The working title for the next book I am working on is called Restoring Balance. My first book, Systems out of Balance, was a referential guide for how our social systems work and how misinformation affects that. Restoring Balance will be more of an inspirational guide and much shorter in length. I will post chapters on this site about once a week. Here is the first installment. Feel free to comment.
INTRODUCTION: ALTRUISM
Are we naturally bad, victims of original sin? Are we naturally good as spiritual descendants from God? We might get caught up in one fixed belief or the other but if we truly look into ourselves and observe the behaviors of others the answer is undeniably: neither. We are naturally variable. We vary in our “goodness” or “badness” from one individual to the next and even within the same individual. There are consequences to succumbing to fixed beliefs, particularly the one that holds we are naturally bad, which I learned the hard way.
When I was a junior in high school a vocabulary word engulfed me in spiritual darkness. The word was misanthrope, defined as a belief that all human behavior was self-motivated. For better or worse I was always a thinker, and the more I thought about the word misanthrope the more I became convinced of its apparent truth. Thankfully, a penny saved me from this mental morass.
After high school I took a year off before going to college. In hindsight that was a critical step in understanding life, rather than automatically accept whatever fixed beliefs were being taught by schools or scholars. I had the opportunity to form my own beliefs based on real experience.
I was Christmas shopping in a mall when I decided to get myself a fifteen cent ice cream cone at a Baskin and Robbins outlet. The disheveled, elderly woman in front of me at the counter paid the fifteen cents for her cone but was informed there was a penny tax. I detected a look of concern on her face. As she rummaged through her purse for an extra penny I instinctively took one out of my pocket and slapped it down on the counter.
That experience provided several revelations. Why did I detect a look of concern on this stranger’s face? The simple answer is because I could. We all can read other people’s emotions fairly well, that is part of being human.
Why did I donate a penny to a stranger? The misanthrope would say the cause was to boost my own self-esteem, or to get the line moving, or because I’ve learned that general reciprocity makes a better world for me to live in. Though I was a misanthrope up until that moment I did not accept any of those motivations for my altruistic behavior.
Instead, I felt compassion for a total stranger that looked like she was down on her luck and I behaved out of pure instinct without any thinking or “self-motivation” involved. As hard as my mind wanted me to believe that my behavior was self-motivated my heart would not allow it. My new conclusion, based on my own experiential evidence, was that not all human behavior is self-motivated.
I had not realized my spiritual impoverishment up until that moment. For I now felt truly buoyant. I skipped in a crowded mall. I went up the down escalator and down the up escalator. I became a child at heart once more, similar to what fundamentalists would call being born again.
I indeed was saved from a life of cynicism. When I later went to college I did not automatically accept popular but unproven assumptions such as “the selfish gene.” Some of what my general field of science assumes as truth amounts to tautology, or circular reasoning. For example, we assume life to be selfish because life has the “self-motivation” to survive. Survival then “proves” selfishness.
If we step back from this assumed dogma we can attach greater meaning to the observation of life. Some organisms do indeed fit the meaning we attach to selfishness. Bacteria behave totally as individuals. The only responsibility one bacteria has for another is through asexual reproduction. Otherwise, each individual bacterium seeks merely to consume resources only for itself.
In contrast, there are organisms whose survival absolutely depends on functioning as a social group. As part of a group individuals sacrifice for each other with even their own lives. You could chalk this up to selfish survival of the species if you want, but you would lose a great deal of meaning for how whales survive in contrast to bacteria if you claim both to be acting in their selfish self-interest.
Though science may be guilty of such tautological assumptions, I find science now to be a saving grace for western culture. Science ultimately depends on experience, not on scholarship. Though many of us are not comfortable with the mathematical or technological tools used to further science, we all were born scientists. We all were given the ability to make educated guesses from our own experiences, and strengthen or adjust our guesses with further experience. That is the essence of science.
By honestly valuing and experiencing our own lives we can discover many problems with traditional western beliefs, including some perpetuated by dogmatic miscarriages of science. This inspirational guide draws from my own experiences as a wilderness backpacker, as a lifelong resident of a small village and, yes, as a trained scientist. These experiences refute the assumption that all human behavior is self-motivated. As both you and I know if we give due credence to our own observations and experiences, human intent and behavior is variable.
