

But as reliable and sturdy as that old Olivetti was, would I consider lugging it back to Vietnam if I were to return for the 47th anniversary of the fall of Saigon on April 29? Not on your life. Of course, that’s a moot point now because of the Wuhan Coronavirus unleashed on the world by China.

Instead, I would carry my Dell laptop computer. Unlike my old typewriter, the Dell XPS 7590 weighs only 4 pounds.

And, unlike my portable typewriter, it is crammed with software products that allow me not only to write my stories and record notes, but to do my expense reports, communicate with the outside world, keep track of contacts and sources, and even play games when I get tired of doing real work—all in living color.

                           My Dell XPS 7590

If I were able to go back to Vietnam, I would sit in my hotel room in Saigon with the Dell’s screen aglow and wonder how I ever got along without this kind of technology in 1975.

The answer seems obvious enough. Most of the work a correspondent does involves observation and interviewing, otherwise known as reporting.

These are things that no machine—not my low-tech Olivetti typewriter nor a high-tech Dell laptop–can do for you.

There is little doubt that the actual process of writing this time around in Vietnam would be made infinitely easier by the Microsoft Word program inside the Dell.

After all, in just a few seconds, I could spell-check my story and even use Word’s electronic thesaurus to juggle adjectives and verbs. Try that on a portable typewriter.

Today, I think about all those times in 1975 that I found myself in the Vietnamese outback with a story written, but with no way to get it back to the Chicago Tribune. Few Vietnamese cities outside of Saigon had a public telecommunications office where you could take a hard copy of your story, punch it into a telex machine, and have it transmitted to Tribune Tower 12,000 miles away.

That meant you had to “pigeon” your story. “Pigeoning” a story meant that after I reported it and wrote it on my portable typewriter, I would jump into a taxi and head for the nearest airport.

There I would run frantically through the terminal looking for a pilot—often one of the CIA’s Air America airplane drivers—and give him my story to take back to Saigon.

Your humble correspondent covering Cambodia & Vietnam 1975

Once in Saigon, the pilot would drop the story off at the PTT (Public Telephone and Telegraph) office, and a congenial young woman named Miss Minh would unfold the crumpled pages and try to decipher all of the barely legible editing notes I scribbled in the margins.

Then Miss Minh would switch on her telex machine and convert the whole thing into about 20 feet of paper telex tape. That done, she would dial-up 253638, which was the Tribune’s old telex number.

A Telex Machine ca. 1975

If all systems were “go,” then maybe 10 or 15 minutes later, one of the Tribune’s old gray telex machines would hump its carriage a few times, ring a few bells, and my story would clank forth, printed on an 8-inch-wide roll of yellow paper.

The total elapsed time from when I finished the story until that old telex machine regurgitated it in the Tribune’s wire room would be close to 8 hours. It might be longer if the pilot stopped off at the Continental Palace Hotel’s veranda for a few beers before trudging down Le Loi Boulevard to the PTT office.

The cost for all of this could run close to $200 because, in addition to the $160 or $170 it cost to transmit the story, I was obligated to buy dinner or several rounds of drinks for the pilot when I returned to Saigon. Today, I could send that same 1,500-word story with the Dell in less than a minute the Internet. The cost? Negligible.

Back in 1975, it not only cost more to get a story from Saigon to Chicago, but the psychic outlay of pigeoning a story was substantial.

After all, I had no way of knowing if the story I handed to a pilot was sent until I returned to Saigon several days later.

About the only thing that comes close to equaling that sensation in this, the computer age, is that plummeting feeling you get when the hard drive in your laptop fails, and you haven’t backed up your work.

In 1975, my backup system consisted of a few sheets of threadbare carbon paper and a tattered 8-by-11 manila envelope. There were no CMOS batteries, no fragile hard disks, and no central processors to worry about— unless you counted me.

There is no doubt that advanced computer technology, for all its brilliance, comes with drawbacks. For example, what would I have done with a laptop in Phnom Penh in 1975? The city, which was under constant bombardment by the communist Khmer Rouge, only had electricity an hour a day. That would have barely given me time to recharge my computer’s battery or the two nickel-metal hydride battery packs I could use as a backup.

Your humble correspondent possibly contemplating new technologies in Saigon?

Then there is the most significant liability of all. I have a feeling I would treat an expensive laptop a lot differently than I treated my Olivetti typewriter.

For example, in 1975, I occasionally used my $99 Olivetti to shield myself from airborne shrapnel and the other fluttering detritus of war.

But I suspect that given the $1,149 price tag of a Dell XPS 7590, I might use my body to protect it during mortar and artillery bombardments.

Just consider the mathematics. You could buy about twelve Olivetti portables for the price of one Dell XPS 7590. And that’s not counting the software.

But then, when I think about all those times I trudged down Tu Do Street to attend the military briefings we used to call the “5 O’clock Follies,” and all the times I swore I would never again waste my time going to them, I’m convinced that the technological advantages of a 2020 laptop definitely outweigh the shrapnel-shielding capacity of a 1975 Olivetti.

