Bobby Kennedy in Harlem

       
          

                 I kept looking for the magic scene but maybe it was never filmed.  TLC had a two hour long documentary The Kennedys, Home Movies last night, narrated by Stockard Channing.  And it was powerful, seeing so much promise and tragedy condensed into two hours.  

             Bill Murphy was there and saw it, so this is his story, and I’d like for him to come claim it.  He was a beginning copywriter at JWT, like me, in those Mad Men days and we were friends in the same creative group.  Bill heard Bobby Kennedy was coming to speak in Harlem so he got on t he subway and went to look for himself.

                 When he got out at 125th street, he found a big crowd around Bobby.  A white man in a sea of black faces.  It was Kennedy’s first visit to Harlem and his speech was not going well. The crowd was silent, skeptical.  Kennedy’s flat nasal New England tones sounded alien, wrong, like what the hell did he know about Harlem?

                     So Kennedy said, “would you like to sing a song?”  "Anybody want to sing a song?" No response.  Bobby Kennedy was a brave man.  There was no band, of course, and no music to sing to.  He sang, “WE SHALL OVERCOME.” his tuneless New England voice sailed right past the crowd.  He sang the second line, “WE SHALL OVERCOME.”  No response.  He persevered, “WE SHALL OVERCOME SOMEDAY AY AY AY AYYY.”

                   Murphy had the suspicion that this could turn ugly.  The crowd was not buying a white man singing their song on their street.

              “DEEP IN MY HEART, I DO BELIEVE.  THAT WE SHALL OVERCOME ONE DAY.”  Nothing.  Except a few murmurs.  

               Incredibly Bobby Kennedy started the second verse.  “WE’LL WALK HAND IN HAND.” Nothing, no response.  He sang the second line, “WE’LL WALK HAND IN HAND,” and a couple of voices joined in. By the time he got to the end of the verse the whole crowd was singing with all their heart, recognizing a great heart was there on their street that afternoon.

              You can’t help but think, this would have been a better, different country if they hadn’t shot Jack and Bobby and Martin Luther King.   

 

               His words sound antique now, too naive for prime time.  But at the time, they promised that the America we learned about in school was true.:

              "This is a generous and compassionate country, that's what I want a country to stand for, not bias, not laws, not disorder, but compassion and love and peace. That's what this country should stand for and that's what I intend to do." RFK

A Footnote to Real Survival

Find the trail.  Can't find it?  Never mind.  You can always make your own. The next human being is on the other side of the mountain.

    

Slim Williams and his dogs.  If you squint he looks like Clark Gable.

          Yesterday's blog on Slim Williams (scroll down a page) and my Uncle John needs a footnote. 

          Recently, Discovery Channel had a reality show about trekking in the Alaska Wilderness called The Alaska Experiment  Ordinary people try to survive in the wild. 

           They are tracked by helicopters.  They have guides, fleece, parkas, gps, gas matches, cell phones, hi-tech boots, radios, high tech tents, sleeping bags, etc. etc.

    

            John Logan and Slim Williams had none of that.  Sure John started out looking like a page out of a 1939 Abercrombie and Fitch ("the greatest sporting goods store in the world") catalog.  They dumped all that fancy stuff in a few days.  Their one canvas tarp was their ground sheet,tent and when there was a river to cross, their boat.  Their tools were a rifle and an axe.  They didn't have nylon anything. Which makes their trek of 2,500 miles through the wilderness all the more impressive. And John's diary, written every night in pencil by the fire, a rare document of what survival takes when you really are on your own without another soul for a hundred miles.

                      On that note, the blog is off to Florida for a few days trek by rentacar to friends, family and sandy shores.  We will not be taking a rifle or an axe.  Do not send search parties. 

 

                       But wait, don't go. There's a ton of goodies here. Last week's Blog, for example,  Frank Lloyd Wright's last private house and his big mistake.

        

                     Scroll down for the beauty of a blizzard in New York City the wacky wonderful Coneheads at Silverstone. Or the flip side of that madness to the days of dope and meditation in The Volvo Years.
    

                  if you missed the all-time-record-breaking-hit- monster blog, The Real Allard Story:give it a click.  No, I lied; the tribute to the women who are as"sweet as honey and smile at you like you're made of money," attracted even more hits. And If you missed the 1979 Polish Grand Prix now's your chance.

Or, click on bob judd on the top of this page or slip down the right hand column to click on such gems as  my favorite, How You Look at the Sky.   Or The Kythera Chronicles to shake hands with Barbarossa.

