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"Hurt"
by Claude Hall
Chapter 20
For some reason, I expected the Human Resources
Technologies building to crumble into rubble like a
house in an Edgar Allan Poe movie that I saw a few
years back. I was eager to get out of the building.
But nothing happened to the building. I looked over
my shoulder from Dawson's Hummer in the parking lot.
It was still standing there. Later that afternoon, a
court order sealed the building and it burned down
less than a week later in a strange fire. I suspect
someone set the fire on purpose although I never heard
any details about it from my major suspect, my
mother-in-law.
My own problems, however, were not immediately over.
Mr. Redneck Plus, a pepper-haired guy man with an
AK47, stuck his nose in the door of my apartment and
then his big foot. He had brought along several other
equally obnoxious types, I might add.
We had just arrived.
Pepper hair insisted on entering when Amanda answered
the door. But she refused to let him past.
"Are you John Dougal's boy?"
His eyes blinked, his mouth came open as if he didn't
quite believe what he saw.
"Yes, mam."
"I thought as much. You look just like him. I know
your father quite well. How is he these days?"
He...he died three years ago."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Amanda said in a quiet,
regal tone of voice. "I always thought John Dougal
was a good, sensible human being. I went to school
with him many years ago. A long time before you were
born. He married the Schuler girl, as I recall."
"My mother."
"She still alive?"
"Yes."
"Please say hello for me," said Amanda. "Tell her
that Amanda Robinson asked after her."
"Amanda Robinson?" His eyes grew wider.
"Yes. I also went to school with your mother."
"But they said you were dead!"
"You believe what you want to believe," she said.
"I'll be damned!" he said softly.
"That may be likely, but not exactly necessary at the
moment," said Amanda. "Will you give your mother my
very best?"
"Yes. I will," he said.
By now, the automatic weapon in his hand was lowered.
It hung in one hand at his side.
She looked at each of them carefully, as if trying to
remember them from somewhere and a distant time. Some
of them seemed puzzled by her. A couple of the men
seemed almost scared and these were men who normally
were afraid of nothing on this earth.
"Are any of you gentlemen guilty of decorating my
living room in such a childish manner?" she asked. No
one said a word.
She looked hard at one of the men.
"Do I know you?" she asked.
"No, mam. I don't think so."
"You must be rather new in town."
"We've been living here 15 years, my wife and I."
"That's what I said," she said. "Well, what can I do
for you boys?" she asked.
"We were chasing a...well, a huge dog. It came this
way a few minutes ago," he said.
"I've always had a fondness for dogs. Especially big
dogs. We had a mastiff when I was a child," she said.
"However, there's no one here except me and my son
and a few of his friends."
I stepped into the doorway beside her, my ears still
smarting from being rubbed by Doris. She'd rubbed too
hard.
"I think I know you," I said. "You're the guy who
shot at me in the shopping center one night."
He nodded. "Yes. I guess I am."
"Well, we're even then," I said. "Because one night I
tried to kill your house."
He nodded again. "You did a pretty good job on the
house."
"I apologize," I said. "I'll be glad to pay for the
damages."
"Not necessary," he said with a grimace on his face
that said he didn't really consider the matter
settled.
"Nonsense," said Amanda with a whimsical smile. "My
brother Elvin will be more than pleased to pay for any
damages. His office is in that tall bank building
downtown. You go in there and you tell his secretary
that Elvin's sister says to write you a check for
$3,000. If he refuses or gives you any kind of
trouble, you come back here and I'll go down there
myself with a couple of lawyers and get you your
money."
"About the dog...," he said.
"There's no dog here," said Esposito, shoving past me.
The men, there must have been about six of them,
gaped as they saw the uniformed police officer.
"Definitely not," said Dawson, filling up the entire
doorway as he stepped out onto the patio.
"Perhaps you men should check the apartment building
across the street," said Senator Bangor O'Connor as he
stepped into view.