For example, had there been laptops and on-line news retrieval in 1975, I could have plugged in my modem to the nearest phone jack and picked up the salient points of the Follies while sipping a vodka tonic at a table on the veranda of the Continental Hotel—otherwise known as the “shelf.”

On second thought, that might not have been a good idea. The obstreperous collection of hacks, soldiers of fortune, and castoffs that used to gather in the shelf and other watering holes in Saigon in those days tended to slosh drinks and spill plates of food.

And while my old Olivetti was irrigated more than once with Vietnamese “33” beer” and assorted food products, I shudder to think what a single glass of vodka or a small dish of Saigon fish sauce might do to the innards of a $1,200 laptop.

 

Remembering the Final 24 Hours in the Fall of Saigon

Forty-seven years ago, I was in a place called Saigon as it fell to Communist North Vietnamese troops. It is a day I will never forget, not only because I wasn’t sure if I would get out of Vietnam in one piece, but because I still consider it one of the greatest betrayals in American history. Thousands of Vietnamese who had worked for and with the United States in an effort to keep South Vietnam from being conquered and assimilated by Communist North Vietnam were left behind as America abandoned them to concentration camps and worse.

Covering Cambodia & Vietnam 1974-75

At the time, I was the Chicago Tribune’s Far Eastern Correspondent based in Tokyo, and I had gone to South Vietnam and Cambodia to report on both countries two years after the spurious Paris Peace Accord was signed.

In my post today, I am sharing with you my account of that harrowing, panic-filled 24-hour period between April 29-30, 1975, when a ten-year-long war that some have called America’s “lost crusade” came to a frantic and ignominious end.

During that frenzied final day, 1,373 Americans, 5,680 Vietnamese and an exhausted and ailing American ambassador with the American flag folded under one arm and his pet poodle under the other would flee a land infamous for its coups d’état and its Byzantine cabals—a stunningly beautiful place of soaring green hills, lush forests, vast rubber plantations and fertile rice paddies that had become a political and military swamp for several American presidents.

Most Americans have subsequently concluded that what was then the longest war in this nation’s history was also the first war America ever lost. However, as a former North Vietnamese colonel told me several years ago, one of the great ironies of Vietnam is that the American military was never defeated in any battle of consequence.

“You lost the war in the cities and villages of America, not on the battlefields of Vietnam,” Col. Ba Thang political commissar of the Saigon­ Gia Dinh Special Action Unit, told me. “We could never hope for a military victory against such a formidable foe. Our strategy was to survive, to make the war last so long that you Americans would eventually tire and go home. That is what happened. We divided you politically and sapped your will to fight a war in a country few Americans had ever heard of or cared about.”

Indeed, while the specter of Vietnam still haunts us today, in the 1960s and 1970s, it divided the nation like nothing since the Civil War. In some ways, it continues to do so.

References to American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as America’s “new Vietnams” are consistently seen and heard in the news media. The phrase “no more Vietnams” adorns placards at nearly every demonstration against any U.S. military involvement and one even hears references to “the light at the end of the tunnel,” the phrase used in the 1960s by former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to describe U.S. progress toward winning the war in Vietnam.

McNamara’s pet phrase was far from my mind 45 years ago when a barrage of 122 mm rockets slammed into Saigon. It was a little after 4 a.m. on April 29, 1975, when I was jolted awake in my second-floor room of Saigon’s four-story French colonial-era Continental Palace Hotel. As I sat upright in my bed, I realized it was oppressively hot and after the initial explosions, strangely quiet.

Continental Palace Hotel (Ron Yates)

Then I realized why. The old window air conditioner had stopped its moaning and coughing. There was no electricity. The North Vietnamese had hit one of Saigon’s power plants—a common occurrence during the past few weeks. I lit one of the dozen or so candles I always kept ready and looked up at the ceiling.

The gecko lizards had stopped chasing after mosquitoes and were retreating down the walls. Cockroaches the size of credit cards were scampering into the cracks of the ruby floor tiles. Even the rat that regularly patrolled my room was gone (I had named him General Giap, after the architect of North Vietnam’s military campaign).

I wondered if what I had heard had been thunder. April 28th had been a day of thunderstorms with lightning flashing over the city. Then, a few moments later, the unmistakable metallic sound of a 122 mm rocket shrieked through the thick humid night air and exploded nearby. This time chunks of ancient plaster fell from the ceiling, and the walls of the 100-year-old hotel shuddered.

That was not thunder. These were the first rockets to hit Saigon since April 27 when one slammed into the roof of the Majestic Hotel overlooking the Saigon River a few blocks away, killing a hotel porter. Later that same morning, another rocket smashed into Saigon’s bustling Ben Thanh Market, killing more than a dozen people.

