An Ordinary Evening
in San Francisco
Goodnight children my kid met at the playground.
Your pajamas wait like starfish on your small beds back home.
Goodnight street sweeper, hugging
every odd-numbered hillside. Goodnight
tomcats, marching from the Marina to the moon.
We are leaving, we are leaving, we’ll not be back soon.
Tonight the lit windows only lead
to better lives and other windows. They spread
out like the cell signals shooting through this night air.
Goodnight strobing cyclist, cyclops in the near-
darkness. Goodnight bald man counting out bus fare for his son.
We are leaving, we are leaving, we’ll not be back soon.
And now the dealers disappear
into their nondescript hoodies; and their dead friend
drinks the cognac they left him on the curb.
We carry this evening to a back booth
at Tosca; we drink Irish coffee and sketch out bus routes,
long as tablecloths, to anywhere we’d call home.
The bartender sees himself in the table he’s wiping
but still hasn’t noticed that we’ve stolen his miniature spoon.
We are leaving, we are leaving, we’ll not be back soon.
We leave and start walking. We say goodnight
to the smartphones swimming upstream like salmon.
Goodnight umbrellas, jostling for your six feet of dry air.
We crowd into a BART car that breathes underwater
and feel our eardrums dissolve. My son sees this crush
of bodies as a chance to try counting. We tell him
we are leaving, we are leaving, we’ll not be back soon.
—DEREK MONG
Derek Mong is an associate professor of English at Wabash. His book Other Romes was published in 2011, and his second is due out from Saturnalia Press in 2018. Most recently, Derek and his wife, Anne O. Fisher, were the recipients of the 2018 Cliff Becker Translation Prize from the American Literary Translators Association.
Vannatter Strikes Again!
I had just flattened the Four-Star General in charge of all United States forces in Vietnam…
BY DAN VANNATTER ’68, COL. US ARMY (RET.)
In early 1970 I was the junior officer at Military Assistance Command Headquarters (MACV) in Saigon assigned to the Army Special Security Group. This was essentially the “Internet” of its day, exclusively dedicated to allow generals to communicate worldwide securely and privately.
I would receive messages from our dedicated communications center, log them, and walk the halls of MACV delivering them. Many of those messages were addressed to Gen. Creighton Abrams, the Commander of all United States Forces in Vietnam. My job was to get messages to the General’s Chief of Staff, Major General Dolvin, in a timely fashion, but also to make certain “Immediate” messages were expedited.
One afternoon after I handed my stack of messages to the Chief he began to read the first one, then stopped. Then he looked up at me and said, “Vannatter, take this message and run—do not walk—to General Abrams’ office! General Abrams is getting ready to leave and he needs to read this before he goes home.”
I grabbed the message, left my leather bag behind, and ran out his door, through his outer office into the hallway, down the hall, around the corner and the 30 feet or so to the door to General Abrams’ office. I was literally sprinting. I reached the doorway (in record time) and turned to enter.
Unfortunately, General Abrams reached the same doorway at exactly the same time as me.
I hit him square-on! I knocked him right on his ass, he dropped his briefcase, his hat flew off, and I was totally mortified. I had just flattened the Four-Star General in charge of all U.S. forces in Vietnam!
I was frightened, flustered, and uncertain what to do. The only thing I could come up with was to come to attention, and then my mouth said, “Sir, you can’t go home yet! General Dolvin wants you to read this message first!”
General Abrams looked at me sternly, gathered his hat and briefcase, stood up and said, “Come with me and let me see this message that is so important that I must read it before I go home!” He then walked through his outer office into his office, stopped at a table, pulled out a chair, and sat and read the message and initialed it. He handed it to me and walked (almost stalked) out of the office and departed.
His aide and his administrative warrant were still laughing, with tears in their eyes, as the General departed.
Unfortunately for me, the story spread like wildfire throughout MACV, and I was teased for weeks and asked, “Who have you run over today, Lieutenant?”
Mississippi Summer
In July 1964, David Kendall ’65, James Bond ’65, and John Moorhouse ’65 traveled to Mississippi to participate in the Freedom Summer Project. Kendall and Bond were assigned to voter registration projects in Hattiesburg and Meridian. Moorhouse was assigned to a Freedom School in Jackson. They joined more than 800 volunteers in one of the largest, most publicized civil rights projects of the 1960s.
