Support Your Local Police

I grew up on Bank Street in Smyrna, Georgia. Smyrna, the Jonquil City. It was called that for a reason. Somewhere along the way, the residents decided to start planting jonquil bulbs. Lots of jonquil bulbs. In the Spring, Smyrna was a plethora of various shades of yellow. In fact, our police department had shoulder patches on their uniforms embroidered with Jonquil City thereon. Needless to say, I grew up a fan of jonquils.

I think the reason I can remember what time of year it was when this story happened is because I remember the jonquils being in bloom.

It was 1956 and I was nine years old. I was playing in my front yard with my neighbor buddies Skipper Miller and Wayne Colquitt. Smyrna was a small town and everyone pretty much knew everybody else. That included the police. At least they all knew me. I was Bill Reed’s boy. Dad was a local real estate broker and sold many of the residents of Smyrna their homes.

This particular day was bright and sunny, a hotter than usual day for this time of year. Smyrna had a couple of police cars. The police department also had a couple of motorcycle cops. I remember thinking they were the coolest of the cool, with their helmet, leather jacket and those high black boots with the riding pants that bloused out from their legs. Of course the big revolver on their hip was the coolest part for a young boy.

As I said, we were playing in the front yard when it happened. I heard the motorcycle coming down Bank Street from the direction of the police station located at the corner of Bank Street and Atlanta Road downtown. Maybe it is just my memory playing tricks with my mind, but I swear the motorcycles were louder back then. If they had mufflers, they couldn’t have been much, because those bad boys could roar. As always when they drove by, I ran up to the sidewalk next to the blacktop pavement to salute the cop when he drove by. They would sometimes salute back, which made my day. Sorta like pumping your fist up and down to a trucker and him honking his big air horn at you.

I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but another car was coming up Bank Street from the opposite direction. All I know is that just as I saluted the cop, the car clipped the motorcycle and the cop went flying head over heels, with the motorcycle stopping right at my feet. Yikes!

The cop was sprawled out on the hot pavement, twisting in pain. I knew enough first aid to know that he needed to be stationary and not move. I ran to his side and sat down on the pavement next to him and cradled his head in my lap, telling him to try and be still and all the while patting his head like I would a puppy. His helmet had come off from the collision. I yelled for my friends to go have my mom call the police station and get an ambulance here as fast as possible. I don’t remember how long we were there in the middle of the road, me with the cop’s head in my lap. All the while I was talking to him and telling him he was going to be just fine, and he finally stopped groaning and just lay there staring up into my eyes. I vividly remember his shoulder patch embroidered with Jonquil City.

More police showed up, then an ambulance, and they then had me move so they could load the cop on a stretcher and onto the ambulance and away they went. The whole time, the injured cop never lost eye contact with me. He never spoke to me, but he listened to me tell him he was going to be OK. I like to think that helped him.

He survived with a broken leg and arm, I believe. No internal injuries. I remember some months later hearing a motorcycle pull into our driveway one evening. It was my cop. He came by to tell me how much he appreciated me taking care of him. He shook my hand and then shook dad’s hand and drove off.

Every Christmas for some years afterwards, my cop would come by the house and drop off a bottle of bourbon for us. Well, for dad, really. I’m sure he didn’t expect me to drink it. I have no memory of his name. If anyone reading this story knows who he is, I would sure appreciate knowing. He would be an old man by now, if he is still alive, since I’m almost sixty-nine. I hope he is and maybe we could meet and I can give him a bottle of bourbon and we could have a drink together.

JIMBO

I’m not sure why dad named our boat Jimbo. Maybe for a childhood friend, a buddy who was killed during the war or maybe that was the name on the boat when he bought it. There is no one alive now that might answer that question. I’ve always thought you named your boats after the female persuasion. Mine, for instance is named “My Belle” after my wife, Michelle. Figure it out. Ah, the mystery. Even though Jimbo is a male name, I still refer to her as a female.

Best I can reconstruct from old family photo albums and dad’s Super 8 home movies, Jimbo came into our family sometime in the mid to late 50’s. She was a 14.5’ double open cockpit, wood construction outboard, built along the lines of a Chris Craft. I remember dad having the Leonard boys (my cousins), fiberglass the bottom. She was fitted with a 33 and 1/3 horsepower Scott At Water engine. Believe it or not, that little engine could pull two skiers out of the water. The true test was she could pull dad up on skis, all 230 pounds of him. And she could fly…the speedometer, as I remember, went up to 40 mph, but if I was alone in her, I could open her up and she would still be gaining speed when the needle topped out at 40.