I jumped from the bed, scampered barefoot over the cold crimson tiles to the small balcony overlooking Lam Son Square, and threw open the French windows. Before me, looming in all its hulking alabaster majesty, was the old National Assembly Building and beyond it the high rise Caravelle Hotel. Both were intact.

To my right where Le Loi Street bisected Tu Do Street, several members of the South Vietnamese home guard, with red rosettes in their buttonholes identifying them as loyalists, were firing their old M-1 carbines. For the past several weeks, home guard troops, who were mostly teenagers, had patrolled the streets by day and at night had slept on sidewalks wrapped in ponchos.

As I looked down at the home guard, bullets buzzed through the dank night air and ricocheted off nearby buildings. I ducked as several rounds slammed into the white façade of the hotel. During the past several months, I had gotten to know several of these home guard militia. Their job was to enforce Saigon’s nighttime curfew. I paid them to escort me after curfew to the Public Telephone and Telegraph Office so I could telex my stories back to the Chicago Tribune.

“What are you shooting at?” I yelled.

“V.C., beaucoup V.C.,” a 17-year-old named Nha shouted back.

“Where?”

“They everywhere…you better hide.” Then Nha, who was usually wasted on Vietnamese “33” beer by this time, shrieked with laughter. “Không Quan trọng!” (It doesn’t matter). We kill all number ten V.C.”

Yeah, I remember thinking if you don’t kill everybody else in the city first. Nha lifted his rifle and fired several more rounds into the air. I had seen Nha in action with his M-1 carbine during our after curfew hikes to the PTT office. He often amused himself by blasting away at the giant rats that roamed Saigon’s deserted streets after the cyclos and ancient smoke-belching Renault taxis had stopped running for the night.

I retreated into my room. In the distance, there were more heavy explosions—what sounded like 80 mm mortar rounds and 130mm heavy artillery hitting Tan Son Nhut, Saigon’s main airport some 7 miles away. The temperature was already approaching 90 degrees as I got dressed, and the sun wasn’t even up. I decided to forgo what would have been a cold shower. I needed to get downstairs to see what was going on.

Was this it? I can recall thinking. Is this the end? As it turned out, America’s disastrous crusade in Vietnam was indeed over. And this was the way it would end: not with honor, as one president had suggested, but in disgrace and humiliation and chaos.

Even though the city was now under a 24-hour curfew, for much of that final day some 20,000 terrified, shrieking Vietnamese—many of them former U.S. government employees—would surround the American Embassy, pleading with Marine guards to allow them inside the 10-foot walls so they could board the choppers that would take them to the armada of 44 American ships waiting off the Vietnamese coast.

Some would make it over the walls and onto the helicopters. But only some. Most would be held at bay by U.S. soldiers—former allies—who pointed M-16s at them, cursed them, pounded their clawing fingers with rifle butts, and threatened to blow their heads off.  I can still hear the voices of American embassy officials and their Vietnamese interpreters shouting: “Không ai sẽ bị tụt hậu!” (No one will be left behind) at the frantic throng outside the Embassy compound.

It was a scene that still saddens me today—one that made me ashamed to be an American, not because we were leaving in abject defeat but because we were betraying thousands if not millions of Vietnamese who believed our promises of a free and better Vietnam if they supported our policies.

I had arrived in Vietnam from my Tokyo base in January 1975, and except for a few weeks spent in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in late February and early March, I had lived in Saigon at the Continental Palace.

The North Vietnamese push for Saigon began March 7 in Vietnam’s central highlands. Four days later, the provincial capital city of Ban Me Thuot, 180 miles north of Saigon, fell. A few days after that, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu decided to adopt a plan of “strategic withdrawal,” which, in effect, conceded the northern half of South Vietnam to the Communists and precipitated one of the greatest routs in military history.

By early April, the North Vietnamese controlled almost 75 percent of the country, and a palpable sense of doom enveloped Saigon. The city’s ubiquitous bars, famous for their “Saigon tea,” were mostly empty. Vendors selling “pho” and “cà phê sữa”(beef noodle soup and “white” coffee), beggars, and hundreds of homeless children had all retreated from the streets.  While these were ominous signs, I knew the end was near when the Indian tailor on Tu Do Street, where I had gotten shirts made and changed dollars into Vietnamese piastres, began producing North Vietnamese and Viet Cong flags instead of American and South Vietnamese banners.

“It’s the reality of the situation you see,” he told me matter-of-factly one afternoon.  “You do what you must to survive. You press chaps can leave; I cannot. Frankly, I am happy that this nasty affair is ending finally after so many terrible years.”

The official length of the war is generally conceded to have been eight years—from 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in the U.S. Marines, to 1973, when the Paris peace accord was signed. However, if you count the first advisers sent to Vietnam by Harry Truman in 1950, America’s involvement in S. E. Asia spanned three decades. During that time, about 3.1 million military personnel (including 7,200 women) served in Vietnam.

