Brown ribbon, its shiny surface spinning, a neon crimson bead the size of an insect eye
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| two bucks for them to fax it and send it to me at home so I could convert it into a faxable
file. Details. “Where do you want this faxed to?” “To my house.” “Where?” “It’s my computer. I just bought a scanner, and I don’t know how to use it yet.” Getting a message on the Internet is okay, but I learned how crummy it could be this morning. A friend e-mailed me. He was in my kindergarten class too. Have you ever had a day where you didn’t want to run into anybody during the day because a friend had done something, rather particularly embarrassing to his family, to his friends and to the frigging EMS people who had to go shovel his frigging brains into a metal sleeve of cranial sock. The first email had been a note of obituary. Brian died. That was all I knew. Brian had died. His daddy had driven race cars, and so did he after a while, and he was a little like Frank Sinatra. Temper. Subdued. Got the pussy. No doubt about that. But when a buddy shoots himself in the head, it kind of disappoints you. I played “Free Bird” about 12 times today in the car. I never could successfully rid myself of a good, plentiful cry. I returned the e-mail telling my friend that it ought to be against the law for anybody to attend the funeral of a sorry son-of-a-bitch that kills himself. That would frigging correct the problem. Damned straight, motherraper. Take it to the bank. Flush it. *************************** OFFICIAL LEGISLATIVE JOURNAL The Senate assembled at 11:00 A.M., the hour to which it stood adjourned, and was called to order by the ACTING PRESIDENT, Senator RAVENEL. A quorum being present, the proceedings were opened with a devotion by the Chaplain as follows: Beloved, hear again a word from the Prophet Isaiah, Chapter 32 (v.2): “And a man shall be a refuge from the wind
And a shelter from the tempest... Like the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land.”
Grant us Your peace both now and always. Amen. This was the day the legislature decided to commend me for investigative reporting. ************** TIME magazine just ran a big story on “Video Crack” June 1, 1998 with a Bennettsville dateline and an emphasis on the Rep. Doug Jennings race and how Marlboro County Coroner Tim Brown was collecting a lot of video poker constituent money. When I’d call Brown on Sunday nights death news, he’d never offer any information. Hmmmmmmmmm. County music star Suzy Bogguss has just pulled off the highway in Nashville, and her cellular is working fine with no static. SUZY: I’m in my car and when I get in a parking spot here, and as soon as I can decide what to do here, I will. TIM: Be careful. Thanks a whole lot for calling. SB: Well, what should be talk about? Q: What’s new in your career? What’s coming up around the corner? SB: Well, I’ve got a new album coming, and I guess the release date is June 2 on that. And I have a new single coming, like in a week. Q: ‘Somebody To Love’? SB: Right, so you know that much anyway. And it’s a song I wrote with Matraca Berg and my husband, Doug Crider. It’s kind of typical of me, you know. It’s an ‘I’m-talking-to-somebody song,’ and in this particular case I’m talking to a gal who’s been out on a bad date, and I’m talking to her and saying, ‘I know how you feel’ and ‘It’s a drag.’ She’s sitting there in the kitchen there loading up on ice cream in that depressed mode that girls do so well, trying to feel her and sort of be empathetic with her, her friend or sister, or whoever it is. It’s kind of funny too. The song has got some funny lines in it. It’s kind of like you understand that she’s trying to not make light of the situation, but at the same time she’s trying to make the girl feel better. Q: Is there a video coming with that? SB: Nope. No video with this one. We just decided we’d take the money and advertise instead. (Laughing.) Q: You have a lot of guest artists on this album. SB: I do. A ton. And it’s kind of weird because I didn’t really set out to do that, but I wanted to get some different textured voices as the background voices on this record, and it was like every song was calling for a particular kind of a voice, and I just kept thinking of friends of mine that sounded like they’d be great for that song. They were all kind enough to say yes and come over. Q: Do you have any new hobbies these days? SB: Well, I have a three-year-old. That’s a pretty big full-time hobby. (Laughing.) I’m learning about his hobbies, basically, and just trying to keep up with him. As far as my own stuff, I’m doing a little less of the hobby stuff than what I used to do. But some stuff has really gotten a whole lot more fun because I’ve always been real outdoorsy, and I’ve always had a garden, and Ben’s really into gardening with me. He just has a blast. He thinks it’s the coolest thing in the world to be able to go out and pick tomatoes and just chow down in the garden. I mean, he eats half of what we pick before we get it into the house. Q: What did you think about being in the comic strip “Nancy”? SB: I thought that was really cool. That fellow (Guy Gilchrist) is just such a nice man. He’s actually kind of struck up a relationship on the Internet with my mom. He’s really talented. He’s