The Year 1952, Chapter 5

Harvey Larson arrives home a little after 9 PM on the first Friday of September 1952.  He is famished, but he knows there will be warm leftovers ready for him in the oven.  

Because of the fight at school today, Burt is not hovering around his father, but is staying away without being too obvious.  He sits in front of the television watching The Aldrich Family, a situation-comedy about a teenage boy named Henry.  It immediately precedes and is on the same channel as The Friday Night Fights which go on at 10 PM.

At about 9:50, Harvey finishes his dinner and joins his son in front of the television.  After a few minutes he notices something on Burt's face.

"Hey, is that a bruise below your left eye?"

"Nothing much."

"How did it get there?"

"Well, I got into a small fight today before school."  

"You can't do that.  We can't afford to offend anybody.  They could take their milk business elsewhere.  Do you understand how that could affect the roof over our heads and the food on our table?"

"I do."

"What was it about?"

"A kid at school named Carl was picking on Libby.  I asked him to stop and he punched me.  I hit him back.  I don't think he'll bother either of us again."

"Next time, let Libby fight her own battles.  And let there not be a next for you.  Promise me or you go to bed right now."

"I promise."

At 10 PM, boxing comes on television live from Madison Square Garden in New York City.  Over 4,000 fans are there to watch welterweight contenders Bobby Dykes (24 years-old) from Miami Beach and Gil Turner (22 years-old) from Philadelphia.  

Dykes is the veteran with 86 wins.  Turner has only 32 fights, but has lost only one, that to the champion, Kid Gavilan.  Turns out Dykes has lost to him, as well.  

Whomever Harvey chooses to root for, Burt, in their unannounced rivalry, chooses the other.  Sometimes, Harvey went for experience, sometimes youth.  But, he almost always goes for the white guy, if there is a white guy.  Why is that?  Maybe because Harvey is a white guy.  Well, tonight's white guy is Dykes.

In the fifth round of a very close contest, Turner knocks Dykes through the ropes and out of the ring.  Instead of being the end, it becomes a turning point.  Dykes, who had been losing, regains the initiative.  After ten rounds, the three judges take over.  All three vote 5 rounds to 4, with one round even.  However, two of the three judges vote for Dykes.  

Harvey is all smiles as his man wins...again.  He seems to be showing his son, that again, he knows best.  Both Burt and his man Gil Turner go to bed that night very disappointed.  For Burt, there has to be a day of reckoning with his father...soon.    

    

Why an Accountant?

Before moving to Brazil at the end of May 2013, I had worked in the USA as an accountant for forty years.  I was as an Auditor for Ernst & Ernst, a Federal Tax Manager for Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc., an Accountant for the Anti-Defamation League and a Cost Analyst for the Office of Sponsored Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  

Why did I take this career path?  Why an accountant?  In the beginning, it should have been an obvious choice.  My father started out as a bookkeeper, a basic form of accounting.  But he never encouraged this for his son.  However, he did utter these immortal words, "Happiness is a well paying job."  Really?  But I took his advice.

When I was heading to college, I applied (and was accepted) as an engineering student, probably because my brother Paul did the same and I didn't want to be a doctor as my mother had hoped.  But in my last term in high school, I was having difficulty with Chemistry.  Ironically, it turned out great.  I believe I got the highest mark in the Regents exam at OHS that year.  Thanks for your help, Mr. Reed.

Anyway, one day in May 1963, because of Chemistry, I drove to Penn and was easily able to switch from Engineering to Business.  Why Business?  Probably because of my father (President and General Manager of a local dairy).  

In my second year at Penn, I was required to take a basic course in Accounting.  As a morning person, I signed up for the 8 AM class, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  The professor was in his 40s and looked physically fit in his three-piece suit on his way (at 9 AM) to his real job.  He was a practicing CPA-tax attorney and a former Marine (I think he included this in his background to be intimidating) who enjoyed teaching one accounting section each year.  I wish I remembered his name.  He encouraged me, by his energetic example, to take that path to accounting.

Officially, we were Section #1 and the professor wanted us to be the #1 group of accounting students (based upon our test scores on department-wide exams).  He demanded we show up at 8 AM and begin the class on time.  He always took attendance and if you were not in your seat at 8:00 he gave you a half an absence.  If not there by 8:05, a full absence.  Four absences and you failed the course.  So, we had excellent attendance from the very beginning of the semester.

If you like numbers and logic and solving problems, you will like studying basic double entry accounting, which is what we did in that course.  I liked it right away.  The way the professor presented the material was stimulating.  At the end of the year, I was so enthusiastic I chose to be an Accounting major.

