A Chip off the old British block

 

Sometimes I think I belong in England. “Cheerio, old chap.” “Stiff upper lip, mate”. No hugging. No smiles.

 

Since I was a child, I have felt at a disadvantage in the free-wheeling, back-slapping U.S., where I was born.

 

British understatement works wonderfully in an old man’s column, but not on the school yard, where kids know no limits. Or in the work-a-day American business world, where it’s dog eat dog, no holds barred.

 

 

I’ll blame (or credit) my grandfather, Fred W. Gee, who was born in the West Yorkshire section of England in 1875. Fred arrived here at age 17 without telling his mother he was leaving. No tearful farewells for him.

 

He settled in the Sierra foothills of California, opening a tailor shop, for which he had been well trained. In later years, suffering from dizzy spells after his wife died, he lived with my parents and our family in San Francisco’s East Bay.

 

I was definitely the best dressed kid in school, with custom tailored British tweed coats he made for me.

 

My mother, his daughter, was as Tory as they come in this country. “We never should have broken off from England,” she said repeatedly, almost 200 years too late. She idolized the British monarchy and followed the Queen’s every move. She was saddened by Prince Charles’ dalliances away from Lady Diana.

 

As a reporter, I wondered how I would have done in Fleet Street’s news madness, so contrary to the genteel way of life I had envisioned as British. It came as a shock to me when English journalists were so rowdy as they questioned our Treasury secretary and their Chancellor of the Exchequer at a news conference I attended with them in Washington. And did British journalists really bug Prince William’s phone? My mother would not be amused!

 

I have enjoyed a number of BBC television shows but need subtitles. I worry about being the grumpy Doc Martin myself.

 

I visited cousins in England several times. My uncle took me to a British soccer game in Newcastle, where the final score was 0-0. Sorry, I didn’t become a convert. And our baseball is speedy compared to their cricket. On a street in Edinburgh, I had a sudden flashback that I had been there in a previous incarnation. Ridiculous, or was it?

 

Would I have been a Scottish street urchin or a wealthy gentleman at the club, holding a gin & tonic and toasting Queen Victoria. I do think I might have fit better in the 19th century, even if they didn’t have the internet.

 

 

 As my grandfather grew older and frailer, we took him out of his nursing home at age 93 to visit us at Christmas in 1968. One of the gifts for me under the tree was a Beatles’ album. “They were from Liverpool,” my mother said. He was utterly fascinated.

That was the last I ever saw of my grandfather other than at his funeral. A true Brit. And so am I, I guess.

 

 

 

People who let you down…and some who don;t

 How many times have you been greatly disappointed by someone you respected and admired?

Public figures come to mind: Lance Armstrong, who admitted doping after winning the Tour de France seven times. Woody Allen, a great film maker who married his former partner’s adopted child. Bill Cosby, the family man on TV who molested women.

Then there are the people in your own life:

—The revered editor who blamed me after inserting errors into my articles.

—The Sunday school teacher who muttered  during a Billy Graham crusade that greedy investors funded his activities.

 —The finance reporter, a good friend, convicted of insider trading.

For me, the worst was a highly respected editor in one of the big-city bureaus I worked in. His son was even an NFL quarterback.

This man had been so nice when I applied for a job, and he kept tabs on me for years, finally hiring me after I was seasoned and ready.

Several weeks into the job, there was a shakeup in the office. Suddenly, I was his boss, at least for part of the day.

I gave him work to do. He was so fast, he finished it in little time. So I gave him more.

Twice, he stood up in an office full of about a dozen colleagues. He screamed and hollered at me, using profanity, telling me that I was running a sweat shop. Who, mild-mannered me? I said nothing in return. What could I say to a legend?

Finally, a colleague went to the top boss and the boss got him to stop.

Wait. This column is getting too depressing. I only write uplifting and happy stuff.

So let’s look at others who did the reverse in life, people you could look up to after they beat long odds,

— Michael Milken, the disgraced junk bond king who turned his life around, funding cancer research after getting out of jail.  

-Charles Colson, a key figure in the Watergate scandal, who became a Christian minister and founded Prison Fellowship, to help reform the prison system.

—An alcoholic friend who overcame his addiction to be a beacon of light with Alcoholics Anonymous.

—Our difficult foster child who earned a psychology degree and raised a happy family.

