About The Books
About The Book (1)
1968 – SOMEBODY ELSE’S War
by David Roy Montgomerie JOHNSON
Somebody Else’s War by David Roy Montgomerie Johnson takes readers on an intense journey through the tumultuous year of 1968. Set against the backdrop of historical events, this gripping work of fiction blends intricate characters with the weight of personal and societal conflict. From Captain Sammy’s struggle with
haunting nightmares to the lives of intertwined small-town individuals, the story weaves together themes of duty, morality, and human connection. With authentic references to actual events of the era, the narrative immerses readers in a vivid portrait of a transformative year in global history.
Excerpt 1
“A friend of mine out at the club told me that the Army won’t draft homosexuals.”
“Hold on, Becky.” Sammy had, once again, been awoken from a bad dream. He had been back in the sands of Iwo Jimo this time, scared shitless, and his ass had just been hit by a bullet fired from some cowardly Jap assassin when he had heard the phone ring. Skipper had jumped and run away and had done so without drawing any blood near or on any of Sammys private parts. A small blessing. Now his wife (had he heard correctly?) wanted his son to become a homosexual to avoid getting drafted? “I just woke up.”
“You sleep too much.”
Sammy had no answer to that. If he could live without sleeping, he would. When he was awake, he could push his Asian memories to the back of his mind. Not so easy while asleep. “Give me a second here. Gay people can’t get drafted, so you want Warren to be gay?”
“Gay? No, I want him to pretend to be a fag. A queer. The Army doesn’t want queers. Marines either. And definitely not the Navy – for obvious reasons.”
“They’re called Gay now.”
“Who is?”
“Homosexuals.”
“So now you’re an expert on homosexuals? What the fuck is going on up in that country? I saw your new Prime Minister on TV last night. That French guy? He’s as queer as a two-dollar bill.”
“He’s not my Prime Minister. I’m still American.”
“Really? Well in America, we still call them queer.”
Oh boy. “Who is this new friend of yours?”
“Now don’t get jealous, Sammy. He’s just a guy I met at my Country Club.” There was a pause. “He owns a Chrysler dealership. He’s divorced. Two kids. Misty tells me he’s well off. He just opened a Honda dealership as well, but I don’t see that going anywhere. He claims Honda makes cars as well as bikes. He might be nuts.”
Sammy had to smile. Now it was ‘her’ Country Club? The call wasn’t about turning Warren Gay. It was about bragging to Sammy that she had a new ‘beau’. He could play along. “Good for you, Becky. I’m happy. Not sure I want to see Warren turn Gay though.”
“He doesn’t have to really turn queer. He’s just gotta pretend to be queer. Or Gay. Or whatever the fuck you Canadians call homos.”
Sammy thought back to that night with Chrissy. Nothing had happened in the romance arena, but the night had been fun. Real fun. They had enjoyed a Chinese meal. Had a nice drive. Had a few beers and a few shots. He’d listened to some strange music that wasn’t all that strange as he looked back on it. Chrissy had given him a quick peck on the mouth when he’d left her, stoned and mellow, in her flat above Bing’s Auto Parts. And, best of all, she had given him two tickets to the grand opening of the Wilde for Oscar show on the Fourth of May. Chrissy would be on stage playing the part of Gwendolen Fairfax in The Importance of Being Earnest. He was going to check out the play at the local library and bone up on her part. Becky with a new man didn’t make him happy. But he’d lived through worse. “I hope you haven’t mentioned any of this to Warren,” he said.
“Sure, Sammy. I’m a fucking moron. Of course I haven’t said anything to Warren. That’s your job. You’re his father. And, apparently, you’re something of an expert of queers now.”
Excerpt 2
Jame Earl Ray, escaped convict and lead suspect in the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, was arrested, at Heathrow Airport in London, England, on the 8th of June 1968.
Ray, traveling with a Canadian Passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd, had, supposedly, been on his way to Brussels. A bright-eyed ticket agent, alerted earlier that day about the name ‘Sneyd’ and, being a smarter than average ticket agent, had then summoned airport police.
How Ray, the most wanted man in the world and an escaped con to boot, had managed to get into Britain became a story unto itself.
After (supposedly) killing King, Ray drove his old Mustang eleven hours to Atlanta, where he grabbed what little he owned and then drove, for three days, north to Canada. He found entry to Canada to be hassle free, which in 1968 it was. Once there he, somehow, gained access to the false Passport he had been detained with.
Then Ray, a certified moron, flew, unquestioned, to London. Then, and this is nuts, he flew to Lisbon, in Portugal. Why? No one could say. But then, and this too is nuts, he flew back to London. For a man trying to hide out he sure did seem fond of flaunting his stolen ID in front of customs and immigration.
At this point the story (myth?) of James Earl Ray gets, if possible, even wackier.