Jimbo had a trailer, and we kept her in the driveway at home, pulling her to Lake Allatoona for family outings. I remember we would find a place to trailer her in, and we would park mom’s ’55 Chevy wagon (which I lovingly named The Tan Turd), and spend the night, us kids sleeping in the back of the Turd, while mom and dad slept outside. I don’t remember tents, but I do recall hammocks. I guess mom and dad slept in either those or on the ground. Mom, Dad, sister Cynthia and I, and brother Bruce after he was born, would sometimes be joined on these excursions by the Logan family. Bob and Louise were mom and dad’s best friends, and their daughter, Connie, was Cynthia’s best friend.

In 1958 or 1959, dad came home one day and announced we had a cabin at Lake Allatoona near Victoria Landing south of Little River. He never said so, but years later I got wind of a rumor dad had won the cabin in a poker game. He probably lost it the same way years later, or so I came to believe.

Our cabin was in the same cove where mutual friends and family from Smyrna had cabins. C.J. and Jerry Fouts, Betty and Harley Morris, uncle Raymond and Mary Francis and a couple more I can’t remember. Some crazy times at the lake. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962, dad moved us up there, thinking we would be out of range of an atomic bomb blast back in Atlanta. Truth be told, if the Russians had dropped the bomb on us, it would have been at Dobbins Air Force Base and Lockheed in Marietta, so we would have been fried anyway.

Back to Jimbo. I’ll never forget the fact that dad told me one day that I was now a man (I had just turned 13 in 1959), and he tossed me the keys to Jimbo and told me to try not and kill myself, because my mom would never let him hear the end of it. I can only try and relate it to being sorta like getting your drivers license at age 16, and the freedom that represents, but I was only 13! Lake Allatoona was mine. I knew every cove. I found every mud flat (uncounted severed shear pins to show for it – there is another story I’ll relay a little later in that regard). Thinking back on it, I can’t believe dad gave the boat keys to a 13 year old, although I was a pretty responsible kid (numerous stories that indicate the contrary notwithstanding). I sure wouldn’t have done the same with my boys. Bill and Lew were grown men before I let either one take out My Belle.

Everybody on the lake knew that Reed kid buzzing around, but of course there were not as many people on the lake in those days. It was a glorious time. I had my first taste of moonshine, given to me by Margie Fouts, Jerry’s wife. I acquired a taste for it. I shot my first .45 1911 there…I don’t think it was dad’s from WWII, because I think he had traded it to his brother B.F. by then, which was his peacemaker at the Don-Ree in Marietta. Most importantly, I received my first “French Kiss” up there from Betty and Harley’s daughter, Pat. I think I fell in love for the first time.

The lake was down during the winter (Allatoona was a variable level lake and the Corp of Engineers pretty much drained it in the winter). Well, at least our cove was a mud flat. But interestingly, when the water was down, I discovered the site of an old Cherokee Indian village where I found numerous arrowheads and pieces of broken pottery. I had quite the collection.

When I wasn’t in the cockpit of Jimbo, I was being towed behind her on skis. We had this big 6’x3’ rudderless ski board that would kill you if you weren’t careful. Uncle Raymond would get me on that bad boy and pull me in ever tighter circles just to see my fly through space when he finally threw me. I learned to slalom by dropping a ski. Once you have slalomed, you can never go back. At least that is what I said, and in fact have lived. When I could no longer get pulled up on a slalom a couple of years ago, I said my skiing days were behind me. I just can’t bear to go back to two skis, although I may break down and do so.

A side story about shear pins, which I alluded to above…for those of you who do not know what a shear pin is, it is basically a metal pin a couple of inches long (sorta like a nail without a head or point) that kept the prop attached to the drive shaft of the motor. If you hit some underwater hazard (like a mud flat), instead of ruining your prop or even worse, your engine, the pin would shear in two, and thereby save your prop or motor from damage. We always kept spares in the boat. I went through them. One evening, buddy David Brown from Smyrna was visiting. He and I took Jimbo across the big water around dusk to Galt’s Ferry. Coming back in the dark was something I had done numerous times, I had a flashlight, and I knew where the markers were, and I also knew where the big mud flat was. But on this occasion I misjudged the crossing and went right across the mud flat and immediately sheared the pin. I tilted the motor up, removed the sheared pin, and went to my stash of shear pins. All gone. We were stranded out in the middle of the lake between Galt’s Ferry and Victoria Landing. David and I were Boy Scouts. We knew Morse Code. We particularly knew Morse Code for S.O.S – dit dit dit, dah dah dah, dit dit dit. So we directed our flashlight toward where I knew our cabin was located across the lake, and proceeded to send out our distress call. Of course after an hour or so of this the batteries died. We were about to console ourselves with the prospect of spending a cold night on the lake. We saw the lights first, then heard the motor, and it gradually came closer and closer. Dad had seen our distress call and rescued us. I made sure to keep plenty of shear pins on board after that.