Though we have variable natures humans evolved to function as an altruistic species, behaving more like whales than bacteria. Both our individual and social well-being depends on realizing the full potential of our altruism. When culture persuades us instead that selfishness is not only natural but good, as evidenced in the way Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of self-interest” has been worshipped (and distorted) uncritically by economists, we have lost our natural balance.
Another instigator for an otherwise Enlightenment culture losing balance is Thomas Hobbes, who claimed that our natural condition was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Because of his misanthropic assumptions Hobbes concluded that paternal institutions, namely government, needed to save bestial humanity from ourselves by establishing order for us. This is utter hogwash that Hobbes derived from observations of “industrial man,” not “natural man.” Hobbes failed to understand that industrial man is caused, not prevented, by paternalism. This inspirational guide counters that you and I can save ourselves if independent from paternal influences, precisely because of our naturally evolved altruism.
This book could have been called Restoring Well-Being, Restoring Health or Restoring Cosmic Harmony. They all refer to the same thing: how to once again live our lives the way we evolved to live over hundreds of thousands of years of fine-tuning. The concept of Balance fits with the naturalist approach for how to live one’s life well in the natural order of life.
Most inspirational guides focus on the individual. They might include social goals as important, but undermine this with a focus on “me.” The focus of this inspirational guide is very much on “us” because no matter what impression you might have been given by Enlightenment philosophers or economists, we cannot attain individual fulfillment except as a social creature, that is how Mother Nature hotwired us. Ecologists and cultural anthropologists understand this, even if the natural supporting observations and experiences eluded some of the great Enlightenment thinkers.
I wrote a previous book called Systems out of Balance with original research and number crunching to inform us how we have been confused about what is natural. That book was a referential guide for explaining how our social systems are now out of balance and how misinformation got us in such a predicament. This inspirational guide focuses instead on heading towards where we naturally need and want to go. Five sections address five areas of prevalent social confusion. Eliminating the confusion about our natural rights, sense of belonging, democracy, public interest and quality of life will help us to restore our balance as a naturally altruistic species.
Tags: Restoring Balance
This is the day of the week that I usually post one of Pop’s letters. Today I’ve got to give it up to my daughter Serena, who was awarded first place by the Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association for their poetry contest. Here is the sonnet she submitted.
That look is clear and cold my dearest friend
And met with charm and wit by only I
Apparent now that this will be the end
But you alone shall suffer this goodbye.
I know the way this story soon will play
The ghost of pity lying in disdain
On you a look of apathy does stay.
Is it enough to act like there’s no pain?
Too soon you’ll wander back to me and plead
And claim mistakes and accidents were made
I’ll say that I agree but won’t concede
Your heart shall know the truth and start to fade
Your arms no longer home, your touch erased
But lucky love is easily replaced.
Tags: Serena's Poetry
I grew up with this long garage in my backyard. You probably can’t see the property marker, but it reveals that the garage goes right up to the property boundary on two sides. For that matter, so does the neighbor’s garage that you see in white. Neither practice would be allowed today with zoning requiring a fifteen foot setback. The terrain used to be flatter by the side of the garage and I would spend afternoons kicking a soccer ball against the side. The garage was originally part of a bakery business, gone before I came into the world. Of course, as a kid I climbed and cavorted on the garage roof, using the black cherry in the corner to get up there. Now both the black cherry tree and the roof has seen better days.
Tags: Sense of Place
I just returned from a vacation to Florida, driving both ways. As we drove through cities, particularly Washington and New York, I reflected on the presence of expanded lanes and dedicated commuter lanes. Knowing what we know now, these solutions to commuter traffic are inferior to developing better public transportation. I would suggest further that we always have known, or should have known, to give more credence to public transportation. Our problem has not been with knowledge but with attitude.
In either case, expanded highway lanes or public transportation, government is necessary to implement and maintain the solution. In the case of expanded highway lanes and commuter lanes the purpose of the solution is to indulge individual lifestyles. I use the word indulgence intentionally because, once again, government must provide this indulgence. The individual cannot decide: “I’m sick and tired of this commuter traffic so I’m building myself an additional commuter lane.” Without government the individual lifestyle preference for driving one’s car and not be stuck in commuter traffic cannot be fulfilled.
