"Far away places with strange soundin’ names,
Far away over the sea.
Those far away places with the strange soundin’ names
Are callin’, callin’ me.
Goin’ to China or maybe Siam,
I wanna see for myself
Those far away places I’ve been readin’ about
In a book that I took from a shelf.
I start gettin’ restless whenever I hear
The whistle of a train.
I pray for the day I can get underway
And look for those castles in Spain.
They call me a dreamer, well maybe I am,
But I know that I’m burnin’ to see
Those far away places with the strange soundin’ names
Callin’, callin’ me."
- Far Away Places (1949) by Joan Whitney and Alex Kramer
*****
I imagine the child. He’s twelve, slender, dark forelock curl against skin paled by weeks of travel. His blue eyes are set in deep hollows. I imagine him sitting on a hard wooden bench. The bench is old and polished by many years of shifting behinds.
It is the only furniture in the long, narrow airport corridor - empty except for his parents, infant brother, and the stern Greek solider standing guard over them. The boy has not moved from that bench for twelve hours. He has a book in his hand - The Count Of Monte Cristo.
He’s a quiet young man, but do not mistake the silence and tired eyes for melancholy. He’s intensely curious, drinking in the sounds of the many strange languages crackling over the hallway speakers. Even the drab walls and small piles of oiled sawdust on the wooden floor seem fascinating. The soldier stares at him coldly as the boy studies his olive drab uniform, webbed harness, and especially the M1 rifle he clutches. The boy is not afraid.
I’ve met the boy before: On a train steaming west to California, holding his pretty mother’s hand as she jostles through the crowd of whistling soldiers and sailors home from war; and at San Diego Harbor, peering at the forest of submarine conning towers bristling out of the mist - the whole harbor ringing with the hoot, hoot of fog horns as he wonders which sub contained his father.
I’ve seen him in Florida, laughing and running from the Brahma bull calf he’s teased into play. And later, by his grandfather’s side, as the one-eyed old man shoots the head off a turtle swimming in the middle of the lake.
There were other times, other places: rattling up the Florida highway in a `36 Dodge, bound for Philadelphia where his father was going to leave them so he could go off and fight – against the Communists this time, instead of the Nazis and Fascists. And I’ve seen that boy tinkering with a homemade short-wave radio, cats’ whiskering up voices from thousands upon thousands of miles away.
Yes, we’ve met before. But never in so grand an adventure as this - under military guard at Athens Airport; his father accused of conspiring to smuggle gold and the boy knowing the joke was on them because his father was an American spy - a CIA agent - and soon the barred doors would swing open and that blustery, imperious Greek diplomat would come scurrying up to them, hat in hand, streaming a greater flood of apologies than he had threats twelve hours ago. And that young soldier, so imperious before, would bow and scrape and beg Lucky’s pardon.
I imagine the child – more than fifty years gone now. I know him well, for that boy is me.
*****
The boy is me, but I’ll call him Lucky, for that was the name his family used and I’ve always been sorry it had to be shed along with childhood. The name had dignity then - and surprise during introductions.
People would ask, "Why do they call you Lucky?" The boy would stop, pretend to think for a moment and then use whatever answer he favored at the time.
"Because Hopalong Cassidy is my cousin and his sidekick’s name is Lucky and my mother and father named me after him," was one he prized at a younger, cap-pistol age.
This story was true - the silver-haired cowboy, portrayed by the actor William Boyd, was loosely related to Lucky by marriage - but the boy had dropped that reason because it tended to lead to fights with peers who doubted he could be kin of any sort to such grand royalty.
Before he left the States he’d seen a movie during family day at the Pentagon. It was called "Mr. Lucky," and starred Cary Grant as a canny Greek American matching wits with the rich, the law, and his crooked rivals. As it happened the film was set before America’s entry into the war and the boy was so taken by the movie that he now claimed it as the true source of his name. Since this was a complete lie, everyone believed him.
Lies, he’d recently discovered, were curious things that were sinful in some circumstances and praiseworthy in another.