It was a wonderful time. I remember our parents allowing me and a buddy, it might have been David Brown, along with cousins B.F. and Cliff Reed and their friend Bill Ransom, I think it was, to have a spend the night party, just us kids one cold weekend. I was probably 14 years old. Without adult supervision, we had a firecracker battle in the cabin. Afterwards, we realized the place stunk of exploded firecrackers. We left all the windows and doors open for 24 hours to air the place out. We about froze, but the folks never found out about the battle. Glad we didn’t burn the place down. I was directed not to go out on Jimbo with the boys. Can’t remember if we did or not, but since I was such a good kid, I’m sure I followed instructions.

That winter dad left Jimbo in the water tied to the dock. Of course when the water went down, Jimbo and the dock were sitting on red clay bottom. Nothing to do but wait until Spring when the water level came back up. It did, but Jimbo did not. It seems that Jimbo was stuck solid to the bottom and as the water came up, Jimbo stayed suctioned to the bottom. We discovered her underwater that Spring. She was pretty much totaled. Dad decided to let her go. It broke my heart.

That same year, 1963 I think, dad walked into the house one day and announced he had sold the cabin, much as he did when he announced he had bought it. It was a huge surprise. My first thought was about all our stuff that was up there, particularly my arrowhead collection in jars on a shelf on the screen porch. Dad said everything in the cabin went with it. I was distraught. Me and my buddy Tim drove up to the cabin and I knocked on the door to the screen porch. A woman came out, looking suspiciously at these two teenaged boys standing there and asked what we wanted in an unfriendly voice. I explained who I was and that I came to get my arrowhead collection, and pointed them out to her there on the porch. She said everything that was in the house was theirs and for me to leave. I hate to admit it, but I shed a few tears on the drive back home.

As I mentioned above, I think, from piecing together old stories and things that were said by dad, mom and others, that dad lost the cabin in a poker game, just like I think he got it in the first place.

I think about the Jimbo from time to time, usually when I am flying across the lake by myself in My Belle.

Mark Reed’s Speech at the dedication ceremony of the Sigma Pi Fraternity, International Veterans Memorial, July 18, 2015

BROTHERS, VETERANS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN AND DISTINGUISHED GUESTS, IT IS AN HONOR FOR ME TO BE HERE TODAY. GENERAL LIVINGSTON IS A HARD ACT TO FOLLOW.

IN 2011 THE ALUMNI AT ALPHA-PHI CHAPTER AT UGA DECIDED TO HONOR OUR VETS. I CONTACTED GS ANDY MORRIS, OWNER OF COLLEGIATE REGALIA, AND CONSULTED WITH HIM ABOUT HOW BEST TO DO THIS.

WE CAME UP WITH THE IDEA OF A LARGE PLAQUE WITH 120 INDIVIDUAL BRASS PLATES TO BE ENGRAVED WITH THE NAMES, INCLUDING RANK, BRANCH AND DATES OF SERVICE OF THE VETERANS WE COULD IDENTIFY. ANDY SUPPLIED THE PLAQUE AT COST.

I FIGURED WE WOULD HAVE 40-50, BUT WE IDENTIFIED 102, AND WE KNOW THERE ARE MORE. THAT PLAQUE IS HANGING ON THE WALL OF THE ALUMNI ROOM AT THE SIGMA PI HOUSE AT UGA.

THREE YEARS LATER, IN JUNE OF 2014, ANDY CONTACTED ME AND SHARED HIS IDEA OF FORMING A VETERANS COMMITTEE AND WAYS TO BEST HONOR OUR SIGMA PI VETERANS.

ANDY ASKED ME TO PUT TOGETHER A PRELIMINARY REPORT TO HIM AND THE GRAND COUNCIL ABOUT WHAT A VETERANS COMMITTEE MIGHT LOOK LIKE AND WHAT IT COULD DO.

I DID, AND OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF MONTHS, ANDY AND I DISCUSSED THE TOPIC MANY TIMES.

IN AUGUST OF 2014, JUST BEFORE THE ORLANDO CONVOCATION, ANDY ASKED ME IF I WOULD CONSIDER BECOMING THE CHAIRMAN OF SUCH A COMMITTEE IF IT WAS FORMED. OF COURSE, I SAID I WOULD BE HONORED.

AT THE CONVOCATION BANQUET IN ORLANDO IN AUGUST 2014, ANDY INTRODUCED ME AS A FOUNDER’S AWARD RECIPIENT, AND ANNOUNCED HE WAS FORMING THE SIGMA PI VETERANS COMMITTEE, AND THAT I WAS TO BE CHAIRMAN.

IN SEPTEMBER OF 2014, THE GRAND COUNCIL MADE IT OFFICIAL.