The human toll was staggering. By the time America’s active involvement in the war officially ended in 1973, it had claimed the lives of 58,183 American men and women. Another 304,000 Americans came home wounded, sometimes physically and sometimes mentally. One of every ten soldiers who served in Vietnam was a casualty.

Also, some 105 journalists died covering the war—more than in any other conflict in world history. Several are still missing.

Vietnam was nothing if not intense. For example, Pentagon figures show that the average infantryman in the Pacific theater in World War II saw about 40 days of actual combat in four years. In Vietnam, the average infantryman saw about 240 days of combat in one year—a fact directly attributable to the helicopter, which allowed for much more rapid deployment of troops.

Then there are the MIAs—the 2,211 Americans still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, including 1,651 in Vietnam.

The dollar cost of the war: More than $165 billion—a figure which includes the loss of 3,689 fixed-wing aircraft, 4,857 helicopters and 15 million tons of ammunition.

Vietnamese who had worked for U.S. were devastated when they were left behind.

In Vietnam the impact of America’s involvement in the war was even more conspicuous: 3 million Vietnamese killed, including 1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers; 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers; and 2 million civilians, according to Vietnam’s Ministry of Labor, War Invalids, and Social Affairs. More than 600,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops were wounded. In comparison, 500,000 South Vietnamese troops were wounded, and 2 million civilians on both sides were crippled by mines, artillery fire, chemical defoliants, bombings, and the general mayhem of war.

*********************************************************************

In early April, I had driven my rented jeep to a town called Phouc Hiep and found myself in the middle of a rice paddy along with a handful of other reporters when a firefight broke out between ARVN (South Vietnamese) and North Vietnamese troops.

We broke into a wild run across a vast expanse of dry paddies toward a hamlet when we heard the telltale “thump” of a mortar shell being fired.

“Eat dirt,” someone yelled, and we plunged en masse into a 3-foot deep irrigation ditch. Seconds later, an earsplitting explosion sent huge chunks of dirt and rock flying through the air and on top of us. We were fully exposed in the middle of a 10-acre chain of rice paddies. The nearest cover was a small river about 300 yards away. We thought about dashing it, but small arms fire from both sides kept us pinned down. We remained there in the muddy ditch for what seemed like hours as bullets kicked up dirt all around us. In fact, the battle lasted only about 15 minutes.

When the shooting subsided, we scampered toward the river, zigging and zagging as we went. When we got there, we paid some farmers who had taken cover along the river bank to ferry us to the other side in their wooden dugout canoes. Once, there we were met with the aftermath of the battle. The bodies of perhaps 15 NVA soldiers were strewn across a field. They had walked into an ambush.

Dead NVA soldier after a battle with South Vietnamese Soldiers (Ron Yates)

I was making a few notes and photographing the scene when several children from the nearby village emerged and began stripping the soldiers of any valuables they had—watches, rings, shoes. Others were amusing themselves by jumping back and forth over the wire cable that connected several anti-personnel claymore mines to a triggering device. One touch and the mines could have killed six or seven children and anybody else in standing within the effective killing range. When detonated a Claymore sends some 700 steel balls flying in a 60-degree horizontal arc at the height of 6 feet over a radius of 300 feet.

In Vietnam, I wrote in my notebook, the war and its instruments of destruction had become a deadly amusement park.

*******************************************************************************************************************************

On April 20, the provincial capital of Xuan Loc just 46 miles east of Saigon fell after holding out for several days against a tenacious siege by NVA troops. The fall of Xuan Loc was a signal for people to proclaim what quickly became Saigon’s epitaph: “La Guerre est fini; Saigon est fini; everything est fini.”

It also sped up the dynamic Saigon rumor mill. One rumor said that Catholics originally from the north would be sent on a death march along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Another story said that Viet Cong soldiers in Da Nang had ripped out the manicured fingernails of prostitutes, prompting a frenzy of fingernail cutting and polish removing among Saigon’s bar girls. Yet another rumor said that unmarried Catholic girls would be forced to marry North Vietnamese war invalids.

The rumors had one cumulative effect: they tended to support the growing belief that the end was near.

Since early April, several of us had pressed the U.S. Embassy for details of the evacuation—with no result. U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin, who died in 1990, was intent on not creating panic by discussing the possibility of an American exodus. Until the last day of the war, he had held out hope that a negotiated end of hostilities could be worked out. Indeed, two days before he had gone on Vietnamese television and announced: “I, the American Ambassador, am not going to run away in the middle of the night. Any of you can come to my home and see for yourselves that I have not packed my bags. I give you my word.”

Martin had, nevertheless, sanctioned a low-key evacuation of Vietnamese and Americans called Operation Talon Vise. Two weeks before April 30, Operation Talon Vise evacuated about 37,000 Vietnamese employees of the U.S. government and their families from Tan Son Nhut to Clark Air Base in the Philippines—far short of the several hundred thousand Vietnamese who had worked with the American military assistance command in some way and who ultimately would be consigned to horrific “re-education camps” by the communist conquerors, in some cases for ten years or more.