Or just cruise through the links on the lower right hand side of this page, maybe come upon some unexpected little gem like  an excerpt from The Candle,  In Praise of the Belleville Midgets,  The Midgets of Belleville. Part II,  Truth in Grass: a Kansas adventure, The Story of the Larned Eagle Optic, Hollywood Calls, You Pick up the Phone, Hollywood Calls, you pick up the phone part 2 maybe my favorite My Short Happy War in Afghanistan or no, wait, wait, Fangio and the Maserati 250 F for the priceless video of Fangio in a polo shirt and helmet, absolutely relaxed driving a Maserati 250F around a beat up old race track with no run off, no barriers, no safety nothing.  My lunch with Rob Walkeris a good one even though it leaves out the Betty Grable stories. 

       You wouldn't want to miss My Short Happy War in Afghanistan

 

             Then there's Erno Goldfingers house-and-mine, which throws in Ian Flemming, no extra charge. Riding around Laguna Seca with Jackie Stewart was picked up by Jalopnik.com.

              Or Uncle John's Prayer.

               Or Clarence Judd Head-Butts a Truck.  Truck dies. That's a good one. 

             And, of course, the one that started it all, Truck Story.

               Then Virgin calls, and Forrest goes to Hollywood to star with an Electric car. And Forrest does a shoot in bed with Virgin. That one is a lot of fun. 

                Although, you might want to take a look at Pheromone Dreams to see what they are doing in bed in front of a film crew. While you're there it's just a short hop to Nurse Pelvis. 

            Or take a dip in the world's largest concrete freshwater free municipal swimming pool.

           And for a fine rainy afternoon divertimento, click on my dance with a prima ballerina.

 

              For a tasty bite with bon mots check out my friend, Gerry Freeman's foodie blog as  Hungry Gerald globe trots from spa to boites.

             Or go visit Elif Batumen, San Francisco's brightest and funniest writer, a fine lady to curl up with for a good read.  Here's Elif's homepage.

             Enjoy, Have a ball.  See you Monday, January 31 when Juddstory will return.

Slim Williams builds a boat with an axe and a tarp

       
    In 1939 my Uncle, John T. Logan rode, pushed, carried, and pulled, a motorcycle from Fairbanks Alaska to Seattle, Washington to show a road was not only possible, but also, the best route for a road that would connect the lower 48 to the remote northern territory. 

If you look closely you can see the motorcycle his partner, Slim Williams, is loading into a small boat that Slim built in two hours from scratch with an axe and a tarp.

           His partner was an old Alaska Sourddough, Slim Williams.  Slim had done the trip before in the Winter of 1933 by dog sled.  When Slim got to Seattle he took the wheels off a Model T Ford put them on his sled and kept on mushing all  the way to the Chicago World's Fair.
  

Eleanor Roosevelt said Slim and his dogs were her favorite exhibit and invited Slim to the White House.  “The driver has the kind of blue eyes that look away off to distant horizons,” said Mrs. Roosevelt.  “I loved his dogs.  They were grand.  I was careful of them and polite to them and asked if I might pat them.  There were two, only half wolf, that it was alright to pat.” Slim and his dogs went to the White House several times.

 

 Sometimes Slim built bridges with his axe.  It was getting dark and Slim and John were cold and tired and so they waited until morning to cross  the creek on their new bridge

A great cracking sound woke them up in the morning.  The creek was a fast running river and their bridge was gone.

Slim and John crossed over a hundred rivers.  Some of them by a raft they'd build on the spot from trees along the river bank and a tarp they used for a ground sheet or tent depending on the weather. John took photos, and 16 mm movies.  Click on this next link and you can see Slim, building the raft (click on "Access this Item" at the top of the link's page)  to cross the Klappan River, his only tool was an axe, in this remarkable archive film at the University of Alaska's Museum of Alaska. 

We Drove Across Spain Before Lunch

Casa de Something, Estoril. We stayed in under $125 a night hotels. 

        For a while I had a wonderful job.

        For example I said to Tom Bryant, the editor-in-chief of Road & Track, “remember the days when there really was grand touring and you drove across Europe from one Formula One race to another in a fast, luxurious car?  How about I go to the Portuguese Grand Prix for a weekend, then drive across Europe to go to the European Grand Prix in Nurmburg, Germany the next weekend. Stay in nifty places and Road & Track will pay for everything."
      
    And Tom said, "Great."

                 I'd cover the races and we would stay in under $125 a night hotels so my piece would be a practical guide to great places to stay without spending a fortune as well as an up close look at the movers and shakers at the top of Formula One.  Here's some snapshots taken at the track.