ANDY TOLD ME THAT MY FIRST ASSIGNMENT AND PRIMARY GOAL AS CHAIRMAN WAS TO DESIGN AND BUILD A VETERANS MEMORIAL AT SIGMA PI HQ AT THE HISTORIC MITCHELL HOUSE IN LEBANON, TN.

“AND BY THE WAY, HE SAID, WE HAVE NO MONEY.”

I WAS GOING TO HAVE TO RAISE IT THROUGH ALUMNI DONATIONS.

HOW MUCH MONEY WOULD WE NEED? IT WAS KICKED AROUND AND ESTIMATES WERE THAT IT COULD COST BETWEEN $75,000 TO $100,000.

AFTER DESIGNING THE MONUMENT, IN CONSULTATION WITH ANDY, THE DESIGN WAS TWEAKED AS I GOT BIDS FROM CONTRACTORS.

WE FINALLY DETERMINED, AND GOT BIDS THAT CONFIRMED THAT $50,000 WOULD COVER CONSTRUCTION AND ONGOING MAINTENANCE.

ON JANUARY 15, 2015, I MADE THE FIRST CALLS TO INDIVIDUAL ALUMNI ASKING THEM TO JOIN WITH ME IN DONATING $1,000 EACH.

ON MARCH 27, 2015, ONLY 71 DAYS LATER, I RECEIVED THE FINAL 50^TH $1,000 DONATION TO REACH OUR $50,000 GOAL.

THIS WAS MADE POSSIBLE BECAUSE OF THE GENEROSITY OF OUR BROTHERS WHO CAME TOGETHER IN ORDER TO HONOR OUR VETERANS.

PLEASE JOIN ME IN GIVING A ROUND OF APPLAUSE TO THE MEN WHO GIVE THIS MEMORIAL TO SIGMA PI FRATERNITY. “THE 50.”

WE BROKE GROUND HERE ON JUNE 16, 2015, AND HERE WE ARE, ONE MONTH LATER. I CAN’T BELIEVE IT ALL CAME TOGETHER SO FAST.

WE WILL BE ROLLING OUT A BRICK SALES/DONATION PROGRAM THROUGH THE SIGMA PI EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION THAT WE ENVISION WILL ULTIMATELY RAISE OVER $250,000 TO FUND ONGOING SCHOLARSHIPS TO SIGMA PI VETERANS. THAT YOUNG VET COMING BACK FROM AFGANISTAN? WE ARE GOING TO HELP HIM.

WE WILL ALSO BE GIVING SPECIAL AWARDS AT FUTURE CONVOCATIONS:

THE SIGMA PI ORDER OF THE PURPLE CROSS. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT IS FOR? A VETERAN WHO RECEIVED THE PURPLE HEART.

THE SIGMA PI VALOR CROSS. THIS WILL BE GIVEN TO A VETERAN WHO DISTINGUISHED HIMSELF ABOVE AND BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY, LIKE MY BROTHER FROM AUBURN HERE, MAJ GEN JAMES LIVINGSTON, USMC, WHO IS THE RECIPIENT OF THE MEDAL OF HONOR DURING VIETNAM.

WE PLAN TO HOLD A SPECIAL CEREMONY HERE AT OUR VETERANS MEMORIAL EACH YEAR ON VETERANS DAY, NOVEMBER 11^TH, WITH THE LAYING OF A WREATH TO HONOR OUR VETERANS.

I WOULD BE REMISS WITHOUT THANKING A SPECIAL GROUP OF PEOPLE…THOSE WHO ACTUALLY BUILT OUR MEMORIAL.

BEAU AGEE, K&A LAND SURVEYING, WHO GOT OUR BUILDING PERMIT SO WE COULD START CONSTRUCTION. I’M AN OLD REAL ESTATE GUY WHO HAS GOTTEN HUNDREDS OF PERMITS OVER THE YEARS. I FIGURED I COULD TAKE CARE OF THIS HERE IN LEBANON, TN, FROM ATLANTA. AFTER A MONTH AND A HALF, I REALIZED I NEEDED LOCAL HELP. BEAU GOT IT DONE.

RICK STEWART AND TRENELL PARFAIT, SIGNS NOW, WHO SUPPLIED OUR FLAGPOLES. DO THESE THREE FLAGPOLES LOOK GREAT OR WHAT? WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE THEM LIT UP AT NIGHT.

RYAN JOHNSON AND HIS CREW FROM MAINSTREET LANDSCAPE, FOR OUR BRICKED GREEK CROSS AREA AND WALKWAY. THEY WORKED LONG AND HARD, FINISHING THE LAYING OF THE BRICKS AND PUTTING IN THE FINAL LANDSCAPING LESS THAN 24 HOURS AGO. WAY TO GO GUYS.