To ensure that Talon Vise went smoothly, Martin authorized bribes to Saigon police so buses could move through checkpoints without a problem. He also allowed Vietnamese to be smuggled into the American Embassy through a hole cut into the wall of the adjacent French Embassy.

“What a perfect metaphor for this f…ked up place,” the late Hunter S. Thompson, who was covering the end of the war for Rolling Stone Magazine, told me one evening. We were having dinner at the My Canh floating restaurant on the Saigon River. “Lies, deceit, and betrayal. Hey, I think I have the name for my next book.” The “gonzo” journalist then took a long drag on a fat Buddha grass joint and asked if he could ride out with me to “the action” the next day.

I dreaded taking Thompson with me because he tended to wander off. I always feared that I would return to Saigon and have to announce that Thompson was captured by the Viet Cong or had stepped on a mine. I didn’t want to be responsible for the death or capture of “Uncle Duke” the Doonesbury cartoon strip character modeled on Thompson.

“What a thought,” someone said one evening. “If Thompson gets captured, he will get the whole North Vietnamese Army high, and the war will be over tomorrow.”

As it turned out, Thompson left Saigon for Hong Kong long before the evacuation, and Rolling Stone had to send in another reporter to cover the story. “This bull shit is going to last forever. I’ve got rigorous shopping to do,” he told me before he left for the airport.

Thompson’s assessment notwithstanding, Ambassador Martin did not want to be accused of cutting and running. Until the last few hours, he was convinced there could have been some negotiated, equitable settlement that would allow a smooth transition of power. It is possible today to forgive Martin for his muddled thinking—especially in light of the revelations contained in the book “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam” published in 1995 by one of the architects of America’s involvement in Vietnam, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

McNamara’s admission that he and others in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations knew the war was wrong—and even un-winnable—as far back as 1965 but decided to send Americans to fight and die there any way makes Martin’s diplomatic dithering seem acceptably innocuous.

Finally, on April 26, with 16 NVA army divisions converging on the capital from every direction, a unique “evacuation code” was revealed by the U.S. Embassy that would alert us when an evacuation was imminent.

The code, which would be played over a local U.S.-operated FM station, would be this: A short announcement that said, “The temperature is 105 degrees and rising,” followed by the first eight bars of the song “White Christmas.”

I can recall sitting one evening on the “Continental Shelf”— the open-air veranda of the Continental Palace Hotel (now glassed in and renamed Chez Guido) that overlooks Tu Do and Le Loi streets—when several Japanese correspondents came rushing up to my table.

On “The Shelf,” Continental Palace Hotel

“How does ‘White Christmas’ go?” they inquired anxiously. I hummed it for them. For the next few days, Japanese and others not familiar with the old Bing Crosby Christmas standard could be seen standing on Saigon street corners, humming the song to one another.

It was one of those droll little moments that punctuated the more considerable agony of the war’s last few hours.

But that humor was all but forgotten as April 29 dawned, and several of us huddled in the lobby of the Continental Hotel listening to the portable UHF receiver an embassy official had given the American press corps.

Over the tiny receiver, we could hear radio traffic between the U.S. Marine contingent charged with guarding the hulking complex of U.S. Defense Attache Office buildings near Tan Son Nhut Air Base called “Pentagon East.”

The radio crackled with a running commentary from the Marine unit assigned to the building as one artillery shell after another slammed into Tan Son Nhut and the American compound.

“The back end of the gym’s been hit!” a Marine shouted into his radio.

“Roger that, Whiskey Joe,” came the monotone reply from the embassy, which was appropriately code-named “Dodge City.”

“My god, control, we’ve got two Marine KIAs.”

“Where are the bodies?” asked the voice from the embassy.

“They’re right here. What should we do with them?”

Then there was a tremendous explosion, amplified by the small radio.

“Jesus, the ammo dump’s just been hit! All hell has broken loose out here!”

A few hours later, Operation Frequent Wind (the name given to the final evacuation) was ordered by President Gerald Ford, and I paid one last visit to my room in the Continental Palace. I had stockpiled a couple of cases of American beer, soft drinks, and a variety of PX junk food, along with a small library of pirated books.

I found Mr. Phan, one of the elderly hotel concierge staffers, who slept in a small room on the second floor, sweeping my room as if nothing had happened. For almost two months, Mr. Phan, who always appeared in clean white cotton pants and jacket, had cleaned my room, kept me in fresh bottled water, and occasionally sprayed my room in a futile gesture at ridding it of roaches and other critters of the night.

I pressed a wad of Vietnamese piastres into his hand. Then it occurred to me that the money would be worthless in a few hours—indeed, as far as Saigon’s ubiquitous money changers were concerned, piastres had been worthless for the past two weeks.