—And best of all, my own daughter, who I never suspected of having business acumen, eventually running a successful business as a dog groomer!

How Repeated Routines Keep You Sane (Or Not.)

Rituals aren’t just reserved for religion.

I think sports have even more of these repeated ceremonies: The national anthem, the tossing of the coin, the fight songs, the seventh inning stretch, even the commercials.

Committee meetings have the reading of the minutes, the treasurer’s report and the adjournment.

Let’s look at our own lives to see what rituals we have. Here are some:

The awakening. “It’s too early. Why did I wake up now? I didn’t get enough sleep!”

The making of the coffee. “Is it two scoops or one? I should have prepared it last night.”

The reading of the paper (online in my case.) “They did that? Outrageous! &%$$#$##!! I think I had too much coffee.”

The feeding of the dogs. They follow you around all morning and start barking if you are too late. One of them devours everything but the other sniffs her food, refuses it and looks up at you as if to say: “Why are you feeding me this crap again?”

The buying of the groceries. “If you forget to give me stamps after I paid for them again, I will scream!”

The honking of the horns. OK, I am slow driving out of Food Lion’s parking lot.

The opening of the mail. I hate this. If it’s important, it is sure to be bad news.

Answering the unexpected phone call. “I never should have answered that phone solicitor!” You can say “I am sorry I am not interested.” Or “Have you thought about a different line of work?” But I usually just hang up to save us both time.

The dinner preparation. “It’s your turn to cook!” “No, it’s your turn. I just cooked last month.”

The prayer.

The eating of the leftovers. If dinner is not leftovers, it’s “Excellent dinner. Thank you.” Or: “You didn’t say anything about the dinner. You hate it!”

The turninng on of the television. “I know I have a billion channels and streaming services galore. But there is nothing on!” You resort to a video game or read a book.

The “Oh, I forgot moment” at bedtime. As in:

“Its my sister’s birthday. I never called her.”

“I left the stove on. Is that smoke I am smelling?”

“Oh, we had $100 tickets to the show at DPAC tonight.”

“I was going to pay the electric bill today. The power goes off at

 midnight.”

Except for the stove, these things will have to wait until tomorrow.

 Good night, everyone!

Driving Me Crazy

 You really have a driver’s license?” My driver training teacher asked me in 1958. “If you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

OK, I get nervous when someone is evaluating my every move behind the wheel.

I’ll bet he got nervous too: He had a lever by his side that slammed on the brakes whenever a student terrified him by veering off the road. I’ll bet he had a stiff drink at the end of the school day.

Decades later, I got nervous too when I helped a visiting 20-year-old learn to drive this past summer. I wonder if I now have P.T.S.D.

I take a lot of driving for granted. I think: Of course you can easily keep the car on course between the white line and the edge of the highway. Of course you start accelerating before you begin climbing a hill. Of course you start your turn before you are in the middle of the intersection. I guess not. Don’t kids learn all that when driving bumper cars?

We started on the almost empty parking lot at the World of Sports in South Boston. It was even more empty once we got rolling. I wonder if they sensed danger and moved their cars.

Well, I was getting bored going back and forth in a parking lot but not my student. He seemed reluctant to get on U.s. 58.

I should have known better. I wanted him to go slow on the four-lane highway, but I started to wail when he went full blast.

“It says 55 mph,” he said. “You don’t have to do that,” I exclaimed, probably too loudly. “Let them pass you.”

I tried to remember everything to tell him. When I taught him to ride a bike, I forgot to tell him about the brakes, and he crashed into a tree.

I should have known better than to try to teach someone to drive all in one day. The next day we stuck to the path from the road to our house,

But I forgot that turning around is no easy task. It took about five or six turns before getting back on the driveway. Without even hitting a tree! I recommended that he take a driver training class when he gets home.

Why was I so worried about him? My own driver’s license expires soon, and I was terrified I would fail the vision test. My vision isn’t what it was at 20.

I kept putting it off until my eyes felt right. Finally, I went to the DMV and was greeted by a friendly clerk, with no wait.

WhenI looked into the machine, she said, “Can you read the first line?” I wanted to say “What line?” But slowly the letters came into view. “A, K, G, R….” I passed! Yay!

So I won’t need the 20-year-old to drive me around.

