My Life as a Reformed Gringo

This kicked off my series of essays on The Back Word, a website of writing about Texas. The folk who ran it lost interest and took down all the pages. Fortunately, I have all the Word files, and this is the first of four published there:


For most parents, a child's exposure to a foreign language is mildly interesting. But for me, the news that my son Sam started studying Spanish this fall in the fifth grade stirs strong emotions. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the gringo minority in the town of Mission, in deep South Texas-- pop. 13,000, Spanish wasn't just a language. It marked the fault line that divided two cultures, Anglo and Hispanic.

Young gringos learned early that we could treat the Spanish language--and Hispanic culture--with indifference, if not outright hostility. When I was in the third grade, the teacher asked a new student, Frank, to read in the front of the class. A migrant or perhaps a new arrival from Mexico, Frank didn't speak English. He stood there utterly baffled, and began to cry. Almost 40 years later, I still remember Frank's humiliation as a perfect symbol of gringo arrogance.

Many gringo (that is, Anglo) adults along the border would shrug at the Franks of the world and declare, "Hey, this is the United States, suck it up and learn English." Compassion for or even curiosity about the majority of our neighbors ranked low among gringos' virtues. Instead, I grew up in an atmosphere of condescension toward Hispanics and Mexico. Those who thought otherwise seemed subversive in the suspicious culture of Texas at that time.

I thought and acted like a typical gringo. Although the Rio Grande Valley incubated Tex-Mex, one of the great styles of regional music, I plugged my ears to the sounds around me in favor of Grand Funk Railroad, Yes, and Deep Purple. Despite the permanent opportunity for immersion learning, I had no interest in Spanish, and neither did my late mother, a native Texan of German-Jewish stock who glowered when store clerks misread her dark looks and spoke to her in Spanish.

In high school, gringos joked that Spanish ALM (audio-lingual method) really stood for "Anglos Learning Mexican." Yearbook photos for Mission High School's Pan American Club showed a dwindling number of gringo members between 1972 and 1976. We derided nearby Pan American College as "Tamale Tech."

What did we think about Mexico itself, visible across the Rio Grande after a short drive down South Conway Avenue? The country was terra incognita, a mysterious and terrifying place that our parents warned us about (singer Kinky Friedman captured the paranoia in his song "Asshole from El Paso," with the lyric, "We keep our kids away from Mexico."). Drugs, violence, federales, poverty, disorder, people not like us dominated the skyline of our ignorance. We learned absolutely nothing about Mexico that didn't involve the Alamo and the Texas Revolution. Likewise, teachers spared our young minds any inkling of the bloody early history of the Valley, replete with land grabs and summary executions of Mexicans by the Texas Rangers. However, kids did enjoy piñatas at birthday parties.

Until I vacationed in Mexico City and Morelia in my mid-30s, I never ventured more than 200 yards into Mexico. As a senior in high school, an English teacher and his wife took a date and me across the river to Reynosa. As I wrote in my journal on May 16, 1976: "Hot, nervous, but different. We ate at Sam's and later had drinks (Coke for me thank you) in the Imperial and buzzed through several curio shops."

Did any aspect of Mexico capture gringos' interest and appreciation? Well, yes: the red-light districts. One conversation with two local luminaries on the attractions of Reynosa seemed so compelling that I recorded the sordid details in my journal soon after I graduated from high school. From June 19, 1976 (names and expletives deleted):

"How's Boystown these days?" Willie asked.

Waylon said the action was OK. Willie took something of a dim view of the area, but Waylon sounded quite enthusiastic.

"Wow! One of the places really has nice a atmosphere with columns, plants, chandeliers," he informed us.

"Sounds more like a bank," I said.

"Well, if you want a piece of ass you can get it cheaper (and cleaner) here, but I go for the atmosphere," Waylon said.

"Once," he added, "I found one who knew my older brother real well."

"When I first moved down here," Willie said, "I'd go down there and stay for hours just talking to the girls and looking at the places."

The topic of Nuevo Laredo whorehouses rose in the conversation.

"Well some guys tell me, 'Them Laredo whores is the best around,' " Willie joked in a mock thick Texas accent. "And I tell them, 'Well, hell, I'm going there this afternoon, so I'll be sure to check 'em out.' "

"You'd be surprised at what goes on in this town," Waylon told me. I can imagine.

