The Friendly Neighborhood Spies
Back in the 60s we had new neighbors who were a young German couple with two children. The young girl, Micha, was a friend of my sisters. They wore the traditional leather shorts and German clothing that you would see at a German beer festival. They were very nice. The mom was a beautiful natural healthy blond who had grape vines in her back yard. She made us the best grape juice in the summertime. The father was a mathematics professor but strangely, my father who was a grade school teacher, tried to talk mathematics with him and found that he didn’t seem to know much. The grandfather painted huge paintings to bring back to Germany every summer as they traveled to Germany every summer.
Years later, the FBI tore up their house and said they were East German spies. Well, they were nice friendly spies and to this day I love grape juice.
Cooked for Biden
In the mid-1980s I was a chef at a restaurant in Greenville Delaware the home of Joe Biden and the duPonts. Often I cooked for these people. Also, I worked seasonal at Longwood Gardens, “The Terrace” that catered events for families such as the duPonts.
Dating Coach
I had a young coworker from China who was very shy but wanted to get married and have a family. I advised her to join activities to get out. She signed up for golf lessons. There she was interested in a man but didn’t know how to show interest. I guided her to ask him if she held the club right. For a few weeks I gave her clues of what to say to get his attention. She is still happily married more than twenty years later.
Match Maker
I had a very good friend from Rollins who had doubts of ever finding a partner as he was injured in an automobile accident and spent a few months in a coma and went through a long rehabilitation. As he was injured, he thought he could not find a partner. I also had a very nice friend from China with two children and a husband who had abandoned her as he lived in another country. During a walk with my friend, I ran into this other friend, and introduced them to each other. They are still happily married and successful over twenty years later.
Mingled with the CEO of JP Morgan/Chase
While working at Bank One, a group of us guys were on an elevator ride. We had a cordial hello with a manager. After getting off of the elevator, I found it we were talking with Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan/Chase. The friend in my previous story was the one who said, “Do you know who that was?”
Lunch with Chairman Mao’s friend
A friend invited me to China. We met up with one of his former students for lunch. I had lunch with my friend, him and his father who was Chairman Mao’s very elderly Burmese interpreter in Beijing. He showed me pictures of him with Chairman Mao.
Enjoyed an evening with a true Shaolin Kungfu Master
While in China, we went to eat at this beautiful restaurant that had a stream running through, plants and beautiful pottery in the walls.
The owner saw me walking around his restaurant and admiring different rooms. He introduced himself and gave me a tour. He discussed healthy and spiritual living. He demonstrated that he was a Shaolin Master and a calligrapher. He made me some calligraphy to take hom.
New Friends in Far Away Lands
I traveled around rural China and made friends there. I met people high up in the mountains who lived a very natural remote life.
I made a friend who was opening a tea shop in Beijing. We had a tea ceremony and he sent me a gift of a huge round block of compressed tea with his stamp on it.
The violin player of the band Kansas came up to me in the audience and played right in front of me because I was cheering so much.
I was on the Gene London show with my siblings.
I was once hanging on to a cactus for dear life off a cliff on Superstition Mountain on the Apache Trail in Arizona.
I once laid down between the tracks of two high speed Amtrak trains coming at me and passing in both directions at the same time.
I was held for ransom on “Turtle Island” for $100.00 off of Bali, Indonesia.
As a child I was kidnapped by an elderly child predator. I got stuck in a thunderstorm at a park next to the Delaware River. An elderly guy with a station wagon offered to take me home. On the way he headed in the wrong direction. As I told him that it was the wrong direction he didn’t want to let me out. I gave him a hard enough time to get let out though. I didn’t realize for many years that I was being abducted.
Having to download some files from a computer, I had a tour of the safe room at the largest casino in Atlantic City and got to see a lot of money.
I attended a wedding in another country where I knew no one including the bride. I was the groom. The bride was my child’s mother .
A friend of mine as a child was in the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia. She had to chug through mud every day to bury people or get killed herself.