The following is an excerpt from John Moorhouse’s memoir of that summer.
Helen and Cornelius Roberts, a retired couple living on the north side of town, took me in. The Robertses lived in a modest frame house, attended the neighborhood AME Church, and had raised a son and daughter and put them through college.
I learned that when their pastor had asked members of the congregation to provide accommodations for summer civil rights workers, the Robertses were first in line.
My roommate was Allard A. Alliston, a junior at Yale from Washington, DC. Allard was a thin black man who was well versed on the American civil rights movement and had seen much more of the world than I had. Although we worked at the same Freedom School, I saw relatively little of Allard, as he was often away working on other projects. On weekends, Allard spent time with a crowd of volunteers his age while I socialized with a group of older volunteers. He went dancing; I drank beer, Mississippi’s own Pearl Beer, at a local bar and grill. For me, those were fabulous evenings of serious and lighthearted conversation—black and white together.
Like most college-age males, Allard and I were ravenous. All summer Mrs. Roberts’ garden supplied us with tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, sweet corn, and okra. Although we each made a modest contribution to the weekly food budget, I later came to realize what a sacrifice the Robertses made just to feed us.
My most vivid recollections of living with the Robertses, however, are of the evenings spent on the front porch of the small house. Mr. Roberts, and less frequently Mrs. Roberts, and I sat for hours talking. We adjourned to the porch to escape the heat stored up in the house during the day. Helen Roberts was a tall dignified woman who talked mostly about her children and her church, though rarely of religion. She was proud of her son, who was a medical school student in the Midwest, and her daughter a teacher in the black public school system of Mississippi.
Cornelius Roberts was a huge man with a friendly face. He must have stood six-four and weighed over 275 pounds. What little hair he had was tightly curled and gray. He talked about being in the Navy during World War I, where he and his mates had been cooks. These black men were largely segregated from the rest of the crew. They ate and bunked together in a lower level of the bow. The constant and pronounced rolling motion of the sea makes this the least desirable quarters on ship. These men were never given fighting assignments, but instead cooked for the “real” sailors.
Mr. Roberts enjoyed reminiscing about hunting and fishing when he was younger. He explained that it was foolish for a black man to attempt to hunt on state game lands in Mississippi, because police and game wardens used every pretext to arrest blacks carrying firearms on game lands. So Mr. Roberts and his friends leased private farmland for hunting. “White farmers like our green money,” he observed. Though he did not hunt anymore, Mr. Roberts’ shotgun stood in the corner of his bedroom where it provided a measure of security.
Mr. Roberts spent most of his working life in the U.S. Postal Service. Yet throughout a long career he was never promoted off the docks, where he wrestled with sacks of mail. From the mid-1920s until the mid-1960s, few blacks were promoted in the Jackson Post Office. As he talked of things past on that front porch during those summer evenings, Cornelius Roberts seemed neither bitter nor resigned. To the contrary, he remained hopeful that things would change and people would finally be judged according to merit.
After being in Jackson for a week, I wanted to find a laundry where I could have my clothes washed. Mrs. Roberts gave me directions. When I entered the small, cement-block building, I saw dread in the expression of the woman behind the counter. She could not believe that some white man had brought his clothes there to be washed. The rare appearance of white males in that neighborhood usually brought trouble of one sort or another.
The woman went into the back and got her husband. After I explained who I was and what I wanted, both relaxed and the woman took my clothes. I used that laundry the rest of the summer. Neither had heard anything about the Freedom School, and I could tell that they hoped its presence in the middle of their neighborhood would not lead to trouble.
I had never experienced someone becoming so alarmed by me simply because of my race. I will never forget the incident.
One afternoon as I walked home from school a group of white males drove past. They had not gone a block before pulling over to the curb. Four men immediately bailed out of the car and came running toward me. I retreated along the sidewalk and then cut through several yards. Watching from behind a garage, I saw them give up the chase and get back into the maroon Chevy. I was badly shaken and took a while to calm down. That was my most frightening experience in Mississippi.