I had about $500 in cash, and I peeled off $300 and gave it to him.

“Here, this may come in handy, Mr. Phan,” I said. “And please take anything you want from my room,” I suggested he might want to get out of central Saigon and find a safe place until the fighting and artillery barrage stopped.

He smiled, bowed ever so slightly, and announced:  “Thank you, but not to worry, I am V.C!”

Many of us had suspected for some time that a lot of the “boys,” as Mr. Phan and his co-workers at the Continental were called, were probably Viet Cong or V.C. sympathizers. One reason many journalists stayed at the old hotel was that we had heard that the owner paid “war taxes” to the Viet Cong so it would not be targeted for attack.

As we shook hands, he looked up at me and said: “Why do you not stay. Everything will be OK here. Much better if you stay here.”

I explained that the Tribune had ordered me to leave and that I had a baby daughter I hadn’t seen for almost four months.

He nodded. “Yes, yes, maybe better you go now.”

It was the last time I would ever see Phan, who was in his 70s at the time. When I returned in 1985 for the 10th anniversary of the war’s end, the staff at the Continental Palace informed me he had passed away in 1982.

Tu Do Street, 1975

By 10 a.m., a small army of American, European, and Asian correspondents lugging typewriters, sound equipment, suitcases, and shoulder bags left the Continental in a single silent file. We had been told to make our way to a point six blocks away near the Saigon River.

As we trudged down Tu Do Street, ARVN soldiers and home guard units watched our ragtag formation menacingly. In the distance, we could hear the constant explosion of artillery and mortar shells as they slammed into the city’s suburbs.

“You leave now?” Nha, the home guard soldier, asked me as we slogged toward the river. His M-1 carbine was slung over his back, and for the first time since I had known him and his small squad of home guard soldiers, he seemed genuinely terrified of what the next few hours would bring.

“Yes, we leave now,” I said sheepishly. Then, for some reason, I said: “I’m sorry . . . sorry for all of this.”

“Không sao, nó không quan trọng!” (Never mind, it doesn’t matter), Nha said. “You come back someday.” He was right, of course. I would return in 1985 and again in 1995 to witness the 10th and 20th anniversaries of the fall of Saigon.

Finally, we arrived at our evacuation point: a spot facing a statue of Vietnam’s 6th Century military hero Tran Hung Dao. A helipad had been created atop a building, but the South Vietnamese navy had placed a 50-caliber machine gun on the top of a building next door. It was decided the machine gun might be used against departing U.S. choppers. So that evacuation point was abandoned.

I made my way to the U.S. Embassy, thinking that might be an option for catching a chopper out. It was surrounded by thousands of furious Vietnamese demanding to be let inside the embassy compound. There was no way I was going to push my way through that mob.

I trudged down Hai Ba Trung Street. The temperature was already close to 100 degrees, and my shirt was soaked through with sweat. Eventually, I made my way to an alternate evacuation point—the University of Maryland’s Saigon Education Center. It was padlocked. I waited. Finally, at 12:20 p.m., two olive drab buses arrived, and I climbed aboard along with about 60 other members of the Saigon press corps.

The two buses then began an aimless voyage through Saigon. Every few blocks, the buses would stop, and the Marine assigned to our bus would ask for instructions on his two-way radio.

“What’s this, the Graham Martin sightseeing excursion?” someone asked.

The UHF radio in the Marine’s hand crackled. It was “Dodge City” again.

“We’re in trouble here!” a voice said. “There are 20,000 people at the front gate of the embassy. It’s getting hostile.”

“What should I do with my bus?” our Marine driver shouted into his radio.

“Looks like Tan Son Nhut’s your only option,” came the reply. “Don’t come here!”

Tan Son Nhut Airport, Saigon

“Roger that,” the Marine said. Then, turning to the 60 people jammed on the bus, he said. “Looks like we’re going to the airport.” In the distance, we could hear the explosion of rockets and mortar shells slamming into Tan Son Nhut.

As the bus approached the main gate of the airbase, we could see black pillars of smoke rising from the runway. Then Vietnamese guards at the gate began firing their M-16s in our direction. We dove for the floor.

Our Marine escort, code-named “Wagonmaster,” yelled into his radio for instructions. “This looks bad. What should we do? What is the situation at MACV HQ?”

”It ain’t good,” the radio crackled. “We are taking lots of mortar and artillery fire. Bust through the gate if necessary and then drive like hell.” The radio crackled, and as an afterthought, a voice said: “Good luck.”

I seriously considered getting off the bus and walking the 7 or 8 miles back to the city. Before I could, the driver moved the bus back some 100 yards from the gate.

“This is it,” he yelled. “Keep low. We’re busting through the gate!” He stomped on the accelerator, and the bus lurched forward. As we bore down on the gate at about 60 mph, we expected the guards to start shooting. Instead, they inexplicably backed off and opened the gates seconds before the lumbering vehicle would have rammed through them.