Confronting a uniformed policeman such as Esposito was
one thing. Maybe even tackling a giant like Dawson.
But the senator's face was known throughout the state
and most of the men gathered in the courtyard either
knew him personally or knew him from television
appearances over the years.
The man stared at the senator and tried to speak twice
before finally getting the words to come out right.
"I guess we should," pepper hair said after a moment.
He nodded once more, waved at the men behind him, and
slowly they began to fade away, disappearing almost as
fast as they'd come.
"I do believe those people were rather surprised to
find a man of your stature here," the senator told
Dawson.
"Guess they were even more surprised to find a man of
your status," Dawson told the senator and bowed
slightly.
"If you think they were surprised," said Amanda, "wait
until the Dougal boy asks my brother for a check for
$3,000. My brother thinks I'm dead."
And that was the last I saw of people who hunt
werewolves for pleasure or out of fear. But, like
J.D. promised, a lot of changes occurred in my life
shortly thereafter.
I stood around for a while listening to Doris and her
mother plan a wedding and tried to insist that I'd
rather just elope or something, but without much
success. That kind of conversation bored Dawson and
Esposito as much as it did me. We shook hands,
promised to get together real soon, and they soon
departed. I actually did become friends with Esposito
for a while after Dr. Jake Chadwick shepherded me
through college for an English degree in return for
some information for a book he was writing.
"Where's Amanda?" I asked the senator.
Doris' mother glanced up from her planning with Doris.
"I told her about her brother and she left to go meet
him," said Jennifer.
"Why would she want to see him after what he did to
her?"
"Why, he was her younger brother," she said. "She
loved him as a child. And it doesn't matter what he
did to her later, she'll always treasure those early
years. Now that he's dying of lung cancer, a very
painful death, she wanted to be with him, if only for
a moment, just to tell him that she still loves him,"
Jennifer said. She glanced at her wrist watch. "In
fact, he died just about two minutes ago."
"Oh, what a pity!" I said. "She'll get there too
late."
"No, she'll be right on time," she said.
"He doesn't know about Amanda, mother," said Doris.
"You didn't know?" Jennifer asked.
"Know what?" I asked.
"Many, many years ago when she was kidnapped and her
brother refused to pay the ransom, the kidnappers
killed her and dumped her body on a vacant lot,"
Jennifer said.
The tone of her voice was kind although the words hurt
like rocks. She reached out and placed a hand on my
arm to comfort me. I didn't believe it about Amanda.
"But I saw her! Talked to her! Watched a movie with
her. She even cooked me a steak one day. J.D. saw
her and talked with her, too. You saw her, Doris."
"She was a lost soul...a ghost," said Doris with a
soft voice. "Until she met you and you befriended
her, she was more or less doomed to wander...just
wander around."
"I can't believe it!"
"Now that her brother has died," said her mother, "her
sorrow has been, well, compensated, and she'll move
along. She'll just have time to say goodbye to her
brother."
"Along where?'
"Just along," said Jennifer. She turned away so that
I wouldn't be able to read her eyes. "She'll be fine.
Among many old and dear friends."
I wanted to ask what would happen to Amanda's brother,
but figured that I probably didn't really want to
know.
After a while, Doris and her mother evidently figured
they couldn't get all of the planning done in just one
evening. We all decided to go out to dinner. Doris
and I sat in the back and held hands.
"I'm going to miss my monthly shindig," I said. "It's
going to be awfully boring without it."
She gave me a peck on the cheek. "We'll see if we can
solve your problem," she said.
"I never thought of it as a problem."
"Oh, it's a problem all right. But the real problem
is that you're going to be busy just about every
night, including when the moon is full."
"Busy? Doing what?"
She just laughed.
- 30 -
STARTING NEXT WEEK: A novel set in the music business of Los Angeles.
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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Commentary
by
Claude Hall
March 1, 2004
The man without an enemy is probably a very dull
fellow. For it is our enemies which keep us in fine
fettle. I'd like to say that I don't have an enemy
that I didn't create, but this is probably not true.