Once back on ‘the old sod’ Ray, still a certified moron, called a reporter and tried to gather information as to how he, Ray, might get in touch with a mercenary group in Africa. The reporter, a fellow named Ian Colvin, advised Ray, telephonically, that the world of African Mercenaries might not be a world a normal human should get involved in. Ray, being far from a normal human being, insisted. Hoping to be rid of the idiot Ray, Colvin then gave him the address of an, again supposed, mercenary recruiter in Brussels.
Was there an actual a mercenary ‘recruiter’ in Brussels? Who knows? Was Ray hoping to move to Africa to kill more black people? Who knows? Was Ray involved in a conspiracy to kill King? Who knows?
And we will never know. Not unlike the assassination of President John Kennedy back in 1963, the more investigators dug the more questions they uncovered, answers being as rare as gold teeth on a Rhode Island Red.
Ray confessed. Then he recanted his confession. Jack Ruby, being tied up with other business at the time (he had died and gone to hell back in 1967), was unavailable to kill the asshole Ray. Ray was shipped back to Tennessee and sentenced to 99 years of buggery, little solace for the mourning millions but comic relief for the rapists at Brushy Mountain (real name) Prison in Tennessee.
In June of 1977 the genius Ray and six other inmates escaped from Brushy Mountain. Six days later they were recaptured. One more year was added to the original 99 years, giving Ray an even 100, a Century. Great in cricket. Not so great in prison.
Excerpt 3
Neudorf, disgusted with the loss of the cruiser, the escape of the wanted murderer and the unfortunate but unavoidable future firing of a reasonably competent constable all in one fell swoop, and now in hot pursuit of both a stolen Ford Wagon and a stolen RCMP cruiser that, no doubt, would require endless paperwork to replace if ruined, heard over his radio that the RCMP idiots in Blairmore had notified the RCMP idiots in Sparwood, British Columbia, about the aggressive chase that was underway for what would have been Canadas number one man on the top ten most wanted list if Canada had ever bothered to keep a top ten most wanted list, which Canada did not. There was no way, Neudorf told Sammy, on this man’s planet that those needle-dicks in B.C. were gonna get the credit for this one. No sirree. Neudorf instructed his pilot to get to the B. C. border ‘as fast as this piece of shit Plymouth can get there.’
As it turned out, the ‘piece of shit Plymouth’ a Satellite, had been equipped with a 440 cubic inch Magnum V8 engine fed by three thirsty two-barrel carbs and mated to a stout 727 automatic gearbox. The thing damn near flew. As the needle on the speedometer reached and then surpassed the 120 MPH line Neudorf almost shit himself. His driver, a middle-aged never to be promoted above constable lifer from Lac-Sept-Iles, Quebec, wherever in hell that was, smiled and said, “She go ‘dis bird. She go like da win’.”
Yes, she did ‘go like da win’.
The boys from Blairmore had just missed the stolen Ford as it had exited Pincher Creek and then gone west on the # 3 Highway toward The Pass and then inevitably, British Columbia. As they spun their cars about, they were joined, first by the stolen cruiser which had also exited Pincher Creek and was now westward as well and then, in a blur, the well-powered Plymouth that held Neudorf and the lunatic French driver.
The other police car from Fort Macleod, the one with the regular old 318 in it, had yet to make an appearance.
It did not take long for Neudorf and the Frenchman to scoot by all the other police cars and to ride up on the back bumper of the turtle like Ford wagon that was plodding along at a mere 90 MPH. For fifteen knuckle busting sphincter-tightening miles the Plymouth tailed the Ford at times ramming it from behind and at other times pulling up next to it to allow Neudorf to wave his shotgun wildly and to scream obscenities at the suspected felon. The felon ignored him. Never even looked over.
Pedestrians scattered as the chase continued through the minor communities of Burmis and Bellevue and then past the famous age-old settlement of Frank, the town that had been buried by a Rocky Mountain decades ago. Every so often Megedagik Brown, once he had caught up to the parade with his lights still a flashing and siren still a blaring in his stolen police car, would run up on the passenger side of the Ford Country Sedan Wagon and, while screaming what Neudorf assumed were Blackfoot curses, stick his shotgun out and point it at the fugitive.
The British Columbia border, where the RCMP boys had set up a professional style roadblock, was getting closer and closer.
Neudorf looked at his unreasonably calm driver. “There is no fucking way that car gets to BC. I don’t care what you do…just do not allow that car to leave Alberta.”
The Quebecer, a man named Lorne Lucien Richard Jr. that everyone called, naturally, Frenchy, smiled and said, “In Quebec we do…the…what you call…demo…herby?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The demo…where we hit da odder car?”
“Speak fucking English!”
“We blow up da radiate,” said Frenchy.
“Da radiate? Are you fucking with me, you French cocksucker?” Neudorf had dug his fingernails so deeply into the dash they were no longer visible.
“Da shotgun. You aim at da radiate. No radiate, car goes poof. Over-eat. Too hot. Steam up.”
That was the moment Neudorf figured out what the hell Frenchy was trying to tell him. Shoot out the radiator and yes, car would go ‘poof’.