On a Saturday afternoon in early August, I walked downtown to look around. I stepped into the state Capitol Building and saw, for the first time in my life, drinking fountains with lettered tiles above them marked “Colored” and “White.” I had, of course, read of such symbols of segregation, but I had never seen with such searing clarity the racial divide
that scarred the South. As I turned to walk away, I looked upon two life-sized, black and white photographs of the 1959 and 1960 Miss Americas. They had both been students at Old Miss and both were in the same sorority. The photographs were mounted on two seven-foot sandwich boards and displayed across from each other under the Capitol rotunda.
The entire scene seemed surreal.
On my way back to the Robertses I crossed a major downtown intersection. As I looked north on Mill Street, the crowds of shoppers were almost all black, and as I looked eastward along Capitol Street, I saw mostly white shoppers. If I had had a camera, one with a wide-angle lens, I could have taken a photograph that, like the drinking fountains, would have documented the poignant reality of segregation.
When my summer was over, Mr. Roberts took me to the railroad station where I boarded the Freedom Express, as Illinois Central trains had come to be called, and headed north and home.
But the hardest thing for me was saying good-bye to Helen and Cornelius Roberts. They had been so kind. I have known few people with their moral courage.
JOHN MOORHOUSE went on to become a professor of economics at Wake Forest University, where he taught for 37 years. In a retirement tribute one student wrote, “His influence on his students only began in the classroom. After each class there was usually a crowd of students surrounding him, both outside the classroom and at his office. And to every student that I knew, his door was always open to ask questions, raise issues, and continue the dialogue.”
“Like the Flicker of a Cat’s Tail” BY JAKE MOORE ’12
Simmering red glow
Embers flickering in wind
Gentle fire fading
It’s a chilly night, March 22, and I am sitting by the fireside. The crackle of the wood alongside the hoot of an owl makes one wonder why we ever developed and invented technology.
This is life. My eyes burn of smoke from blowing the fire, all my senses are on alert, the air smells of burning redwood. There is a little opening between the crowns of the redwoods through which I gaze up at the marvelous number of stars glittering in the sky.
I'm thanking my lucky stars for beautiful weather.
Today as I was getting ready to begin this ride across the United States, I felt the shocks of a 4.6 magnitude earthquake about an hour south of where I was staying. I was startled by the shaking house. The song “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” popped into my head.
Scientists predict that, within my lifetime, there will be a massive quake that will cause a tsunami, wipe out entire cities, and cause massive flooding in this region. Considering that inevitable disaster, I used to be amazed that people still chose to live here. But once you see the beauty of the redwoods, smell the fresh air, and feel the cool ocean breeze brush up against your face like the flicker of a cat’s tail, you'll most likely stay put as well.
I suppose I’ve gained a new understanding of West Coast living.
We have tornadoes in Indiana, but this is something bigger. Feeling the power of an earthquake under my feet left me in awe of how small and feeble we are compared to Mother Earth.
as i sit by the campfire the wind is changing directions and the temperature is dropping. A plume of smoke just danced the aroma of burning redwood under my nose. I am sitting here looking at my shelter and all the belongings I have brought with me: a single man tent, a BeachFlyer bicycle, and two panniers holding my clothes, tablets, chargers, and bike tools.
I continually ask myself, what am I doing? Not in doubt but to remind myself why I am biking, who I am on this trip for, and how this work will support students in Cameroon and other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.
But the trip has its own rewards. In my life I have traveled thousands of miles to some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. But tonight, one that rivals them all is my backyard.
Some would feel lonely out here, but how can I be when all this beauty surrounds me and so many thoughts, prayers, and well wishes are being sent my way? People from all over the world are following my journey. I have support from my family, friends, and colleagues. Every well-meaning word imaginable is pushing me along.
So with owls hooting, wind blowing leaves, and the branches playing a percussion for a concert of calls from animals I’ve not yet met, how can one be lonely? Life all around me is talking, interacting, and sending me good vibes.
I can never and will never be alone.
JAKE MOORE is making a 5,000-mile bike ride from the Pacific Coast to New York City to raise awareness and funds for youth in Cameroon. Jake spent two years in the Peace Corps in Cameroon and remains in the country as director of ScholarShop, a non-profit that furnishes students in Sub-Saharan Africa with school supplies, leadership skills, and a commitment to public service.
Read more about the trip at https://jakesjourney.online