Some enemies occur by accident. However, I'd like to
believe that the enemies I've made on purpose are a
finer breed and deserving of more respect than those
enemies I've made unintentionally. Unintentional
enemies are merely the swishswash of life and after a
while mean nothing if you remember them at all.
Friends, of course, I treasure more. Good friends and
true, as the writer-artist Barnaby Conrad once
remarked of me and my wife Barbara. Friends can, too,
keep you in fine fettle. Usually, you have to measure
up to their image of you which is usually more lofty
than you have of yourself. The constant effort to be
better than you are demands great energy, great
concentration, and even greater determination. You
eventually may measure up to their expectations, but
seldom the expectations of yourself that you think
they have (which are more likely imagined than real).
However, it is the handling of enemies with which I'm
concerned at the moment. When one has the government
as enemy it is, indeed, possible to believe in anarchy
as a better way of life. Bring back J. Frank Dobie
and God bless him! And I did not create this
particular enemy.
In previous Commentaries, we discussed the strategies
of Musashi, but these were primarily in the realm of
physical combat. For the aspects of psychological
combat--especially in an antagonistic
environment--there are few better theories than those
developed and honed in real life by Saul Alinsky.
Some today consider his theories passé. I do not. Of
course one must assume that any theoretical entity or
concept applies only to the extent it affects you
personally and is more than likely not the total
answer.
I stumbled across Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals"
while studying for a Ph.D. in communication at the
University of Buffalo, Each course that I took
seemed to have four textbooks as well as 20 or so
academic papers that must be devoured. So, once a
week I would drive early in the day from Brockport to
Buffalo, hole up in the graduate library on campus,
and study all day, attend class that evening, and
drive home, reaching home sometimes about midnight and
frequently having dodged snow flakes, flying deer in
the dark of night, and enormous fatigue in addition to
professors that often knew less than I did about some
aspects of communication. But this, I surmise, is
merely because I'd been around for more than a decade
and a half some of the greatest minds in practical
communication--Lou Dorren, Jack McCoy, Kent Burkhart,
Chuck Blore, Jay Blackburn, Ron Jacobs, Bill Drake,
Buzz Bennett, etc.--and, in addition, had become a
groupie of such as the communications guru Dr.
Marshall McLuhan.
Born in 1909, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants,
Saul Alinsky's passion for justice originated from his
experience growing up in Chicago's Jewish ghetto
during the suffering caused by the Depression. It was
his mother, Sarah Rice, who influenced him most.
Alinsky's son, David, said, "She taught him
that...individuals [must] be responsible for other
individuals and that you can't just walk away when you
see something that's not right."
In 1938, with a graduate degree in criminology from
the University of Chicago, Alinsky began work for
sociologist Clifford Shaw at the Institute for
Juvenile Research. Assigned to research causes of
juvenile delinquency in Chicago's tough
"Back-of-the-Yards" neighborhood--setting of Upton
Sinclair's "The Jungle"--Alinsky soon realized that
crime was a symptom of poverty and powerlessness.
This immense slum in the shadows of the giant Union
Stockyards, one of the largest factory complexes ever
created, was crowded with poor inhabitants; they had
no rights and no job security. In the course of one
year, wages were cut three times. (Does this remind
you of something that is going on under the present
government administration as good jobs are being sent
abroad and Americans are left with taking a job at
Burger King or else?) Alinsky believed that
widespread poverty left America open to the influence
of demagogues and that the only cure was active,
widespread participation in the political process. He
organized and led the Back-of-the-Yards Council in a
series of successful pickets, strikes and boycotts and
in the process won a mentor in CIO President John L.
Lewis. In 1940, with concepts learned from Lewis,
Alinsky formed the Industrial Areas Foundation, an
umbrella organization to organize new campaigns. His
book "Reveille for Radicals" (1946), was a manifesto
which called upon America's poor to reclaim American
democracy.