In the case of public transportation the purpose of the solution is to become more independent. Wait a second! How can an individual be more independent if they depend on public transportation? The individual depends on government for most transportation, public or otherwise. Whether driving in a metro bus or a commuter land the same refrain of “there but for the grace of government” still applies. Yet with public transportation there is less social dependence created for fossil fuels, and less individual dependence created for owning and maintaining an automobile.
So the choice really comes down to whether government should facilitate indulgent lifestyles or independent lifestyles. We have been convinced by corporate media and even some noted academics that the indulgences of consumerism is the essence of liberty, but don’t be fooled. We have been herded in our dependence on fossil fuels and automobiles, herded by government and herded by corporations, with grave consequences. When a soldier dies in Iraq, he dies not for the sake of real freedom or independence, but for indulgence.
The irony of commenting on public transportation after driving to Florida and back is not lost on me. In truth, I do not know the fuel comparison for individuals driving to Florida versus taking a plane or bus. I do know that driving in my 43 mpg Toyota Echo saves money over flying and renting a car in Florida. I know that commuting with a car does not similarly save money over public transportation when all the expenses of commuting are factored in. I know that following the path of public transportation might lead to the next logical step of solar panels or some other renewable energy solution being installed along the public transportation lanes. I know that in all these cases what government does affects the choices we make.
Tags: Government Entitlements
I’m back from vacationing in Florida where two of my brothers have homes in Venice. It was a good week to get away from stormy Norfolk, but I was basically sick the whole time. Oh, well. Here’s the next installment of Pop’s letters. This will be in two parts; the first part includes a good story about Pop rescuing a dog.
Mr. Harold Lufkin, V.P. Norfolk, Conn.
Newton Mfg. Co. Feb. 21, 1962
Newton, Iowa.Dear Mr. Lufkin:
First of all, thanks for your letter of the 12th and the nice assumption that I am at least half a salesman. I have the blues for sure this month, and especially so in that I guess I said something about Jan was for Mr. Peck and Feb. was for you, and I just can’t seem to buy a sale in Feb. this year.
So it cheered me up a bit to think that SOMEBODY thought I could sell anyway. I will give Mr. Paler his Executive “pile o gold” and I know he will be delighted with it, and it was certainly most thoughtful of you to send it, but there again is why YOU are the sparkplug. I remember, many years ago The Wadham’s Company in Torrington had a 75th anniversary, and you wrote him a nice letter about it. The old chap was pleased to no end, and al long as he lived (he died last year) I always had whatever business in this line that he bought. I forget just how it went, but it was something about anyone that had kept their doors open through all those years of wars, depressions, recessions Etc should be very proud of it, and you know I don’t think he ever gave it a thought until you wrote him that letter, and he was kind of proud after that. Anyway may God rest his soul in Peace. He was a fine old gentleman. Of course I have always liked older people anyway. Even when I was a boy I chose the companionship of much older boys than myself.
There now, enough of that. I’ll just cross this week off as a dead loss, and try to get going the few days that I have left of the month, knowing that somebody THINKS I can sell anyway.
Now I will go on to the Ford Times. How nice of you and the Mrs. to think of the “old salt”. It is a very interesting magazine and our local Ford dealer always sent me one until he finally decided that I was a “dyed in the wool, confirmed Pontiac man” which I sure as heck am, so I would have not seen the item which is of tremendous interest to me unless you had sent it along.
The first dory that I ever used was many, many years ago when I used to help an old Civil War gent (and he was nearly 80 then) do his haying. His field was near a part of Frenchman’s Bay (which you have seen) and in those days they used to use seaweed and kelp for fertilizer for the gardens and field, so when there was nothing else to do, I used to take the dory and go collect seaweed and kelp, and I can smell it to this day. What a clean, glorious smell.
However, to really admire the dory you have to see it handled by the people that practically live in it and those of course are the Grand Banks Fisherman, and even more expert the Pilots.
I see Lunenburg is mentioned in the article and I have been there as well as every seaport along the Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island Coastline, in order of “ports of call” on the Steam Yacht Sachem, owned by a gentleman from Philadelphia by the name of Taylor.
