Posing as a financial whiz

My father said he didn’t know what I did for a living until I showed him a $10 bill.

“Look, that’s where I work,” I said, displaying the image of the Treasury Department.  “You can even see my window.”

He was shocked. He even showed $10 bills to his friends, proudly telling them the story.

But I wasn’t sure I wanted to work there in 1977. During a shake-up, I had been ousted from my job as a supervising editor at Associated Press and transferred to Capitol Hill.

 After that, I loved covering Congress! There was so much action! There were so many famous people: Sens. Edward Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey and Barry Goldwater. Members fawned over wire service reporters, hoping their words would reach constituents. We got the best seats at congressional hearings.

The place was overflowing with young people, especially beautiful women whom congressmen seemed to hire en masse. You figured any woman who was even middle-aged was probably super competent or knew some dark secrets.

Then, an opening appeared for AP’s Treasury correspondent. I was sent there over my own objections. I didn’t want to leave. Unlike Congress, the Treasury was filled with old bureaucrats who were marking time until retirement. They looked down on wire services, hoping to influence fellow insiders through the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Washington Post.

But eventually, I liked it. For one thing, I believe I got more bylines than the White House staff because there were three of them and only one of me. I covered a huge swath of the government, almost everything with a dollar sign on it.

Other staffers considered me a guru on finance when I wasn’t. Sure, I analyzed the federal budget and even wrote specials on how to file your income tax returns. But I had a professional do my taxes.

If anyone questioned a story, I would say something like, “It all depends on the nondefense capital goods sector,” and that would shut them up. (It really means simply refrigerators and cars.)

I often thought about how much better this was than sitting in an office with a row of typewriters and a boss watching over me. There were only four of us in the Treasury press room:  AP, UPI, Reuters and Dow-Jones/Wall Street Journal. The one exception was the time a media company sent several pretty young women over to get a break on press announcements. Playing darts with these gals was something we wouldn’t have done at the main office!

But after awhile, it became a burden covering so much of the government and trying to make sense out of the meaningless economic indicators that came out monthly.

I quit and went to U.S. News & World Report, which was more analytical than AP. My new editor complained to me once, “This reads just like an AP story.” He meant it as an insult. I took it as a compliment.

 

 

Bringing back Sara

What has been my biggest life adventure? Well, it had nothing to do with journalism. It was a personal journey in the chaos of Central America in 1990.

When we decided to adopt a child in our 40s, two friends who were missionaries in Honduras put us in touch with a lawyer there.

Sure enough, she found a new-born baby, Sara Teresa,  in an orphanage in Tegucigalpa. Sara was already popular. The wife of the U.S. ambassador wanted her, too.

Probably unwisely, our lawyer sent Sara back to her birth mother for a few weeks to reserve her for us. Sara was malnourished there and lived among many chickens. Maybe  that’s why she loves animals so much today.

We flew to Tegucigalpa to see Sara, but first we wanted to stop at a Honduran resort on the Island of Roatan. We enjoyed this spot, frequented by rich people from all over the western Hemisphere, until disaster struck. Pickett fell off the edge of a pier (which had no railings) and broke her ankle.

There we were, the farthest we had ever been from what we considered civilization, and what could we do? As soon as we got back to Tegucigalpa, Pickett went to the hospital.

The doctor insisted surgery was necessary. But looking at the primitive equipment, Pickett wisely decided to wait until we returned to the U.S.

But first, with her leg in a cast, we were finally introduced to Sara, age 6 months, and enjoyed several days with her.

But for the adoption to become final, we had to wait another six months until we could return from Arlington.

In the meantime, we got a young woman to take care of her, and Sara was fed lots of  ice cream. This once-scrawny child now looked so fat in her pictures that the ice cream had to stop.  Meanwhile, Pickett got her leg fixed in a D.C. hospital.

As things dragged along, a friend actually lobbied the president of Honduras on our behalf as he gave the official a tour of Georgetown University.

But I think what really worked were the bribes we got the lawyer to pay the administrators.

Returning to Honduras around Sara’s first birthday, we took her home on Thanksgiving Day. The lawyer told us that the birth mother was secretly at the Tegucigalpa airport to watch as we departed, though I am not sure that really happened.

When we got home, Sara fell in love right away with our dog, beginning a love of dogs that led to her career as an animal groomer.

Post script: Sara expressed interest in trying to find her birth mother in later years, but the turmoil in Honduras at that time made it unsafe. However, she did meet some distant relatives in this country through DNA testing.

 

 

 

Are you old? Here’s how to find out

Ignore the calendar. Follow this guide to figure out whether you really are elderly:

—At the self-service checkout, clerks always come to help you because they know you won’t be able to figure it out.

—You don’t cut your toenails anymore. You either can’t reach them or (worse) you can‘t see them.

—You can’t watch long movies in the evening because you fall asleep after one hour.

—You wrote a list of things to remember, but you can’t remember where you put it.

—You think “Dewey beats Truman” was a funny headline in 1948, but no one knows what you are talking about.

—You lost 8 pounds when you were sick, but your gut hasn’t gotten any smaller.

—You can actually remember when there was no television.

—Friends younger than you have great grandchildren.

—You order the senior special at a restaurant and your son or daughter orders one too.

—You remember the music of Neil Sedaka, who died last week. During the pandemic he put on a Facebook show every day. (You know I recorded his “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” and sent it to him and he wrote back that he liked it!) https://youtu.be/nfAj3KfMDcs?si=PD1mxsTdDUQY4Rgu

—You say: “You don’t remember Doris Day? Everyone remembers Doris Day!”

—You type on a phone one finger at a time, never with both thumbs.

—You can’t think of a word you want to say, but it pops up in your head days later.

—You like matinees, but you always fall asleep in the second act.

—Social gatherings are difficult because you can’t remember people’s names or even their faces.

—You keep calling people in their 50s “kids.”

—You are offended by “modern music,” but on the radio it is called “oldies.” They don’t play the music you grew up with anywhere.

—You remember when the Dodgers were in Brooklyn and there were no Major League Baseball teams west of St. Louis.

—You wake up with a hangover, but you had nothing to drink last night.