821
Angry White Male
By STEVEN TRAVERS
PROLOGUE
MVP
“Oh! Come on you people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now
Yes! Come on you people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now
“Come on you people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now”
--“EVERYBODY GET TOGETHER”
By The Dave Clark Five
It was hot that day in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Hot in the way the late Summer sun hangs heavy, oppressive and sticky. Hot the way it gets back East, and Stan Taylor felt it on this, the most glorious day of his life.
It was hot when he had gone to bed the night before at the Travelodge. He had turned the air conditioning on all the way, and woke up in the middle of the night briefly paralyzed with fear that his valuable right arm had caught a cold. He had a touch of sore throat from the flowing freeon coursing through the room, and when he got up early it was still hanging on. He was paranoid that something would stop him in his tracks on this day. If it were not the air conditioning causing his arm to be stiff or his throat to be sore, it would be something else. He was nervous about something happening that would sabotage his dreams, everything he had worked for.
As soon as he dressed and walked outside, however, he felt good Karma. It was 85 degrees at eight o’clock in the morning and threatening to get hotter. Stan loved hot weather. What made him nervous was cold, fog, and wind. He was comfortable under a hot sun. He liked the Summer when the days were long and he could wear a short-sleeved shirt at night.
Dressed in shorts with white athletic socks and sneakers, with a stylishly preppy Banlon sport shirt, Stan entered the sunlight and immediately his arm loosened up. His throat was no longer sore.
His skin, dry as a bone after spending the night with the air conditioner at full blast, immediately began to sweat. Within minutes he was covered in perspiration, large stains under his armpits. By the time he returned from breakfast, he needed a shower, so he jumped in and allowed the cool water to cover his body.
Afterward he toweled off, Stan got ready to go to work.
Now, five hours later, his work was almost done. 12-year old Stan Taylor was one out away from wrapping up the 1976 Little League World Series for his hometown team from Palos Verdes Estates, California. Stan stood ramrod straight on the mound and soaked it all in. He was a tall kid, almost six feet tall already, but thin. Still, he felt like he filled out his uniform. He perceived himself differently from the way others perceived him. He was a good-looking kid, a tow-headed blonde with blue eyes, and he fantasized that girls liked him. They did not like him at school. They thought he was handsome, but this was unknown by Stan. It was only when playing baseball that Stan felt sexy and cool. Once the game ended, he reverted to being “uncool.”
Not that he ever had the courage to talk to them. He knew from the way they flirted at school that some girls dug him. However, they had been flirting less over the past year or so. He had now finished the sixth grade and was moving to the seventh, only a few days away. Junior high school. He felt that his age of innocence was rapidly ending. He was entering a new, perilous period of life that would not be good. So, this was his “last hurrah,” in a sense. A final chance at childhood glory before moving on to something…ugly. There had been signs that things were changing for him, and not for the better, but he had put off facing that.
Others his age were already “going steady,” but Stan was not there yet. Sports were his outlet. He was a natural athlete, good at everything he tried. He tried to convince himself that girls swooned over him when they saw him.
There were girls here at Williamsport. Ann Louis was here. Her brother, Chris road the bench, but his family had made the trip. She was blonde and fetching, and looking at him right now. So were dozens of other girls his age, sisters and friends of his teammates, his opponents, and others associated with this annual rite of Summer.
They were all watching him. Stan was just hitting puberty and his hormones were in overdrive. He did not quite know what he was thinking, but he knew damn well that it felt good. He had pornographic visions involving Ann Louis in his hotel room after the game. Somehow she had morphed into Brigitte Bardot in his vision.
The final game of the Little League World Series is a major American sporting event, played before a packed house of thousands on a well-manicured field of dreams ringed by a stadium that could pass for a good college or minor league facility. Only, it is miniaturized to fit its youthful competitors.
The event had started in 1948. Joey Jay of the Cincinnati Reds was the first kid to go from the Series to the Major Leagues, but a number would follow him. Stan knew he would be one of them.
Every year different teams compete for the championship. By the 1960s, it had become an international festival. The way it works is that every community in the United States has a little league. It is as American as apple pie. There is midget league, for kids age eight and nine, followed by the minors, which is for the 10-year olds, and then majors, which is reserved for 11- and 12-year olds.
The league consists of six or eight teams, each team composed of 15 or 16 players. Each team is sponsored by a local business or community organization. Home Market. Taco Bell. Rotary Club. American Legion. Every player on every team has to play in every game if he is suited up. Nobody could pitch more than six innings in a week.
Stan played for Police. They had gone undefeated during the regular season, and Stan won 10 of those games.
The regular season, however, is just prelude for the real season, which is “all-stars.” The coaches and managers, usually parents but sometimes a high school kid, or just a guy who likes baseball, then select all-stars. Some of those “guys who like baseball” were men-children with “little Napoleon” complexes. Rob Lateucci, for instance, stood five feet ye high to a grasshopper. He had been turned down by the police academy and worked as a security guard. In his mid-20s he still lived with his mother and always would. He equated his strategy decisions as manager of Rotary to those of John McGraw when he skippered the Giants in the first 30 years of the 20th Century. He also admired Ben Chapman, a racist with the Philadelphia Phillies. Lateuci did not admire Chapman’s racial views, but rather the way he had taunted Jackie Robinson when Robinson broke the color barrier.
To the extent that there is any white trash on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Lateucci, who lived in San Pedro, had found them and stocked his roster with these types. The sons of garbage men, auto mechanics, toll takers at the Vincent Thomas Bridge. Kids who carried knives, who had records and done time at juvie. Kids who hung out with dirty girls who put out, the kinds of girls who repulsed and turned on Stan The fact that these losers had chicks like that while he was a novice in that department was nothing less than a travesty.
