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Morton Marcus: As part of these rituals, I began to play a strange game that was to have far-reaching consequences. I'm sure the game arose because I couldn't draw. Even in kindergarten art periods, I created the most wretched stick

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figures saluting the flag, or with hands joined setting off on a smiling family outing. To this day, my one painterly achievement is drawing the head of Dick Tracy, which I render with enough resemblance to that hard jawed fighter of comic book

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crime that most people recognize him without my prompting. This deficiency in my artistic abilities inspired me to paint word pictures instead. I started playing this word game when I was seven years old. This is how it came about: I was at the

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Hudson school in New Rochelle, New York and my room was adjacent to the house mother's. She was an elderly heavyset woman, who always wore gray uniform-like dresses with starched white collars and cuffs. She would get up at 5:30

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each morning and turn on the radio, first listening to gospel music, the news of the war in Europe, and then Arthur Godfrey. That was her ritual, and it took place an hour and a half before she woke the boys and girls in her house. But the radio woke me

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and soon I was looking forward to hearing the church music and opening my eyes in the pre-dawn dark to see the plane of light outlined at the bottom of the old woman's door. By overhearing the news reports on her radio, my world was enlarged beyond the

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school grounds in New Rochelle. World War 2 was raging in Europe and the Pacific, and strange names like Guadalcanal, Batan, Midway, Nanking, Stalingrad, Leningrad, and the Urals, snaked down through my ears, into my eustachian tubes to exit from my

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lips, as I murmured, their names like litanies, over and over again. These were the kinds of notions and things that scampered through my brain. Each morning as I lay undisturbed for the

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hour and a half before the other students woke, and the day began. And as I murmured the names I heard on the radio in the other room, I thought about the experiences of the previous day, or the dreams from which I had just awoken, or the longings

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from my mother, who was in such faraway places as Frisco or Little Rock, Arkansas, I would create pictures of those events or places. Those pictures were drawn with the words I'd mouth from the piles of words I would pick through like a scavenging

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bird, discarding some, choosing others until I had words that best described what I was seeing in my head. Soon I was playing this word game throughout the day, snatching the words that would capture how the wind moved in the trees across the road or

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what the cruel mathematics teacher looked like when he was angry or what the sound resembled when all hundred or so boys and girls were let loose on afternoons to run wild on the athletic field in winter snow around that same field edged

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with fat green maple and walnut trees in spring twilights. Was this the beginning of my becoming a writer? I have no doubt it was. Did I know that at the time? Of course not. I was just a seven year old kid playing a lonely boy's game, a

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game like the rituals, which gave me a sense of my place in the world, and kept me from wondering why my mother who called me on the phone every week or two from one faraway place or another, wouldn't visit me or take me home.

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So that is a memory from my very, very early years, and there are a lot of different kinds of memories and I will sort of just jump around and give you some memories. I've finally got through high school and was on a lot of athletic

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scholarships but I'm afraid I was a basketball bum and I flunked out of high school and lost my basketball career as well. But I immediately joined the airforce and I'll read some stories about being in the Air Force. And this was when I was

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in the air force for a couple of years. AS A SERGEANT WITH A CLASS A PASS as well as the top secret clearance, I was allowed to fly anywhere in the country on any plane that came through my base. During the last days of

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September in 1956, I had the opportunity to fly from Illinois to Washington DC, on a C-47. There was a good chance I could get a hop as they were called from there to Hamilton Air Force Base in New York, which was near where my girlfriend and future

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wife lived. But just after we landed at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, torrential rains and snapping winds, the unexpectedly powerful end of a hurricane named Flossie that roared up the East Coast from the Caribbean caused the flight

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line to be closed down. I sat in the cafeteria near the runway with a dozen other stranded officers and enlisted men and with them glumly drank cup after cup of coffee. The officer on duty informed us that we would be put up in guest quarters, but

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that didn't make us any happier. It was evident that everyone in the cafeteria imagined their plans for the weekend were ruined. As night fell, so did our complaints. And soon we sat in a silence that emphasized the sound of the rain lashing the

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large windows. Suddenly the inner door to the cafeteria was flung open and two full colonels in Class A blue uniforms rushed into the room: One was short and stocky, and the other was tall and thin. The short one led the way and was all bluster and