First we anchored at St. Andrews, New Brunswick, and from there we went on up to all the ports. Yarmouth, Chester, Mahone Bay, Shelburne, Halifax and what have you.
We took on a pilot at Shelburne, if I remember rightly and it was a very rough sea. Of course when you take on a pilot, you lower a “gangway” down the side of the Yacht, a couple of “dory men” land the pilot on the gangway, and he takes you into the harbor. If you are going to dock, he of course goes right in with you and stays aboard until you are tied up, if you are going to anchor, he pilots you to the anchorage and the dory men pick him up again.
Anyway, as I said it was a very rough sea, but never if I live to be a hundred will I forget the way those chaps handled that dory. Of course the timing had to be perfect, or else the dory would smash into the gangway, but those chaps just timed the “crest of the wave” just right, and the pilot stepped off as lightly as a feather, and those chaps pulled away on the crest of the next waves that came along in a manner that was almost uncanny. Believe me a “dory” is a rugged boat.
A few nights after Shelburne, we were in Mahone Bay, I think it was, and our own launches (motor powered) were tied to the boom. Each night one of us unfortunate sailors had to take a little French Poodle that belonged to Mrs. Taylor ashore for his nightly walk. Mr. Taylor I might add (and which I did not find out until too late) hated the dog.
The night that the chore fell to me to take the poodle ashore was, and that’s the usual situation in Nova Scotia, a bit nippy to say the least. I took the dog ashore, gave him his nightly stroll, and as I went to step off onto the gangway with the poodle in my arms, the launch man (not being as good as the dory men) hit the gangway head on, so I went into the sea, dog and all.
The first thing I spied when I came up was my white sailors hat and struck out for it thinking it was the dog, but one of the sailors on board shouted at me “that’s not the dog, he is over there”, so I swam over and got the little bugger, threw him up on the gangway, where one of the sailors ran down and got him, and then dragged my own half frozen carcass up on the gangway.
I went down in the engine room, stripped down, dried out and put on some dry clothes, and by the time I had gotten back on deck again, Mrs. Taylor was there gushing about what a hero I was to have saved “little Fritzie”.
Well you know you can just bet I thought I was quite a guy until I met the Captain on deck the next morning. He was an old schoolmate of mothers. He said “Leon, I always credited you with a few brains, but after last night’s episode I have changed my mind.” I was quite upset and said “Why, what did I do?” He said “It’s not what you did do, but what you didn’t do. The “ole man” hates that darn dog like poison, and if you had let him drown, I would not be in the least surprised if he might not have written you a check for a thousand this morning, as it is we are saddled with the damn mutt for the rest of the cruise.”
Tags: Pop's Letters
I’ll be away on vacation until the beginning of March. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this music video from The Bards of Balance.
You can keep an eye out for other videos on our YouTube site.
Tags: Restoring Balance
Pop tells of his varied experiences as a sailor and of his first jobs as a youth in Maine. He also worries near the end of the letter that circumstances may prevent any of his sons from getting college degrees. For the record, this proved to be one of many instances of needless worry for Pop.
Mr. Harold Lufkin, V.P. August 1, 1961
Newton Mfg. Co.
Newton, Iowa.
Dear Mr. Lufkin:
I will answer your letters of the 19th and 26th both at the same time.
Yep! I get a terrific thrill out of a “storm at sea.” Although believe it or not, these little ponds around here give me the creeps, they look so murky and dark, yet when we were over the Mindan Deeps in the Philippines (five miles straight down) I did not feel the slightest apprehension.
We were (all at the same time) in the second battle of the Philippines and also one of the worst Typhoons that had hit the old Pacific in 110 years, or so they said at the time and I could well believe it.
We were in a “Task Force” of some 1200 ships of all tonnage and character. The waves were so high that they went into the ventilators way up in sky control, and there was about two feet of water sloshing around in the after mess halls. The shields for the 20 millimeter guns were rolled up just like toilet paper from the terrific force of the water.