Virtually unknown now, by the late 1960s Alinsky had
become a folk hero to America's young college
radicals. In 1969, he wrote "Rules for Radicals" in
which he urged America's youth to become realistic,
not rhetorical, radicals. Time Magazine hailed Alinsky
in 1970 as "a prophet of power to the people,"
contending that Alinsky's ideas had forever changed
the way American democracy worked. Alinsky died
suddenly of a heart attack July 12, 1972. He was 63
years old.
Memories of Saul Alinsky organizing a riot in
Rochester, NY, still permeated the State University of
New York campus at Brockport during my tenure. Just
FYI, one of his personal rules was that he had to be
invited to wield his turmoil by a major organization
of some kind in the area. Thus, he was invited to
upset Rochester. Which he definitely did.
Are the rules of Saul Alinsky pertinent today?
Remember what I said about enemies? Well, I wasn't
aware that the government of the United States was an
enemy of mine and of the people of the United States
until recently...and then I noticed that many of Saul
Alinsky's rules were being used against me. By those
who appear to be robbing us of our constitutional
rights at a rapid and quite rabid pace, i.e., those
who want to change the world from what it is to what
they believe it should be whether you personally agree
or not, but whose real aim is to put money in their
own pockets at the expense of those not also wealthy.
First, let me tell you I was quite aware that I was
under physical control while in the U.S. Army and have
more than likely been under mental control to some
extent throughout random periods of my life.
Religion, for example, is naught more than a form of
mental control in regards to the fact that others try
to tell you how to think and act. If you're born and
raised in the so-called bible belt, you've much to
overcome.
Today, we have people presently in control who appear
to be striving for even greater control and there is
the possibility that the control sought is both
physical and mental. I see this in various aspects of
our current life. I see the rules for radicals used
constantly against me. Not just because gasoline
prices soar for no reason (we're told because of lack
of sufficient supplies, but this is a lie), not
because Vice President Cheney gave himself a "bonus"
of more than $30 million and no one dared complain nor
investigate, not just because we have a non-president
we didn't elect (and that crime has, too, been swept
under the rug), not just because we have a war we
didn't declare (the government claimed Iraq was full
of "evil ones" and that there were "hundreds of
thousands in mass graves" in the country which is a
lie because no one has found these mass graves nor, in
fact, the so-called "weapons of mass destruction" that
was the primary excuse by our non-president for
attacking Iraq).
Meanwhile, more and more firms are moving overseas to
take advantage of virtually slave labor conditions
while here in the United States more and more people
are left without decent jobs, forced to retrain for
jobs they do not wish to do, jobs which are much less
than the jobs they previously enjoyed. And the
economy has not only gone to hell under G.W. Bush, but
the jobless, the old, the sick, the homeless have been
left without hope. The other day, there was talk of
cutting back on Social Security benefits to help
balance the budget. Are you aware that the members of
Congress have their own retirement funds equal to
their salaries and thus have no need for Social
Security? Are you aware that the so-called tax cuts
were mostly for the rich?
So, I thought I would print these rules here under the
belief that perhaps you should be more aware of what's
being done to you. How. Why. They are fodder for
thinking. No matter your proclivity for
thinking...pro or con.
These rules provide advice on confrontational tactics.
For Alinsky, organizing is the process of
highlighting what is wrong and convincing people they
can actually do something about it. The two are
linked. If people feel they don't have the power to
change a bad situation, they tend to continue to act
like docile sheep. In my opinion, at some point, they
have the potential to literally erupt.
According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is
to bait an opponent into reacting or providing them,
perhaps, with a valid excuse for not reacting.
Essentially, we're talking about control of people.
Getting them to think what you wish them to think
whether it's positive or negative.