And yet in an awkward, unconscious way I edged away from gringoisimo. Call it my mild form of teenage rebellion. Whatever her antipathy to Spanish, my mother's life philosophy--"Be friends with everybody"--fostered an accepting attitude. Fragments of the Hispanic world lodged in my memory, from a young age. I remember thumbing through comic-book novelas¸ or graphic soap operas, when my mother visited her hairdresser in South Mission, on the other side of the railroad tracks. I read Richard Vasquez's powerful novel Chicano when I was 13. Before long, I started listening to music groups that I still enjoy, such as Malo (led by Jorge Santana, Carlos's brother) and El Chicano, an L.A. band that performed dreamily romantic songs. To aggravate my younger brother after we started driving, I tuned the AM radio in our family's Chevy Impala to a Mexican music station, prompting a yelp of disdain whenever he turned on the car.

I must admit that for years I mooned over Hispanic girls, with names like Dalia, Delia, Hilda, Olalla, and Maria Luisa. Especially Luisa, with whom I shared a love of writing. With a beautiful choir-trained voice, straight black hair tumbling to her waist and a calm face that fit my image of an Aztec princess, Luisa won this gringo's heart during my senior year in high school. We even stole moments to hold hands in the guidance counselor's office. I asked her to the favorites dance, but her father did not want a gringo to take her. So I never did slow-dance to Chicago's "Color My World" with Luisa, my enchanting Aztec princess.

As an adult, I've tried to fill in the blank spaces of my knowledge, what I refused to learn or notice as a youth. I've studied Spanish enough that I can almost speak it as well as Ernest Borgnine's character in The Wild Bunch. Mi amiga querida buena (myvery dear friend) in Mexico, Ana Gilda, encourages me to chat with her online in Spanish, and I'm improving. I follow the ups and downs of Vicente Fox's administration and other Latin news, to the extent I can in U.S. newspapers. I became a big fan of telenovelas, with their easy-to-follow dialogue such as "Idiota!" and "Mi hermano es muerto! (my brother is dead)." I smiled while watching the movie Traffic when I realized characters spoke Spanish with Mexican accents, which I could distinguish from the Puerto Rican and Dominican accents I hear in New York.

I like the accordion-driven norteño music of groups like Los Tigres del Norte, which takes me straight back to Hidalgo County. (In an example of what goes around comes around, a Los Tigres song, "El Gringo y El Mexicano," refers to McAllen, Texas, the city next to Mission. I've teased Ana Gilda that I want to write a story about us called "El Gringo y La Mexicana").

Why does any of this matter? A middle-aged man reconsiders his roots and starts digging in the loam. He likes what he finds. Call it a story about one man's continuing engagement with a part of the world he once considered alien and irrelevant, even threatening. Now, I can appreciate another society and language that, by reason of where I lived, remains part of who I am.

News from Latin America no longer comes from the dark side of the moon (that is, beyond the south bank of the Rio Grande) but from distinct places that matter to me. In other words, I have enlarged my world. When I see Mexican and Central American men waiting on street corners in the Northeast looking for day work, they are no longer a faceless "them," but men with a language, a history, a place.

In these days, a big world view matters. America's efforts to remake the Middle East may suffer from the gringo attitude I know so well: "We know what's best for you, just watch and do things our way, and learn our language." Is that an effective way to treat a neighbor, or to reform a wounded country? Certainly I thought so at one time. Just ask my friend Velma, she knows.

Back at Mission High School, I once told her that the U.S. should just "take over" Mexico and that would fix the problems there in a jiffy. Rightly incensed, she recalled this exchange many years later. I forgot about it (a microcosm of U.S.-Latin relations?) and could only reply, "Oh, I said that?" Back then, ignorance supported blissful assurance. These days, I think differently. Velma and I even call each other primo and prima--cousins.

At the same time, I am who I am. Reformed, but not neutered. I emotionally connect with other gringos on the same wavelength. Robert Earl Keen's sweetly melancholy song "Gringo Honeymoon" speaks to me with its sense of wandering between two worlds; the stanzas include,

We took a rowboat 'cross the Rio Grande
Captain Pablo was our guide
For two dollars in a weathered hand
He rowed us to the other side.

We were standin' on a mountain top
Where the cactus flowers grow
I was wishin' that the world would stop
When you said we'd better go

ZZ Top's "Mescalero" album includes two wonderful songs primarily in Spanish, with what I now term an ASS sound: "Anglos Speaking Spanish." I know, because that's what I sound like (again, think of Ernest Borgnine).