The nuns said lying was always evil and ought to be avoided at all cost. The Hellfires were mentioned in detail as the extreme result. Minor torture for tens of thousands of years in Purgatory were cited for lesser transgressions.
But Mr. Blaines - his CIA family counselor - said there were certain exceptions God took into account. It was no sin to lie to protect your family or your country, Mr. Blaines claimed. He said when anyone asked what his father did the boy must always lie. His father - and other agents like him - were fighting a great war against Stalin and his Communist hordes and if the boy gave them away America might be endangered and his father could be killed.
"What about confession?" Lucky asked. "Is it a sin if I lie to a priest during confession?"
"It’s no sin under the circumstances I described," Mr. Blaines said quite firmly. "And if a priest asks your father’s occupation, yes, you still must lie. Even during confession. There are no exceptions."
Lucky didn’t worry over the matter much, but he did find it interesting he was being told something that couldn’t be tested. What would a priest say to Mr. Blaines’ notions about lying? Would he agree? Lucky could never know for certain, because he was forbidden to seek outside expert opinion. Even so, Mr. Blaines would probably have a logical retort. He always did. Later, when Lucky became more experienced at the subtleties of lies, he managed to ask a Jesuit priest about Mr. Blaines’ statement without giving anything away. The Jesuit not only confirmed Mr. Blaines’ view, but he did so with frightening passion. The priest, a short, powerfully built man, had been a chaplain at a Japanese prisoner of war camp and had experienced such awful things that he’d scared the hell of Lucky explaining in graphic detail what could happen to someone who fell into enemy hands.
But that was later, much later. Now, Lucky was stuck on the bench at Athens airport, his skinny behind bruised from so many hours of sitting. As he looked over at his parents dozing on the far corner of the bench he wondered what Mr. Blaines would say about the current situation. After all, it was a lie of sorts that had gotten them into this predicament.
The incident in Athens had been the only mix-up in their extended journey to his father’s first overseas post. They were bound for Cyprus - a Mediterranean island off the coast of Turkey that Lucky hadn’t known existed until his father had informed the family of his assignment.
When he’d learned their destination Lucky had been disappointed. Originally his father had been assigned to a post in Africa. Now that was exciting news. Lucky got all the Tarzan books out of the library and read them from start to finish. Africa was definitely the place to be for a boy seeking adventure. His enthusiasm wasn’t lessened when his father started bringing home smeared mimeographed reports about Kenya - the African country they were going to live in. He also brought home books, maps and illustrated articles about the grand life and homes of the British colonial masters who ruled the land.
None of the facts matched Mr. Burroughs’ descriptions. However, that didn’t make the Tarzan tales any less exciting, so Lucky put the stories on one side of truth - on the side of imagination. Which in a way, he came to realize, was also real. The line was infinitely movable if you were a CIA brat. Fact became fiction and fiction became fact as quickly as you could tune in the various news accounts on your radio. When Lucky’s father was in his cups and feeling philosophical, he used to say that nothing was actually true. Certain principles worked because everyone agreed to accept them. One plus one equaled two, his father liked to say, only because everybody had decided long ago that it was a usable system. There were other arithmetical methods based on one and one equaling three, or even four. They were also valid, his father said, but not so handy in describing the world they lived in.
That’s how Lucky learned to deal with fact and fiction when Africa had been their destination. Tarzan was one view of things. The books and reports were another. Anyway you looked at it, Africa was definitely an exciting destination. Then there was something the newspapers called a Mau-Mau uprising. A Kenyan convent was supposedly raided on the outskirts of Nairobi, the capitol city. The news accounts said the nuns had been slain and worse. Whatever worse than dead could be, Lucky was just old enough to start to imagine, before the "yuck’ factor cut in.
It was claimed that farms were attacked by rebels demanding independence… rebels who were supposedly in collusion with the loyal black servants Lucky had seen portrayed in the illustrated articles. Some accounts claimed the servants massacred their masters while they slept. A few very weird – KKK type news accounts - compared the uprising to the alleged massacres in the Old South before the American Civil War. When wildly erroneous newspaper accounts claimed that servants and slaves had massacred their masters and mistresses in their beds.
