Why I am Not a Criminal

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 17:23:20 -0400

There are people in this world who get away with everything, and there are people who get away with nothing. I am certainly in the latter category, and that is why I am not a criminal. Of course, I have moral objections to murder, deceit, fraud, and mayhem, but these are buttressed by a lifetime of experience, knowing that if I dare stick a toe out of line, they'll catch me.

Let me illustrate. When I was twelve, my best friend for life Dick Lefevre, and my other best friend for life, Dave Hall, and I were walking across the schoolyard of Our Lady of Grace School, while sharpening our dirty joke technique. Dave told a story about some mythical person getting a BJ, and we all snorted in a manly fashion, even though we had no idea what a BJ was, and would be weirded out if somebody told us.

Then Dick told another joke about some mythical girl calling him Big Dick, and we snorted at that, again in a manly fashion. So far, the Sisters were all looking the other way, or were busy admonishing some girls for rolling up their skirts so that they were inches above the regulation length.

But then, it was my turn, and I told a joke about a mythical person's butt, or some such thing, and before we even got a chance to snort in a manly fashion, Sister Vincent appeared exactly behind me, and tapped me on the shoulder, while holding out a yellow detention ticket. I swear she beamed there, because I saw her on the other side of the school yard just seconds before.

Now let's take this five years into the future. Dick had bought a beautiful 1968 Mustang, and after polishing it forty or fifty times that day, announced that he wanted to put his new car through its paces. Time for Smokey Burnouts. And he knew a perfect place for it. There was a new housing development going up a few miles away, and while the houses were in various states of construction, the streets were brand new, perfect for screeching the tires and making smoke out of the burning rubber.

So Dick went first--half an hour of Smokey Burnout ecstasy, while I stood to the side taking pictures. So then Dave took a turn. Another half hour of uninterrupted smoke and noise, while I took more pictures. Finally, it was my turn, and I sat behind the wheel, revved the engine, and a police car appeared, lights flashing. A cop pulled himself out of the driver's side, and pulled out his ticket pad. I swear it was yellow. I was doomed.

The memory has almost turned to dream now. I was in high school, but I had a sometime job as an assistant to Donn Reed, a reporter for KMPC radio in LA. It was 1968, and the California primary was nearly over, so anticipation was high. Donn called that afternoon and asked if I would come along with him to cover the speeches. The First one we went to was Sen. McCarthy, because he was losing and would likely speak first, which would free us to run over to the Ambassador Hotel to hear Kennedy. I was feeling cool with my press badge and made sure that any girl who passed by got a good look at it.

The hoopla went on for quite a while, and eventually the girls stopped looking at my press badge, so I was happy when Donn told me that we should scurry over to the Ambassador Hotel to catch Bobby Kennedy.

We got to the Ambassador just as Kennedy was about to come on stage. The place was packed with ardent Democrats, trying to wriggle their way around each other. We were too late to get Donn’s microphone up to the podium, so he told me to take the tape recorder and stand in the middle of a crowd of reporters, and hold the mike up high. I was a big guy and could push my way through the crowd, and it didn't matter if they gave me the evil eye, which I suspect was the main reason I had the job.

They announced Bobby, and the crowd jumped and hollered and whistled, while a pretty brunette near me hopped up and down and wept. I thought then that if that was the reaction of pretty brunettes, then I should go into politics. Inside the mob of reporters, the crowd pressed me all around, and in spite of my size I couldn’t move in any direction, so I stood flat-footed and unmovable, mike hand raised like the torch on the Statue of Liberty. Kennedy was unstoppable and everyone in the room knew it. The air snapped with electricity, making people giggle for no reason. Even the reporters tried to keep their cool, and their objectivity, but now and then a little "Go Bobby!" came out of some reporter nearby, and everyone else laughed.

Bobby waved to everyone, congratulated Senator McCarthy for a great campaign, joked with everyone for a few moments, and then left the podium and started for the kitchen. The crowd of reporters followed after, still shouting questions, and since I was in the middle of the pack, I went along with them whether I wanted to or not.

At this point my memories collide with my dreams, and I can no longer be certain of what I saw that night. The crowd was pushing forward, through the door that led to a narrow hallway on the way to the kitchen pantry. Supposedly, KTLA television had a camera in there, but I didn't see it. All I saw were human heads in front of me and human heads behind me, crushed together in that narrow space, inching forward like a blood clot. Suddenly I heard a pop, louder than a champagne cork but not as loud as a rifle. Pop Pop Pop. Suddenly the crowd was swaying back and forth, pressing me like laundry until it was hard to breathe. A short woman standing next to me reached up and said "help me kid, I'm going down." So I put my arm around her and pulled her up so that she was hanging around my shoulders. Then I thought I saw the crowd part for just a second, and then I saw the top of Rosie Grier's head. He was sitting on somebody and he was crying. I heard somebody shout that he'd been hit, and then somebody was standing on the hand holding the gun and trying to pull the gun free, but the gun kept firing, and then suddenly there was a hand on the collar of my jacket, pulling me out of the kitchen. By that time some security guards were trying to move all the reporters out of there so that they could capture Sirhan Sirhan and attend to Bobby.

Then I was standing in the ballroom where Kennedy gave his last speech and Donn ran up to me and said "what happened? What happened?" I told him that Kennedy had been shot, or at least that's what I thought happened, and Donn asked for the tape recorder. Then I noticed that I was still holding onto the woman. She was about 40 in a white suit and she was very short but not particularly petite, with a jowly face like Winston Churchill's. To this day I don't know who she was. When I set her down, she said "thanks kid, you saved my life." And then she ran off to file her story. The rest of that evening I sat on one of the folding chairs staring blankly into space watching people run back and forth. Some were weeping; others were angry; others still were trying to hold it together and at least look professional. I was trying to keep from crying, but I’m not sure if I succeeded. I didn't care about my press badge and I didn't care about looking cool, because I knew at that point that America was losing its mind.

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