At the time I was looking through a little slot, way up in Sky control and on our Port side was the Battleship New Jersey. The waves would hit her, and huge as she was, she almost completely disappeared from sight, then slowly (like a submarine coming up) she would rise out of the sea, shake herself like a shaggy old sheep dog, and just for seconds you would see her whole outline, and then Wham! Another sea would hit her and she would be almost submerged again. It did not seem possible that she could survive. We were of course undergoing the same kind of treatment, being in the same sea and only a few hundred yards away, but you cannot (like a person) see yourself as others see you, so I was just fascinated in watching the New Jersey. As for my own ship, I had complete confidence that, angry as old Father Neptune was, that we would survive all the same.
Yes! A passenger is just a passenger, but a sailor is part of his ship and she is part of him. I don’t imagine there can be any love for a ship (especially in a typhoon) by a passenger, but the ship and the sailor must combine their efforts to survive.
Of course I have always had an intense love of the sea. My first money was earned, “treading hay” at the sum of ten cents a day, and the field was right side of the Ocean, down in Maine or up in Maine, whichever you prefer.
The smell of the “flats and seaweed” at low tide, and the lonely (but lovely) dry of the seagulls, were the first sounds of my boyhood. What is it they say about seagulls? Something about the lost souls of sailors or something like that I believe.
My first paying job was driving an ice wagon in Bar Harbor Maine for the old Brewer Ice Co. Believe me, it was hard work too. A hundred to a hundred and fifty pound piece of ice, carried up a couple flights of stairs maybe, on the back of a 16 year old boy is WORK. It was not too bad though as you eventually learn to kind of “balance the weight.” The worst job was of course filling up the huge coolers of the large cottages and the markets. They would take tons and tons at a time, and we had to get inside the cooler and stack it up, so as to take up every possible foot of space with ice.
It was really a nice job though. Many of the Irish maids at the cottages always left a bottle of home made root beer and a piece of cake or something for the iceman, and of course the iceman was not at all adverse to chatting with some of those “beautiful and completely unspoiled Irish girls.” Straight from “the old sod” they were, and as innocent and unaffected as the day they were born. The girls of today (to me at least) look very shoddy in comparison with them.
However to get back to the Sea. My route was on West St. in Bar Harbor, and that as you know, runs right along the seawall. At this time of year (in fact exactly) in August, the British ships and the American ships were anchored in the Harbor for the annual Tennis matches at The Bar Harbor club. In addition to that, there would be as many as forty to fifty big Yachts lying at anchor in the Harbor. J.P. Morgans, Corsair. A big, black steam yacht. The Normahaul which belonged to Vincent Astor. The Alondra which belonged to Atwater Kent, the Lone Star, the Atlantic (a beautiful sail yacht which was always in the Cup race of Sir Thomas Lipton), and many, many others. It has been a long, long time, but I used to be able to tell the name of every Yacht in the Atlantic, the minute she came over the horizon.
At any rate, by the middle of the second summer on the Ice wagon, I could stand it no longer. Captain Parker, who ran the Ships chandlery asked me one morning if I would like a job on a Yacht, that the Sachem had lost one of their sailors and was leaving for Nova Scotia in the morning and must have a man.
I rushed back to the office of Brewer Ice Company and quit right then and there, and at 4 A. M. the next morning, we were heading out to Sea for Nova Scotia, and after that I just never got it out of my system. To this day I would “jump at the chance” to be called back into the Navy, but of course I am in my second fifty years, so I guess the hope is a dim one. Also I could not bear to leave Janet and the boys at this late stage in life.
Enough of the Sea. Yes! Bobby was a very lucky boy indeed, and we as his parents are very grateful to God indeed, that he was not only spared his life, but that outside of having to limp for a week, he is apparently just as good as ever.
I am a little upset (nothing unusual for me) this morning as David was warned yesterday by the Draft Board, that in spite of the fact that he has only one and one third more years at college that he still may be taken. I am both heartbroken and furious. Furious as all this Administration preaches is that Russia is ahead of us and that we must catch up, and then they consider cutting off David’s career at this age. Heartbroken because neither Ernie or Pete finished and David has the “stuff to see it through”. I guess I am not destined to have any College Graduates for Sons, but I do have five fine sons and that is something to be very thankful for indeed.
Well I have to take Dave back to Springfield now. He works days in a child study home taking care of disturbed children and nights as a waiter in Vincent’s Steak HOUSE OUTSIDE OF Springfield. (Sorry the keys slipped), so he is a pretty busy and tired boy, but has nearly enough money for his first semester already.