Now, if I ever stop driving, it will be my decision, not the government’s.

 

 

 

Jimmy Carter Makes it to 100

 

Congratulations on Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday today. In my 50 years In Washington, I followed Carter more closely than any other president.

 

From 1971 to 1977, all of my work at The Associated Press had been writing and editing from a desk. Then suddenly, a week after a bureau shakeup, I found myself sitting in the front row of the audience for Carter’s inauguration, my feet freezing on the icy ground. While watching him and Rosalynn walk from the Capitol to the White House in the parade, I may have wished I was still warm and inside.

 

Within a few months, while covering the Treasury Department next door, I was often called on to help out the nearby White House staff when the President spoke on an economic subject or when his helicopter took off for Camp David. The White House press staff seemed helplessly dependent on the President or press secretary for news. There were few interviews or visits to White House offices. TV crews and still photographers sat around watching soap operas and game shows all day, something I had never seen in a workplace.

 

I did get to shake hands with Carter several times at White House Christmas parties for the press. After a series of stuffy presidents, it was great to see the leader of the Free World grooving along to the music during entertainment. However, I thought the jack-o-lantern that was painted over the front of the White House at Halloween was hopelessly tacky.

 

Though I normally focused on arcane economic issues, I got drawn into Washington’s biggest story when Carter’s right-hand man, Bert Lance, got into trouble for making too many risky loans at rural banks he ran in Georgia. If a guy can’t run a small bank, how can he manage the budget of the most powerful country in the world?

 

I was first with news that banking regulators had cleared Lance of wrong-doing, but details in their report troubled members of Congress. Their hearings on this mess were big national news. As Lance’s bank faltered, he had been making questionable loans to people who would seek influence with Carter. I covered the hearings that followed, and Lance was forced  to resign. I never thought the offenses were that terrible. Now Carter was soon deprived of advice he badly needed to fight inflation, which was out of control on his watch.

 

I give him poor marks for his economic policies, but he did bring Egypt and Israel together for a historic agreement. He made great, though unfruitful, efforts to advance human rights around the world.

 

His charitable acts as a private citizen were admirable, though I think it is what a president does in office that really counts.

 

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Note: I wrote this over a year ago when Carter entered hospice care. But he has been hanging on bravely, so I decided to publish this on his birthday.

When Your Favorite Teams Leave

 It’s a sad day when your hometown loses its last major league sports team. The Oakland A’s played their last home game yesterday.

I was an A’s fan for decades through:

—The dynasty of three World Series victories in the 1970s. Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudi, Rollie Fingers, Vida Blue, etc.

—Billy Ball of the 1980s: Billy Martin’s tantrums. Ricky Henderson’s speed. Great starting pitching, not much hitting.

—The “Bash Brothers” of the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire tore up the American League with their hitting before being disgraced for their use of steroids.

—Money Ball of the 200s: Billy Beane put together great teams despite a small budget, using boring statistics rather than intuition to pick players.

—After that, not much. Few winning teams. I lost interest. The Washington Nationals were my team.

My favorite story about the A’s involves Watergate, of all things. I was managing the news desk for The Associated Press in Washington on Oct. 20, 1973, when the “Saturday Night Massacre” broke. It was a huge story when President Nixon fired three top officials who were investigating the Watergate scandal.

As the tumultuous evening ended, my boss, Walter Mears, , said, “Mike we need you to come in on Sunday and handle the reaction story.”

“But it’s the seventh game of the World Series tomorrow!” I said. “My Oakland A’s are playing.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but I will try to make it up to you.”

I did watch the  game on TV between news breaks, but Mears did a very generous thing. He SOLD me his tickets to the Washington Redskins the next Sunday. Tickets were VERY hard to get back then.

It was a great game, and it was worth it. And the A’s won the World Series!

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Oakland also lost the California Seals NHL hockey team in 1976, the Golden State Warriors basketball team in 2019 and the Oakland Raiders football team in 2020. I had the pleasure of helping cover three Raiders’ games for The Associated Press in the John Madden years of the 1970s. never felt that Oakland and San Francisco could support two major league sports teams anyway. The A’s will play in Sacramento until moving later for Las Vegas.

The writer Gertrude Stein once complained of Oakland, “there’s no there, there.” But it’s not yet a minor league town. Not when another Oakland native might be elected president.