Lateucci taught them, like Chapman had done to Robinson, to taunt Stan, a single child with a sensitive side. The previous year he had stood on the edge of the dugout and said things to Stan that should have gotten him arrested, and in a scene more appropriate to “Lord of the Flies” encouraged his jackals to do the same. In tears, Stan pitched every inning of a losing rout, and the dirty girls heckled him, too.
“Rich kid.” “Mama’s boy.” “Faggot.” “Stanleeee.”
But this year he had come back to toss a perfect game at Lateucci’s team, shutting them up with pure excellence, and that night he thought about the dirty girls. If he had learned how to masturbate yet, those girls would have been the objects of his fantasy, but instead he just lay in bed wallowing in repressed sexuality. One thing, however, he knew for damn sure. He was no faggot!
Then there was Mike Lodeen. His younger brother, Rickie, pitched in the league, and Mike had been the “big brother” of the P.V. Little League for several years. Everybody liked him. He was a cool hepcat, with long hair and hippy clothes. He also was a heroin addict and child molester, information that would come out a few years later.
The all-stars of Palos Verdes had moved through the obstacle course that is the road to Williamsport on the strength of Stan Taylor’s right arm. They won the regionals in Torrance, then the sectionals in West Covina, the state in Bakersfield, and the Western States’ in Colorado.
Now they had been given a new set of uniforms. For the first five tournaments they wore uniforms that said “Palos Verdes” on the front. Now they wore a uniform that said “WEST” on it. The eight teams in the Series all represented a different region of the world. There were two U.S. teams, the other coming from New Haven, Connecticut. Over the years, many U.S. towns, big and small, had been represented at the Series. California, especially Southern California, because of the weather, the population and the fact that more great athletes come from there than any place in the world, was represented more than other regions.
There was a team from Germany, but they were not Germans. They were the sons of American airmen stationed at an air force base, and they represented Europe. There was a team from Puerto Rico, all kids hoping to be the next Roberto Clemente. There was a team from Saudi Arabia. Again, these were American kids whose parents worked in the “oil bidness” in Riyadh.
For years American teams dominated at Williamsport because baseball is the American game, but by the 1960s the Japanese had become a power. However, by the early 1970s, the Far East was no longer represented by the Japanese, but rather kids from Taipei, Taiwan.
Once the island of Formosa, Taiwan had become a major flashpoint of the Cold War when Mao Tse-tung had taken over Mainland China in the Communist Revolution of 1949. America’s friend, General Chiang Kai-shek, had fled to Formosa, re-named it Taiwan, and declared it to be the legitimate government of China.
The United States backed him and sent warplanes to the region as an exclamation point. Despite the political controversy, Taiwan had over the years become, if not a true democracy, a bastion of capitalist success and little league dominance.
Somebody had come up with the bright idea of pouring money into little league baseball in Taiwan. The best coaches were brought in, and the kids, in the inscrutable way that Orientals go about things, had become baseball automatons who practiced for hours a day and played like robots. Every year the Taiwanese came to Williamsport, and every year they dominated. It also did not hurt that their birth certificates were fabricated. For years, the Taiwanese’ 12-year olds were actually 13- and 14-year olds.
It had gotten to the point where distressed American moms and dads wanted the Taiwanese banned because their own kids could not compete with them. Accusations of cheating and fudging of birth certificates ran rampant. Some U.S. team would run the gauntlet of regionals and sectionals, make it to the finals, only to be wiped out by the superior Taiwanese, 18-0. It was not fair. The kids would cry, all the success of their magical summers wiped out by those horrid Asians.
That was the situation that Stan Taylor and his Palos Verdes teammates faced in 1976. Stan pitched and hit his team to victory over Mannheim, West Germany in the opener, and Santurce, Puerto Rico fell in game two. Taiwan, of course, beat Riyadh, 25-0 and Westport, Connecticut, 17-0, and was heavily favored against the Californians.
Las Vegas posted odds on the Series that year for the first time, and rated Taiwan 50-1 favorites. Stan was asked to stop the Yellow Menace.
Stan defied the odds that day, and now with two outs in the sixth and last inning, he led 4-0 with nobody on base. Taiwan’s big man, Lin Te-tsung, their ace pitcher and power hitter, taller even than Stan, stood at the plate with fear in his eyes.
For Lin Te-tsung, defeat in Williamsport was not an option. Unlike the Americans, who would say it is “just a game,” this was about national honor, and to lose the game meant losing face. He might not have to kill himself, but he would face a country turning its collective back away from him.
Stan toed the rubber. He was sweating like a stuck pig in the afternoon heat, just the way he liked it. The hotter the better.
He glanced into the stands. There was Brigitte Bardot, er, Ann Louis.
“Man, she looks good,” he said to himself.
A few other 12- and 13-year old chicks dotted the stands. Tanned skin. Long silky hair wearing shorts and tube tops. A pubescent fantasy.
Then he looked at his mother. Shirley Taylor, a pretty blonde woman in her mid-40s, looked proud.
“C’mon Stanley,” she yelled. Stan winced, but he was not quite sure why.
His father, Dan, was another story. He was not in the stands. He was standing on the edge of the dugout. His face resembled that of Emil Zatopek heading down the stretch in the 10,000. He did not enjoy his son’s games. He endured them. He had coached Stan in every sport he participated in, and he lived his life completely, totally and vicariously through his 12-year old son.
Briefly, Stan contemplated his self worth, and considered that because he was about to become America’s most famous 12-year old, his father would value him. Certainly he was thrilled and happy, but deep in the recesses of his mind he knew that if he had given up a few key hits today, and his team had not scored four runs, he would be walking off the field a loser instead. His father would not be very happy about it.
The hell with it, he thought to himself. Win this one for yourself.
With that, Stan Taylor wound and threw a fastball right past the swinging bat of the best Taiwanese little league hitter in the world, for strike three.
Stan stood patiently on the mound. The tall Oriental kid turned and headed disconsolately towards the dugout, convinced he had lost face forever. Stan was excited, but decided to downplay the moment. At certain times he could be very mature and this was one of them.