To my delight, even my Borgninesque Spanish makes sense. Not long ago, while I waited at JFK airport to board a flight to El Salvador, I noticed a man who desperately needed to make a phone call. However, the security guards would not let him leave the area to find a pay phone. Speaking only Spanish, the man's anxiety became more obvious by the minute. As I watched, a famous Jewish teaching kicked in: "If I am for myself only, what am I? And if not now, when?" Rabbi Hillel was right: I thought, the time to act is now. I told the guards the Salvadoreño could call on my cell phone. They looked surprised, but agreed to my idea.

"Excusame, señor," I said, catching his attention, "Usted necesita usar telephone? Llame en los Estados Unidos?" I held out my cell phone. He gratefully took it, and I showed him how to dial. He made the call, then returned the phone to me as the line crept ahead. No longer strangers, the man and I shared a moment.

I'll tell Sam this story. He will learn at a young age, as I did not, that language skills and an open attitude can make the world a friendlier place. Sam will be a reformed gringo from the beginning.

In the Belly of the Anti-War Beast: NYC 8-29-2004

(unpublished essay)

On August 29, hundreds of thousands of people gathered to denounce the war in Iraq, shriek about Bushitler and exercise their cherished First Amendment right to free speech. On August 29, I also went to New York to express my right to free speech, as a member of the New York chapter of the group Protest Warrior (http://www.protestwarrior.com/). I learned, however, that among some members of the Left, free speech only applies to their speech.

Some background: since early 2003, Protest Warrior has confronted leftists with witty subversions of their own slogans and truisms. The group’s very first sign set the tone: “Except for ending slavery, fascism, nazism and communism, war has never solved anything.” Through counter-demonstrations and peaceful infiltrations of anti-war marches, PW drives leftists batty with its brand of daring tactics and intellectually challenging posters (another favorite shows a woman in a head-to-toe “burkha” with a male fist holding a chain tight around her neck. The poster says, “Protect Islamic property rights against western imperialism! Say no to war!” With 7,000 members in chapters nationwide, the group is getting traction as an alternative voice in the marketplace of protest on matters of war and peace. And some people despise that kind of intellectual diversity.

Politically, I’ve always been a maverick. Childhood friends in Texas think I’m a commie hippie pinko tree-hugger. East Coast friends suspect I’m a crypto-fascist Texas gun nut. The reality lies somewhere in the middle. PW tracked my foreign-policy views, and so August 29’s “Operation Liberty Rising” marked a great chance to express a real maverick position in the belly of the anti-war beast. I had read reports on the unhinged reactions of leftists to PW, but now I could see for myself.

The night before, I carefully selected my fashion statement for the day. I considered, then rejected, my “Jdate” t-shirt, figuring it looked a bit too picnicky for the political occasion. I settled on the delightfully confrontational “These colors don’t run” t-shirt from my brother in Houston (I got it when took me to a Texas shooting range so I could, as I joke, “get in touch with my inner NRA”). The black shirt bears an American flag and also says “Jim Pruett’s Guns & Ammo: Your anti-terrorist headquarters.”

About 150 of us met Sunday morning for orientation, which stressed team formation and safety tactics. The leaders knew from past actions that leftists can become violent, so we had to prepare ourselves for a fast response. The group itself was, to use an overloaded term, “diverse,” with men, women, gays, straights, Jews, Christians, veterans, students, mild-mannered graybeards like me, and some ponytailed bad-asses who would be formidable in a tough situation. The zesty new group Communists for Kerry (http://www.communistsforkerry.com/) prepared for its march with us.

Before we stepped off, a half-dozen of us dashed down 8th Avenue for an impromptu mini-demo in front of the storefront office of the New York Civil Liberties Union. The group had made lots of noise about protecting the right to protest, so we decided to see how the NYCLU might respond to a protest outside its own hive. Own sign collection include “The ACLU: We don’t hate religion, we just hate Christianity!” PWs lined up in front of the office while I snapped photos. The response was mild rather than screechy, as one man came out to ask if we knew our rights as protestors, and to hand us brochures on the topic. Another volunteer posed with the group for a picture. So, bravo for the NYCLU members for not screaming we were fascist Zionist racist Halliburton pigs who did not support the Kyoto protocols.

With a police escort, PW began walking to 24th Street, where we would slip into the main march in groups of 15, to get maximum visibility for our signs. As we passed the MSNBC tent in Herald Square, we chanted, "Chris Matthews sucks!" While waiting to filter into the march, we gave demonstrators an aural jolt, disrupting their utopia with chants of "WE GAVE PEACE A CHANCE, WE GOT 9-11!” and "JOHN EFFIN’ KERRY, NO EFFIN’ WAY!" And as always, the PW signs often stopped them cold.