Off to one side, a downed Huey helicopter, with one skid broken off, lay on its side with its motor running and it’s tail rotor still spinning.

We watched a Vietnamese C-119 transport plane somehow lift off from the cratered runway, and we applauded the pilot’s skill. Our applause turned to horror seconds later when a heat-seeking missile streaked skyward, slammed into the transport, and sent it plummeting toward what looked like the Cholon section of Saigon.

As we pulled up to the MACV HQ compound, a 122 mm rocket punched into the Air America terminal just across the road, showering us with debris.

MACV Headquarters

I was in the back of the bus trying frantically to get the locked emergency rear door open when another artillery shell exploded a few hundred feet away, pelting the area with shrapnel and breaking several windows on the bus. By this point, I was on my back, kicking with all my strength at the door.

Finally, I managed to kick the door open. I slid down to the ground and waited for a few minutes using the bus as cover. Most of the press corps had already made it into the building. I took a deep breath, then began my sprint over some 50 feet of open ground to the DAO building. Another rocket slammed into the road a few yards behind me. I dove to the ground and flattened myself on the hot concrete. I could hear razor-sharp metal shrapnel slicing through the air behind me. A few seconds later, I pulled myself up and scuttled like a crab toward the door.

Once inside, we crouched along interior hallways and waited. A couple of hours went by. Several Marines handed out paper bags and told us to write our names and next of kin on them and attach them to our clothing.

“These are for you, not your luggage,” they said. I knew what they were. I had seen them before—attached to the bodies of battle casualties.

Outside, a constant deluge of rockets, mortars, and artillery shells rained on Tan Son Nhut and the DAO compound. I closed my eyes and actually managed a few minutes of sleep between explosions.

It was almost 6 p.m., some 14 hours since the final bombardment of Saigon had begun. I was exhausted. I was sure every ounce of adrenalin in my body was used up. I thought about the C-119 I had watched get knocked out the sky by a SAM-7 missile and began to wonder if I had made the right choice. Maybe I should stay. After all, during one of the Saturday briefings at the Viet Cong compound at Tan Son Nhut, which was established as part of the 1973 Peace Accords, Col. Ba had told me all correspondents would be treated as “guests” by the conquering North Vietnamese Army.

“We are not barbarians like the Khmer Rouge,” Col. Ba said, referring to the news of the carnage in Phnom Penh that was beginning to filter into Saigon. “Just remain in your hotel room, and someone will come for you. Those who earn an honest living will be welcome.”

Of course, I had not remained in my hotel room. I was inside the DAO compound, more than 7 miles from the Continental Palace Hotel. How would I get back to the city center? Catch a ride on an NVA T-54 tank? Hardly.

The shelling outside intensified. The huge DAO building trembled as one artillery shell after another slammed the compound. I was on the verge of getting up and walking back to central Saigon when a Marine captain walked into the corridor and bellowed:

“OK, this is it! We’re moving out! Di di mao…Go, go, go!”

We spilled out of the DAO building. Two Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion heavy helicopters were waiting on a tennis court about 300 feet away, their blades whooshing slowly in the hot sticky air. After what seemed an eternity, I and about 80 others scrambled up the rear loading ramp hunkered on the floor and canvas bench seats. Seconds later, the loadmaster raised the ramp, and we lifted off.

Leaving MACV headquarters by CH-53 Marine Helicopter

We flew low at first. Then the pilot put the helicopter into a steady climb. I stood up and looked down at Saigon over the door gunner’s shoulder. The city seemed bizarrely peaceful and idyllic with the Saigon River meandering through the city and toward the South China Sea some 50 miles away.

Forty minutes later, we were landing on the deck of the USS Denver, a Landing Platform Dock about 35 miles off the coast of Vung Tau.

For the next several hours, we watched one helicopter after another arrive. Some unauthorized South Vietnamese army helicopters were allowed to land and then were pushed over the side into the sea.

Eventually, with the ship’s decks filled, Vietnamese pilots were no longer allowed to land, so they would fly their Hueys to within 100 yards of the ship, open the doors and jump into the sea along with their passengers. The chopper would remain in flight for a few moments and then pitch into the ocean-sometimes dangerously close to those swimming toward our ship.

At 4:58 a.m. April 30, Ambassador Martin closed down the embassy, destroyed its communications equipment, and climbed aboard a helicopter on the embassy roof.

The helicopter pilot sent a message to the fleet: “Lady Ace Zero Nine, Code Two is aboard.” Lady Ace Zero Nine was the chopper’s call sign; “Code Two” was the designation for an ambassador.

At 7:52 a.m., the last chopper lifted off the roof of the U.S. Embassy, carrying out the small detachment of Marines who had guarded the embassy compound and engaged terrified Vietnamese in a running floor-by-floor holding action throughout April 29 and early April 30.