“It’s only little league,” he said to himself, just before his father grabbed him and tried to throw him to the Moon. His teammates followed. Even now there was resentment. The Stan and Dan Show was not popular in Palos Verdes, which like every little league in every town in and out of America is a total soap opera of deceit, prejudice, intrigue, and parental backstabbing. The child molester Mike Lodeen was not the only dangerous adult in their midst.
Still, Stan had put Palos Verdes on the map. Actually, it was already on the map. Anybody who knows anything knows it is the most exclusive and best place to live in Los Angeles County. Forget Beverly Hills, Malibu or San Marino. P.V.’s the place, and the announcers had made the point on more than one occasion that this team came from affluence.
Now they had proven that they were more than a bunch of spoiled rich kids, which of most of them were. They were spoiled rich kids who were also great ball players.
Stan soaked up all the love, unconcerned with the knowledge that it would not last. He would ride it for what it was worth. When the team returned to their dugout, the home folks gave them a standing ovation, and the glad-handing went on all around.
At the traditional mid-field shaking hands ceremony, Stan made mental note of the long Taiwanese faces. These kids, who all looked 15 anyway, seemingly were now 30 years of age, their childhood, or what there had been of it, completely stripped away by this failure of purpose. For a split second, Stan felt sorry for them. Then an image of his father sitting stone-faced in post-defeat silence appeared to him like the Burning Bush. He knew it was either he or they. That is the way it is in war.
The obligatory awards ceremony followed. This would be his crowning moment. He would be named the Most Valuable Player of the Little League World Series. Stan had thought a lot about this, and he wanted it. Athletes like to downplay awards with clichés, but Stan had a selfish streak. He was a glory hog, an only child, and he wanted that trophy. He had won the first and third games. He had hit two homers and starred at shortstop when he did not pitch. The TV cameras loved him, and he deserved it.
Then he thought about his father. He wanted it more than his son. It validated him. Stan anticipated the trophy with confidence, right up until the time it was announced. He knew he should win it, yet a tiny voice, at the last second, told him that for his sins, and for the sins of his father, he would not.
“Billy Boswell,” came the voice on the public address system.
Stan felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. A streak of disappointment coursed through his body like pain, and he was unable to hide the grimace of his sweaty face.
Then he heard it.
“Shit.” It was Dan, muttering under his breath a yard behind him, and the other kids all heard it. Oh, that would cost him.
“Fuck you, Taylor,” he heard.
Then Billy Boswell emerged from the dugout. He was the only black kid on the team, a great athlete whose grand slam home run in the fifth had broken a 0-0 tie and provided all the runs in the game. He raised his arms toward the Heavens as he went out to take the hardware.
Stan stood stone-faced. He could hear Billy’s father, Al Boswell, yelling like a crazy for his son. He picked up on his wife’s high-pitched scream, and the other members of the large Boswell contingent, all whooping it up way too much.
Blacks, thought Billy to himself, and at that moment he hated Billy Boswell, and he was utterly and absolutely green with envy. The color of Boswell’s skin most definitely mattered to him.
CHAPTER ONE
THE RULING UPPER CRUST
I know I'm free,
”And I
won't forget the men who died
who gave
that right to me,
And I gladly stand up next to you
and
defend her still today,
'Cause
there ain't no doubt I love this land
God bless
the
U.S.A.”
--“GOD
BLESS THE USA”
By Lee Greenwood
Los Angeles is a town of new people with new money and new ideas. It was a sleepy pueblo at the beginning of the 20th Century, more an extension of Mexico than part of America. In 1906, William Mulholland, the city’s chief engineer, decided that it was time to bring the city into the new century.
Screenwriter Robert Towne told the story, kind of, in “Chinatown”. What happened was that Mulholland and a few of L.A.’s “City Fathers” made the trek on up to the Owens Valley, which is on the east side of the Sierra’s near the Nevada border, where Highway 395 runs now, and conned the local yokels into siphoning all their water down to Los Angeles in perpetuity.
By 1932, L.A. was hosting the Olympics and was world famous as the home of motion pictures. After World War II, the population grew and grew and grew, with black shipyard workers, Okies, Iowa farmers, discharged servicemen, con artists, drifters, dreamers, actors, and opportunists of all stripe drawn to its sun splashed beaches and palm tree-dotted boulevards.
Los Angeles developed a rural mentality despite its size. There was a streak of Southern racism mixed with plainspoken Midwestern values. Mexicans who once ran things were shunted out of power. The Chinese, who had built the railroads that made L.A. possible, were given a little piece of land north of downtown and told not to stray past Temple Avenue.
Of course, the Mob boys came to cash in and gave L.A. a touch of tanned Guidoism. Of course, there were the Jews, who approached their religion in a decidedly different way than their Brooklyn counterparts. A few of them were in the rackets, too.
Being black in L.A. was not paradise, but it was decidedly better than being black almost anywhere else. The University of Southern California’s first All-American football player in 1925 was a black guard named Brice Taylor.
Blacks attended public schools and colleges with whites. They ate in the same restaurants, rode the same buses, used the same bathrooms, and played ball side by side on the same football, basketball and baseball teams. That was the environment that produced a black athlete named Jackie Robinson, who would emerge from Muir High in Pasadena to team with another black man, Kenny Washington, to produce UCLA’s first great football teams.
In 1939, the film community awarded the Academy Award to a black actress, Hattie McDaniel, for her work as Mammy in “Gone With the Wind”, over Olivia deHavilland, who did even better work in the same picture. That award was a major statement about Los Angeles and the new sensibilities of liberal Hollywood.
Still, Los Angeles, try as they might, never quite convinced themselves or others that they were sophisticates. San Francisco was sophisticated, a place where people who lived amid the elements of the four seasons would dress up for dinner or a night at the opera. Los Angeles was a La Land of tits ’n’ ass.