Finally we entered the parade route, swallowed by the great snaking line. For a while we marched in relative peace. A reporter from the Village Voice interviewed me, and I probably confused him by saying I had voted for Nader in 2000 and that I had attended pro-choice rallies. Asked if I was concerned about violence, I naively said that I hoped the demonstrators would show respect for PW’s First Amendment rights, which we were asserting in a flamboyant but non-hostile way.

Before long, the catcalls and screeching against us began. I had no problem with obscene chants, name calling, finger pointing, Jews screaming at the Orthodox members of my group—that's fair game. It wasn’t pretty, but it was free speech (heck, if the Jews for Jesus did that at a Salute to Israel parade, I’d act the same way). Yes, PW was provocative, even annoying, but we act strictly to stimulate debate and we did absolutely nothing to interfere with anybody’s right to protest. And we were outnumbered 1000-to-1, a batch of harmless fuzzballs, as Rush Limbaugh might say.

But many of the marchers found us so threatening, so disruptive, so unconventional that they had only one option: TO SILENCE US. Even though most of us did not respond to their taunts and simply shouldered along, the venomous protestors quickly escalated to breaking our signs' cardboard poles, and trying to tear the signs (which were laminated to prevent damage), and physical assault. Other than a single call of "Leftists, be cool," I heard nothing but screaming and threats. A bullhorn was smashed, people were spit on. For a video the captures the menace of the moment, go to http://jasonn.com/~blindpig/ While some PWs got into shoving matches, I only had my sign’s pole bent, with some minor rips in the sign itself. But the narcissistic violence that festers in the heart of many leftists became screamingly obvious, as it does at most PW events. They can’t handle opposition.

Our security plan kicked into gear. We moved to the east side of 7th Avenue and walked on the sidewalk, signs down, until we stood behind police protection on W. 28th Street. Groups called each other to check out how they were doing, and we waited, per police orders, until the march neared its end.

We patched our signs and cooled off at our protected pod, with several police officers between us and the marchers. Even away from the river of bodies, we still had impact. As the parade thinned, more people walked down W. 28th Street and saw our signs. Now we had the advantage of numbers, with the police nearby, so nobody got physical, but we still got the message across and had some heated, but civil, discussions, the First Amendment in action. We did more chants, and several PWs stood at attention as the marchers carried caskets representing U.S. servicemen killed.

Three black filmmakers came over to do interviews, saying they had talked to people on the other side and wanted to hear what we had to say. I said, “Hey, I’m a registered Democrat,” and that got their attention. I spoke about my politics, that I never vote a straight-party line, and that I even voted for Al Sharpton in the Connecticut Democratic primary. The delighted interviewer shook my hand.

After the coffins passed, the parade dribbled to an end. We could start moving again. Rather than follow at the tail end of the parade, we headed east and found a very visible position behind metal barricades in Herald Square, on W. 34th St. east of Macy's. This provided an ideal location for showing our signs at protestors who could only walk past us in the street and snarl, with no chance of attacking us across the barrier and the police along the way.

Well, some of them, swept up in the moment, just couldn't take a let's-agree-to-disagree approach. One man lunged at a sign, got a police warning, then lunged again. He moved away with the NYPD in pursuit, and somewhere in the scrum he was arrested. PWs appreciatively chanted, "NYPD, NYPD!" Finally we headed back to our secret HQ high over the streets of Gotham, with a closing chant of "NYPD" as we passed a line of police resting on the street.

That didn't end the fun. I took the train home to Stamford, Connecticut, that evening, which involved a short trip on a shuttle train from downtown Stamford to the Springdale neighborhood. I took a seat, and wouldn’t you know a demonstrator sat beside me and noticed my shirt and the “Viva Bush!” bumper sticker plastered on it. “Well, the two of us are on different sides of the issue,” he opined, as if I cared about his views. But, I recognized him from the morning commute, and we had but a short trip to my stop, so I spoke with him, and enjoyed our civil interchange.

Actually, “spoke” too kindly describes the encounter, which was one-sided litany of grievances on: environmental degradation, the war, Israel becoming an apartheid state, Ariel Sharon is a war criminal, President Bush’s inability to speak a foreign language, President Bush’s lack of travel experience, and finally back to environmental degradation. Naturally I said some things that egged him on, but not so much that he tried to strangle me. When I got off at my stop we agreed to disagree (note to self: buy Halliburton stock, keep this fellow updated on the share price).