Over the next two years, I took four more accounting classes from four different professors.  None of them came close to matching the teaching ability of my first one.  As a matter of fact, two of them made the subject matter quite boring.  But I persevered because of my first professor.

However, I have learned from my years in the accounting field that the most satisfaction I got from being an accountant was the people I worked with.  In this regard, I would like to thank the late Marty Kolins, Joe Giordano, Delferine Spooner and Kevin Maynor.    

The Great War

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie, were assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist.  The reason was his opposition to the Austro-Hungarian Empire ruling over parts of the Balkans, in south-eastern Europe.  

Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack.

The Russian Empire supported Serbia.  Germany was an ally of Austria-Hungary.  France and Great Britain were allies of Russia.  In August 1914, with each side having long been preparing, the Great War began.  It was not until World War II that it became known as World War I.

During the 1916 US presidential campaign, the Democratic Party  used the slogan, "He (President Woodrow Wilson)  kept us out of war."  This was significant because German submarines had attacked cruise ships travelling the high seas around Great Britain, their enemy.

In April of 1915, a German submarine sank the British cruise ship, Lusitania, near the British coast after having left New York. Almost 1,200 people perished in the attack, including many Americans.  Prior to its departure, the German Embassy in Washington published a warning to travelers on ships flying the British flag found to be in waters around Great Britain did so at great risk.  In fact, material to support its war effort was put on the Lusitania in New York by the British government.  

Obviously, there was a great anti-German outcry in the USA as a result of the Lusitania.  However, the Wilson administration successfully pressured the German government "to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare."

In November of 1916, Wilson won re-election.  Early in 1917, Germany again started attacking neutral shipping (which could be carrying valuable cargo to its enemy) in areas around Great Britain.  Five American merchant ships were sunk.  American public opinion shifted to favoring war.  On April 2, 1917, President Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany, which would "make the world safe for democracy."  Really?  Such a war would be "a war to end war."  Really?  

By this time, the Great War had been going on for three bloody years with no military victory in sight.  It was a stalemate with German, French and British armies facing each other across trenches in western Europe.  Germany feared the entry of thousands of fresh American troops could tip the balance against it.  

Before things got worse, Germany launched an offensive in the spring of 1918.  Its army pushed the front westward to within 75 miles of Paris.  The French capital was shelled forcing some residents to flee.  However, the offensive stalled.  British, French and American forces (the Allies) started pushing the Germans back to where they had started before their offensive began.  

In the summer of 1918, Allied forces launched their own campaign which kept pushing the Germans further and further back.  Finally, on November 11, 1918 (100 years ago today), an armistice was signed signaling a German surrender and an end to the Great War.  US involvement won the war but the US suffered over 300,000 casualties in one year of fighting.  Was it worth it?

A final peace treaty (The Treaty of Versailles) was signed on June 28, 1919 (5 years after the assassination).  It required Germany "to disarm, make ample territorial concessions, and make reparations."  This German humiliation and its aftermath led to the rise of the Third Reich a mere fourteen years later.  Twenty years after the above treaty was signed, Europe was at war again.  

America's entry into the Great War "most likely foreclosed the possibility of a negotiated peace among belligerent powers that were exhausted from years mired in trench warfare."  How the history of the world would have been different had America stayed home we'll never know.   

                        

Anatomy of a Murder

In Thelma and Louise (October 7, 2018 post), I discussed alternatives to their fleeing the scene after Louise kills Harlan.  She was responding to his obscenities after he tried to rape Thelma.  Could there be a legal justification for what she did?  

In Otto Preminger's 1959 courtroom drama, Anatomy of a Murder, we may have an answer.  The film was nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture (won by Ben-Hur), but won none.

In the movie, defense lawyer Paul Biegler (James Stewart, nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor, but lost to Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur) is hired by Frederick Manion (Ben Gazzara), a U.S. Army officer, who is accused of murdering Barney Quill, an innkeeper in Thunder Bay, Michigan (Upper Peninsula).  He admits shooting Quill, but only after Quill raped his wife, Laura (Lee Remick).

Laura had been at the bar in Quill's Inn (her husband was home asleep) drinking and playing the pinball machine (while swishing her hips).  After driving Laura near her home, Quill rapes her.  Laura wakes up her husband and tells him what happened.  He goes to the bar and shoots Quill.

Biegler tells Manion his only hope for a not guilty verdict is temporary insanity.  Biegler uses the argument that Manion "may be eligible for a defense of  irresistible impulse (M'Naghten rule), a form of temporary insanity."  This means the accused could not control their behavior even when they knew it was wrong.