Los Angeles voted Republican and gave the world first Richard Nixon, and later Ronald Reagan. San Francisco was liberal from the get-go, probably because it was the home of the Barbary Coast, where an anything-goes mentality made it a town of gamblers and hookers who would become respectable with age.
Where L.A.’s immigrants came from the Bible Belts of the South and the Midwest, San Francisco attracted people of secular means from the Eastern Establishment who were eager to break away from the bonds of decorum required in the salons of Boston and Philadelphia. L.A.’s Easterners were slick Italians or Jews. San Francisco’s Italian population was homegrown, a product of its natural harbors, which had made it a place where Columbus’ descendants were drawn to.
In the beginning, of course, was the Gold Rush of 1849, and this was when the first Taylor’s came to California, leaving the East Coast Taylor’s in Massachusetts, where it was said that they had been since colonial days. Nobody could verify that any Taylor’s had fought for America in the Revolutionary War, but over time it had become a matter of faith that they had, and that the family was of the English blueblood variety.
The `49er Taylor’s did not strike gold, but they quickly settled in San Francisco and became successful in business. Members of both the East and West Coast Taylor clans had fought for the Union in the Civil War. In 1880, Stan Taylor’s great-uncle heard about a new college in Los Angeles, founded by a Methodist, a Catholic and Jew. He became the first member of the family to attend USC. He settled in Los Angeles and became a prominent attorney and judge.
His brother was Charles Taylor, a very prominent American. Charles had been born in San Francisco, eight years younger than his brother, and he chose to follow in his footsteps by going to the University of Southern California, where he graduated in 1892. Charles then moved in with relatives in Boston, where he lived while attending Harvard Law School for three years. He graduated in 1895 and moved to New York City, where he took up the practice of law in a tony firm.
The blonde, suntanned, athletic Charles ran into some opposition from the Wall Street crowd, who felt a Californian was more likely to ride the range on a cowboy ranch than handle the intellectual workload of the New York legal scene.
Charles disarmed this attitude with intelligence and good humor, which today would be called charisma. What gave him panache and gravitas was his association with a high-profile client, a few years older than he was, named Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was one of those New Yorkers, but he shared the love of adventure and the great outdoors of this young Westerner, who he took on as a protégé.
In 1898, Roosevelt showed up at Charles’ office and informed him that he was going to take a leave of absence and become a member of his officer cadre in Cuba.
“I am?” said Charles.
“Yes, sir,” replied Roosevelt.
Charles thought about it.
“Okay,” he said.
Charles served as a lieutenant in Roosevelt’s “Rough Rider” unit that charged up San Juan Hill in a victorious war with Spain, liberating the Cuban Island from the Spanish. The war put Cuba under U.S. control.
When the Spanish-American War ended, Roosevelt told him that he was going into politics. He asked Charles to go to California, where he would rely on him to rally support for him in the West.
In 1899, Charles’ son, Charles, Jr., was born in Los Angeles. Charles, Sr., who turned 30 in 1900, began to lay the groundwork for his own future in Republican politics as well.
The rest, of course, is history. Roosevelt was elected Vice President on the ticket with William McKinley, who was assassinated in Buffalo, elevating Roosevelt to the Presidency at a young age.
This put Charles, Sr. on the fast track. He had been the McKinley-Roosevelt ticket’s campaign coordinator in California, and had settled in with a Los Angeles law firm specializing in water rights.
The firm represented William Mulholland, the city’s chief engineer, and was instrumental in negotiating land rights for an aqueduct that brought water to the desert pueblo from the mountainous Owens Valley.
Charles, Sr. barely had time to establish himself with the firm when he got a telegram from Roosevelt, who asked him to move to Washington, D.C. and serve as an adviser.
From 1901-04, Charles, Sr. served in the White House, and from 1905-08 he was Ambassador to France. On a Christmas trip to California in 1907, the Los Angeles Times interviewed him. He had ominous news.
“Germany will attack France within five years,” he told him.
He was off by two years. The German Chief of Staff, von Moltke, had formulated a plan as early as 1905 to attack France through Belgium, with “the last German’s right sleeve brushing the Atlantic.”
When Roosevelt left office in 1909, Charles, Sr. had a young family to take care of, and he decided to move back to Los Angeles, where he re-joined the law firm he had been with before. By now, with the water deal complete, the firm was a powerful political force in a state that was gaining importance all the time.
In 1912, Roosevelt asked him to help him run for President again, on the Bull Moose ticket. Knowing that Roosevelt’s “speak softly and carry a big stick” philosophy might be needed to ward off war in Europe, Charles took to the task, despite objections from the Republican Party.
Charles warned anybody who would listen that war drums were banging in Berlin, but in the United States, this issue had little resonance.
“The creation of a massive German state is the creation of a military giant,” he told yawning crowds.
Roosevelt split the Republican vote, unseating William Howard Taft and giving the White House to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. In California, Charles, Sr. did not hear the full brunt of complaint against him and the Bull Moose “cabal” blamed with giving away the store.
He settled into his law practice and semi-anonymity. In 1914, “the sleeve of the last German brushed the Atlantic.” Still, Americans were unconcerned about the European War, until 1917, when Wilson, re-elected a few months earlier specifically on the campaign promise to keep the U.S. out, entered the war.
Charles’ son, Charles, Jr. was a senior at Hollywood High School, where he starred in football and baseball, in 1917. He was exceedingly handsome and popular with the ladies, and planned to attend USC, of course. The U.S. entered the war in April. In June, Charles, Jr. graduated from high school. He spent the summer at the beach, and in August, just a couple of weeks before starting college, he was taken with patriotic fervor. Charles, Jr. decided to join the Army with a friend.
His father was shocked, yet proud. Charles served under the legendary General “Black Jack” Pershing. In the Summer of 1918, he was approached by one of Pershing’s aides on a French country battlefield.
“Taylor,” the man called to him.