Hope to see you and the Mrs. during our lovely fall, except that if lack of rain continues, the foliage will be pretty dry looking.
Sincerely,
Leon R. Sinclair
Tags: Pop's Letters
Emerson Street is a short street with a 90 degree turn in the middle. My block is the east side of Emerson Street below the turn. Last week’s Sense of Place featured the brown house that belonged to Bill Hurst when I grew up. When he died a few years ago that left me the longest remaining resident of Emerson Street. The other houses, going from right to left, belonged to Colwell, Sinclair and O’Connor. O’Connor was the first to move away from the street during my lifetime, about when I was ten. The MacBurnie’s moved in, a large family including one son (Jim) who was my age.
Tags: Sense of Place
Last week I made a couple entries regarding the conditions of Haiti and the influence of our government on the western hemisphere. This would seem to be leading up to a big plea for giving generously to Haiti. Well, yes and no.
Despite some entrenched misconceptions to the contrary, the United States is not all that generous with our foreign aid. Oh, sure enough, we give more in foreign aid in an absolute sense than other countries, since we control so much of the world’s wealth. Yet we have tended to be second or third to last in proportional giving out of developed countries. Our biggest competitors for last place are Greece and Italy. This does not necessarily mean we should be giving more, however.
The first thing to keep in mind is that foreign aid is more of a symptom of centralized global economics than a solution to that centralization. Referring to a metaphor I use often, if the United States and other developed countries can be thought of as corporate “managers” of the global economy, we are much more comfortable giving the developing “secretaries” of the world a generous Christmas bonus for sticking to their lower status role than a training program that genuinely levels the playing field for becoming a “manager.”
There are two practical solutions that would benefit the “secretaries” of the world. One of them is to give them the training to compete effectively in a global economy. This would mean establishing their own corporations where capital gains end up in the producing country, rather than open the door for multinational corporations where the capital gains become a capital drain away from the producing country. Or another effective solution would be to simply leave developing countries alone to develop at their own pace and rate. The widespread famines affecting developing countries do not result from their own initiatives; they result from being tied to our apron strings and having to develop under the conditions and timetable we dictate.
There is a book called The Road to Hell by Michael Maren that gives a more detailed, sobering account of the problems of foreign aid than you will find here. Globalization + foreign aid = catastrophe. The equation we should be shooting for is decentralized autonomy – foreign aid dependence = sustainability.
That’s easy to say sitting here with my affluent lifestyle. I will concede that Haiti desperately needs aid; we just need to be mindful which global equation we are shooting for. Government and corporate aid have been generally bad for countries; there are too many strings attached that steers them towards globalization under conditions best for us. Private and nonprofit aid do not have this problem, yet some of these charities are more interested in making a living for themselves, diluting the value of giving.
In general, I would look towards charitable organizations that have their overhead covered independently of the service they provide. I can make two concrete recommendations: Church World Services and Habitat for Humanity. There are other worthy organizations as well. The bottom line is that the aid should be of the nature that leads to decentralization and greater sustainability, rather than globalization and greater dependency on developed countries.
Tags: Restoring Balance
Pop shares a story about my kind-hearted brother Pete and about his days in New York City during Prohibition.
Springfield College, Springfield, Mass.
Mr. Harold Lufkin, V.P. Feb. 15, 1961
Newton Mfg. Co.
Newton, Iowa.
Dear Mr. Lufkin:
Thanks a lot for enlightening me on the subject of Colfax! I wish that like so many nice things you say about me that I were worthy of them, but the fact is that I have a very poor memory.
I do think though that we are inclined to remember the things that are pleasant and to forget the ones that are not. I suppose if that were not true it would be almost impossible to live in this sordid old World.