The prosecution, led by State Attorney Claude Dancer (George C. Scott, nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, but lost to Hugh Griffith in Ben-Hur), at first tries to prevent the alleged rape from being introduced by the defense since it is unproven.  Thus, Manion would lack a motive for killing Quill.  

Eventually, Judge Weaver (Joseph Welch - Cowardly Acts post on October 14, 2018) allows the alleged rape into the record.  Then the prosecution claims the sex was consensual, which again hurts the defense.

Near the end of the trial, a witness comes forward to corroborate the rape accusation which again helps the defense.  She is Mary Pilant (Kathryn Grant), Quill's manager of the inn who has inherited it after his death.  She found the missing panties (in the hotel laundry) that had been worn by Laura Manion the night of the rape.  

It was "common knowledge" around Thunder Bay that Mary was Quill's mistress.  On cross-examination, Dancer tries to discredit Mary's testimony by strongly suggesting her belief Quill raped Laura Manion was motivated by jealousy.  Shocked by this accusation, she tries to respond.

"Barney Quill was my..."

Dancer presses forward right in her face, "Barney Quill was what?"

Mary then completes her sentence, "Barney Quill was my father."  

Dancer is struck dumb.  A lawyer should never ask a question to which he doesn't know the answer.  Quill and his illegitimate daughter had kept the true nature of their relationship a secret for years.  

How did this new evidence affect the jury?  We don't know for sure, but Frederick Manion was found not guilty.  Maybe with irresistible impulse, Louise could have earned the same verdict for killing Harlan. 

I recently (2022) read the book (same title) written by Robert Traver which was the basis for the movie.  Important differences between the movie and the book were the Laura Manion's panties found by Mary Pilant and that Barney Quill was not Mary Pilant's father.  Give credit to Otto Preminger, the director, and Wendell Mayes, the screenwriter.   

                  

The Year 1952, Chapter 4

Libby Collins, a pretty girl with short, reddish brown hair who just turned thirteen on the first of the month, sits near the window of her home anxiously awaiting the arrival of her cousin, Burt.  From here, they will make a 15 minute walk to their middle school, talking and laughing.  This is a practice they had been doing every school day for as long they could remember.  

Libby's father, Eddie, was Molly Larson's younger brother.  He married his high school sweetheart, Dottie, right after graduation in 1937.  Two years later, just a month after Burt, Libby was born.  A few months after Pearl Harbor, Eddie was drafted into the US Navy.  A year later, he was killed by a Japanese torpedo attack in the Pacific.

Libby and Burt both grew up without a parent of the opposite sex.  Living close together and without much of any other family, they grew close.  They are more than cousins.

When Libby finally sees Burt approaching her home, she yells out to her mother she is leaving.  She grabs her school books and runs out the door.  They meet in front of the house and head to school. 

Just as they arrive in front of the school, Carl, another kid from their class, sees them approaching.  He is one year older than the rest of his classmates, having been left behind a year some years ago.  He isn't stupid.  He just doesn't try.  Outside of school, Carl is a trouble maker, occasionally picking fights on the playground.  He approaches Libby.

"Hey, Libby, what are you doing with this loser?  You could do so much better."

"Yeah, like who?  You?  Don't make me laugh."  

"I'm willing to do you a big favor.  Not that you deserve it."

At this point, Burt has had enough of this conversation.

"Knock it off, Carl.  Leave her alone."

"Really.  And who's going to make me?  You and what girl scout troop?"

"Just me, Carl."

At that moment Burt and Carl stand face to face waiting for someone to make the first move.  A small group of other children start crowding around them waiting for something exciting to happen.

Finally, Carl, looking for some action and having waited long enough, cocks his right fist and thrusts it towards Burt's face landing just below his left eye.  At almost the same instant, Burt's right fist strikes Carl's left jaw.  Carl wobbles back a bit from the force of the blow.  He quickly recovers and is about to throw another punch, but decides against it.

"Had enough, Carl?"

"Another time, another place.  This isn't over."

The school bell rings and all enter the building.  Libby holds tight to Burt's arm as they enter together.       

For Whom The Bell Tolls

In 1624, the English poet John Donne wrote the immortal words, "No man is an island, entire of itself.  Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.  Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."  

To me, Donne is saying that all human beings are part of one universal community, all related to each other, regardless of race, religion, or nationality.  

The novelist Ernest Hemingway chose the above phrase as the title of his greatest novel, first published this day back in 1940.  I consider it the finest I have ever read.

Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois on July 21, 1899.  After high school, he went to work for the Kansas City Star as a reporter.  

In 1918, Hemingway volunteered as a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy where World War I was raging.  It became the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms.  

In 1926, Hemingway, while living in Paris, wrote The Sun Also Rises based on his experiences there with the post-war expatriate generation that didn't return home when the war ended.

In 1937, Hemingway went to Spain to cover the civil war for the North American Newspaper Alliance.  A group of right wing generals (fascists) from the Spanish Army had led a revolt to overthrow the moderate-liberal republican Spanish government.  

Hemingway was "at the Battle of the Ebro, the last Republican (anti-fascist) stand, and he was among the journalists who were the last to leave the battle as they crossed the river."   His experiences in Spain led Hemingway to write For Whom the Bell Tolls.  I believe he chose the title because he believed what happened in Spain was everyone's responsibility, not just Spaniards.

It is the story of Robert Jordan, an American with experience as a dynamiter who went to Spain to fight fascism.  He is assigned to blow up a bridge in the mountains near the city of Segovia just before an attack begins in order to limit the enemy's ability to launch a counter-attack.

Robert (or Roberto as he is known in Spain) is assisted in blowing the bridge by a group of pro-Republican guerrillas in the area.  In the group he meets Maria, "a young Spanish woman whose life had been shattered by her parents' execution and her own rape at the hands of the fascists at the outbreak of the war."  Over the four days and three nights of the story, Roberto and Maria fall in love.

My favorite lines in the book occur at dawn just before Roberto and the guerrillas will attempt to blow the bridge.  Roberto and Maria are alone and she asks, "How much time do we have?" meaning before they will have to part for their tasks at hand, he to do his job with the dynamite and she to secure the horses necessary for the group's escape after the mission.  His response is beautiful, "A lifetime."  It is what all of us have remaining in our lives.      

     

Cowardly Acts

I'm a human being.  I try to treat all other human beings with decency ("generally accepted standards of moral behavior").  I hope others will treat me with decency.  It's like what I learned in Hebrew School a long time ago, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  

In 1954, United States Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin was conducting hearings into conflicting accusations made by both McCarthy and the United States Army.  Chief Counsel for the Army was a lawyer named Joseph Welch.  He later portrayed Judge Weaver in Otto Preminger's 1959 standout courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder.

In the most memorable moment of the hearings, Welch stopped McCarthy's unjust character assassination of a young man with, "You've done enough.  Have you no sense of decency, sir?  At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"  The answer was apparently not.  

To me, a cowardly act shows a lack of decency.  In my life, I have been both a victim and a perpetrator of cowardly acts.

I am sorry for beating a dead horse, but I must bring up again the pretty blonde girl from Minetto (Sixteen Again and Sixteen Again RevisiTed).  She believed I did something that hurt her in some way.  Instead of confronting me with an explanation and a request for an apology, she committed a cowardly act by ignoring me forever.  She showed me a lack of decency, which I deserved.

I am sorry a second time for beating another dead horse, but I must bring up again the Nameless Girl (and the Nameless Girl RevisiTed).  I did not appreciate how she treated me.  So, instead of confronting her with an explanation and a request she change her ways, I committed a cowardly act by ignoring her forever.  (Did I learn that from the pretty blonde girl from Minetto?)  I showed the Nameless Girl a lack of decency, which she deserved.

Let me mention a new person.  One night my freshman year at Penn, the young men on the fifth floor of the Class of 1928 Dormitory invited women from the nursing school at the nearby Philadelphia General Hospital to a mixer.

There I met a very nice young woman who apparently thought I was a very nice young man.  She wasn't beautiful, but she was cute with short curly brown hair.  We spent virtually the whole mixer together, talking, drinking and eating.  We ignored all others.

She was an athlete (played soccer) and a sports fan.  How wonderful!  When her curfew approached, I walked her back to her dormitory on 34th Street.  She gave me her phone number and we kissed good night.  I felt great.  However, walking back to my dorm, I threw her phone number into a garbage bin on the street.  I never called her, ever.  What a dummy!

In the cold night air, I suddenly realized that our relationship had no long-term future since she wasn't Jewish.  I could imagine the frowning faces of my parents at my considering (at 18 years of age) marrying a shiksa (50 years later, I married one).  I committed a cowardly act by not giving her an explanation for my rude behavior.  

Of course, I should have continued seeing her in spite of my parents.  I was too young to be thinking about marriage.  I showed the nice young woman a lack a decency, which she deserved, which everybody deserves.