Charles, Jr. sprang to attention and saluted the officer.
“At ease,” said the man, who stood ramrod straight. He introduced himself. “George Patton.”
Patton offered his handshake.
Charles, Jr. took his hand.
“Charlie Taylor, sir,” he said. “It’s an honor.”
“I understand you’re from Los Angeles,” said Patton.
“Yes, sir,” said Charles, Jr.
“I’m from San Marino,” replied Patton. “That makes us neighbors.”
“Sure, I’ve ridden some horses out there,” said Charles, Jr.
“Beautiful horse country,” said Patton. “Are you a horse man?”
“Yes, but not like you, sir,” said Charles, Jr. “I understand you competed at Stockholm.”
“Damn gun froze on me the second day,” replied Patton, referring to his ill-fated efforts in the 1912 Olympics. “I would have won. How old are you, son?”
“19,” said Charles, Jr.
“Helluva an age,” said Patton. “Helluva place to be when you’re 19.”
Patton waved his hand as if to display the war-torn countryside.
“It’ll make a man out of you, though,” he continued.
Patton went on to tell Charles, Jr. that he was an admirer of Teddy Roosevelt, and of his father, and told the young man to relay to his father his desire that Charles, Sr. make a run for politics, based on his having warned the country to be prepared for the “Kaiser’s menace,” as Patton put it.
“Trouble with Americans,” said Patton, “is they’re too secure. They think just because there’s an ocean separating us, we’re not in danger of war. Especially Californians. Californians could care less about anything except sin and perdition.”
He laughed.
“Not that I have anything against sin and perdition, mind you,” he said.
Patton asked what Charles, Jr.’s plans were after the war, and Charles told him he planned to attend USC.
“I have nothing against Southern California, either,” said Patton, “but have you considered West Point? I’d be happy to put in a good word for you.”
“Thank you, sir,” replied Charles, Jr. “I’ll consider it.”
Patton then bid him good-bye, they saluted, and Charles went back to his duties. His mates, seeing the hard-boiled Patton’s obvious good impression of him, gave him a combination of ribbing and respect.
In October, 1918, shrapnel from a “potato masher” in the Argonne Forest felled Charles, Jr., by now the recipient of a battlefield commission promoting him to the rank of second lieutenant.
Luckily, he recovered from his wounds, and returned along with the rest of the victorious “dough boys,” when the war finally ended a month later. Charles spent the Winter and Spring of 1918-19 recovering in California, and in the fall of 1919 he entered USC, a “grizzled veteran” of the Great War.
When the war ended, Charles, Jr. had given strong consideration to Patton’s recommendation to attend West Point. In the end, he decided on USC, where he attained some notoriety as an athlete.
Patton saw what Charles, Jr. was doing on the athletic field, and the two maintained contact and a friendship. In the 1930s, Patton even hired Charles, Jr. as his publicist when he tried to increase his visibility as a warrior with no war to fight. Charles, Jr. tried to sell a film concept of the man already known as “Ol’ Blood and Guts,” but in the Pacifist ‘30s there were no takers.
In 1920, Charles, Sr. ran for Congress. His number one campaign supporter was his son, who would make speeches for his dad while dressed in his Army uniform, adorned by a Purple Heart. Charles, Jr. discovered a talent for writing, and became his father’s speechwriter.
At USC, he was regarded as special, a man among boys, because of his wartime experiences. Youth and toughness had helped Charles, Jr. to heal from his shrapnel wounds, enough to allow him to play football and baseball at USC. On the football field, he found his speed at the end position had diminished as a result of the injuries, but as a shortstop on the baseball team he possessed excellent skills. After his senior year of 1923, several professional teams in the Pacific Coast League expressed an interest in his services, but Charles, Jr. had been bitten by the writing bug and had other plans.
His father was elected to Congress in 1920, and served for eight years. From 1921-23, Charles, Jr. spent summers working for his father in Washington, D.C. Upon graduation in the spring of 1923, Charles, Sr. asked his son to come work for him full time, to make a name for himself in the political world. The young man was honored that his father had such faith in him, but he was stricken with a serious case of wanderlust. It occurred to him that all his life he had been the “good son.” He had made grades at Hollywood High, was student body president, a star athlete, and a Big Man on Campus.
Instead of ducking military service by attending USC, where he could have played baseball and chased girls, he had enlisted as a buck private. His father had the connections to keep him out of harm’s way, but he had taken on every responsibility, earning his stripes on the field of battle. Roosevelt himself had sent a telegram expressing his great admiration for the son of his loyal friend and advisor. When in Washington, Teddy had personally congratulated him. His feelings towards the youngster were in earnest.
No sooner had Charles, Jr. received his diploma from Southern California than he was on a ship bound for Europe. From May of 1923 until just before Christmas of that year, he traveled on the Continent. In Paris, he found himself drawn to Harry’s Bar, where he found a fascinating group of expatriate Americans. Among them were Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Charles, Jr. enjoyed the Paris café scene. He had an enormous appetite for sex, and found the French girls liberating in their open, sensuous desires.
The Taylor’s were Episcopalians, but Charles, Jr. had not been raised in a highly religious manner. He was struck by the open atheism of the expats, who would come to symbolize what is now called The Lost Generation. For the first time, he realized that he held Christian religious values.
Many of the drifters, wanderers and seekers of Paris café society lacked any real moral compass. One day a drunken Hemingway cornered young Taylor at Harry’s Bar.
“So you wanna be a writer?” asked the former Kansas City Star scribe. “Well, you’re sorely lacking in several important areas.”
“Tell me,” replied Charles, Jr.
“It’s like this now see,” said Hemingway. “I unnerstan’ yer old man’s a high muckatymuck, and you don’t seem to have any hate for the old bastard. Bad form. You’re from California. Nobody from California amounts to shit, but you can overcome that, and your damn respect for the old man. Your problem’s you know when to quit the drink. Don’cha know you gotta hate everything to write any damn good? You can’t believe in God, fer chrissakes. You gotta have a lotta derelict in ya to be able to write.”
