The Last Chapter in Sal Mineo’s Life

Anyone who’s seen Rebel Without a Cause will remember Sal Mineo’s performance as the sensitive young kid who meets a bad end when he is fatally shot by police. He came to a violent end in real life as well: he was stabbed to death.
I recently saw a biography of Mineo and browsed through it. Since I’d heard of his murder, I wondered if they’d ever found the culprit. I discovered that a pizza delivery guy named Lionel Williams was convicted of not only Mineo’s murder, but more than ten robberies, all carried out at knifepoint. He got a fifty-three year sentence, but he only served nine (and you wonder why people get cynical about the criminal justice system).

After the jury delivered its guilty verdict, Williams asked for a chance to speak, and after calling his public defender everything but a precious child of God, he felt the need to comment on one aspect of the prosecution’s case. Williams had multiple, visible tattoos, and the prosecutor had repeatedly pointed out that after the murder, Williams had purchased a new tattoo of a bloody knife on his arm. Mr. Williams just couldn’t help himself: he denounced the prosecutor for mentioning the tattoo, and added, “Besides, it looks nothing like the knife that killed him!” I don’t know how his defender managed to keep himself from banging his head on the counsel table.

The Best Twilight Zone Episode Never Written

Many years ago there was a Twilight Zone episode that depicted an alien race making contact with earth. Initially the aliens proved quite helpful as they provided supplies which eliminated food shortages and starvation throughout the world. The visitors seemed quite altruistic, but a skeptical scientist found that the visitors brought with them a book entitled To Serve Man. It was only in the last minute of that episode, after the scientist had boarded a spaceship headed back to their homeland, that his assistant gave him the horrible news that To Serve Man was a cookbook.

It occurred to me that the episode ended where a fine one could begin. The human race has so many conflicting races, religions, and ethnicities that the only thing that could truly unite us is an external threat. For example, if someone had told Alex Haley’s great-great-great-great grandfather Kunta Kinte the day before he was kidnapped that he was an African, he would have had no comprehension of what that term meant. It won’t be until a hostile species shows up that homo sapiens will realize that we are all Earthlings.

Katyn, Jimmy Carter, and Kulaks

I have been politically aware for just under 50 years now, and the two most mind-bogglingly clueless statements I’ve ever heard a President of the US make were both from James Earl Carter. During the 1976 presidential election campaign, he said that he hoped America would be able to overcome its “excessive fear of communism.” Seeing as how at the time he made that statement, the Soviet Union had the capability of hitting the US with several thousand nuclear warheads, I can only wonder about his definition of “excessive.”

Then in ‘79), when the USSR invaded Afghanistan, Carter was quoted as saying he had learned more in the past year about the Soviet Union than he ever had before. I was flabbergasted then, and am flabbergasted now, that an Naval Academy graduate, a man who spent more time in uniform than any other president that century (besides Eisenhower), could make that statement.

Since Carter had served as a professional Naval officer, I really wish someone could have sat down with him and shown him pictures of the Katyn Forest Massacre to educate him about what Soviets did to military officers of countries they found less than amenable. Thousands of Polish military were found with their hands bound behind their backs and bullet holes in their heads (along with police, government officials, and academics).

Furthermore, since after leaving the Navy Carter spent several years as a peanut farmer and achieved an impressive degree of success, I think he would have benefitted from an education in what happened to elderly survivors of the forced collectivization in Ukraine of the 1930s. Kulaks, or rich peasants, were either shot, systematically starved to death or shipped off to the gulag, from where only a miniscule percentage ever returned.

I happen to agree with G. Gordon Liddy’s judgment on Carter: “Fine Sunday school teacher, lousy president.”

Professor Fred Lansbury

Back in 1977, I attended the Ohio State Summer Program at New College, Oxford, England. New College was founded in 1379—the Brits have some very interesting ideas about what’s new and old (as I have previously mentioned in the blog, the lovely Kate Beckinsale studied at New College as well). Part of the program was a history course in Elizabethan England, and I prevailed upon our instructor, a Professor Fred Lansbury, to let me teach the class on the Spanish Armada. He was amiable enough to let me save him a day’s work teaching, and now I can truly say I have lectured on Elizabethan history at Oxford.

I had noticed that when Professor Lansbury was in the New College dining hall, he was always drinking port. However, at the farewell banquet, he was drinking scotch. When I asked him about the change in drink, he informed me that he had developed gout and didn’t want to aggravate the situation any further. I made a mental note of that, and four months later sent Prof Lansbury a fruit basket along with a bottle of Scotch and a note which read:

There was a prof with a gout of a sort
That kept him from drinking his port
He had a student named Kent
With a poetic bent
Who said, "Here’s some scotch, take a snort!"