I took several impressions away from the day. First, I saw how ugly the mob mentality can be, and how coarse political discourse, if it can be called that, has become. I saw the vitality of free speech—and also its suppression by peace-loving thugs who practice the hecklers’ veto over speech that differs from theirs. On the other hand, I gained heightened respect for PW. Call us what you want (and we’ve been called everything), but the frenzied reaction to our ideas and strategies shows the power of Protest Warrior in the marketplace of free speech. PW is becoming home for my maverick political energies. To paraphrase Mr. Karl Marx, we are the specter haunting the left at their demonstrations. Get used to it.

CIA defends intelligence on Super Bowl half-time show

As the United States reels from the damage inflicted by Janet Jackson during the Super Bowl half-time show on February 1, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet spoke forcefully this week to defend the CIA’s actions to uncover WND, or “Weapons of Nipple Distraction.”

“I am proud of the work our analysts did before the Super Bowl,” Tenet declared before a closed-door meeting of the Recording Industry Association of America. “Success and perfect outcomes are never guaranteed when you are dealing with half-time entertainment—or, for that matter, awards shows like the Oscars. We put our skills and reputations on the line every day to protect Americans from WND and other threats. This is a serious breach, and the American people, and Matt Drudge, deserve to know what happened.”

Tenet spoke as the furor over the Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake performance continued to roil the country. A new Gallup poll revealed that 89 percent of Americans now believe that Jackson and Timberlake defeated the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl XXXVIII. IN fact, the National Football League has ordered the New England Patriots to return the Vince Lombardi Trophy so it can be awarded to Jackson and Timberlake. In the Gaza Strip, thousands of Palestinians who had watched the game via satellite poured into the streets, chanting, “Death to America, death to Israel, death to nipples!”

In his speech, Tenet said CIA analysts had picked up “chatter” before the game indicating that something was in the works. “The CBS website warned something ‘shocking’ would happen at the game and we took that threat seriously,” said Tenet. “our communications intercepts heard Justin Timberlake saying, “I’m going to get you naked by the end of the song,’ repeatedly during the week. As you must understand these are very, very ambiguous messages open to enormous shades of meaning and interpretation. The CIA would never force a single perspective on any of these streams of intelligence. For example, some of our most experienced analysts were of the opinion that Justin was simply pining for ex-flame Britney Spears not Janet Jackson, when he sang about getting somebody naked. Was that the right call? In retrospect, not quite. But we work in a wilderness of mirrors. Sometimes Janet’s naked, sometimes Britney, and a lot of times, Paris Hilton.”

Tenet continued, “I probably shouldn’t mention this, but we definitely nailed down that the ‘something shocking’ was going to be a surprise appearance by Michael Jackson. MTV absolutely had this in the works. Our sources within MTV learned that Michael Jackson planned to run on the stage, do some moon walking, and then pull down Justin Timberlake’s pants. We immediately alerted the President, Justin Timberlake’s security staff, and the Secret Service, which arranged for Vice President Cheney to b moved during the game to a secure location equipped with additional defibrillators in case he had an unusually strong response if Michael Jackson went ahead with his nefarious plan. Fortunately, Michael Jackson was isolated in his spiderhole at Neverland and, we believed, in good faith, that the threat ended there.”

Tenet noted that the events at the half-time show buttressed the Administration’s assertion that America faces a foe that can shift quickly as circumstances and opportunities arise. As soon as the threat from Michael Jackson to pull down Justin Timberlake’s pants was neutralized, the threat morphed to a “costume malfunction” that, cleverly used Timberlake as the instigator rather than the victim.

“We are forming an internal investigation team to assess what we missed. We will hear testimony from Paul Abdul, for example, on choreography issues. In fact, Paula has agreed to serve as a consultant to the CIA and help us start our new choreographic analysis program, which will help us develop a sharper, more informed view of the threats embedded in song-and-dance routines.”

Technology Drives the Heart Afield

A look at the fun and frustration of post-divorce dating in the 21st century, from the Princeton Alumni Weekly. http://www.princeton.edu/paw/archive_new/PAW03-04/07-0128/perspective.html

Long Day’s Journey into Another Long Day’s Journey: Blackout 2003

(article originally published in the Stamford Times, September 2003)

For 24 hours, no hearts were broken in New York City

Thursday, August 14, was progressing nicely. I got an excellent year-end review, raising hopes for continuing employment as a writer for MAF (Major Accounting Firm) and a bonus and a raise. I was looking forward to my vacation the next week.