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irritation, "Where is the flight line officer, who's seen him, huh?" He said, his lips working below a thick brown mustache. Before we could answer, the duty officer appeared from behind another door. "You closed down to the base?" the little colonel

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asked him, his chin thrusts forward, "Yes, sir," the officer, a captain, answered. "Well, it's not closed down for me. I've got to get to New York," he said. And with the back of his hand, he slapped the briefcase locked to his tall

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companion's chest. That briefcase meant urgent top secret information and that the little colonel's companion was a courier. "I'm sorry, sir, I can't do that," "You can and you will, captain," the little colonel replied. "Only if you

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assign responsibility for whatever happens to you and your aircraft," "Of course I will and I've got my own plane. I'll sign for that too." The captain went to get the responsibility form which the colonel signed, then dismissed him and turned toward

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us. "I'm going to Hamilton in New York. I got a Beechcraft ten-seater, anyone want to join me?" Even though the colonel's invitation provided us with a possibility of restoring our weekend plans, everyone hesitated as the wind and rain

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kept slamming the cafeteria windows. Finally, a womans air force sergeant said, "I'll go," and six of us followed her lead. The duty officer provided us with two jeeps and we drove out to the plane. The Jeep was enclosed by a canvas shell, but

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we were soaked through by the time we boarded the twin engine Beechcraft. When we had cinched ourselves in, the little colonel turned in the pilot's seat, and said in a grave, calm voice, "And I think you better put the chutes on that are under your

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seats." The seven of us looked at each other alarmed, the little colonel who had seemed so self-assured in the cafeteria obviously wasn't, but it was too late now. We all sat rigidly as the colonel radioed the control tower, taxied down the empty

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runway and took off into the rain and darkness, the plane literally swinging left and right. Once we were airborne, the plane bounced from one air pocket to another, or unexpectedly dropped hundreds of feet is if the earth was intent

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on yanking me and my stomach to destruction. At times, the engines groaned and seemed about to stall. These conditions were continuous, but I got used to them enough to observe the big colonel sitting with his head bent forward in the co-pilot

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seat, he was obviously asleep. He hadn't said a word during the show down in the cafeteria or the plane, and in the aircraft single enclosed space, all of us I could smell the aroma of alcohol from his breath. Meanwhile, the little colonel

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was radioing control towers at checkpoints as well as operating the plane, his arms flying back and forth, his hands frantically moving from one instrument to another, as he single handedly drove the Beechcraft through the storm. Soon the seven of us were

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aware of what was going on, and we're nodding to each other with concerned expressions, all of us bolt up right in our seats. We flew under these conditions for two hours, finally coming into radio contact with Hamilton, or rather with a control tower in

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New Jersey, 50 miles away from the base. He was assigned to have us land blind, he told us, by radioing us in or by what is better known as having us perform an instrument landing. But there was a plane ahead of us a C-47 transporting a number

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of military dependents, women and children from New Foundland. We listened as the New Jersey based operator guided the C-47 into Hamilton step by step, the voice of the C-47's pilot becoming more and more tense until it rose to a shout as the

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plane overshot the runway and we found out later nosed over in the marshy muck beyond it. "Holy shit," said the little colonel, but that was the only sound in our plane except for the whirring engines, the storm around us and the frantic voice

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of the C-47 pilot yelling to anyone who would listen. We circled the base in a wide pattern. "You still there, flight 703?" The control tower operator finally said, "Yeah," the colonel answered. "Keep circling, we had difficulties

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with the plane ahead of you." "I heard, but I'm running out of fuel." "I'll have you down soon, but ambulances and fire trucks are on the runway now." The little colonel didn't answer, we were all thinking the same thing. We circled for 10

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minutes, the wind and rain buffeting us back and forth, then the colonel called the control tower, "I'm almost on empty." "Five minutes, just five minutes," was the reply. Finally, the control tower operator began to guide us in. I

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was holding my breath more numb than frightened and I'm sure everyone else including the little colonel was doing the same thing. We descended through the darkness, the colonel following the point by point instructions. Suddenly, the