Frenchy pulled the Plymouth just in front of the Ford. Neudorf leaned out and blew a hole the size of Kansas in the old Fords radiator. Just for fun Neudorf did it again. God Damn, he thought, this beats the shit out of paperwork any day. So, he blasted the Ford one more time. Twenty seconds later the steam began to rise. Then the oil began to leak. Then the Ford began to slow.
“See that drop off Frenchy?” Neudorf had spied an almost gentle thirty-foot grade to his left.
“Oui.”
“Well, dammit, ram that asshole into it.”
Frenchy did what he was told. The gentle thirty-foot grade was, in fact, a fifty-foot not-so-gentle-after-all grade that dead ended at an extra-large sized pile of Rocky Mountain.
Upon landing the Ford stopped abruptly. The suspected murderer exited. He appeared dazed. He collapsed. Neudorf and Frenchy stood by the side of the road looking down. “Nice driving, Frenchy,” said Neudorf.
“Just like da demo…herby,” said Frenchy, “car goes ‘poof’.”
Frenchy had barely gotten the words out of his mouth before a cruiser, this one being operated by the apparently still piqued Blackfoot Pharmacist Megedagik ‘Kills Many’ Brown, flew over the ridge in pursuit of the now motionless Ford Country Sedan Wagon and its equally motionless operator.
“Uh-oh,” said Neudorf.
“Shit on da barn where da horse get out now, eh?” said Frenchy.
Excerpt 4
The Simpson family, April May had finally figured, was a lot like The Munsters on TV. They were make-believe. They were fictional people in a fictional land. Had to be. Sissy was beautiful, just like The Munsters unfortunate niece Marylin. The son, Boy, was a funny-looking goofy freak, just like Eddy Munster. The mother, an absolute saint and pretty as all hell, flitted about as if she lived on another planet, a planet that was stuck in a 1952 time-machine. The only real difference was that Gunner, as Herman, was way too pretty. He bore no resemblance to that big monster Dr. Frankenstein had cobbled together out of spare parts way back when in Transylvania.
The day that she and Gunner had dropped the motorcycle off at poor Diggers house had almost turned disastrous. Bad enough that she had to ride with him, alone, in a vibrating truck, but then he had done the one thing that could cheer her up after the depressing good-bye scene she had just played out with the once charismatic but now simply pathetic Digger – he had sung to her. And not just any song either. No, the prick had sung Hey Jude softly, almost in tune and a cappella. She had damn near melted. The desire to slide on over to him and confess her love had been so complete that she truly thought she had lost her mind. It had taken every scintilla of restraint she could muster to avoid the most embarrassing scene ever, not counting the flying sperm incident back in Mickey Watsons barn so many months ago.
The memory of the flying sperm made her laugh. God, she had been such a loser! Could she really have been that dumb? Yes, she could have.
She was 14 years old. 14-year-old kids did dumb things.
Her mother, God bless her, had been knocked up when she was just 14. At least April May wasn’t that dumb. But wait, she thought, if mom had been smart enough to not get knocked up, by a complete asshole at that, then April May would not exist. What if mom had said ‘no’. Or, even worse, what if mom had said ‘yes’ and then, once she’d found out she was pregnant, had decided to get an abortion? Sure, it wasn’t legal, still wasn’t, but from what April May had read and heard that wasn’t stopping it from happening. Much.
Either way, it was time to move on. Again.
And so, April May broke the news to the Simpson brood over dinner, after Grace and before desert, the sweet spot where mouths were too full to say much in response. They had, naturally, taken it like any well scripted TV family would – graciously. There were believable ‘awes’ and the odd ‘we’ll miss you’ and numerous ‘God Blesses’.
Trouble was, April May knew, that they all meant what they said. They weren’t actors reading lines in some silly old black and white sitcom. They genuinely were good people. Good goofy people. How did that happen? On a planet as fucked up as 1968’s dystopian version of earth how in hell did people manage to be so damn nice? Were they unaware? Or, and this was even scarier, did they know the world was fucked but had decided to just not play along? Were they aliens? Were they the smart ones?
And if so, what did that make April May June?
About The Book (2)
An Illegal Smile:
Flying High in Niagara 1960 – 1980
I stole the name ‘Illegal Smile’ from a John Prine song. If you know what it means, congrats, you’ve lived a good life.
The book started life as a few silly stories that I had penned for my friends. Folks that heard me rattle off the old stories from Niagara on the Lake usually got a laugh. Not certain anyone believed them, but nothing I can do about that. They are true.
An Illegal Smile deals with my life from 1960 to the early 80’s. Some wild times. A much simpler world. There is some foul language included at no extra charge.
Excerpt 1
Here is a quick summary of what the heck was going on in the world as I tried to grow up in the Sixties. I was 4 years old when the decade began and 14 when it finally gave up the ghost. If I am warped (and I believe I am) I offer up the sixties as one (several) contributing factor(s).