As for the Kenyan atrocities, it was said that Communist agitators were responsible. British authorities were quoted as saying that Stalin’s hordes had invaded Africa to turn good, simple people into ravening beasts. Some newspapers dubbed the Mau-Mau transgressors a "red horde," which Lucky found slightly amusing because the Mau-Mau were black, not red.
The main impact on Lucky was that suddenly the assignment to Kenya was deemed too dangerous a posting for a CIA family and so they were left in assignment limbo. His dad’s pay was held up – money diverted to the Kenyan mission had to be booked back to Washington again. This was not an easy thing for any government bureaucracy to handle, but it was doubly difficult when it involved a covert employee.
Basically, as Lucky later came to understand it, when an agent was posted overseas it was usually as an employee of some other branch of the government. That would be his cover – that he was working for the State Department, or as a civilian employee of the Army or the Navy. To further support that cover, the agent would officially resign from the CIA. Then if Agency files were breached by the Enemy – or prying Congressional bureaucrats, who were nearly as bad as the Enemy - it would show that although the person in question once worked for the CIA, this was no longer the case. Not officially, at any rate. This arrangement also gave the Company deniability. If his father’s cover was blown the CIA spokesman could say with a perfectly straight face that he (the captured one) didn’t work for the Agency.
The downside for regular CIA families, whose fathers had not been captured and held for torture - was that the system made getting paid more than a little tricky. The agent’s wages were issued by the department he officially worked for – the State Department, in the case of the Kenyan mission. Any difference in wages was made up by the Agency and paid directly into a Stateside bank account. There was always a significant difference for CIA types because of things like overseas pay, hazardous duty pay – practically the whole world was hazardous duty in 1952 – and cost of living adjustments. On the other hand, many times this tortuous trail meant the family would be borderline destitute waiting for checks to catch up to them. CIA families took care of each other during those times, delivering bags of groceries and necessities to their colleagues and making small, private loans.
After the Kenya assignment fell through, Lucky’s dad and other CIA families suddenly found themselves stranded in drab apartments in Langley Park, – all scrambling like hell to get a new assignment. Things got so bad at Lucky’s house that at one point his dad got a part time job as a checker at a local supermarket to fill the gaps between the much delayed Agency paychecks. After all, there was a third mouth to feed – Lucky had a new baby brother, Charlie.
Several months of waiting commenced. His father disappeared for days at a time for more training at "The Pickle Factory," – CIA slang for facilities in the Foggy Bottom area of D.C. – or at "The Farm," which was a secret base in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The good news here was that he got a per diem allowance that was immediately transmuted into groceries and rent. Meanwhile, the old Dodge the family had driven up from Florida fell into disrepair, its doors rusting shut and its tires collapsing like their hopes.
Suddenly, everything changed and the atmosphere was charged with excitement. There was a flurry of activity. Many trips to the Pentagon ensued to get inoculated against foreign diseases. Lucky had already undergone thirty-six shots for the African assignment. He couldn’t see how there could possibly be any diseases left to protect him from. But the Middle East, it seemed, was in some ways even more pestilential than Africa. It took six trips to the Pentagon clinic and twenty-three shots to armor him and his family against the dreaded germs they might encounter.
The Agency was new in 1952 and expanding rapidly. A headquarters building was being constructed at Langley, but meanwhile the CIA’s many functions were spread all over D.C., Virginia and Maryland. The clinic was housed in the Pentagon and visiting there was an exciting expedition, even though the purpose was ultimately painful. There’d be a grand trip by bus to the Capitol. Lucky never got tired of seeing the White House, with its cherry trees, the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument, which was not only five hundred feet high, but you could take an elevator all the way to the top.
Then there was the reflecting pool and the Lincoln Memorial, Lucky’s particular favorite. An old black woman – Mrs. Johnson – who used to help his mother when they lived in Florida said it was her lifelong dream to see the monument for herself.
"Lincoln set the people free," she used to tell Lucky. A woman who had apparently had bad luck with the male species, she liked to say that there were "only three men in this old world worth a plugged nickel." She’d tick them off on her fingers – "Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt."