written a couple of poetry books that are just phenomenal. One of them is a great tips book. It’s really a neat, neat book. Q: What was it like working at Tennessee’s spokesman for child passenger safety? SB: Well, I’m still kind of involved in that. You know, I don’t know, I guess it was sort of a natural thing for me because I’m really passionate about people being safe with their kids in the car. I always have been. Even before I had a child, I would see people with their kids sort of hanging out in the car and hanging out of the car and just think, oh my gosh, what am I going to do if they have to stop quickly? Then when I had a baby, and I went to buy my first car seat, I was so overwhelmed. I did all this research and everything to find out what I needed, and really what’s the best place in the car, and the more I found out about it, the more, I mean from my friends and stuff, everybody sounded so confused on it that everybody had different opinions about what you should do. So the more I got confused, the more I wanted to find out the real answers, and then I kind of felt like I should share that with people because if everybody was that mixed up on this stuff, it must be confusing to more than just my friends. Q: Did you have a lot of fun filming “Back in the Saddle”? SB: That was a riot. I mean, these girls are all really good friends of mine, and most of us have known each other for a number of years now, and we end up sharing dressing rooms a lot for the awards shows and things. So we’ve gotten to know each other and talk about everything from redoing our kitchens to how much we pay the band members. Everything right down the middle of it, the really intricate business decisions that we have to make. Q: Do you still have any of the work that you did at Illinois State in metalsmithery? SB: Oh yeah, I have several pieces that I wear all the time. I did a chalice that was a little too gaudy that nobody would wear, I don’t think. There’s a chalice that I made that’s got these court jesters all over it, and it’s real, real gaudy, and my husband loves it, but the only reason that he uses it is to put his change in it at night, so it’s not like he thinks it’s a valued art piece that we have to put in the living room. (Laughing.) Q: What was it like performing for the Clintons? SB: Well, it was great. It was nerve-wracking. My baby was just eight weeks old when we were there, so I was just trying to get back to my own self and was really caught up in the motherhood thing, and I was nervous because I had never performed for what we think of as our royalty or whatever. The first I said to him was, they were only sitting about ten feet in front of me, and the first thing I said to him was I hope I didn’t spit on him during the show. So USAToday picked up on that. The next day my brother, who is an attorney in Iowa, had like seven copies on his desk, talking about how the first thing I said to the president was that I hope I didn’t spit on him. (Laughing.) Q: Do you like touring with Billy Dean at The Palace in Myrtle Beach? SB: Yeah. Billy and I have been friends for years. In fact, I had him in my first video before he even had a record deal. He was the love interest in my first video. The song was called “Somewhere Between,” and we were kind of breaking up and not understanding each other. You know, it’s been a long time that we’ve known each other, and it’s really fun for us to get back together and do these shows because we come from a real similar background of doing a lot of clubs solo with just our guitar. So we usually try to end up doing something together at the end of the night that we kind of throw together behind the scenes. Q: What was it like working with Jimmy Bowen? SB: It’s wonderful. I’ve not worked with him for a while since he left the record label, but when I was working with him it was a very good experience. He knows so much. He taught me a ton of stuff about the industry as well as producing records. Q: Who do you admire as a songwriter? SB: Oh, tons of people. Q: You did a song of Lowell George’s. That’s pretty eclectic. SB: Yeah. I’m pretty into Lowell George. I always have been. I always thought he was an amazing, soulful person. I really like the singer-songwriters. I’ve always been drawn to them. When I was young and buying my first records and stuff, it seemed like that was what I would pick out, the singer-songwriters. I still cut songs of friends of mine who are singer-songwriters, and they’ll put them on their records, and I’ll put them on my records too. It doesn’t matter to me, as long as the song touches me in some way and motivates me to sing it. Q: What was the first record you ever bought? SB: The first record I ever bought was, I think, was (giggling), let’s see, I think it was “Houses of the Holy.” (Laughing.) Q: Great day. SB: But I think my second one was Elton John’s “Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only The Piano Player.” Q: Where are you now? SB: Actually, I’m in Nashville. My son’s birthday is coming up on Sunday, so I’m going shopping for birthday presents while he’s napping. *************************** Slamming Bloody Marys back at the exclusive Dunes Beach & Beach Club where the Senior Energizer Tour is held every year, I awaited a meeting of a group of elderly women