There was a time, long ago, when I trusted people and believed what they said. Most kids were probably like that. I had trusted the quack doctor on that Army base back in Shilo. I trusted Walter Cronkite, the guy on the TV news. And I figured my teachers here being honest and, more importantly, knew what the heck they were talking about. I was wrong on all counts.
So, over time, the trust just goes away. There is no Santa Claus.
When the doctor said, “This won’t hurt,” that was a lie. Doctors continued to lie to me from that point on.
Our parents instructed us to place our former teeth under our pillows for the Tooth Fairy. But there was no Tooth Fairy. And, if there was, why did the other kids at school get a quarter per tooth while I only got five cents? Was I shedding inferior teeth? Did rich kids have their own, more benevolent, Fairy? They sure as heck had their own, more benevolent, Santa Claus.
There was no Easter Bunny either. Were we even supposed to fall for that one or was it some sort of wink-wink, nudge-nudge Monty Pythonesque inside joke? A bunny running around handing out chocolate? Sure. I suppose all the furry forest creatures celebrated The Resurrection with gifts of tasty treats.
Don’t get me wrong: I loved (and still love) my folks. They were good people. Kind. Hard working. Loving. I could have done without the lies though. I mean, come on…a Tooth Fairy? Why bother with that shit? Easter Bunny? Really?
So, by the time we were old enough to figure all this out our parents, along with their fellow adult conspirators, had set a precedent of filling our heads with absolute bullshit. No wonder we didn’t believe LSD was bad for us or that we could get a venereal disease from sitting on a toilet seat. We didn’t believe any of it because it just wasn’t true and even if it was, we wouldn’t have believed any of it because of the history of bullshit we had been fed. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice…fuck off.
The sad thing is that there were so many things our elders taught us (and more that they should have taught us) that were true: there was (and still is) a God. We really should treat each other as we would like others to treat us. Brushing your teeth regularly is a good idea. And maybe kids should not get in the back of long black limousines with strange old men or stick dirty needles full of heroin in their skinny little arms. But us stupid little kids were tasked with shifting through what was and what was not bullshit. And it was an enormous fucking pile of bullshit to wade through. A heapin’ helpin’ of bullshit, as Jed Clampett would have said. We were little fucking kids for crying out loud. It was tough enough just trying to figure out what the heck was going on in our own weird little kid world without having to decipher which statements the adults told us were true and which were pure fiction.
It all became very confusing. It was almost enough to make us turn to alcohol and drugs and promiscuity.
When we were kids – little kids – we were told that if we would just hide under our wooden school desks, we wouldn’t get hurt when the nuclear bombs went off. Seriously. I’m not making this shit up. The teachers made us practice this silliness. Every day. There were even sirens to signal when we were supposed to ‘duck and cover’. I felt like Pavlov’s fucking dog. Siren? Woof, woof, time to hide under my desk! Hope it’s a small bomb and it doesn’t wreck the baseball diamond.
All this is to say that some serious shit was going on in the real world while we were kids. But we had no idea what was real and what was bullshit. Same as today. You just cannot trust the fuckers. The Media Mobsters and the Government Grifters will sell anything they can make money on. They have little kids (and some really dumb grownups) convinced that people can control the climate…and if we don’t listen to our leaders and do everything they tell us to do, we will all fry like bacon. Assholes. The idiots are too lazy to solve any real problems so they invent fantasy problems that only they can solve. With our money.
In the autumn of 1960, the Democrats did what they were famous for: they voted early, and they voted often. So, Kennedy (the spoiled playboy) was able to steal the election from Nixon (the boring Vice President who just happened to look like a worn-out sandal, like something one of The Disciples might have discarded after the long trek from Galilea to Golgotha). Odd to think back to how much different the world would have been if not for that one electoral district in Texas (irony?) that somehow managed to count more votes for Kennedy than it had living citizens (thus granting him the 24 Texas electoral college votes), or the million-dollar kiss Joe Kennedy (JFK’s dad) slipped under the table to Richard Daley (Mayor of Chicago and Godfather of the Chicago Democratic Mobster Machine) to ensure the union vote and the organized crime vote that swayed Illinois (27 electoral college votes) Jack’s way. Would Nixon have started that crazy war in Asia? Would he have had the audacity to challenge the USA to send a man to the moon within ten years? How would The Human Sandal have handled the fallout from that evil murderous Castro and his murderous revolution in Cuba? Nixon certainly looked crazy enough to start the bombs a flyin’. And, what about civil rights? As a Republican Nixon would not have owed the Dixiecrats a damn thing. He could have told George Wallace to go fuck himself. We’ll never know.
Also, in 1960 a U.S. spy plane (a U2 flown by Francis Peters) was shot down over The Soviet Union. Scary stuff.
On the radio Chubby Checker encouraged us to do ‘The Twist’ while Sam Cooke reminded us ‘(What a) Wonderful World’ it really was. On TV Andy Griffith still lived in Mayberry with Barney and Otis and Floyd the Barber and some guy named Ronald Reagan hosted The General Electric Theatre.