Two Old Friends

Almost everyone has dreams of being rich, famous, or powerful, but I can only imagine what it must be like if you’re in that position knowing that a great many of the people you encounter are trying to get something from you. Clear back in 1957, then-Vice President Nixon met a man with whom he became friends who told him, “I’ll never ask you for anything.” That man was Woody Hayes (I heard that story straight from Woody’s lips).

Woody was every bit as good as his word. The two maintained a friendship for the rest of Woody’s life. I once heard Woody say he knew more about foreign policy than Nixon did, but Nixon knew more about football than Woody did. It’s entirely possible that both statements are true. Thirty years later, Nixon spoke at Woody’s funeral. He said, “When I met Woody, I wanted to talk football and he wanted to talk foreign policy. [pause] You know Woody—we talked foreign policy.”

While reading yesterday, I came across a story that made my jaw go slack. A few days before the 1976 Rose Bowl, Nixon sent Woody two dozen roses, along with a note saying OSU needed 24 points to beat UCLA (as well as complete an undefeated season and win the mythical national championship). Nixon’s note proved prescient: UCLA won that game 23-12.

Woody must have been devastated by the loss. He knew in his heart of hearts that would be his last chance for a national championship. He stayed in coaching for another two years, which turned out to be a mistake.

A postscript to that story: What, might you ask, did Woody do with the two dozen roses? He drove over to University Hospital and gave them away to 24 different patients. For the benefit of my readers who don’t give a hoot about football, maybe that will give you a small understanding about why so many people in Columbus loved Woody.

George Washington and Ora Judge

To be a slave must be a hellish experience. However, if you were destined to be a slave in early 1797, it would be hard to have a better gig than Ora Judge did. She was one of George Washington’s domestic slaves in the Presidential Mansion in Philadelphia. (at that time the US capital was in Philadelphia—the White House wasn’t to be built until several years later). Ora Judge was smart enough to know that at the end of Washington’s second term in office, he and the entire household would be moving back to Mt Vernon. So Ora ran away with the help of a sympathetic sea captain and made it clear to Greenland…Greenland, New Hampshire.

When Washington first got word that one of his slaves had escaped to the Granite State, he sent a letter to the US Marshall for NH, asking for help in recovering his “property.” Interestingly enough, the Marshall wrote back, suggesting that Washington take a different tack because the people in New Hampshire, even back then, tended to take that whole “Live Free or Die” slogan very seriously. Washington then wrote a letter to Ora herself, telling her, in effect, that while he favored eventual abolition, she was setting a bad example for the rest of the slaves and would she please come on home? Ms Judge was not buying any. She stayed in NH and made a living as a seamstress.

Ironically enough, at the time Washington left office he only had another 2 years and nine months to live, and his will contained ironclad language that upon the death of his wife Martha, Mt, Vernon’s slaves would have the choice of manumission (freedom) or a chance to spend the rest of their lives at Mt Vernon being provided for from the state’s revenues.

Most people don’t realize that before the end of the Revolutionary War, Washington could be classified as a lukewarm abolitionist. He favored emancipation with compensation for slave owners. Mt Vernon’s records indicate that Washington’s estate was still making payments for elderly slaves into the early 1930s. Washington had a better retirement plan for his slaves than do a great many modern corporations.

Ora Judge spent the rest of her life in New Hampshire. She married and had two children before her husband deserted her. When she grew too old and sickly to work, the townspeople of Greenland provided for her. Shortly before her death, she gave an interview to an abolitionist newspaperman saying she had never regretted running away.

I believe the story of Ora Judge proves that the best stories are the ones you don’t find in the history books.

General Charles Napier—Feminist???

I relish the story of British general Charles Napier’s duty in India for both its irony and political incorrectness. The Hindu custom of Sati is a funeral practice once popular in India. It goes like this: when the husband dies, you take the widow and her burn her on the funeral pyre. Which makes me think: Girlfriend, if you’re going to marry a Hindu guy, marry one a lot younger than you.

In today’s politically correct environment, British imperialists are the most evil men in world history. Perhaps one might expect to see them cackling over the funeral pyres and twirling their proverbial mustaches. Thanks to General Charles Napier, overseer of India for the British army, this was not the case.

British reaction to the Sati practice was actually quite mixed. The Church of England was having a conniption fit, saying you can’t allow this to happen. The East India trading company was saying it’s not involved with business, leave them be. Napier took matters into his own hands. Napier says, “OK, you have your customs, we have ours. In my culture, when a man burns a woman, we HANG him. You can build your pyres, and next door we'll build our gallows. We'll respect your tradition as long as you can abide by ours.” Afterward, the practice of Sati saw a sharp decrease.

I wonder about two things: 1 did Charles Napier qualify as a feminist? And 2) if they made a movie, wouldn’t it be cool if the American actor Charles Napier played him?