As the last Huey lifted off, the pilot radioed the final official U.S. message from Saigon:  “Swift-Two-Two is airborne with 11 passengers. Ground security force is aboard.”

Then, the radio crackled again: “Bye, bye, Vietnam,” a voice said. “Bye, bye for now.”

Aboard the USS Denver, several of us looked at one another in stunned silence. The longest war of the 20th Century was finally over. Our emotions ran the gamut: relief, guilt, anger, disgust, joy, sadness—depending on who you were and from what country you were.

“So this is what the light at the end of the tunnel looks like,” I said to no one in particular.

I then went below decks to write my final story of America’s war in Vietnam. Only it wasn’t.

I am still writing the final story 47 years later. You just read it.

 

Systemic Racism in America is a Canard

I recently read a new book by Kathleen Brush, Ph.D. entitled “Racism and anti-Racism in the World: before and after 1945.”

It does a good job of arguing against the B.S. being spewed by President Biden, Black Lives Matter, the 1619 Project, and the “Border Czarina” aka Kamala Harris. The book builds a compelling case that America is not a racist nation. It is instead a leading anti-racist nation that has tried to compel other nations to behave the same as the United States. After all, the United States remains the ONLY nation in history that actually fought a war to rid itself of the scourge of slavery.

Of course, that doesn’t fit the bogus narrative that leftist Socialists who have taken over the Democrat Party are pushing–namely, that America is a nation rife with “systemic racism.”

“I was crushed when reading about Americans that were not proud of their country because of its racism,” Author Brush said. “I have studied racism in the world for over ten years, including traveling and working in 111 countries. America’s demonstrable commitment to anti-racism is something to be proud of.”

Below is a commentary by Dr. Brush that I think you will find interesting—unless of course, you are one of those who are convinced that the United States is more racist now than it was before the Civil War and during the Jim Crow era, which ironically, was created by the Democrat Party.

Systemic Racism Not in America

By: Kathleen Brush, Ph.D.

People familiar with America’s legal system are on solid ground saying this system is not systemically racist and this system is foundational to all of our systems. They are also on solid ground acknowledging that prior to 1964 and 1965 the United States legal system had many so-called Jim Crow laws that were racist. In 1964/1965 America killed its history of white supremacy and systemic racism.

Kathleen Brush, Ph.D.

If that is so, why are we told hourly that we are a systemically racist nation? Beyond political opportunism, we have new authors defining why America is systemically racist. According to the lead author of the NY Times Project 1619, Hannah Nicole Jones, America can never escape systemic racism because America possesses the original sin of slavery. Like the original sin, this one can never be forgiven or erased. In building her case, no one would accuse her of being fair-minded with American history or unbiased towards whites.

Ibram X Kendi is a self-proclaimed anti-racist czar and author of How to be an Anti-Racist. He claims systemic racism in America is tied to the original sin of racism which he argues is unique to America. It’s apparent that Kendi has never stepped outside the USA or studied the history of racism around the world. Odd qualifications for an anti-racist czar, Kendi is outwardly and overtly racist against whites, and he unapologetically enjoys the company of anti-Semites.

It is in Critical Race Theory (CRT) where we find the basis of systemic racism that most BLM activists and advocates seem to stake their claims on.

Under CRT, systemic racism in America is found in the unconscious thoughts of Americans. These are the unconscious biases that the media has been prattling on about since President Obama was in office. Unconscious biases have been found to result in discriminatory actions about 4% of the time. This 4% includes discriminatory actions like someone rolling their eyes, and shrugging, or standing in a defensive posture. These actions paint a good picture of the severity of the claims of systemic racism in America, however, there are other examples that might seem more grave. A Latino choosing to donate to a charity in Argentina rather than Somalia, or a black person choosing to donate to a charity in Somalia rather than Argentina are exhibiting unconscious racial biases. Per CRT, until unconscious bias is eradicated there will continue to be systemic racism. It could be said that as long as there are people there will be systemic racism.

What about the ostensible systemic racism we hear about in law enforcement, healthcare, and education? America has entered a silly phase where all disproportionate outcomes are ipso facto racism. The problem is if people look under the covers, they would not find racism. They would find for example, that disproportionate health outcomes are tied to different lifestyle decisions. Disproportionate educational outcomes tie to different values placed on education as seen, for example, through studying habits. Disproportional outcomes with law enforcement tie to the disproportional engagements in crime.

If anyone is interested in the analysis of disproportional outcomes in health care, the legal system or schools, or any other system please let me know. I have the analysis of the first three, but I also know that every time I decide to analyze the validity of a systemic racism claim it ends up as fake news.

Kathleen Brush, Ph.D. is a consultant, writer, and educator on global and women’s leadership issues. She has more than 30 years of experience as a senior executive and researching, traveling, and working internationally. Her Ph.D. is in management and international studies. Kathleen’s articles have appeared on CNBC, Fox Business, The Washington Post, Financial Times China, Business Week, and Entrepreneur.