Charles, Jr. had to admit that he was, perhaps, too happy and well adjusted to achieve success in the writing game, and now he was even beginning to subscribe to Christianity. In the world of the educated, the enlightened, the dilettantes, Christianity was, as Hemingway had put it, “bad form.”
He had seriously considered staying in Paris indefinitely, to write novels like the others. He had money stashed away and could have done it, but he simply had too much get-up-and-go to continue with these misbegotten drunks and “intellectuals.” He arrived in Los Angeles just in time to celebrate Christmas with his family. He kissed the ground when he arrived on American soil.
In Europe, he had decided to make a go of it in Hollywood, where the silent movies were all the rage. Charles, Sr. had tried to guide him into law school, but there was an artistic side to his son, yearning to breathe.
Charles saw himself as an alternative to the “Lost Generation.” He had served “over there,” been wounded, and attained full manhood. In Paris, Stein, Fitzgerald and Hemingway were painting a picture of disillusionment, but Charles was still patriotic, conservative in his beliefs, a true believer in the promise of America.
He saw the movies as a perfect avenue for his expression of faith in his country. He felt that in the succeeding years the screen would provide for him a greater forum to express this feeling than the law, politics or writing “the great American novel.” At first, Charles, Jr. took a job as a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times. On the side, he began to write a newsletter called “Out and About In Hollywood”, which covered the comings and goings of the celluloid heroes of the day - Rudy Valentino, Clara Bow, Doug Fairbanks, and the like.
It was a perfect gig. His USC connections gave him an in with his old coach, “Gloomy Gus” Henderson, and in 1925, the new coach, Howard Jones. Because he was young and had been a notable player himself, he was given virtual carte blanche amongst the players. In particular, Charles, Jr. became friendly with a ruggedly handsome blocking guard named Marion Morrison.
Morrison had prepped at Glendale High School, and was on scholarship at Southern Cal. When Morrison and Charles, Jr. got to know each other, Charles found that Morrison shared his conservative political values, and particularly was interested in his Hollywood connections, vis a vis, his access to actresses.
Charles, Jr. knew some of the right people over at Fox Studios, who needed plenty of extras to portray the Roman Legion, Napoleon’s Army, and the U.S. Cavalry in the blockbusters of that period.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association had not yet been formed, and the under-the-table paying of college athletes was rampant, especially at USC. It got so bad that other schools bastardized their fight song, changing the lyrics from:
“Fight on, for old SC,
our men fight on
to victory.”
to:
“Fight on, for old SC
the fullback needs
his salary.”
Coach Jones loved it. At Iowa, where he had coached before, there were precious few inducements to get his players to play there. Now, in Hollywood’s backyard, he could offer his charges a chance to get paid for bit parts in movies. The real inducement, of course, was the glamour of film making, and the pretty girls that went along with it.
In the history of college recruiting, nothing has ever proved to be a better sell than the promise of access to beautiful girls. USC was in the beginning stages of establishing one of the greatest, and most long-lasting football traditions in history. Sex was the driving force behind the Tradition of Troy.
In the mid-1920s, it all came to a head, literally, and Charles Taylor, Jr. was the alum behind it. He arranged to interview the actress Clara Bow at her home. Clara was the “it girl” of that era, a woman of indescribable beauty and sex appeal. Charles, Jr. barely got his interview. He was too busy satiating the sexual needs of Clara Bow, who was a certifiable nymphomaniac if ever there was one.
Finally, after hours of licking, sucking, fornicating and fingering, Clara sat back, covered in sweat and other “fluids,” and let Charles, Jr. finish the interview. When it was over, she inquired of his association with the USC football team.
“I just love football,” she said. “That is, I just love football players. I want you to me a favor.”
What she told Charles, Jr. at that point aroused him so much that he immediately developed an erection more potent than the one he had arrived with, several hours before, and which he used to satisfy Clara’s appetites to the nth degree until he collapsed in exhaustion after midnight in her bed.
That week, Clara Bow’s request led Charles, Jr. to show up at Morrison’s fraternity house. He told his young friend that he had to help him with something. So it was that, a couple weeks later, on a Saturday night, the entire University of Southern California football team, along with a few friends, hangers-on and athletes from other teams like baseball and track, arrived by caravan at the home of Clara Bow.
An English butler seated them and served them drinks. For 45 minutes they sat in chairs and various states of nervous, excited repose in Clara’s living room. Finally, Clara arrived in a fashionably risqué dress. She made small talk with the fellows, then removed the dress, standing in the middle of the room adorned only in French lingerie.
Marion Morrison was the first to make a move. He walked up to her, and began to kiss her. For the rest of the evening, and on into the wee morning hours, the Trojans gave it to Clara Bow from every conceivable angle. She displayed amazing oral techniques, and demanded to be penetrated anally, which required some doing on the part of the football players who had the gumption to be sodomites in front of their friends. Only a few were able to accomplish this task.
Thus was born the modern gangbang.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, for Marion Morrison, his football career at USC was short-lived. In the summer of 1926, he went with a friend to Newport Beach, where huge waves are created by rock formations under the water, known as The Wedge.
Many have called themselves “Victims of the Wedge” over the years. Morrison may have been the first. While body surfing in an effort to impress some girls on the beach, he was caught by the waves and found his body bouncing off The Wedge. When he emerged, he had a separated shoulder.
Fall practice was only a few weeks away, but Morrison was too scared to tell Jones about his freak injury, incurred while engaging in a frivolous activity and an attempt to impress girls.
When football began, Morrison could not block. He quickly lost his starting position, and with it his scholarship. A kid from modest means, he could not afford life at USC, a “rich kid’s” school, without the financial aid. “Duke,” as he was already called, soon found himself borrowing money from his frat brothers. They asked him to move out, so he went to Charles, Jr. for help.