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runway rose before us. We touched down, and like the C-47, overshot our mark. But the Beechcraft was so small, the colonel was able to break the aircraft and guide it to a halt before we slid past the end of the runway. The colonel taxied

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the plane to the lighted buildings in the middle of the flight line, and cut the engines. We sat there in silence, as the colonel expelled a huge breath and sat quietly, regaining his composure. Then he radiod the control tower, "We're

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down, thanks New Jersey," he said and switched off the radio. Next, he slapped the tall colonel on the shoulder, "Wake up, Harry, were there," he said, "What? What?" said the tall colonel, and the little colonel as if he hadn't heard him,

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continued with his old bravado, "That was one for the books. But what did I tell you, huh? We made it." And he reached over, flipped open the briefcase slung across his companion's chest, reached inside and withdrew two slips of paper, "Yes, sir!" he

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said and held up the two slips, "Two tickets to the first game of the World Series. I told you we'd make it here in time." The seven of us sat in stunned silence. All of us, I'm sure, realizing how close our brush with death had been, and how

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unnecessarily foolhardy the fight had been as well. What I couldn't understand then, and can't understand now is not only did the little colonel offer to take us with him but what in the first place had compelled him to fly to New York through a killer

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hurricane, that blustery Friday night, when he knew the World Series wasn't scheduled to begin until the following Wednesday. So that is some of the strange experiences, some of them very, very funny and let me just give you another one here.

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I HAD GOTTEN OFF A FULL DAY OF KP DUTY and have gone to bed immediately falling into an exhausted sleep, only to be woken by shouts and other agitated noises of bodies rushing back and forth, "Up, up, up!" yelled several voices. And

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before I knew it, my bed had been tipped over and an air policeman was standing over me. "Get your ass up, Marcus, and over to headquarters." "What?" I groaned still half-asleep, "The base is flooded and General Martinson wants everyone at

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headquarters. There's a truck outside." I wrestled my way out of the overturned bed-clothes. By the time I climbed into my fatigues and brogans, the barracks was empty, and the truck had left. "The base flooded? What was the joke?"

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I left the barracks and trudged to headquarters a quarter of a mile away. Sheets of rain was streaming out of the night, I cursed and grumbled, stepped off a curve and sank up to my waist in water. The rain had started after I'd gone to bed and the

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base, which was a drain marsh had returned to its natural state in the unexpected downpour. I waited and swam to headquarters, which was swarming with activity and lighted flashlights. The electricity had gone out. Over the commotion

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general Martinson, the deputy headquarters commander, was bellowing orders left and right, "Who can swim? Who has a top secret clearance?" he kept saying, as I approached, he caught sight of me. "What about you, Marcus?" "Yes, sir," I

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said, "Yes, sir, what?" "I have a top secret clearance and can swim, sir." "Good, sergeant, give him a forty-five and a belt." He said to an air policeman. I stripped to my underwear, strapped on the webbed belt, loaded the heavy

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pistol and jammed it into the holster as the general briefed me. "The basement's flooded," he said, and I don't have to tell you the vault down there is vulnerable. This is the kind of situation the commie sympathizers have been waiting

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for. I want you in those three men over there to go to the opposite sides of the basement and patrol the vault." "Patrol, sir?" "Yes, dammit, don't be so thick. I want you to tread water in front of the vault at ten-minute intervals, then trade

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off with the airman on your side of the building." "Sir?" "Just do it." And do it I did, tread water for six chilly hours with the three others, each of us splashing about and spitting at the basement ceiling, two feet above our heads, protecting

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whatever important documents were in the submerged room size vault from possible communist infiltrators, or worse, Russian frogmen who might make it to the middle of Illinois in a sudden spring flood somehow knowing that the headquarters vault was

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susceptible to their evil intentions. But there was another kind of experience in the airforce and I will leave my airforce stories with this section. Here it goes. LIKE MUCH OF THE COUNTRY the military was segregated until

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after World War II. In the summer of 1948, one year after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier of Major League Baseball, President Truman issued Executive Order 9987, which called for a committee to oversee the integration of the

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armed forces as quickly as possible. By 1950, the integration was complete. There had been turmoil in the ranks over the desegregation decision, much of it quiet and subtle, but some of it involved rioting and individual acts of violence,