In 1961 the communists built a wall dividing West and East Berlin. More scary stuff. Those darn communists just kept stirring up shit everywhere. The poor fuckers had no food or clothing, but they had money to build a wall? And the wall wasn’t meant to keep Western evil doers out…it was meant to keep the poor starving East Germans in! You know you got a fucked up economic system when you gotta build a wall to keep your citizens from running away.
On the radio Ben E. King sang ‘Stand by Me’ and Patsy Cline crossed over from the Hillbilly Charts with a little Willie Nelson tune titled ‘Crazy.’ Over on the television CBS gave us our frost glimpse of a beatnik (Maynard G. Krebs – played by Bob Denver) on a show called The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. My oldest sister (Joanne) was so infatuated with Little Joe (Michael Landon) on Bonanza that she insisted on hoarding all the old TV Guides so she could look up past plot lines. Puberty can be a bitch.
Excerpt 2
We had made it to the Rockies. Halleluia! Praise Jesus! As sinners pulled from the Jordan River by John the Baptist we had been born again. Time to spark up a doobie!
We toured the Nova through Downtown Cowtown. Not much to see. There were no skyscrapers but there were hitching posts – some elaborate and ornate others plain and functional. We didn’t see any horses attached to the posts though. But maybe we were too early. We didn’t see any cars either. Or people. Calgary must have slept in that day.
So, westward we continued, on the Number One Highway – or what the Canadian government optimistically termed the ‘Trans Canada Highway’. We wound through Jumping Pound and past Morley, then through Seebe and Kananaskis and Dead Man’s Flats. We were in the mountains now. No longer witnesses from afar. Like Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea and Old Toby we had ‘discovered’ the west.
It may not make sense but at that time there was a certain romance about going ‘out west’. Kerouac had done it. The Okies had done it. The Pioneers had done it. The Mormons had done it. The Sooners had done it. The Beats had done it. The Hippies had done it. Kids from all over the East (USA and Canada) had migrated (if only temporarily) to western North America for decades. ‘Go west, young man, and grow up with the country” declared Horace Greely in 1850 (never mind that he was referring to Manifest Destiny and the decimation of the native population) and for over a hundred year’s young men and women had taken up the challenge. The west appeared wild, untamed and adventurous in the collective imagination.
Being ‘out west’ made the boredom of the last few days a thing of the past. So, it was time to spark up another doobie.
We felt like little kids – pointing here and there at the beauty of the mountains and the valleys and the ice packed peaks. What we were not doing was keeping an eye on our speedometer. Wish was behind the wheel so we (forever) blamed him for what happened next but, in truth, any one of us could have been the driver at that time and any one of us might have been speeding. We were stupid in both a plural and singular sense.
Well, you can guess what happened. Some young RCMP zealot pulled us over. I would be lying if I told you how fast we were going or what the speed limit even was back then. I can tell you that we were most definitely fucked.
Barney smelled the weed.
He strip-searched Jim-Bob, Wish and yours truly. He found no weed. It was all in a baggie in Sandy’s underwear. We had figured, correctly, that the Mountie would not strip-search a girl.
Unfortunately, the impertinent limp brained little weasel had another, equally effective and offensively underhanded, plan.
Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier as it does play into the narrative: Sandy was only fifteen years old, a few months shy of her sweet sixteen.
Now, before you get your corset in a clove hitch about all this and start slinging about words like ‘statutory’ and ‘rape’ and ‘underage’ it will do you well to understand that the legal age for consensual sex (in Canada) at that time was fourteen. It was not unusual for teenage girls to be wed. I can remember girls at high school dances that were pregnant. And I was a mere teenager myself at the time this tale took place. Having said all that, I was still fucked. While it was A-OK to have sex with young women it was still verboten to supply them with weed and to transport them across the length and breadth of Canada. That was considered contributing to the delinquency of a minor. As was driving said minor across the country with neither her parent’s knowledge nor blessing.
So, Mikey the Midget Mountie gave us a choice: either one of us lads owned up to the dope or one of us (me) would be charged with the whole ‘runaway teenage girl with weed in her panty’s’ thing. That would not have been cool. A charge like that may have even involved her parents and I was (rightly so) scared of her dad. I doubted that he was all that keen on her running away to some hippie commune on Vancouver Island to begin with.
Excerpt 3
By the time we got back to Niagara on the Lake the entire town had heard about the ‘incident’ at Rich Stadium. I was the talk of the town (well, the portion of the town that got drunk on Sunday nights anyway). Channel Two News (WGRZ out of Buffalo) had reported my arrest (name withheld). Must have been a slow news day. Certainly, something noteworthy had to have happened in Western New York during the last 12 hours that could have topped the ‘Drunken Canadian Idiot Tries to Steal Mercy Flight’ headline. There had to have been a couple of fires. Maybe a murder or two? Maybe a city councillor caught in bed with a one-armed Chinese circus midget? What about a gang of black dudes charging Caucasian Bills Fans cash just to use the stainless-steel shitter in the Orchard Park Cooler? Certainly, a competent investigative journalist could have sussed that story out with a bit of hard nosed under cover sleuthing. But there was nothing. Huh.