The organizer of a confrontation and change must first
overcome suspicion and establish credibility. For
example, you might accuse the liberal of being
something bad when, in truth, Franklin D. Roosevelt
was a liberal and was one of America's greatest
presidents. The liberal is willing to help the down
and out. The conservative is more concerned with
themselves and to hell with everyone else. Next the
organizer must begin the task of agitating: rubbing
resentments, fanning hostilities, and searching out
controversy. For example, you might claim Iraq has
weapons of mass destruction and are about to attack
the United States. This is necessary to get people to
participate. An organizer has to attack apathy and
disturb the prevailing patterns of complacent
community life where people have simply come to accept
a bad situation. Thus, you accuse Democrats of
causing the depression that is coming, but which
you've been planning on as soon as you get into the
White House because, after all, the poor are easier to
control. And if they rebel too much, you can always
shoot them.
Thus, the first step in community organization is
community disorganization. There is already evidence
that certain people in our present government were
warned of 9/11 and did nothing to stop it; however,
this past week on CNN a Republican even accused the
previous administration of "an intelligence failure"
which resulted in 9/11. Republicans still harp on
Clinton's sexual proclivities (which they spent more
than $40 million of my money and your money to
"investigate" even though the alleged sexual
shenanigans of G.W. Bush Sr. and Jeb Bush were swept
under the table and CNN doesn't bother to mention them
anymore as well as probe those "missing months" of
G.W. Bush Jr. when he was supposed to be pulling duty
in the National Guard).
Through a process combining hope and resentment, the
organizer of discontent keeps the real issues second
on any national agenda and "smoke screens" before the
media and/or the public. Who really gives a damned
whether gays and lesbians get married or not? Their
business. I have enough trouble handling my own
business, whatever it may be at the moment. I am more
concerned with the price of gasoline, the rising price
of food in the grocery, the rising cost of medical
attention and prescription drugs.
Alinsky emphasized that his rules, mentioned below,
must be translated into real-life tactics that are
fluid and responsive to the situation at hand. So,
here they are, just FYI:
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an
opponent thinks you have. If your organization is
small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din
that will make everyone think you have many more
people than you do.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your
people. The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience
of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion,
fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of
rules. "You can kill them with this, for they can no
more obey their own rules than the Christian church
can live up to Christianity."
Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's
hard to counterattack ridicule and it infuriates the
opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. "If
your people aren't having a ball doing it, there is
something very wrong with the tactic."
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a
drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn
to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics
and actions and use all events of the period for your
purpose. "The major premise for tactics is the
development of operations that will maintain a
constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that
will cause the opposition to react to your advantage."
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing
itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of
poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of
O'Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly
agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto
organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of
passengers poured off airplanes to discover every
washroom occupied. Then they imagined the
international embarrassment and the damage to the
city's reputation.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a
constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an
opponent or an interviewer who says, "Okay, what would
you do?"
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it,
polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations
or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual.
Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
OTHER MATTERS
Scott Burton, sgb831@cox.net:
"After WHK , Bill
Stewart hired me to program the Storz station, WDGY,
in Minneapolis. The six years working with Bill was
one of the greatest learning experiences of my career.
Claude, thanks for reviving some great memories."
Chuck Chellman,
www.CaldwellTrvl.com,
chuckc@caldwelltrvl.com:
"Thanks for keeping me on
your list. I really enjoy the reading. FYI...the
wonderful Country Music Hall of Fame building holds a
lot of wonderful non-country exhibits. Coming soon
will be Nashville's contributions to blues and R&B.
They have made a CD compilation which is just super.
Stay tuned and come to visit us one day soon."
I sent Raechel Donahue,
mizrae@netvip.com, one of the
emails promoting a coming novel on my website and she
responded: "Claude, how nice to hear from you and I
can hardly wait to see the book. I have a new one
coming out soon, albeit not about the biz." I wrote
back, asking for information and she replied: "Right
now you can check me out at 995themountain.com--just
click on Mountain guides on the Air and then on my
picture (I'm the only chick so it's easy to pick me
out). My new book will be called 'Sex and the Single
Sexagenarian'--because once you're over the hill you
can start to pick up speed. I have a lovely grandchild
that looks frighteningly like Tom. But then, so did
our son. Would you like to see a couple of my
documentaries? I did one on Phil Spector and one on
the history of FM radio?"