Charles arranged for him to meet some executives at Fox, and the rest is the story of John Wayne.
Charles, Jr. established himself as a first-rate writer and publicist in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1928, he married a gorgeous actress named Denise Stoneham, and they had two boys. Charles III was born in 1931, and Daniel in 1932, both in Los Angeles. He wrote a sports column for the Los Angeles Times until 1933, and developed his newsletter, “Out and About In Hollywood”, into a leading publication of the silent era.
From 1933-34, Charles, Jr. lived in New York City, where he was financed by an “angel” who paid him handsomely to write three stage plays, all of which were produced to success and acclaim.
He returned to Los Angeles, and sold his trade publication for a good price. Now a successful man of means, he bought a home in Beverly Hills, where the “new elite” was now living. He had grown up in the Hollywood Hills, but by the 1930s, the “west side” was all the rage.
By now he was a successful screenwriter. Despite a happy home life, two rambunctious boys and a perfect wife, Charles, Jr. was unable to be faithful for many years. There were too many temptations. He and Wayne were friends and would tomcat about town, or on boat trips to Catalina Island. He took many leading actresses and starlets of the 1930s to bed, but managed to keep it secret from Denise. Nobody ever knew whether she suspected. If she did, she maintained silence on the subject.
He loved his kids, and raised them to have the best of everything. They were athletic and smart, just like him; the apple of his eye. Eventually, in his late 40s, he had “gotten it out of my system,” and managed to stay faithful to his wife in all the remaining years of the marriage.
In the late 1930s, a writer friend, knowing that he had political connections, asked him to help form the Writer’s Guild.
“I went to one meeting,” he recalled in an interview some years later, “and was appalled to discover the most horrendous group of un-talented hacks you’ve ever seen, all agitating for something without earning it. I don’t s’pose I knew it at the time, but I was surrounded by Communists.”
Needless to say, Charles, Jr. did not help with getting the writers organized into a union.
In the 1940s, Charles, Jr. became a leading producer, and even directed several films. He came to realize what he had not realized at that meeting, that there was a Communist element to Hollywood. With the end of World War II, the alliance with the Soviet Union, and the beginning of the Cold War, it was apparent to him that sides were being taken.
He saw a growing liberal bias in the entertainment industry, but that was not what concerned him. Liberal bias was one thing. An American had a right to think what he wanted to. What he saw were propagandists for Stalin’s Russia, using their influence as writers and filmmakers to create a product that shed a favorable light on a regime that was now, obviously, an enemy of the United States.
He did not see espionage, but he suspected it. It was definitely a part of political Washington and London. In 1950, Charles, Jr. followed his father’s footsteps, being elected to Congress as a Republican. He was an ally of Richard Nixon, who was elected to the Senate that same year over Helen Gahagan Douglas, the wife of actor Melvyn Douglas.
Mrs. Douglas was so far to the left that Nixon painted her as “the pink lady,” as in “almost Red.” Charles, Jr. also found Ronald Reagan to be useful to him. Even though Reagan was still a Democrat, he was influential as president of the Screen Actors Guild in rooting out Communists within the industry, and he was ideologically aligned with Taylor. Charles, Jr. served California in the House of Representatives until 1961.
Charles, Jr.’s first-born son, Charles Taylor III, grew up in Beverly Hills, and played football and baseball at Beverly Hills High School from 1946-50. He was everything a first-born son was supposed to be. Tall, blonde, handsome, regal in bearing, he was a great athlete, a scholar, and popular. He met his wife, Lillith, his freshman year at Beverly Hills. They were married after they both graduated from USC. Everything he would ever touch would turn to gold. He had the Midas touch.
In 1949, Charles III matriculated at SC, where he played freshman football and baseball. In June of 1950, shortly after completion of his first year in college, the North Koreans crossed the 38th Parallel, launching war on the peninsula. Charles III’s father had lobbied for preparedness and diligence against Communist spies, provocateurs and saboteurs. Now, history was playing itself out. Years earlier, his father had made his political name warning against German war plans, and when they came to fruition he looked like a genius. This now happened to his son. Also, his sons faced a dilemma. Charles, Jr. had opted to go to war in 1917, even though he could have been protected.
In 1950, Charles III, a college freshman, could easily have stayed out of the war, but instead he dropped out of school, and joined the Marines. In World War II, a college dropout would have been welcomed into the Marine Aviators’ Corps, but now jets were the thing. The aviators were made up of hotshot Naval Academy graduates with the engineering skills to handle and understand jets.
Instead of using his old man to protect him, Charles III used his dad to help him cut past the red tape, and to get accepted into flight school without a degree. From 1950-53, he flew for the Marines. His buddies included Ted Williams and John Glenn. Twice he barely landed his flak-scarred aircraft. He was decorated and celebrated.
When the war ended, Charles III returned home to Lillith and a normal life. He played football at SC in 1953, ’54 and ’55, and graduated in 1956. He immediately married Lillith, then moved with her to the East, where he had been accepted at Yale Law School. He maintained his military career in the Reserves, where he eventually retired in 1964 with the rank of colonel, and would go by the title of Colonel Charles T. Taylor III for all the rest of his days.
For one year, Charles III showed promise at Yale Law School. Towards the end of his first year a Marine friend who had gone to work in the Eisenhower Administration offered him a chance to work for the State Department. That friend was Kip Wentworth, a Harvard lawyer who would be Charles III’s best lifelong confidante. Eventually, Wentworth would rise to the rank of Secretary of State.
Charles III always said leaving law school was the best decision he ever made. From 1957-59 he was a State Department attaché assigned to the staff of the Ambassador to the Court of Saint James in London. He could have made a big name for himself in politics. But he desired a career in the private sector, a chance to “stake my claim” monetarily.
For two years, 1960-61, he worked in a New York public relations firm owned by the father of another of his Marine flyboy pals. At the age of 30, Charles III was already a “man in full.”