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almost all of which was kept from the public. One of the hushed up riots had occurred in the abandoned section of the base, where I had been sent to on an ill-fated TDY assignment, which I'll talk about later. Rumor had it that several black

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airmen had been killed in a barracks burned down, which said the rumor mongers was why the area had been closed. By the time I enlisted four years later, whites, blacks, browns and yellows were living in grudging acceptance of each

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other. And there were few outward signs of racism, nor did the majority of recent enlistees think much about the subject, since we're all enduring the same hardships together, which as any veteran will tell you, brings men closer emotionally

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than any other experience. This was the atmosphere in which the following tale occurred. It was 1957 and there were ten or twelve blacks among the hundred or so enlisted men living in the barracks under my

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supervision. I was a barrack sergeant. One of the blacks was a light-skinned twenty-two year old named Steve, who worked in the embryonic and little understood computer field. He avoided the other blacks and they in turn avoided him. No one

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seemed to know why the separation had occurred or why it continued. The situation was noticeable, not only because Steve kept to himself, but because the rest of the blacks were always together, joking, jive talking, trading phonograph

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records, and generally showing the solidarity that made Steve's exclusion more apparent than if he had been white. I had bunked next to Steve before I was assigned my barrack sergeant's room at the end of the open bay, and although I tried to be

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friendly and gauge him in conversation, he would only nod a murmur in response, and otherwise ignore me. The other white guys in the barracks were leery of Steve for other reasons, although he did nothing to outrightly offend anyone. Two

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of his habits, in particular, riled them: the first was certainly strange and occurred every night just before lights out, Steve would climb into bed and tuck the sheets and blankets tightly around him on both sides, so he seemed to have

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strapped himself to the mattress, as if he feared he might fall out of bed while he was sleeping. This habit, which was more like a ritual, proved to be a dangerous practice one night, when I was alerted to a commotion in the bay outside my

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room, "Sarge, sarge!" several voices called. I had already heard shouts and the sounds of scuffling and rushed from the room in my undershirt and boxer-shorts to see Steve helplessly lashed beneath the covers with a big black airman

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kneeling on top of him and punching him in the face. Several black barracks members stood around the bed, cheering the attacker on. I rushed toward them yelling, "Hey, cut it," or something like that. A white friend grabbed my arm and hissed

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in my ear, "Don't get involved," but I yanked my arm away and descended on the attacker, grabbing his raised right arm and pulling it back. He turned to me eyes blazing and spat, "Like go my arm, mother. Let go you white-" "Harley, it's the

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Sarge!" yelled one of the blacks around the bed. And the attacker, who was not a barracks member hesitated, his arm and shoulder rigid in my grip. We went nose to nose. "Get your ass out of here you hear me?" I rasped. He stared into my eyes,

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wavering between one decision and another. "Get the hell out of here before I write you up!" I shouted, still looking him in the eye. Reluctantly, he dismounted and was led away by the group around the bed. When I tried to examined Steve, he

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turned away. I turned his head toward me. There was a lot of blood leaking from his nose and several abrasions, but nothing serious. I loosed the blankets and Steve rolled over. "You okay?" I asked. "Leave me be." "I'm asking you if you're okay.

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You want to go to the infirmary?" "Just leave me be," and that was how it ended. The next day I asked him if he wanted to prefer charges, but he ignored my question and walked away. The other black barracks

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members told me that the attacker, Harley, was drunk but an okay guy, and he came to me contritely and told me as the other had that Steve was no good. I reported the incident to the squadron top sergeant but without Steve's statement,

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nothing could be done. Steve was a man alone, and nothing I or anyone else could do would pierce his stony exterior. The white barracks members found Steve's second quirky habit more difficult to accept because it affected them directly. In the

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end, it explained all the questions, Steve's anti-social behavior it raised. Every morning Steve would get up half an hour before everyone else and shower. These showers was so lengthy that by the time he was finished, he had used the

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barracks entire supply of hot water. Several airmen, both black and white, asked him to make his shower time shorter, and when that failed, they asked me to officially direct him to cease and desist his overly-long bathing practices. I talked to

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him, he nodded as usual, walked away and continued taking his overlong, hot-water-depleting showers. The blacks grumbled and glared at him. But the whites were furious and resolved to surprise him while he was showering and force him to stand

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under a blast of cold water, so he could experience what everyone else went through because of him. Several of the white guys asked their black barracks mates to join them but the blacks turned away mumbling something or other, which was

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loosely interpreted as protestations that they wanted nothing to do with whatever happened. But it seemed to those who approached them, that the blacks knew something they weren't saying.