World Champion Damon Hill finished 2nd

World Champion Alain Prost would later buy Ligier

World Champion Mikka Hakkinen

In the paddock.  Ron Dennis in the Middle

  

 

           After the race we drove up the coast of Portugal and stayed in a small hotel on the beach. In the morning we watched the fisherman push their boats into the sea as fisherman have done in boats like this for over a thousand years. Under the beauty of the old boats and the spectacle of challenging the ocean, there was the grit of brutally hard work, small catches, and almost no money at all.

           We drove up to Oporto, and out along the Douro Valley.

  My companion wearied of sliding around hairpin after hairpin turn.  So we drove across Spain before lunch.  At a steady 155 mph the M3 was at ease and so were we.

 

We stayed in San Sebastian, next to France. In several ways, I believe, San Sebastian is the most delicious city in Europe.

 And the next day drove to the Nurburgring in the Eiffel mountains.

The M3 and the Blaue Ecke in Nurmburg

Where Dario Franchitti demo'd Juan Manuel Fangio's 1955 Mercedes W196, the one that won the world championship. The next day Michael Schumacher won the European Grand Prix in front of his home crowd.

It was a good week to go to work.

ONE DAY THE TEACHER WILL COME: One of those moments (two, actually) that changes everything.

             
             Twenty years ago, Nick Hansen was traveling in Bihar one of the poorest states in India.  Nick collapsed and a doctor told him, he would recover but he was going to need a lot of rest and time.  The doctor suggested a Bodh Gaya where they were used to Westerners and their strange ways. 

 

               Bodh Gaya is the Mecca of Buddhism.  Around 500 or 600 BC a wealthy Prince named Siddhartha sat under a giant tree to meditate and fast until he was transformed into the enlightened and loving Buddha, the founder one of the world's greatest religions.  Millions of pilgrims from all over the world go to Bodh Gaya every year so, yes they were used to the weird ways of foreigners.  

the temple at Bodh Gaya

        Nick went to Bodh Gaya and as he became strong enough to walk around the village, he met Deepak Kumar. They became friends and Deepak said, “let me show you my little village where I grew up, Piani, in Jharkhand India.  It’s not far.”  

              As they were walking around the little village where Deepak grew up, they noticed a little boy sitting in front of an abandoned building.  It wasn't the first time they'd seen him.  The little boy was there every day, sitting on some old sacking with a few tattered books alongside.  The building had no roof, no door, even the window frames had been ripped out for firewood.  They asked the boy what he was doing.  And the boy said, “this is the school and one day I know the teacher will come.” 

           Nick has been on a mission ever since.  He went back to Britain to raise money for a school and returned to the village in 1992.  He and Deepak Kumar started a small school with local teachers and from that simple beginning People First was born. Now employing over 70 people the trust now works in health, education, child protection and welfare, women's rights and poverty. 

    

                Years later, in the winter of 1999, my friends Michael Kilgroe (that's Michael in the column on the right) and Patricia Burbank went on their own pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya.  They got off  the night train from Calcutta in Gaya at 4 AM.  It was cold and desolate.  The train platform was dimly lit and seemed deserted. 

               Patricia and Michael were California pilgrims, therapists and teachers, tired and sleepy but glad to be so close to their desitnation.  They found the taxi stand beside the platform but there were no taxis. They'd have to wait until morning.  Too dangerous. Too many bandits at night.  “Don’t even leave the platform.”

 
             As they waited, forms rose up from the platform like small ghosts.  One by one they were surrounded by little children in rags.  The children were orphans and abandoned kids with no one to care for them, no food, no money: barely surviving on scraps they could beg from strangers or by selling water on trains. 
 
             It was cold, the middle of winter in the north of India and some of the children slept on the bare concrete train platform without a blanket. They were “platform kids” some of the millions of orphan and abandoned children in India who “live” on the train platforms.       

            For Michael and Patricia, seeing those children was  one of those moments that changes everything.  It would change Patricia and Michael’s lives and the lives of tens of thousands of children around the world. With any luck, it will change the lives of millions of children in the future.  Patricia said. “We hav do something for these children. We have to.”    But how?  When the need is infinite, what can you do?  

        .


         When they got to Bodh Gaya the visited the school that Nick Hansen and Deepak Kumar were running, how wonderfully efficient it was.   $4 would educate and feed a child for a month.  They would go back to Palo Alto to found One World Children's Fund with $10,000 of their own and their friends and family's money. 

School Kids in Marin, California sing their hearts out for kids in Africa

        Last year One World Children's fund raised nearly $600,000 for needy kids in America and around the world.  And they did it with a grand total of 2 employees. 
      
(to be continued)