He was the son and grandson of a Congressmen and a decorated war hero. He was a college football player of some note, a product of USC and Yale Law School, married with a son, with three years of experience as a diplomat in England. For two years he had worked in the “fast track” of the New York public relations and advertising world. He counted among his friends some of the best and brightest minds in politics, law, the military, and the media.
In 1961, he approached his father, recently retired from the House of Representatives, and asked for a loan to start his own business. His father gave him $1 million, which he used to form Taylor Communications, Inc., on the Miracle Mile of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. He settled his family in Palos Verdes Estates.
For 10 years, he built Taylor Communications into the leading PR firm on the West Coast. They handled accounts of political campaigns in the U.S. and abroad, as well as top corporations.
In 1970, Charles III did what was expected of him. He ran for Congress, representing the Palos Verdes Peninsula and the South Bay section of L.A. County for 10 years. He became Secretary of Defense in 1981, a job he held during fours years of the Cold War (1981-85). Finally, at the age of 55, he stepped down as Secretary of Defense, and went on to a lucrative, high profile career as an author, television personality, investor and fellow at the Hoover Institute.
Charles III’s younger brother, Dan, attended Beverly Hills High School, where he was an All-CIF-Southern Section baseball, basketball and football star. Dan had it all. He was 6-4, 220 pounds, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Adonis from a wealthy, prominent family. Girls were crazy about him, and he loved them right back.
At USC, Dan starred in baseball for legendary coach Rod Dedeaux. On the field, he was an all-conference pitcher who possessed a flaming 90-mile an hour fastball. He was the starting quarterback on the football team, president of his fraternity, wrote for the student newspaper, and even appeared in school plays when he found the time.
There was, however, a certain amount of tension during this period. Charles III had dropped out of SC to join the Marines in Korea. Dan opted to stay in school, and out of harm’s way. Nobody ever came right out and said it, but there was an unspoken understanding that Charles III had done something heroic, while Dan had not.
For the life of him, Dan never felt guilt. He was proud of his brother, but enjoyed the frat parties, the girls and the easy life of an athlete at a jock school, without giving it a thought that his brother was slogging through much harder times.
In those days, USC did not challenge one with a particularly rigorous academic curriculum, but Dan took to school with the same enthusiasm that he brought to everything else. He was interested in knowing about things, always wanting to learn more.
At a time when USC was a “rich white boys” school, whose fraternities were closed to minorities, Dan sought out and befriended the foreign students who were already populating the campus in large numbers.
Because of its geographical location, in the middle of an important, cosmopolitan city on the Pacific Rim, USC has always attracted wealthy foreign students. Many of these students are the sons and daughters of prominent businessmen, political figures and royalty from countries in the South Pacific, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Wealthy, attractive white boys and girls dominated the social scene at USC, while the foreign students would move about relatively unnoticed, sometimes in their turbans or other traditional dress. Because they were less tempted by the vagaries of frat or sorority life, these students often are among the most serious at USC.
Dan would find himself trying to study at Doheny Library, which was more often than not a pick-up spot and a place where an athlete such as himself would attract campus idolatry from other students. He found himself at the alternative library at USC, where most of the foreign-born students studied in solitude. Here, Dan found quiet time, and his curious side. He sought these kids out, and after initial confusion over the language barrier and his motives, many of them would open up to the smiling, friendly jock.
Dan was a solid B+ student, and he found stories of these kids’ backgrounds fascinating. For instance, he wanted to know about the tribal customs of the United Arab Emirates, where one student, it turned out, was in line for the crown.
Many Saudi students came to USC to study in the acclaimed engineering and natural resources schools, taking their knowledge back to their oil-rich states. Many sons and daughters of politicians and diplomats sent their children to USC to learn about democracy, and to soak up the atmosphere of this thriving American megalopolis.
Dan learned from them, and was a good ambassador for his country. More than just a few foreign students returned to their homelands, and informed their fellow countrymen that not all the white kids in the U.S. were vain and self-satisfied.
Dan graduated from USC, and signed a professional baseball contract with the Chicago White Sox. In his first year in the low minors, he led the league in earned run average and strikeouts, moving up to Double-A ball the next year, where he posted a 10-5 mark with a 3.17 ERA. It looked like he was on the fast track to Chicago and big league fame, but the years in between Korea and Vietnam, the military draft was still in place, and Dan was subject to it.
In order to avoid active duty, he joined the Army Reserves. The Reserves required attendance at a once-a-month “drill.” The soldiers are known as “weekend warriors.” For two weeks every Summer, every unit goes to an active base for two weeks of annual training. Because his Summers were taken up with baseball, Dan arranged with a sympathetic commander, who was a big baseball fan, to do his two weeks in the winter at Fort Ord, near Monterey.
On a cold, wet day, Dan was riding in the back of an Army truck with some other soldiers. The truck skidded on a patch of wet road, and Dan was thrown from the truck, landing on his left arm, his pitching arm. The Army doctor told him he had sustained calcium chip damage to his elbow and shoulder, but he could not determine what the effect would be on his baseball career. He would have to let it heal properly, which would take time.
The injury occurred in January. In February, Dan reported to the White Sox Spring Training camp in Sarasota, Florida, but he never told anybody about the injury. When he began to throw, he was in pain and was ineffective.
Instead of being promoted to Triple-A, or even getting elevated to the White Sox for the trip north, Dan found himself demoted to Class A. That year, he pitched in agony, and was hit hard. Eventually, the White Sox discovered his injury, and he was released.
Dan had enrolled at Loyola Marymount University Law School in the fall of 1956. At first, he had planned to attend in the fall, and to play baseball in the Spring and Summer. Now, released by the White Sox, he became a full-time law student. A few months into law school, the Los Angeles Rams called and asked if he would like to try football again. Perhaps the pain was something that would not affect his ability to throw a football.
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