Another Vietnamese friend of mine got stuck in the “Killing Fields” trying to get to Thailand to get out of Vietnam.
I had an Iranian friend who had to serve in the Iran/Iraq war. He told me how they were all pawns.
A female friend of mine worked undercover for Mayor Duterte of Davao before he became the Philippine president. She worked as a spy for the “extra judicial” law enforcement.
I got lost on the Beijing subway system. No one seemed to speak English and I had no idea where I was.
I spent 24 hours crossing from south China to Beijing on a train with rest rooms that were holes that went down to the tracks. I was fortunate to have a sleeping compartment. Most had to sit on the floor. I spent the entire trip talking politics with a business man from China who sold tractors in America. I learned a lot.
In Beijing, China I was admiring a restaurant I was at that nature inside. The owner turned out to be a true Shaolin master who saw me admiring, offered me a tour, and talked with me about his philosophy, health and culture for a few hours. He sent me back with calligraphy that he did for me.
I was once on fire as a child as one of the gang tossed gasoline or something on a camp fire in the woods which caught everyone and everything around such as a dog and me on fire. I had just a week before learned in boy scouts about rolling around to put yourself out. The dog ran down the the creek and jumped in which I thought was pretty amazing.
One time driving in 20 below zero at 2 am I drove past a car off the road that looked strange. I went back and found a couple freezing to death and rescued them.
In my neighborhood there were two twin attached houses with three very small bedrooms and one bathroom. In one house there were twelve children and the parents. In the other were seven children, parents, Pop’s the grandfather, Aunt Lala, a few uncles and many neighbors who wanted to hang out and have a place to sleep. They were all hard core alcoholics who will fill a steel outside trash can with Seagram Seven bottles over a good weekend. The dad and grandfather bragged about working on beams over Delaware River on the Commodore Barry bridge without safety measures.
As a child, I’d visit “John Morton’s Cabin” which was an old Swedish settlement cabin from the 1600s. The “park ranger” would send me upstairs to the attic of the cabin and ask me to look for “inscriptions”. Much later in life, in hindsight, I found that particularly strange.
I know a guy who got two life terms for murder. He was called the “mastermind”. Actually he was being manipulated by an FBI informant who wanted him to kill his partner and share the money with him. The FBI informant got him very addicted to opioids and then manipulated him. It was obvious to me who the “mastermind was”. The FBI agent got a slap on the wrist with a light sentence. The two young thugs from the intercity who performed and made a mess of the killing and killed the poor partner’s wife too I don’t believe got charged with murder.
My daughter had a cat that was on national television Dateline for one of the big shows on murder mysteries.
I saw a rocket shoot from one horizon to the other. A sonic boom alerted me to it. Others heard and reported it but I saw it. The military denied it ever happened. The next day I read that the USSR lost a rocket over the Great Lakes.
Here’s a strange case nearby that got buried quickly. The Delaware State police were told to not waste too much time on this case.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/03/delaware.pentagon.official/index.html
Here’s a Delaware judge who practices a two-tiered justice system–not that I want prison but I just mean this judge locked up all kinds of people for much less.
https://www.cnn.com/2014/04/02/justice/delaware-du-pont-rape-case/index.html
My first grade teacher would put masking tape around my face, tie me up into the chair with rope, not let me go to recess with the other kids probably because she hated my father who was an elementary teacher in the same school district. She didn’t last long. If this happened today it could be national sensational news.
My first grade teacher failed to teach me to read, sent a letter home to my parents that I was in less politically correct words, mentally challenged, and would never amount to anything. I was a moron. An imbecile. My father then proceeded to teach me to read. I went from zero to advanced before the school year was out. The teacher sent home another letter to my father that she was the teacher and for him to stop teaching me. Who’s the moron? I think Pink Floyd wrote a song about this teacher.
I was told that my paternal grandfather, Giovani, was a very bad person who spoke no English and went out at night with his brother Alfonso.
One of my sisters developed a vaccine for rabies but didn’t get her name published as she was working under a doctor who took all of the credit.