dedicated to keeping alive the poetry of Archibald Rutledge of South Carolina. The new credit card worked well, and it felt high-class to drink at The Dunes, however, I’d prefer a shag club. I’m still using the VISA card I’ll later run up and have to pay off in default. The Sun News columnist was getting bored, and so was I, so during lunch I slipped into the lounge and got slammed. An FBI meeting was being held, a luncheon for retired officers, so I slipped in and talked to everyone I could. The result was an interview for us and one for the Miscellany. The fellow was Catholic. So with a Bloody in hand, I walked into the FBI meeting and started asking questions until I found someone with the most interesting story. Older FBI agents have a lot more class and are friendlier than the younger ones. Art Roehrl’s part in the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy involved the tracking of a weapon. The Federal Bureau of Investigation accounting department where Art Roehrl of Myrtle Beach worked after the shooting death of President John F. Kennedy had a task - to identify “the weapon that killed him and that Lee Harvey Oswald was the person who purchased it.” “It was a weapon that was made in a foreign country. It obviously had been imported into the United States. In Alexander, Virginia, the largest importer of foreign weapons was Interarmco. So when we found out that he had been killed with a foreign weapon, they sent a team of us down to Interarmco to try to identify where it was imported. We knew the make of the weapon. After we had been there an hour and a half, one of the people there came in. He said, ‘I have just seen on television a man carrying the weapon that killed him over his head.’” The man told them that it had been imported to a company in Chicago, Ill. “He mentioned the number of the weapons that had been imported at the same time. We got ahold of our Chicago office. They immediately found out where that weapon went, and by the next morning, they had that weapon traced to Lee Harvey Oswald.” Did Oswald kill Kennedy? “I think there’s been a lot of speculation. I think that they have found out who really did it, that Lee Harvey Oswald did it,” he said. Why did Oswald do it? “That’s a tough one to answer. I really don’t know. I remember I was sitting in the office in Alexandria, Virginia. I tried to make some phone calls but was getting a busy signal.” An agent’s wife called and told him the tragic news. “My first reaction was ‘Gee, what is going on for somebody to go so far as to kill the President?’ There was a lot of turmoil in the country as such. Remember that this is after the Bay of Pigs and the ultimatum that we had with Russia. A lot of things go through your mind.” Another case he remembered was the Wineberger kidnapping case in New York City where a man had taken a baby and abandoned it in a field on Long Island in about 1955 “It was a very interesting case because the only clue we had was the handwriting on the ransom note. We went over nearly a million documents just to find his handwriting, and we finally found it in the Probation Office in Brooklyn,” he said. “We were closing in from all directions. “It was the end of a long, long road. We were working seven days a week, 16 hours a day, and we had somebody say I think we finally got it,” he said. “It was great to be able to solve a case just like that. It makes you feel like you’ve really accomplished something. He was not only convicted, but he was executed.” Roehrl, 73, moved here in 1982. He is chairman of disaster operations for the American Red Cross in Horry County and is on the board of directors. The Minnesota native attended school at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. and spent three years in the 14th Armored Division in the European Theatre in 1943-46 in France and Germany. “I came back and finished my college education, worked briefly for a company for six months and then entered the FBI,” he said. “I spent 30 years with them. I heard about the FBI on the radio when I was a kid, and I thought it was one of the greatest things going, but financially I didn’t believe that I’d be able to get in. Then I found out they would accept accountants.” Roehrl and other friends, all retired agents, met recently at The Dunes Golf & Beach Club for a luncheon meeting with their wives. Ham Floyd, 86, a Tabor City, N.C. native, attended. Floyd and Ham go back. Floyd served as an FBI agent with six years in New York City and at headquarters for 21 years. His most interesting case? “It was a surveillance actually, one of the missing Communist Party leaders. Something happened during the surveillance.” If you ask Floyd about the surveillance and what happened, the 86-year-old will not spill the beans. “It was very interesting, which I can’t spell out, in New York City,” said Roehrl’s pal. Floyd retired in January 1976 after 27 years. “When I graduated from law school I went to Charlotte and was interviewed. Actually the pay that time was better than a job that I would have taken teaching law.” He entered the FBI in 1948. “I think the leadership has been good. The FBI will never go down even though a lot of, I don’t like to use the word left-wingers, but a lot of the more liberal people would like to redo it. But I think it’s doing fine.” Floyd