Luckily mom and dad preferred WKBW (Chanel 7, Eyewitness News, with Irv Weinstein) for their American News. They didn’t learn that their son was a famous Chopper pilot for years.
The gal I was shacked up with at the time (we’ll call her Ireland) was less than impressed. We had just purchased a small ‘fixer-upper’ (her mom was a realtor) and had promised each other that we would have it ‘fixed up’ within the year so that we could sell it (for a profit) and ‘move on up’ like The Jeffersons had. Lawyers’ fees and fines and (even worse) missing time from work to spend time in jail was not in the plan. But, like Mike Tyson said many years later, “Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the nose.”
The following Monday I contacted The World’s Greatest Lawyer (Garth Roberts) and asked him if he could refer me to a competent yet none-to-expensive New York attorney. Garth laughed. I explained my predicament. He laughed harder.
“You’re the best client a guy could ever have,” he said through the chuckles. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll go with you.”
“Are you licensed in New York,” I asked.
“Just don’t worry about it,” he said again. “I can bullshit anywhere.”
So, about three weeks later Garth and The Clipper and I headed off to Orchard Park, New York for Night Court. The border dude laughed when Garth explained where we were headed. He must have been a Channel Two guy.
We got to Night Court, and it was a complete shit show. So many defendants. So many lawyers. So many back people. So much white trash. So little room. The place was chock-a-block full of societies cast offs. And us.
The Bailiff told us we were case number twelve thousand nine hundred and three (an exaggeration). It was a Tuesday night. I did some quick arithmetic and figured we’d be done by Passover.
Garth laughed. He asked the Bailiff where the Judges Chambers were. The Bailiff explained that the Judge was not rot be disturbed. Court was due in session in five minutes. Garth just smiled that lawyerly smile of his. Then he claimed to be an old pal of the Judge (bullshit) so the Bailiff led him through the back door of the courtroom.
Ten minutes later Garth appeared from the back of the court. Smiling (to himself) as always. Big grin on his puss. He looked like a fat plumber with an inch of twenties on pervert row at the stripper bar.
“Nothing to worry about,” he said.
The Judge came out. We all stood (as instructed). The Judge sat down. The Bailiff announced our case. We had certainly moved up in the world. We had shot up the docket all the way to number one – with a bullet!
The Judge called the District Attorney and Garth up to the bench.
They murmured and whispered and chuckled. Even the D.A. was laughing.
Then Garth and the D.A. moved away from the Judge. Garth waved me up to the defendant’s table. The Judge looked at me and he shook his head. He was smiling. Then he said some very important legal bullshit. Then he said, “Does the State agree to lower the charge from felony motor-vehicle theft to misdemeanor trespass?”
“The State does, your honor,” said the still smiling D.A.
“Does the defendant wish to plead at this time?” The Judge was looking at me. It seemed he was about to break into a solid belly laugh at any moment.
Garth gave me an elbow “Guilty,” he whispered.
“Guilty, your Honor,” I said.
“Three hundred dollars,” he said. Then he banged down his gavel. “Next case. Let’s move things along gentlemen.”
Well, Lord love a duck. That quick. That easy. I was figuring on maybe a thousand fine and/or a week or two in the slammer. Maybe a bit more. Some time suspended maybe? Probation maybe?
Nope. Three crispy Benjamins. We got back the $200 The Clipper had raised for my bail. Not bad.
Garth then took us out for pizza and wings at Honey’s Pizzeria on Pine Street in Niagara Falls, New York. His treat. He said he had had a ball.
“So,” I finally asked, “what the hell just happened?”
“Nothin’ to it,” he said. “The best thing to say to a judge is ‘I know my guy is an Idiot but he’s my Idiot and he’s OK.’ He wanted to know if you were the famous drunken helicopter pilot. I told him that you were just a rambunctious lad and there was no reason to blemish your record. I told him you were getting married, and that you had a kid on the way. I told him that you had no intention of stealing the thing. I told him you were just showing off.”
Huh. Fucking Garth.
He never did send me a bill. The next time I saw him (when Ireland and I sold our ‘fixer-upper’ and bought the bungalow in Queenston he did all the legal work) I asked about it. He just smiled.
A couple months later I received a letter from One Bills Drive, Orchard Park, New York. I assumed it was a notice to remind me about renewing my season tickets. Nope. It was a very polite letter asking me – no, telling me – to never return. I had been banned for life.
Those pricks! I had been a faithful season ticket subscriber for ten years at least. I had once sat through a game against Cincinnati where the final score was 5 to absolute zero. I had lived through the Joe Ferguson days. I had driven to Dallas and Cleveland and St. Louis to cheer those losers on.
And now I was banished like some Old Testament leper. Just because of a silly misunderstanding.