I guess, being somewhat of a dreamer myself, that the story appealed to me when I read it. “Pete” (Heaven help him) has quite a bit of “the ole man” in him, in that he is, as you say a good deal of a dreamer, and an idealist. Even when he was very small he always was dragging stray dogs, cats AND humans home. I remember one night when I was reading, and it was rather late, that Pete crept into the pantry and filled a bag full of stuff, not dreaming that anyone was awake in the house. I came out into the kitchen just as he was going out the door and asked him what he was up to. He said, “Dad, it is just as well you don’t know.” I got kind of peeved and said, “What the Hell, I think I am supposed to know, now come on and tell me just what is going on.” He was RIGHT! Some kid had escaped from Reform School and had been living in a cave in Norfolk for a week and was going hungry and had frostbitten toes on both feet, and my son Pete was feeding him but did not dare to bring him home. To make a long story short, he told me that he knew that he was doing wrong, but that he did not want to get me involved as an “accessory” or whatever you call it. Anyway I went down to the Cave with him, brought the kid up to the house and kept him for a couple of days, I then took him over to the Police Barracks and explained that he had no Mother, that his stepmother beat the Hell out of him and that I thought he had some good stuff in him. I advised him to serve out his term and then go into the Navy (my pet service). He did so and got along fine and is now happily married Etc.
You know if I could conform I would be a better salesman, but I often find myself in the Summer especially, stopping side of a Lake, or side of the road looking at a Mountain and just wishing that I was a million miles away, and I have to pinch myself every day to realize that I am married and have five beautiful sons.
I have to conform these days, and a great deal of it is due to my fine wife and to you. Between the two of you, you have enabled me to sort of (as you say) “roll with the punches”, but there are times when I still get very rebellious and don’t see any sense to any of it, so in a way I suppose in spite of my sputtering that I understand my son “Pete” much better than even his mother does.
I got to Heck out of Ellsworth, Maine on the next train after I graduated. My first Hotel was the Mills Hotel in New York, a Hotel for bums. Of course I did not know that. I had about $400 in my pocket at the time, but I had heard stories that as little money as that was spent in one night in New York. I barricaded the door and put the money in my sock, and the next day asked my boss (The Manager of Childs Restaurant at 31 Cortland St in NY if I could get something a little better. He said, “How much money have you got?” and I said, “About $400.” He said, “Hell they can put you up at the Waldorf for that.” Anyway I got to room with a chap and we paid $6 each for a room at 66th and Broadway and had a fine time. It was right next door to the Marie Antoinette Hotel, which was the hangout of Peaches and Daddy Browning at the time. That was in the “Roaring Twenties” and I had my share of the Roaring.
That was the days of the Ziegfield Follies, Geo. Whites Scandals, Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and what have you. Also the days of the Gangster (In NY the Gas House Gang) the Speakeasy Etc. I will never forget as long as I live while strolling with my roommate around Columbus Circle one night a guy passed me a card. It said Roland W. End, Interior Decorator, Call Susquehanna 5050. I asked my roommate what the heck I would want with an Interior Decorator and he doubled up and liked to laugh himself sick. He said, “Why that is a bootlegger.” ME and my old state of Maine innocence. Sure enough he was! Guaranteed to deliver a quart of Gin anywhere in NY or Brooklyn within ten minutes. He did it too! I tried him out.
On hot nights in the summer, myself and Bill used to sleep in Central Park, with a good suit of clothes on, and money in our pockets. I wonder what would happen to us now? I well remember one St. Patrick’s night when I had a little more than I should have and at that time I roomed in Brooklyn. On the B.M.T. Subway on the way home, some little old Irish lady sat down side of me and said “Sure now and do you think you can find your station?” I said, “Oh sure I am O.K., but she got out of me where I got off to and where I roomed and believe it or not got off with me and saw me into a Taxi and home. I’ll bet she was 80 if she was a day. I would just like to see someone in NY, or for that matter, any place else take that much interest in anyone today.
Well Dave has come back from his studies so I guess I will have to give up his Typewriter. They have a Gymnastic event up here tonight and I was the only one that could come.
He is doing very well, but is a worrier like myself and wonders how I am ever going to get the money for him to finish, but he only has one more year and I will manage that somehow. He is a real nice boy and the ONLY one of the entire Sinclair family that realizes what money is and that means EVERYBODY. If I had any money to leave my family, Dave is the one person that I would choose to administer it. The rest of them don’t know a dollar from a cent.
See you again when I get a typewriter.
Leon.
P.S. Thanks for your kind comments on “Pete” also.
Tags: Pop's Letters