AND A SPECIAL SHOUT OUT TO ANDY BOND AND HIS MOTHER, MARILYN, WITH LEBANON MONUMENT, FOR OUR MAGNIFICENT GRANITE CENTERPIECE BEHIND ME, WHICH WE SHALL UNVEIL SHORTLY. I SPENT A LOT OF TIME WITH THEM MAKING THIS HAPPEN. IN FACT, MARILYN SAID WE NEEDED TO STOP SEEING EACH OTHER SO MUCH…PEOPLE WILL TALK.

THANK YOU ALL. PLEASE GIVE THEM A HAND.

FINALLY, I WOULD LIKE TO INTRODUCE THOSE BROTHERS WHO JOINED RANKS WITH ME TO HELP MAKE THIS HAPPEN. THE VETERANS COMMITTEE.

I WOULD LIKE TO INTRODUCE THEM TO YOU. PLEASE STAND AND SALUTE THE CROWD AS I READ YOUR NAME.

CAPT STEVEN BANKS, USN, EPSILON-NU ‘84

MAJ LARRY BRADLEY, US ARMY, ALPHA-RHO ‘72

ENSIGN FRANK FRYBURG, USNR, THETA ’49 – PGS – PYTHAGORAS

MAJ GEN JAMES LIVINGSTON, USMC, ALPHA-DELTA ‘62, MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENT.

LCDR PAUL RICHARDS, USNR, BETA-THETA ’87 – ASTRONAUT.

COL JEFF WILKINSON, USMC, ALPHA ‘68

LtCol NICHOLAS ZEISLER, USAF, ETA-SIGMA ‘93

AND THE GUY WHOSE VISION MADE THIS HAPPEN, GRAND SAGE E. ANDREW MORRIS, GAMMA-UPSILON ’70

WITHOUT THESE MEN, THIS WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED.

ONE LAST COMMENT. I HAVE GOTTEN A LOT OF CREDIT FOR THIS MEMORIAL. BUT GS ANDY MORRIS IS THE FATHER OF OUR MEMORIAL. I AM ONLY THE MIDWIFE. PLEASE GIVE ANDY A HAND FOR HIS VISION AND LEADERSHIP.

THANK YOU AND GOD BLESS SIGMA PI.

The Septic Tank

It was the summer of 1962 – the last summer of my childhood (if you figure it was the last Summer I would ever spend without a driver’s license). I was fifteen and rode my bicycle most anywhere I needed to go when Mom or Dad couldn’t give me a ride. I had a few friends with driver’s licenses, but usually I was “two-wheeling it.”

My most usual destination when on my bike was over to my best friend’s house. He lived about three miles away and basically all downhill. Coming back was a bitch, but I was young and in pretty good shape, so the ride was worth it. His parents treated me sort of like a second son; I was around so much. I was known to ride my bike over to his house late at night and peck on his window and wake him for a late night conversation about important matters – usually girls. Remember that we were only 15 and the hormones were flowing. To his parent’s credit, they never gave me a hard time about these late night visits. I have no memory of ever being told to go home, and I’m sure they could hear us talking on those still nights. Good folks.

It was a simpler time. A time before cable TV. We only had three channels. Everyone listened to the radio a lot more then. The oldies stations of today play all the songs that were on the airwaves then. Families tended to spend a lot more time together doing things. The same applied to neighbors. The neighbors on your street were usually some of your best friends. They would drop in for coffee without invitation at most any time and not be resented for intruding on your life. They were welcome. If a delivery truck came to your house, after it left, your neighbor would as likely as not come by to see what you had received. If you had a project going on at your house, well that was almost an open invitation for neighbors to drop by and watch and talk about the issues of the day. Corny stuff like Jackie Kennedy’s new hat, or sometimes important stuff like what the Russian’s were up to.

This summer, my friend’s parents had decided that they needed to have their septic tank dug up and cleaned out. This was cause for a neighborhood gathering while the backhoe dug up the backyard. There was a festive atmosphere in the air (maybe because of the “addition” to the atmosphere that was about to be released). Anyway, there must have been a couple dozen of us gathered around watching the digging activities.

Finally, the top of the septic tank was reached, the dirt cleared away and the process of lifting the top off to expose the interior was embarked upon. A momentous occasion if you gauged by the rapt attention given by the spectators (like I said, it was a simpler time and entertainment was gathered wherever you could).

I’ll never forget when the concrete slab was removed from the top of the septic tank. As it was lifted up and allowed to crash down on the dirt to the side of the excavation, there was an audible gasp from the crowd and then an unearthly silence. It was almost like the birds had stopped singing, the insects stopped chirping and buzzing, and definitely everyone stopped talking. No one moved a muscle. Every eye was focused on the contents of the septic tank.