The Pentagon was so big that it staggered the imagination. Lucky’s teacher, a pretty young nun at "Our Lady Of Sorrows," was enthusiastic about the details of what she called the American "fortress for freedom and Christianity." Constructed during World War Two, he learned, it was the largest office building in the world – nearly four million square feet, with seventeen or eighteen miles of hallways. The book Lucky checked out of the school library said each of its five wedge-shaped sections was big enough to hold the Capitol Building.
Those facts were impressive, but did nothing to convey the feeling of sheer power and pride the complex radiated when he approached the Pentagon for the first time. Each step he took made him feel smaller and smaller until it seemed that he was no more than a flea when he reached the entrance. Inside, he encountered an elaborate warren of olive-drab hallways and offices, with checkpoints at every turn where uniformed Marines stood guard. Along with his mother, he was given a badge, which he pinned to his shirt and at each checkpoint the Marines solemnly examined Lucky’s badge and his mother’s badge as well, along with the sheaf of documents and passes she clutched in her hand. To the boy’s amusement, they even studied baby Charlie closely and the first time they did it he made a joke that maybe the kid was a Communist in baby disguise. The Marines didn’t reply, or crack a smile, and Lucky’s mom gave him such a pinch that he swore off joking in the Pentagon forever.
Then it was on to the next checkpoint and they went higher and higher until Lucky knew that they were now at a rarified level that few Americans would have the security clearances to enter. Because this floor was so tip-top secret it took a half-an-hour for the three of them to get the final approval. Then they would be ushered into the clinic proper - the strong smell of disinfectant announcing its presence well before they were passed through the last checkpoint -and the big double doors were pushed aside.
Here, everything was hospital white and there were large steel and glass cabinets positioned about the rooms. Waiting for them were doctors and nurses in crisp white uniforms – all wearing high security ID badges. They were CIA medical personnel specially trained to handle agents and their families. Lucky met other CIA brats during those visits. They all looked and behaved like ordinary kids and talked about things that interested typical American youths – their favorite radio shows, movies, games, sports, etc. Thanks to Mr. Blaines’ counseling none of them ever mentioned the CIA, much less their fathers’ connections to the Agency. The boy took pride in belonging to this new, secret club of young people and he was sure the others felt the same.
The family’s departure was set for late May and it seemed the date would never arrive. Then when it did come, it was with such a rush that it didn’t seem possible they could get everything done in time. The hardest part for Lucky was school. He’d be leaving before the end of the semester and wouldn’t be returning to classes until the fall so he had to take his final exams early. Fortunately, Lucky was an old hand at transfers - he’d already attended half-a-dozen schools. And the school itself – Our Lady Of Sorrows – was experienced in handling the children of military and diplomatic personnel so everything went off without a hitch and his final grades were all "Excellents."
When the big day arrived, Lucky was just as excited about Cyprus as he had been about Kenya. There wasn’t much to do except make sure he had a good supply of books to read during their travels and to resist devouring them before the journey began. Most of their belongings had already been packed by professional movers and shipped off to Cyprus. They wouldn’t see their things again for many months and would have to make do with the contents of a few suitcases and his mother’s two big olive-drab steamer trunks. Those trunks were magical things and his mother boasted that if she were suddenly dropped into an empty apartment she could turn it into a home in a flash. By nightfall there’d be warm, comfortable places to sleep, pictures on the wall, music playing on the radio and a hot meal served on real dishes displayed on a clean linen tablecloth spread over the trunks. So she packed the trunks with great care, tucking small things into crannies and folds of cloth – a little smile on her lips as she imagined the surprised looks on their faces weeks or months from now when she suddenly conjured up a special treat that would turn a grim day into a grand adventure.