In retrospect, signs abounded that Something Was About To Happen. Just before 3 pm, I pondered my American Express bill. Should I pay it online Thursday, or Friday, when I got my direct deposit? Did it matter? Which would hit my checking account first (given the perilous state of my finances, such timing is a major concern). I could wait, I could act, I could wait until later in the day. Finally, with the madcap abandon that so often marks my actions, I decided to pay on Thursday and at 3:01 pm I pushed the button to send American Express its latest cup of blood. Done.

Mrs. Ex-Wallach called me around 4:10 pm. She had driven our son and a friend to the Science Museum in Queens, a good summer vacation activity. We were chatting when the lights in my office suddenly died. My computer stayed on via battery power but everything else just stopped. The room stayed light because of sunlight from nearby windows. “Gee,” I said, “The power just went out.” In a matter of seconds I realized Mrs. Ex-Wallach had vanished, remaining only as a cellphone number frozen on the display of my office phone.

My officemates on the 15th floor of our swanky midtown Manhattan office building and I thought this was a glitch in our building, similar to the occasional false fire alarms. Our hopes evaporated as cell phones failed, lights remained off, and we began to sense a bigger problem confronted us (beyond not being able to submit our timesheets by midnight).

A designer plugged his Walkman into a small stereo speaker and we gathered to listen to updates on WCBS. It was bad and spreading. The pattern across Canada and the U.S. did not, at the time, make sense. Some of us went to a roof outside our offices to watch traffic congestion build below on 3rd Avenue. Large groups of people gathered outside buildings. What I found most unnerving were sights of people looking out their windows, watching, wondering what would happen next.

The dumbest thing I heard came from a young mail room employee, who groused that the blackout was “worse than 9-11. At least then the phones were working and I could call my girlfriend.”

Ultimately everybody in my group hiked down 15 flights of stairs to their apartments, friends, wherever they could go. I got down seven flights, then turned around and decided to stay in my office, because the floor had a bathroom and a refrigerator – amenities I would not find so easily on the streets of New York. Back upstairs, I finally got through, via cell phone, to my friend Beth in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn, near where I used to live. She and her husband, Phil, would be happy to put me up, especially since one of their sons was at sleepaway camp and I could flop in the bottom bunk bed. I hadn’t decided to head in that direction, but at least I knew I had the option.

Building security people, finally checking my floor, made the decision for me. They were evacuating the building. I had to leave. I packed my Lands’ End bag with a liter water bottle I kept at work and two apples, my digital camera, and, for some bizarre reason, the new issue of New York magazine, so I could keep my lifestyle in high gear. The security guys pointed me down a flight of stairs. “Keep your hand on a rail. It’s kind of dark,” one said. He was kind of right, especially for the first levels I groped down. I could see nothing. Finally emergency lights helped and I emerged into the dim lobby. I dutifully signed out at the security desk at 7 pm – habits die hard.

I could see natural light beyond the lobby, along with people on the streets. Emerging onto 3rd Avenue, I felt like a salmon fighting against the stream, as most people were walking uptown, while I was heading downtown, toward the far distant Brooklyn Bridge. The density, of both people and traffic, was unlike anything I had ever seen in New York. Streets that were usually crowded were extraordinarily congested as buildings emptied out. The masses who typically would be on the subway were on foot, on the move.

I couldn’t get myself to beeline downtown to Brooklyn; rather, I drifted over to Grand Central Terminal on the off chance trains were still departing for Connecticut. They weren’t. Instead, thousands of people milled in front of the station on 42nd Street, hot, frustrated by the non-working cellphones and uneasy about their inability to leave for the suburbs. Grand Central was closed. No trains were going to move. With a finite amount of daylight remaining, I had to commit myself. The office was barred, Grand Central impossible. I was trapped in Fun City. Memory-haunted Brooklyn became my destination.

I struck out east on 42nd Street, snapping a photo of a man playing the trumpet in front of a sign. I think he was playing “Amazing Grace.” Grey-uniformed police academy cadets already worked the streets. They would become a welcome, common sight over the next day.

I turned south on 3rd Avenue, fighting against the heavy traffic. Deli operators had set out tubs of ice water with beer and soda for sale. The bars along the way were going full blast. I stopped several times to listen to radios playing, either boomboxes on the street or in cars. Traffic had a nightmarish quality, cars stopped, people standing on them, buses trapped in traffic as they tried to turn from streets onto avenues but were unable to complete the swing. It reminded me of “The Stand” by Stephen King.

