Stories

Six Words: Field, Inject, Original, Hunter, Suntan, Bomb

On our first trip to South Africa we used Ntaba Tours. Our tour director was a handsome, suntanned man named Robin Mountain. Robin chose the name Ntaba for his company because it is Xhosa for Mountain. Xhosa is one of the eleven official languages of South Africa. Robin speaks several of them. Xhosa is spelled X-h-o-s-a where the X is a click and the h is silent, so it should sound like click-osa. Try it. I’ve been practicing since I started this story Friday night.

Although Robin and his wife, Stella, live in Frankfort, Kentucky, they are originally from the Cape Town area in South Africa. He’d been in the army and I think he’d been a hunter, although when we knew him, he hunted, like me, with a camera in fields and forests.

Over dinner one day, as we got to know Robin, he dropped the bomb about what he did previously and what brought him to America. He was an expert in the artificial insemination of bees! Undoubtedly, you are wondering the same things we did. How do you get the material to inject, what kind of a needle do you use, how do you do it? He came to the U.S. to be a professor at a university in California, and eventually at a university in Kentucky. But he loved South Africa and the safari experience, and leading tours let him go back often to visit his mother. The business thrived and is still going. I still get email a couple of times a year from Robin and Stella.

If you want to hear the click sound used by a fluent speaker, do a search for Pata Pata. You’ll find a Youtube link to Miriam Makeba singing it on the Ed Sullivan show, and she does it seamlessly.

Six Words: Sell, Compartment, Straw, Certain, Penetrate, Garage

During the night that I spent in the Richardson city jail, I was very surprised to see someone come in with a balaclava covering his face. I didn’t know why the jailers would let someone in wearing that disguise, or why they would allow him to keep it on. I didn’t even have to ask. The jailers told me.

He was an undercover officer and the balaclava was so that neither prisoners nor their families or friends would be able to recognize or to identify him if he penetrated a criminal group. Whether he was penetrating an auto chop shop operating in a garage, or a drug or counterfeiting operation, it was important that the bad guys not know that he was a cop. It’s a dangerous job and everyone wants to be certain that he is as safe as he can be.

He might be acting as a strawman, buying something that the bad guys are selling. I don’t know what other roles he might play.

Sometime later a man that I hadn’t seen before walked past the jailers desk toward the compartment that leads to the exit and the jailer who monitors the cameras and doors let him out. The jailers asked if I recognized him. Nope, I replied. They told me he is the man who came in wearing the balaclava. I’m guessing that he had probably changed clothes too, although I really don’t remember.

I do hope you are surprised that I spent a night in jail. I’ve debated whether to just end the true story there, or to explain. I haven’t decided.

Six Words: Minimum, Slave, Wrestle, Girlfriend, Lamp, Foreign

There are subjects that are difficult to talk about, but that are sometimes necessary to talk about. There are lessons to be learned by shining a lamp on history, history that is sometimes an example of greatness and sometimes an example of things that we wish were foreign to our history. Things that you wouldn’t have a casual conversation with a girlfriend about, but ideas that, at a minimum, should be discussed and wrestled with. One of those things is slavery and not just in the ways we all have heard about.

Most of us, I think, aren’t aware of how much slavery influenced our Constitution. For example, the Preamble to the Constitution says “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, . . .” Part of that “domestic tranquility” was making sure that there could not be a slave rebellion, even in places where black slaves greatly outnumbered white people. The “Blessings of Liberty” did not apply, obviously, to slaves.

But talking about it, or worse, teaching students about it, challenges the image that many of our fellow Americans would like to believe. Which history have we taught? Which history should we teach?

I yield the soapbox.

Six Words: Jet, Triangle, Theft, Initial, Wear, Find

The Bermuda Triangle is an area of the Atlantic Ocean between Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico. Dozens of ships and airplanes, both jets and non-jets, have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. There is a reason it is also called The Devils Triangle.