Then slowly every eye shifted to my friend’s parents who were standing at the edge of the hole. His Dad stared at the contents and just blinked his eyes – an expression akin to that of a child who has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. His Mom, on the other hand, had placed her hands over her face, as if willing what she saw to go away, but when she peeked out, she immediately covered her face again.

Then there was a slow murmur that started to escape from the surrounding crowd, which built in volume until there was a low roar of everyone talking at once. Wives were whispering in their husband’s ears, older children were snickering and making jokes, while the young children, almost unanimously, called out, “Look at all the balloons!”

I know that time has a way of dimming the memory and sometimes a story will grow with embellishment upon being retold. Let me tell you, as one who was there, that there is no need to embellish this story. All who witnessed the contents of the septic tank, if they could be gathered together, would tell you the same thing.

There were literally thousands of pale, bobbing condoms floating on the top of the septic tank pool, like a field of white poppies gazing up at the bright sun. It was an awesome sight. It boggled the imagination. Every man in the crowd looked at my friend’s Dad with newfound admiration, while the women in the crowd looked at his Mom with a mixture of envy and pity. As for us kids in the crowd, especially those who knew what they were, even though we had never had occasion to use one yet, it was the stuff of legends.

Here, in one fell swoop, the Kinsey Report on human sexuality was shot out of the water, at least on this street in this neighborhood. The national average would never be the same.

Everyone drifted away after that, no one feeling comfortable to stand around and make small talk, especially not with the owners of this particular septic tank. There is no doubt that this event was reason for many private conversations thereafter, although due to the times we lived in, no one had the bad grace to ever bring it up again. In fact, it took me 37 years to sit down and write this story. And another 16 years before I made it public – 53 years ago. I felt it only proper to wait until they had passed on.

All I can say is, “What a man!” and “What a woman!” More power to them.

The picture of me below was taken the Summer of 1962.

Eating Glass One Night In Bangkok

Back in the day, in 1970 while in the Army stationed in Bangkok, when I wore a younger man’s skin, I placed myself in danger. Don’t tell me you never did that. Remember how it felt to be young and immortal? You were in the best shape of your life. You could run forever. You knew how to kill men with you bare hands, and maybe with the help of a heel stomp. The Army makes you believe no one can take you. It actually serves you well in certain circumstances. In others, not so much.

This is a not so much story.

Me and two buddies had been in the NCO Club throwing back beers for a couple of hours. Yes, we were impaired. No, I don’t do that anymore. We decided to take a walk on the wild side. We headed out on the town looking for some off the beaten tract bar that wouldn’t be full of American GI’s. Back in 1970, Bangkok was full of GI’s, with the war still going strong, although it was gearing down and we didn’t even know it.

Bangkok was a big city even then. It is huge and sprawling today. Let me put it this way…it was a ragtag version of a big city. You know what I mean, if you spent any time in S.E. Asia, or for that matter, basically anywhere in the Third World.

We wandered the labyrinth of back streets, and believe me when I say it was Third World. No street lights…no streets really, more like passages between shacks and structures seemingly thrown up randomly. We walked past tin huts with open doorways with the glow of charcoal embers from within. The smells were a mix of sewage and a sweet smell of flowers laced with various spices and curry from assorted kitchens, if you can call them kitchens. People were squatting in doorways and they just stared at us as we walked by.

And then, there it was…what we were looking for. A square concrete block building with a tin roof and an illuminated sign of a bottle of Singha Beer (my beverage of choice in Bangkok, sometimes chased by shots of Mekong whiskey). We walked in the open doorway into a large room which had a long bar along one wall, and small tables around the other three walls. There was one big table in the center of the room. There were five young women sitting there. The tables around the walls were all occupied by young Thai men nursing their drinks. There was Thai music coming out of speakers hidden somewhere in the room. I use the term music advisedly. Random clangs and bongs with some sort of flute instrument making noise.

We had a choice…sit on stools at the bar, or join the girls at the big center table. Yeah, we chose the girls. Not sure how long we were there, but long enough to have the table covered with empty beer bottles and glasses, because we were buying the girls drinks, and we had the lone bartender running back and forth. At some point, we departed the beer and focused on Mekong on the rocks. The five girls grew to 10, and we were having the time of our lives. The tables around the walls were still populated by the now glowering young men staring at us with all the women in the place gathered at our table.

At some point, I noticed that all the men in the bar were no longer sitting. They were all standing and talking among themselves, gesturing toward us in the center of the room. I don’t know, maybe twenty men. We were loud and laughing a lot, with the girls giggling and taking turns sitting in our laps. It was at about this point that I realized that there was something going on, and not necessarily good as far as we three GI’s were concerned. The men had formed a rough circle around our table and were slowly creeping closer and closing the circle. I nodded to my buddies and gave them the high sign to look around us. There was no doubt that these men wished us no well, as the circle grew even tighter.