By 34th Street the pedestrian crowds thinned enough so I could quicken my pace. I clomped down 3rd Avenue, then Bowery, where residents poured out of the single-room occupancy hotels and missions, moving their party to the streets. I just kept walking. The crowds picked up as I approached the bridges across the East River to Brooklyn. I had to smile as a mitzvahmobile (a Winnebago outfitted as a recruitment center/synagogue on wheels by the Lubavitcher group of Orthodox Jews) approached the Williamsburg Bridge headed for the Lubavitch home territory in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I thought to myself, the Lubavitchers were the people least affected by the blackout since, as we all know, their Rebbe’s teachings provide all the light they need.

After that bit of merriment, I continued the slog, through Chinatown in the gathering dusk. By the time I maneuvered onto the Brooklyn Bridge, night had arrived. I joined the thousands of people trudging across the bridge. In the darkness I could just make out people around me. I stopped to call my friends in Brooklyn and let them know I was on my way.

From the bridge I had a great view of the FDR Drive, an unmoving river of car and bus lights snaking along the eastern edge of Manhattan. Feet were slow, but at least they moved more than those vehicles. As I crossed along the bridge, I was amazed by the ability of women to walk – briskly – in high heels and other footwear that looked terribly uncomfortable. My feet hurt, and I had on walking shoes. How could women move fast in those shoes?

As I neared the bridge’s exit I heard a portly man bellowing into a bullhorn. At first I thought he was a New Yorker driven berserk by a lack of air conditioning, then I realized he was the Brooklyn Borough President, Marty Markowitz, welcoming footsore residents of the Borough of Homes and Churches back to Brooklyn. I liked his gesture a lot, combining humanity, smart retail politics, and New York-style showboating. I cheered and took a photo of Marty with my digital camera.

Downtown Brooklyn was so dark I could not read the street signs. Fortunately, I remembered my way around from the years I lived there. I soon found Clinton Street and walked past my old haunts of Brooklyn Heights, Middle Eastern restaurants on Atlantic Avenue, Amity Street, where I had my first apartment ($300/month in 1981); Kane Street, location of Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes, the synagogue where Mrs. Ex-Wallach and I were married on Sept. 16, 1989; past darkened stoops where people sat and talked, sometimes illuminated by candles. I saw flashlights beams moving on the walls of apartments. I could only track my progress down Clinton Street when car lights flashed on the numbers on brownstones. Once I almost impaled myself on an iron fence in front of a brownstone.

Finally, I found Beth and Phil’s distinctive building, a former church. People clustered outside in a festive mood. Beth had just gone in, one man told me, and he let me in and took me to their apartment.

Finally, I could sit down, grab cold pizza and warm soda and relax after three punishing hours on my feet (and I wasn’t even in heels. Honestly, I don’t know how you women walk in your shoes. Gosh, I’d be a total failure as a cross-dresser). As we dined by candlelight, I related my adventures, then caught up with my friends.

Beth, an editor turned stay-at-home-mom who holds the world’s record for working for and being laid off by the most Wall Street brokerage houses, said people outside the building were saying, “This is what Brooklyn was like in the old days. People went outside and sat on their stoops.”

“There’s no law that keeps them from doing that now,” I observed. “They just need to get up off their duffs, stop watching ESPN and go sit on the stoop.”

Phil had been on a subway when the lights went out, but managed to get aboveground before the hordes of rabid tunnel rats began their merciless attacks on humans (just kidding). Phil, IT wizard by day and bass-guitar god by night, told me about his new, unnamed five-player country band. The three of us amused ourselves by concocting names for the band. Among my suggestions (which will make no sense at all to people unschooled in the fierce and feverish byways of U.S. Southern culture):

The Five Hemorrhoids of George Wallace
The Secret Shame of Pat Robertson
Five Remaining Teeth
House on Wheels (our favorite)
Snakehandlers
Stone Mountain Scholars
Lester Maddox Dance Party!

We also kicked around “Squeal Like a Pig,” from Deliverance, but that’s such a cliché.

I woke up the next morning to see a nightlight shining. Brooklyn had the juice, again. Everything was getting back to normal, sort of. I called Connecticut, where the Westport Wallachs arrived safely after a two-hour drive from Queens. I commandeered my friends’ computer to let friends know I was holding up well in the situation. My main concern was returning home to the Nutmeg State. Metro-North’s website was overwhelmed. I called Greyhound, which was running normal bus service to Connecticut, including Stamford.