They took a train to New York and Lucky was wide-eyed when they exited into the organized chaos that was Grand Central Station. It was the most famous station in America – so famous that it even had its own radio show where dramas unfolded each week. Long silver passenger trains lined the myriad tracks, engines hissing steam that boiled across the platforms. Through the windows of the dining cars he could see the starched white linen and gleaming silverware and dishes. Black men in white waiters’ uniforms served the people. The trip up from D.C. had been too short to warrant a meal on board and although Lucky wasn’t hungry, he missed the quiet elegance of the dining experience on a really first class train. He’d been on trains many times – including two coast-to-coast journeys – and loved everything about them, from the thrilling sound of their whistles to the constant rocking motion that made you want to sleep and dream forever.
Lucky saw two new diesel engines, looking like enormous bullets and painted bright red and green. Lucky’s father said that diesel would soon take the place of all the steam engines. At first he thought that was just wonderful – the trains looked like Buck Rogers’ rocket ship. But then he wondered what would happen to all the old steam engines and the thought made him sad. They’d probably be mothballed in huge train graveyards – like all the ships and submarines he’d seen in San Diego Harbor after the war ended. There were hundreds of gray hulks, once brave warships that had confounded the enemy, now slowly dissolving into rust.
Then the plight of abandoned trains and ships and subs was forgotten as Lucky found himself on the verge of being left behind. Redcaps had loaded the family baggage onto to carts and were starting away. The redcaps wore huge smiles – Lucky’s father was a believer in large tips when he was flush and he was certainly flush with government travel money. The porters, both large black men in starched uniforms and burnished hats, headed out across the platform in a swift, sure line – the crowd parting before them. Lucky’s father strode behind the porters, his head tilted to one side from years of living and moving about the cramped, head-bumping quarters of a submarine. His mother was at his side, little Charlie perched on her round hip, her long fine legs sheathed in silk and shod with stylish high heels, eating up the platform. Soon they’d be lost in the crowd.
Lucky sprinted after them, dodging through the crowd, the great speaker voice calling the arrivals and departures of the trains, sounding just like the man on the radio with the fabulous baritone when he intoned the opening of: "Grand Central Station!"
NEXT: ESCAPE FROM ATHENS
*****
NEW STEN SHORT STORY!!!!
STEN AND THE STAR WANDERERS
BASED ON THE CLASSIC STEN SERIES by Allan Cole & Chris Bunch: Fresh from their mission to pacify the Wolf Worlds, Sten and his Mantis Team encounter a mysterious ship that has been lost among the stars for thousands of years. At first, everyone aboard appears to be long dead. Then a strange Being beckons, pleading for help. More disturbing: the presence of AM2, a strategically vital fuel tightly controlled by their boss - The Eternal Emperor. They are ordered to retrieve the remaining AM2 "at all costs." But once Sten and his heavy worlder sidekick, Alex Kilgour, board the ship they must dare an out of control defense system that attacks without warning as they move through dark warrens filled with unimaginable horrors. When they reach their goal they find that in the midst of all that death are the "seeds" of a lost civilization.
*****LUCKY IN CYPRUS: IT'S A BOOK!
Here's where to get the paperback & Kindle editions worldwide:
Here's what readers say about Lucky In Cyprus:
- "Bravo, Allan! When I finished Lucky In Cyprus I wept." - Julie Mitchell, Hot Springs, Texas
- "Lucky In Cyprus brought back many memories... A wonderful book. So many shadows blown away!" - Freddy & Maureen Smart, Episkopi,Cyprus.
- "... (Reading) Lucky In Cyprus has been a humbling, haunting, sobering and enlightening experience..." - J.A. Locke, Bookloons.com
*****
MY HOLLYWOOD MISADVENTURES
Here's where you can buy it worldwide in both paperback and Kindle editions:
United Kingdom ...........................Spain
Also: NOOK BOOK. Plus ALL E-BOOK FLAVORS.
*****
TALES OF THE BLUE MEANIE
 |
| Venice Boardwalk Circa 1969 |
In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place “Pepperland,” after the Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Threatening this paradise is "The Blue Meanie," a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself. Here's where to buy the book.
*****
*****
*****
STEN #1: NOW IN SPANISH!
STEN #1: NOW IN SPANISH!
Diaspar Magazine - the best SF magazine in South America - is publishing the first novel in the Sten series in four episodes. Here are the links:
REMEMBER - IT'S FREE!
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