It was then that I stood up, bent at the waist and took my glass of Mekong in my teeth and tilted my head back and drank the whiskey down with no benefit of hands. As I drained the glass, the flimsy bar glass shattered in shards sticking out of my mouth. I beat my chest and screamed my most ferocious battle cry, taught to me by my crusty old Drill SGT. Miraculously I was not cut. I shook my head from side to side and spit out the glass, all the while still beating my chest and screaming my primal roar. Don’t get me wrong here. I do not profess to be a tough guy. But just about then, the Singha and Mekong made that irrelevant.

It was then that the battle was to be joined. The twenty of them would have closed on us and kicked our three butts good, maybe even killed us. But instead, they stopped in their tracks and backed away from this crazy GI who was eating glass and spitting it at them, all the while screaming like a banshee. It was almost a synchronized retreat as the circle expanded with the men all ending back at their tables. They didn’t want anything to do with me. It was then I had my first lucid thought since entering the bar. I grabbed my buddies and herded them through the doorway and into the dark night, putting the bar quickly behind us.

I realize now that a cheap bar glass probably saved my life. That and being a little, no, a lot, crazy drunk, and feeling like I could take on the world.

EAT YOUR DESSERT…FIRST

A friend sent me a nice little story about some old men in their seventies, who met for lunch, and one of them ordered and ate only a huge dessert, while the others ate a sensible, healthy meal, more suited to their advanced age. When pressed as to why he was eating so unhealthy, he replied something along the lines that he was planning to enjoy as many things possible in the limited years he had left. I guess there was a moral for all of us in this story. Maybe we should start doing this while we are still young. Actually, it matters not what age you are.

Now don’t get me wrong. Everything in moderation. You obviously don’t want to eat only dessert at every meal, or eat fried food without exception. No, but you can use a little common sense and expand your enjoyment quotient a little, maybe a lot.

This struck a chord in me because my dad, Bill Reed, long gone now, lived his life pretty much along these lines. I remember him eating his dessert first sometimes, saying, “Why save the best for last?” When we would grill out these wonderful Porterhouse T-Bone steaks, the ones with the filet almost as big as the strip portion, he would always eat the filet first. He would say he did that just in case he got full before he finished. Sometimes he would joke and say he eats the best first just in case he dies before he is finished. Some would say that was dark. He would laugh when he said it, and it was just his way of making his point.

He shared with me stories of his service during WWII. He was a B-17 bomber pilot flying out of England to the angry skies over Europe. The losses were hard to believe. Statistically, you were unlikely to survive your thirty-five combat missions. He said that he would return from a mission and hit the bar, unless he had a mission the next day. You did nothing that would diminish your chances of coming home safely, and flying drunk or with a hangover was not a good idea. He said he grew up a drinker, but the war took it to a higher level, at least for him. He said it was a way to cope with the horror. It was a release, in a way, and perhaps a way to forget for a little while before going back up to fly and possibly die. He said that is also when he started eating dessert first.

The heavy drinking continued for the rest of his life. He was not a sloppy drunk, and while he might today be called an alcoholic, he was a functioning alcoholic. And he was a friendly drunk, too. Don’t get me wrong, he did not wake up drinking. He almost always waited until it was 5:00 PM (although sometimes he would say, “It’s sure as hell 5:00 PM somewhere,” and have a drink. But one of my most vivid memories would be of him coming home from work (after 5:00 PM) and pulling out the fifth of Jack Daniels Black he kept in the kitchen cabinet. He would take out two glasses. In one he would pour two fingers of Jack, with an equal amount of tap water in the second. He would shoot the Jack straight down, chased by the water, and then hold his clenched fists out in front of him and watch the goose bumps form on his forearms, with little beads of sweat sometimes breaking out on his forehead, and he would shiver a little. Then he would pour some more Jack over some ice cubes with a splash of water and go sit in his easy chair (which I had recovered and sit in today) and sip his drink.

Dad was a big man – six foot four inches tall, weighing 240 pounds in his later years. He was not fat, just big. And he lived his life large, just like he was large, with a personality just as large. He was the life of the party and you always knew when he entered the room. People gravitated to him. Men wanted to be near him. Women, too. Hell, kids loved him, as well.