met Roehrl many years ago, and to hear these two aging agents discussing the old days is a little . “I knew him when he had green behind his years,” said Floyd. “I got him out of an old motel. It wasn’t a bad motel, but he was lonely, and I had him over so some other agents could look after him. He did a good job. He was in a field office running the show. I was just back there telling what to do and getting cussed for it.” “We did what we told you we did,” his friend said. “And some things they didn’t tell us,” Floyd retorted with a laugh. “They transferred me to headquarters. He was in New York, and they transferred him to Richmond. The Richmond office sent him up to Alexandria, and that’s where I was living. He moved in with me and ate me out of house and home. I can’t get away from this son-of-a-gun.” “What he said was true. We met each other in ‘51,” said Roehrl, remembering the old days. “I think they have a tougher job today than we had with all the drugs and all the crime that is here, and they kind of break down society with respect to the people,” said Roehrl. “There is a lot of respect that has been lost from the elders. They don’t seem to care for each other like we used to. “I think the public no longer holds them in esteem as they did us, and a lot of that is due to misinformation. The Ruby Ridge is a very difficult thing to talk about because having not been on the scene makes it extremely difficult to try to judge what exactly did or didn’t happen. We were instructed never to shoot unless shot at. This becomes a problem, and whether or not there has been a change in the procedure or change there, I don’t know, and I don’t feel like I should guess because there is so much controversy about it.” What was it like fighting organized crime back then? “The major problem is that we didn’t have the laws that we have today to fight organized crime. They say that Mr. Hoover was light on the Mafia in the organized crime section. Well, you didn’t have the laws to enforce. Basically it was considered to be a local crime problem, and it wasn’t until Congress finally recognized that they needed to put more laws on the books making certain things an interstate violation, because organized crime had definitely gone interstate, they were sitting there with their hands tied. “Of course, there were no drugs in those days. There were no laws on bootlegging because whiskey was no longer illegal,” he said. “They are finally reaping the benefits today. It’s not easy to catch these guys. It’s a lot of hard work. The FBI was finally able to do it (Gotti).” The National Organization of Women is using the RICO Act to sue anti-abortion foes over bombings. Is the racketeering act working? “I think the courts have done a pretty good job on it,” he said. Is there organized crime in South Carolina? “I can’t really say yes or no on that particular point. I would not be surprised if there was some, but I don’t think it would be organized on a grand scale like they would have in New York and Pittsburgh and some other offices that have been around for a long time.” How about Hoover? That was the term my family always used in my childhood when referring to my favorite dog ever, our beagle. He met his fate under a wheel. “He was out when I graduated from training school. He was not in the office and not in Washington, D.C., but he was in California. I’ve been in the same room with him. I think highly of him. He really did a great job in making law enforcement something to be looked up to, rather than down to. His idea was that law enforcement should be meeting justice, and his idea also was that we, as the FBI, should be training the local officers to uphold the law in the same manner as it does. Police officers were never intended to be punishers. They are supposed to take it to the prosecuting people and let the courts make the decision of whether someone is guilty or not guilty.” Whether your image of a federal agent is that of James West, Robert Conrad’s macho version of a Secret Service agent from the hit, violent CBS show “The Wild, Wild West,” or the Chuck Norris U.S. marshal character, or the militia’s skewered manipulation of the great conspiracy of helicopters and anti-government propaganda, to meet a retired FBI officer is an honor in itself because Americans like brave cops. They’re heroes. “I think the worst thing in the world is to have a crooked police officer,” he said. “I think he is the worst enemy of society because he sits under the cover of law, saying he is great, and he isn’t.” ****** Al Jarreau’s hands sank into the cool, wet cement block which was placed in the Broadway at the Beach Celebrity Square Walk of Fame several months ago. His lush, rich voice filling the hallway of The Palace with laughter, the Reprise Records legend spent some time talking about his career before his show at The Palace. Having won five Grammy Awards, in 1992 he won Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male, and in 1977, 1978, and 1981 he won Best Jazz Vocal with Best Pop Vocal in 1981. This made him the only artist to have won Grammies in these three different categories. “Tenderness,” his latest release from Warner Brothers, was recorded over a five-day Download 2.99 Mb. Share with your friends:
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