Fortified by cold pizza and ice cream, packing a strawberry-creamcheese bagel (thanks, Beth! It tasted great!) and water, I finally set out the next long day’s journey at 1 pm. This time I used public transportation, starting with a B75 bus that got me to the Brooklyn Bridge and saved 45 minutes of walking. I walked across the bridge one more time, with lighter traffic in the 90-degree weather. On the Manhattan side I gratefully took a water bottle from a Red Cross emergency vehicle, telling the volunteers I was a regular blood donor. I took a picture of the news crews under tents outside City Hall Park, directly in front of the bridge.

Then, more walking. The Red Cross lady said I could get a bus a few blocks over, by Ground Zero. I walked to Church Street, but found no buses, so I headed uptown, my pace geared to getting the 4 pm Greyhound bus from the Port Authority at 42nd Street and 8th Avenue. The streets were hot and empty, the trash bins overflowing with discarded water bottles. Most stores were closed, although I could tell power was returning by the functioning traffic lights.

I finally got on an express bus at 16th Street and 6th Avenue, unexpected but welcome as a way to get me uptown faster (no subways were running). The air-conditioning felt wonderful as the bus sped through Herald Square (you know, home of Macy’s, Bullwinkle balloon on Thanksgiving Day, etc.).

Exiting at naughty, bawdy, gaudy, sporty Forty-Second Street, I decided to check Grand Central Terminal before committing myself to a bumpy bus trip. The main entrance to Grand Central was closed, but people could enter elsewhere, into an unnerving, grotto-like darkness that showed electricity was still lacking here. I had little hope of a train, but plunged in anyway. Around a corner, I found the magnificent central concourse, full of natural light and crowded with hundreds of people standing and sitting. The schedule boards were dark. Still, the massed bodies told me travel was possible. I took photos of the famous clock, stopped at 4:12 pm, the instant the power failed. After that I staked out some floor space, plopped down, opened the Times, and munched that bagel.

My mazel was holding. After 20 minutes hundreds of people suddenly arose and moved, lemming-like, toward a door to a track. Well, heck, I decided, I’d better join that herd, so I stood up and moved with them. Before long, a Metro-North official with a bullhorn squawked what was happening. The next train to leave would be a diesel making all local stops to Stamford. I pushed through the entrance toward the precious train, disheveled and dirty like Warren Beatty as John Reed in Reds, although no Diane Keaton as Louise Bryant emerged from the throngs to approach me. I moved to the front of the train, which had plenty of seats and the blessed air conditioning. On the 90 minute trip, I listened to a young Wall Street type tell how she found herself in a hotel sharing a bed with the head of her firm’s fixed-income securities trading desk. The horror, the horror.

As the trained inched northward, I knew the lights were flickering on, from Grand Army Plaza to Times Square, Coney Island to City Island, Jackson Heights to Brooklyn Heights. For 24 hours, New Yorkers for the most part behaved admirably in the dark and heat. Indeed, I did not see a single episode of violence or even ill-temper. A song from 1915 came to my exhausted mind, “There’s a Broken Heart for Every Light on Broadway.” Reversing the song’s logic, I fantasized that lights-out on Broadway protected New Yorkers and their hearts for an entire day. By Friday evening, that special day was ending and the lights returned to Broadway. What passes for normal life began again.

Finally I arrived in Stamford, in time to fetch my car from a repair place a few blocks from the train station. From there I drove to my silent apartment for a very welcome shower. My vacation could finally start.

The New, New Ritual

Mourning strategies for when dot-coms die, from the flame-out of the e-commerce bubble. Some of the references in this golden oldie will sound incredibly antique, from an era on the other side of current history.

http://www.workingfortheman.com/van.html

Governments Go Direct: Citizens Get a Direct Connection

How the Internet is changing how governments provide services, from my short stint at strategy+business, the thought leadership publication of the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. I was the editor of the enews section and I wrote this piece, so I gave myself the byline. http://www.strategy-business.com/press/enewsarticle/22752?pg=all&tid=230

Creativity, Value, Age, and Experience: Do They All Correlate?

I edited this essay, which appeared originally in the "re: Business" online magazine of the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. Author jeff Popova-Clark republished it on his own website, and graciously credited me for the introduction. Note that the link opens into a PDF file. http://www.dataanalytics.com/creativity.pdf

Tales of a Laid-Off Tiger

Together, a father and son weather the anxieties of unemployment. From the Princeton Alumni Weekly, this essay appeared after I was laid off by Video Store Magazine in July 1995. http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/archive_old/PAW96-97/08-0122/0122endpg.html

Smoking Out the Tobacco Industry

Richard Kluger, Princeton Class of 1952, won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris. I profiled him for the Princeton Alumni Weekly. http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/archive_old/PAW96-97/01-0911/0911feat2.html