He had an affliction I inherited from him, and that was the inability to remember names. Subsequently he called most men “Bud” or “Fella” or “Guy.” He called all women “Little Darlin.” Today I suppose that could be considered sexist, but he did it with friendliness and affection. It became his trademark, and in fact, his friends started calling him by the nickname, “Little Darlin.” It may have seemed ludicrous, him being so big and being referred to so, but it fit him. Today, thirty-five years after he died, when I run into that dwindling crowd that knew him, they still refer to him as “Little Darlin.” He was also known as “Big Bill.” But “Little Darlin” was the name that most referred to him as, and what they called him to his face. I also inherited part of that from him – I call most women “Darlin.” If you are a woman and are my friend, you have been called “Darlin.”

I remember a couple of years before he died, getting a call from him asking me to go by his house and pick up his shaving kit and pack a little bag with pajamas, underwear and a robe, and bring it to him at the hospital. I demanded to know what he was in the hospital for and he laughed and said they thought he was having a heart attack. I asked him what happened. He said he was at the doctor getting a physical and the doctor wanted to stick his finger somewhere he was not too keen on. He asked me, “Wouldn’t that make your heart miss a beat?”

Anyway, I did as he asked and when I arrived at the hospital, I quizzed him about what was going on. He laughed it off. I searched out his doctor in the hospital and told him to give me the straight poop about dad’s condition. He said that dad had heart disease and that unless he lost weight, ate healthier, cut back substantially on his three packs of Salem menthols a day (quit smoking was actually what the doctor said), cut back on his drinking (good luck on that), and started exercising (his only exercise was walking from the golf cart path to his ball under wet conditions), that he would not live two years. Damn.

I had a heart to heart with dad, and I guess he was a little scared about the prognosis, because for the next month he actually made improvement on all those areas the doctor ordered him to change. He actually bought a pair of tennis shoes and would go with me daily each afternoon after work and walk the track around the lake at Interstate North where our Reed Realty offices were located. I would run and he would walk, with me lapping him multiple times in the course of my thirty minute run. Like I said, we did this five days a week for a month. By that time, he actually started to feel better, and finally he announced to me that he was too old a dog to learn new tricks, and planned to go back to his old ways. He said he enjoyed his life the way it was too much to change it just so he could live it longer and not enjoy it. I used every argument I could, but I could not get him to change his ways.

We had a talk one time not too long after he decided to live his life on his own terms. He told me that the perfect last day of his life would be to go to his beloved Atlanta Country Club, eat lunch with his buddies at the “Big Table” and then play eighteen holes of golf. After that, back to the Men’s Grill next to the Pro Shop and play gin rummy with his buddies while having a few Jacks. Then he wanted to go out to a bar for a few drinks with friends, then to dinner with friends for a big red steak, followed or preceded by dessert, then drop in on a cocktail party in progress, then home to bed, where he would pass away in his pajamas while laying in bed. Damn if he didn’t do it exactly that way.

One other little tidbit about that above mentioned conversation about his best last day. He told me that when he died, he wanted me to do two things for him. He said he was asking me to do the same thing for him that his good friend Art Mimms (the namesake of Arthur’s Vinyard on Johnson Ferry Road in East Cobb) had asked of his wife Snookie. Art had said, “Snookie, when I die, I want you to do two things for me. I want you to make sure I’m dead, and then get me in the ground quick. The next day if possible.” “So, Mark,” dad said, “do the same for me.” I laughed and said I would see to it. Now you have to know that it is pretty customary to have the funeral a few days or more after a death, to allow for arrangements to be made, the funeral to be planned, the visitation, out of town folks to travel to the funeral, etc., with the funeral or memorial service being that few days later. But dad insisted I make sure I did this for him. I promised. And so it was.

As an afterthought to that conversation about the two things, he said there was one more thing he wanted me to do. A third thing. He wanted me to make sure he had a closed casket. I told him that was not customary unless the person was disfigured in some way. I told him I would probably have a fight on my hands with mom. I asked him why. He said, “There are some sum bitches out there who said they would see me dead, and I don’t plan on giving them the satisfaction.” That, my friends, is consummate Bill Reed aka Big Bill aka Little Darlin. We both laughed our butts off over that one. And I followed his instructions. I had some explaining to do with mom, and my sister Cynthia and brother Bruce, but when I told them what dad said, they all laughed and agreed. Not sure who those sum bitches were, but they did not see him dead.

Dad died at age fifty-nine, not two years after that doctor told me that would be the case unless he changed his ways. A young man, really. Too young to die. The youngest fifty-nine year old you ever met, though, and conversely one who lived more in his fifty-nine years than most who live to be a hundred. I turn sixty-nine in a couple of months, having outlived dad by ten years. After he died, I decided to clean up my act and get rid of most of my bad habits, especially the ones that got him. Dad’s older brother, Raymond, died this past year a couple of weeks short of his ninety-eighth birthday. He was the oldest living Reed in recorded family history. I intend to beat him. One hundred is my goal. I wouldn’t mind a last day like dad had. And I ate my dessert first tonight.