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I was apprised of all this afterward, by the same way to airman had grabbed my arm and told me not to get involved in Steve's beating. He told me now that he and twenty other white barracks members had waited until Steve was in the shower,

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and then had crept down to the latrine as quietly as possible, with the intention of grabbing him unawares, and holding him in place as they turned off the hot water and opened the cold water spigot full force. The shower water was so hot he said that

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the latrine was blanketed in a steamy fog when they entered. He and several others were in the lead and he said he would never forget what he saw. Quote, "Steve was standing on one of the last showers in the shower room, his back toward us,

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scrubbing himself all over. At first we couldn't make out any more than that. Then it was clear he wasn't scrubbing himself with his hand with a stiff brush of some sort. I didn't get what was going on at first, but Norman Karabetis(?)

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did, and they turned and push their way out of the crowd. Christ, but ignore him as he passed and then I understood. Steve was trying to scrape the color off his skin, I swear it. I felt sick and turned away with the others. And by the time I

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was out of the latrine, a handful of guys were following me. No one made a sound. Everyone just looked, understood, and got out of there without saying a word. Then I guess Steve turned around and yelled something when he saw the

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guys who were left, but they just turned around and exited with the rest of us. It was creepy. What's going on with What's going on with that guy? That was a rhetorical question. that guy?

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And the teller knew the answer as well as I and everyone else did. As for the ten or twelve black guys in the barracks, they didn't want to hear anything about the incident, and for a few days, wouldn't look at any of us in the eye. Nor do they

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approach Steve with sympathy. Instead, they glared at him with tightened lips and expressions that can only be described as contempt. They had known what he was doing all along, and as far as I was concerned, that explained their ostracizing him.

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Steve was a casualty of racism in America, whose wound was visible to them daily. It was a wound they didn't want to see or acknowledge because it was deep and festering, and they feared they carried pieces of it like shrapnel somewhere in

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themselves. Unknown: [music] Morton Marcus: And you've been listening to excerpts from my memoir that's, "Striking Through the Masks: A Literary Memoir,"

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by yours truly. And as I said, this Thursday, March 13th, at 7pm at Holy Cross Parish Hall, 170 High Street in Santa Cruz, the book will be launched, it will not be in bookstores until the next day, and the book launch will include friends and

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well known Santa Cruzians. I'm reading from the book, and that will include California Poet Laureate Al Young, Taoist author and book designer, Deng Ming-Dao. And such well-known Santa Cruzians as the poet Ellen Bass, Jeffrey Dunn, James D.

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Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Sandy Leyden, George Ow, and finally, Cheryl Anderson conducting members of Cantiamo! and the Symphonic Chorus in two of my poems, which were performed last year by them at Carnegie Hall. So we'll be

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reading more of the book and I'm going to be reading some pictures of writers when we finished with what is now our public announcements section. Well, the Poetry Show on KUSP is supported in part by a grant from Complete Mailing Service

00:27:50.400 - 00:28:12.750

located in the Harvey West Business Park. Complete Mailing Service, pushing the envelope for Santa Cruz County since 1956. Complete Mailings Service at, and this is a telephone number, 425-5556, okay. Also Sunday night at nine, KUSP

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presents "From the Bookshelf" hosted by Gary Shapiro. Each week Gary presents a spoken word program with stories, authors, and special guests; join us this evening at 9pm following the Poetry Show on your Central Coast Public Radio KUSP.

00:28:30.480 - 00:28:43.680

Unknown: Is it your dream to work at a radio station? Do you frequently talk on the phone? Well look no further. We're looking for volunteers to answer phones for KUSP's Spring Pledge Drive March 13th through the 21st. For more information, call

00:28:43.680 - 00:28:45.570

476-2800.