It’s impossible to know when the initial disappearances occurred. When Christopher Columbus sailed through the area on his first voyage to the New World, he reported that a great flame of fire crashed into the sea one night. William Shakespeare’s The Tempest may have been based on a shipwreck in the Devil’s Triangle.

Efforts are always made to find the ships and planes that go missing, but there are many, many cases, some famous, some not so famous, where nothing is found. It is as if aliens spirit them away in bizarre thefts.

As I wrote this little essay, I had an idea that I should probably share with the Coast Guard at the very least. I’m going to recommend that every person, whether passenger or crew, that sails or flies through the Triangle wear a Gaines Ranch emergency call button. When someone is lost or in trouble, or as they’re being stolen, they can push their button and Wanda, Howard, Elise or another Concierge will immediately know their location and help will be on the way.

Six Words: Soak, Function, Snarl, Mass, Scrape, Nerve

One of the greatest pleasures that a person can have is to go outdoors at night, preferably under a clear sky, take off all of your clothes and immerse yourself in a hot tub or spa. Soaking in water between about 98 and 103 degrees, you don’t feel your mass, your mind slows its functions, and you are near nirvana. If you’ve been careful, as you should, you haven’t scraped yourself or pinched a nerve while you entered. If someone tells you it’s time to get out, the common, and 100% appropriate response, is to snarl and tell them just a few more minutes.

Six Words: Alarm, Pie, Parameter, Flavor, Law, Correspond

A question that there is no reason to ask is: Can an engineer bake a pie? Would the flavor matter?

The answer is: of course an engineer can bake a pie. The first thing the engineer would do is to establish the parameters for the pie. Next, ingredients would be acquired. Then, an early step in the process would be to preheat the oven. Some people would simply ask what temperature the oven should be set to, but the corresponding question for an engineer might be how to apply laws of heat transfer and thermodynamics to the baking process. This would also assure that no smoke alarms would be set off. The calculations would also take into account whether the pie was going to be apple or cherry.

Why only apple or cherry you may ask. Because when you start thinking about kitchens and thermodynamics, you obviously start thinking about refrigerators and freezers, and that leads you to thinking about ice cream, and then that transitions to pie ala mode. So obviously the pie has to be apple or cherry. No one orders pecan pie ala mode.

Six Words: Copy, Needle, Extort, Shadows, Distinct, Spine

At this time of year, a time of gift giving and gift exchanges, there is one gift that seems to lurk in the shadows. Some folks with strong spines will argue that there are distinctive variations, while others will argue that there is only basic type and any variations are mere copies. This gift is nothing like a multi-layered, crème filled torte. Although it is a gift that lasts for ages, and it looks aged, you would never get away with calling it an ex-torte.

By now, you’re probably on pins and needles wondering what this gift is. It is of course, the gift that is said to circle the world, passed unopened from recipient to recipient, year after year. It is – drum roll please – a fruitcake!

Six Words: Unanimous, Learn, Class, Process, Layer, Stage

It’s unanimous
That it is a process,
Plus perhaps a class,
That skills and knowledge you amass,
Learned layer by layer as you age,
Are things that help
To become a star of screen and stage.

Six Words: Generate, Shine, Wedding, Maximum, Visual, Ground

The wedding venue was designed to generate maximum visual impact. The grounds were immaculate. The silverware shone. Even the doorknobs were polished to a high gloss. The staff was well trained. The proprietors nervously awaited an opportunity to excel. All that was missing were clients.

Six Words: Shelf, Paint, Transaction, Headline, Confidence, Train

This story is a little long, but I hope it has you on the edge of your seats as you share my adventure. It is a true story. About 43 years ago – and I’m finding it very hard to believe I’m old enough to say that – I had the good fortune to have to be in Paris for a meeting. That was after spending a week in Stockholm. Denise came with me on that trip. I know you’re going to have a hard time feeling sorry for me, but we’ll see what you think as this story unfolds.

Read More »An Adventure in Paris