Those bastards.
I still, to this day, cheer for The Bills. It ain’t easy but I do. The dirty dogs break my heart every year. Oh, well.
No one ever said it was gonna be easy.
Coming Soon
About The Book (3)
1969 – SOMEBODY ELSE’S School (Coming Soon)
by David Roy Montgomerie JOHNSON
1969 – Somebody Else’s School finds the gang in Newport on the Lake ready for one more year of silliness and sadness. Added to the cast of characters is a Barbadian Teacher, a scrum of alcohol fueled IRA sympathizers, a serial masturbator (at the helm of the local high school) on a misguided quest for Miss October 1968 and, to top it all off, psychic Xavier the Delphi. The background includes Nixon being sworn in as President, two men cavorting on the moon and Three Days of Peace, Love and Music in some farmers field in New York State.
Excerpt 1
It had been a tough twenty-four hours for Wellington Edison Whitehead. A shaky flight from Barbados to Miami on New Years Eve. A delay while awaiting his flight to Atlanta. He was last man boarded on the Atlanta to Buffalo 707 New Years Day. That plane had bounced about like an angry tennis ball, and he had been forced, after a seating SNAFU, to endure such bouncing back in coach with the peasants.
Upon landing in the frozen hell that was The Buffalo New York International Airport Whitey, as Mr. Whitehead was known, had been informed that, no, the Cadillac De Ville he had reserved was no longer available, it being two hours past the reserve time. And, it was also no to the availability of a Jaguar, Avis not stocking Jaguars. Lincoln? Un-uh. All gone. Chrysler Newport by any chance? Well, yes, Avis did just happen to have one, but, oops, that car was in the repair shop receiving a new battery, Buffalo New York weather being tough on batteries. Could Mr. Whitehead wait three hours? No, he could not. He had a meeting scheduled in Newport on the Lake that he was already running late for.
“What,” Whitey asked, “might be available?”
The young woman at the Avis desk seemed keen to help. Wellington Edison Whitehead had that effect on the ladies. Always had. He was proper. Tall. Quite handsome. Well dressed. And that posh British accent certainly didn’t hurt. “We have two vehicles available,” said the blushing girl. Her name tag said, ‘Doris’. “There’s a Chevrolet Chevy II. Might be a bit small for you, sir. But it has an AM radio. And air conditioning.”
“Air conditioning?”
“Doris turned red. “Not much use today I suppose.”
“Not much fun working on New Years Day is it, Doris.”
“No sir.” Then Doris looked around to make sure no one was listening. There was no one within thirty feet. “It’s a good job, though. We’re number two so we try harder.”
“That seems to be the gen on the street.” Whitey had heard the Avis commercials enough times. He leaned in. “You mentioned two vehicles. Doris?”
“Well, we have a moving van.”
“A moving van? Like a Lorry?”
“Not sure what a Lorry is, sir.”
“A big truck.”
“Not too big. Medium maybe?” Doris smiled. “I can give you the van at the same price as the Cadillac.”
Whitey cared not about the cost. What he wanted was transport. Comfortable transport. Room for his legs. Nothing less. Nothing more. He planned on purchasing a new motor within the week. A North American car. Ten tons of luxury and chrome. “Let’s go take a peek at that van, Doris.”
Excerpt 2
April May June and the pretty Mennonite girls that toiled happily in Cindy Newmans ice cream shop were all a twitter. The word had spread that there was a very handsome man, a negro no less, living above the store. What was a negro doing in Newport? Theories were invented, improved upon, dismissed and then recycled. Was the man an actor, like that Sidney Poitier fellow, in town to try out for the Wilde for Oscar boys? Was he an international financier on the hunt for shares in the freshly minted King George III Hotel syndicate? One of the girls mentioned that diamond smugglers were often African, Africa being a reliable source of rare jewels. That rumour morphed into possible heroin distribution, another supposed favored trade of the colored folk. The runaway slave idea was shelved quickly, runaway slaves not usually having the ready cash to plop down rent on a flat in Newport. Plus, it was assumed, most slavery had been outlawed long ago. Or had it?
April May took the various rumours in and mulled. She had seen black men on television. The Reverend King, that poor dear man that had been murdered last spring came to mind. There was a black man on some TV show, but she couldn’t remember the name of the series. A lot of black men played baseball. That famous boxer, the draft dodger, he had been black. The one with the funny Muslim name.
“He might be a policeman,” she said. “Like in that movie. The one where the black cop from Philadelphia goes down to Alabama or Mississippi or something?”
That idea was pondered and soon tossed to the side. Surely Newport needn’t import policemen from Africa. There had to be enough lazy uneducated white men living in town to fill those positions, if those positions even existed.
Then April May remembered that last summer, while she had been living at that crazy Simpson household, Boy Simpson had mentioned a black man playing golf at the local club. That man had, supposedly, been a big shot at General Motors down in Detroit. That would make sense. Detroit was full of black men, and they couldn’t all be out rioting like the ones she had seen on Walter Cronkite’s news program.