Naturally!
Just FYI for those of you who may not know, there were
two women who were pathblazers in the early days of FM
rock radio and especially in what we called
progressive rock at the time. Alison Steele, New York
City, and Raechel Donahue, San Francisco. Two
legends.
Neil Young,
nlryoung@hotmail.com, wrote to mention the
death of Al Casey, 60. Cancer. Feb. 23, 2003. Neil
got the news from Cary Pall,
CARYPALL@aol.com, who
worked with Casey at 99X, New York.
David Martin,
radiopers@aol.com, says the 1976
International Radio Programming Forum "still remains
one of the most amazing experiences of my life."
David sent his views of what makes a good general
manager. Ah, yes, most of the ones I knew were,
indeed, supermen. Of course, then there was Art
Simmers.
Pat Walsh,
pwalsh@aristotle.net: "Many thanks for your
reprinting of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette column
mentioning the twenty consecutive years of being
number one for KSSN's Bob Robbins. As a result of your
column I also heard from several people from the past
years, one from over forty years ago. You mentioned
the return to Arkansas of 'the legendary Mitch
Michael's'. As a side note I should tell you that when
he was tearing them up in Louisville I was running a
very profitable and successful station in Little Rock
(KAAY) and because of the strange programming we were
doing to produce much-needed revenue for the home
office I lived in constant fear that someone would
hire a good programmer to go after us as we were
extremely vulnerable. Knowing that Mitch (TM) was from
Arkansas and might like the opportunity to return, I
attempted a flanking action. I named one of my on-air
personalities 'Mitch Michaels', launched fairly
extensive promotion of the name, and even got an
Arkansas service mark on the name. Kept the name on
air from 1966 until I left in 1976. Fortunately, Mitch
(TM) went to New York."
For those of you who don't know or don't remember,
Mitch Michaels was the on-air name of Kevin
(KevinMetheny@clearchannel.com)
Metheny's father.
From Gene of "The Sounds Of Philly" at
www.giantgene.com,
GIANTGENE1@prodigy.net:
"Our
'Sounds Of Philly' book...(or, 'How to Sell a Million,
Collect $64, and Don't Pass GO!') is coming along. My
wife does the work...I have what's left of the
memories...(she knows the REAL stories...) so it's
fun. Looking forward to the Disco Show on VH1 this
week. I was asked to be on, but my wife didn't think
it was a great idea as I promised her no more TV after
years of being on it and the road...so we just do our
net shows now, which are STILL tons of fun, and get
lots of listeners at
www.soul-patrol.net, as well as
the giantgene.com 'Sounds Of Philly' site that my son
started. Hope all's well."
Whew, Gene! I got tired just reading about everything
you're doing. Amazing output! I'd like to mention
something about the book when you get it done. Sounds
like a worthy project.
Garvin Rutherford,
rutherfordbilletdoux@bigpond.com:
"Just when you think there is no one left...a name
jumps out at you. Just discovered your site
accidentally so it's going to take me some time to
read the past columns. What I have read brings back
some memories...names I will always remember. Howard
Kester, Jack Thayer, David L. Moorhead, and yourself
and Barbara. I hope you are keeping well."
Garvin, too, brought back some great memories of
Australia. The Rocks in Sydney, a plane trip to
Canberra. But my greatest memories of Australia have
to do with the people I met down there and who
occasionally dropped by my door in Los Angeles during
my years there. Wonderful people! Peter Davidson,
Rod Muir, Kevin O'Donohue...many, many more. Same
with Brasil and Luis Brunini, Guilherme de Souza,
Antonio Porto, and others. Always felt--and still
do--that I've got many, many friends in those
countries.
Coming next week to
www.claudehallonline.com, a new
music-industry novel.
Claude Hall
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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