It was a cold day. There was little ice cream scooping to be done. A few bored boys were dropping nickels into the pinball games. A few orders for take out burgers and fries had come in, but that flurry of business died on the vine by 2 PM. April May, a little bored herself and still unsure of what to make of the newly arrived black man went out back for a smoke. She lit her Cameo Menthol. There was a huge AVIS Rent a Truck parked out behind the shop. Hmmm. 1968 had been an odd one. A terrifying year to be sure. What adventures did 1969 have in store? It was only day two and Newport had a black man, a man of mystery, living right here in town. Hmmm.
Excerpt 3
It was as if planes could no longer remain in flight. Once airborne they would all fall back to the earth. Or flee to Cuba.
On the 13th SAS (Scandinavian Airline System) Flight 933, while headed to Los Angeles International, crashed instead into the Pacific Ocean. Flight 933 had begun in Copenhagen, had stopped briefly in Seattle for fuel and a fresh crew, then slid down the coast to L.A. 15 were killed.
Inspectors listed pilot error as the cause.
At about 18:30 Pacific Time, on the 19th, United Airlines Flight 266 took off from Los Angeles International and promptly dove into the sea. The plane crashed approximately one mile from where SAS 933 had hit the Ocean. All 38 on board perished. That plane, a Boeing 727, was just four months old. About two minutes after takeoff the crew reported there was a fire in engine one. That was the last time they were heard from.
The bad luck continued for Southern California. On the 25th, after three days of torrential rainfall, mudslides began. Homes were swept away. There were 18 drownings, 58 traffic deaths related to the weather plus 15 died stuck in the mud.
On the 18th, Mother Nature not quite done, the largest oil spill (up to that point in time) occurred a little over five miles off the coast of Santa Barbara. Union Oil was drilling for a new rig. The # A-21 Well had reached a depth of over 3,000 feet when the troubles, a blowout, developed. Over the next eleven days tens of thousands of barrels of crude would flow freely into the ocean and on to the beaches. A slick over 800 square miles, over half the size of Rhode Island, was created.
Not all disasters on the Pacific Ocean were confined to the Los Angeles area. On the 14th, over in the tropical paradise of Hawaii, a poorly stored ‘Zuni’ Rocket went off and blew up a fuel tank on an F-4 Phantom. The resulting explosion on the USS Enterprise Carrier killed 27 Navy men and injured a staggering 314 more.
Tuning in to watch Walter Cronkite had become a chore. Bad news piled onto bad news. There were nightly reports of death counts from Vietnam. The numbers became numbing. A tornado ripped through a black town, Hazelhurst, in Mississippi and killed 29. There was a nuclear meltdown over in Switzerland at the Lucens Nuclear Reactor. Not that anyone knew what a nuclear meltdown was. But is sure sounded scary.
In the mountains east of Los Angeles there was man who didn’t care a whit about any of the bad news. For one thing he was high on LSD pretty much every day. He and his followers, a sad collection of losers and outcasts, were living rent free on an old movie set that looked like a wild west town. The girls in his commune were happy to drive into town and prostitute themselves for ‘the family’. The men, the few there were, busied themselves stealing cars. Talk had turned to violence. The man, former unwanted pal of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, was named Charlie. Charlie had plans. Big plans. He and his followers were preparing for Helter Skelter, a race war that existed only in their drug addled brains.
Excerpt 4
Over at The Niagara County Golf and Country Club just outside Hudsonville Becky Enfield spied a new man. She had spent the spring, summer and fall of 1968 making inventory of all the cute and not so cute men that hung like Christmas tinsel about the club. This was a new specimen. Kinda tall. Well dressed. Blonde hair cut like a movie star. Expensive looking cotton shorts that flattered his calf muscles. And he seemed to float when he walked. Graceful. Athletic.
Hmmm.
Becky waited while the man did his stretches and began his warmup on the practice tee. Becky did not play golf very often, but she sure did like hitting the shit out of the balls on the range. Once the man seemed lost in his own thought she pounced. She took her bag of clubs, dropped them on the grass behind the man and pulled out an iron of some sort. He had a nice ass. A young man’s ass. After a swing or two one of her practice balls magically found it’s way between the man’s feet. “Oops,” she said, “sorry.”
“Not a problem,” he said.
“I’m new at this,” she said. She gave her shoulders a wee shrug. “Old dog, new tricks I guess.”
The man laughed. Nice teeth. White and straight, just how Becky liked her men. “Trade you,” he said.
“I’m Becky.”
“Name’s Spencer. Spencer Donovan.”
“Like the singer?”
“You mean Spencer Davis or Donovan Leitch?”
“You got me there. I was just trying to flirt.”
“Flirt away, Becky. I’m new in town. You’re my first new friend, not counting the golf pro and he only likes me ‘cause I bought a new blue sweater from him. He told me it matched my eyes.”
Well, my oh my, thought Becky. My oh my.