Ben Stein's Diary: Sons and Fathers
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY by Benjamin J. Stein Sons and Fathers Thursday I spent the night at my house in Malibu for once in a great while for a dismal reason. This morning I had to get up early (for...
...What a feeling...
...I stood and watched them...
...Tommy ran out of the plane to hug her...
...I am going back to L.A...
...We are out of here...
...My ten-year-old son is hanging around with boys who smoke marijuana...
...Through dismal Oxnard, then through brighter Ventura, and then onto the major highway portion of the trip where mi joins the i and heads north...
...Tommy's friend did everything you are not supposed to do...
...She and Wlady greeted me pleasantly, especially under the circumstances...
...Oh, well...
...Still ill...
...Then Sandor swore he had a great place to fish at a nearby smaller lake, a state park called Round Lake...
...Yes, and he had not had call girls and gangster molls in the White House the way Kennedy had...
...My son's innocence is paramount in my life...
...True, my wife and I illegally had FBI files on Republicans by the hundreds delivered to my political hit men and then lied about it...
...Go about twenty feet down the path, where I can still see you and talk to you, and I'll stay here on this little bridge...
...But I thought another point was that Wlady's Dad had seen so much horror in his youth that for him, America, and Santa Barbara in particular, were a heavenly life after death...
...We tried to name all the justices of the Supreme Court...
...He had not connived at assassinating foreign leaders the way JFK did either...
...The deal is that if any two of these passengers care to fly in the seats directly in front of or behind Ben Stein, they can do so for free if, and only if, they have at least four drinks and talk in a very loud voice throughout the flight and also lean their seats back into my face or kick me if they are sitting behind...
...And I always wondered what was going to happen to the generation after that...
...Nothing exciting, and so to bed in my room, with its quietly whirring air conditioner...
...It's so fast off the line you become disoriented...
...So hot you can hardly step out the door without frying your eyeballs...
...Months later he was arrested by the Nazis and spent five years in a concentration camp...
...Argue with your mother...
...Tommy and his pals caught only very small fish...
...I allowed him to drive the machine back across the lake to the Marina...
...He cried when I told him we were leaving so I said I would reconsider...
...But I am not having a real good time here this summer...
...Do you think he does...
...Plus, it's a little lighter than I thought it would be, and that means it's "tippy," and tends to lean to port or starboard and also to get its bow submerged...
...He did it well, but he looked very scared as he went across the broad waters off Contest Point...
...The sky was visibly turning blue as I rode north, and great flocks of gulls cawed so loud I could hear them through the closed windows and the air-conditioning...
...He and his pal, who also stays up late, nag me to make them snacks and more snacks and they are wearing me out and making me sick...
...Most of all, I am not going to risk my son's health, his emotions, his whole life around the subject of drugs...
...One of Tommy's best friends, whom I will call Sandor, showed up unannounced at our house with a friend named Massie...
...Just then a heaven-sent woman appeared...
...This trip is just about over, I think...
...I was particularly fascinated with Wlady's room, on the ground floor, where his father had lived towards the end...
...He would say that yes, he had lied and covered up, but he had not routinely audited his political enemies' tax returns (even though he talked about it) the way FDR did...
...I mean, none...
...Tommy looked upset, and started to cry...
...I was alternately furious at Sandor for leading them astray and humbly grateful to God for letting me find them alive and well...
...It's about one thousandth the size of Lake Pend'Oreille, but the little fellow swore it was filled with juicy fish...
...Right this minute...
...Then I switched on the TV to CNN...
...Sue Hatch helped a lot and so did Rachel Feierabend...
...They were exhausted, cut up, Tommy bleeding from his beautiful little calves, a look of extreme disappointment on his little sweet face...
...Too horrible...
...The trip back was tiring, but otherwise fine...
...My father never scolded me," Wlady said...
...In fact she looked so much like my mother that I was startled...
...What's a bong, daddy...
...The priest who officiated had an oddly inappropriate voice, as if he were talking about a concept rather than about a man...
...Tommy is ten but much of the day he's around two boys who are 4. They go off to a video game arcade and play something called Magic...
...What's this as I flip on the TV...
...A horrible new, red, lit-up Texaco station...
...Tommy answered in a surly voice...
...Bad karma around that house...
...If he's in danger, as long as I can, I am getting him out of there...
...I just could not get Wlady's mother's face and bearing out of my mind...
...I walked briskly back to a clearing and sure enough I could faintly see Tommy and his pals fishing in what looked like a swamp out of The African Queen...
...It's all about safety...
...You are not allowed to blithely disobey me...
...Then I let Tommy and his friend ride it from the Marina over to Bottle Bay, and then around Bottle Bay...
...The sun was far hotter than it had been in Santa Barbara...
...Friendly words from my fellow shoppers at Chalet Gourmet...
...They took the service seriously, knelt for a long time praying and crossing themselves at the pews, and obviously they felt the loss personally...
...Before I could even start to get to them, they had it righted and were off and running again...
...This seems the only explanation...
...Many suggestions were floated about what to do...
...Many stories about the stock market correction...
...I called out to them...
...Wlady talked about his father and his pets, and about how his father would not hurt a fly, "as any insect who came into the house quickly discovered on being gently released outdoors by my father, who'd carefully gathered it up in his unfolded handkerchief...
...I called out to them to show them where to walk, and finally they appeared on the bridge...
...They come early in the morning, especially little tiny girls...
...Sometimes I think that being taken care of is true wealth...
...I said I was...
...But good to know your father was a hero...
...But still, in loss, so gracious.44 The sun in Carpinteria was much hotter than it had been in Santa Barbara...
...After about half an hour, I caught sight of them in the high grass, mumbling to themselves about how cut up they were and how lost they were...
...After the ceremony, Wlady, his mother, and his grieving sister, Helena, stood in front of the Mission and greeted us all...
...Only this time he also did a 36o, as they're called, so fast he turned over the damned thing so that he and Tommy were far out in the lake without a boat...
...You can't use it ever again if you don't use it safely...
...Plus, Tommy has gotten into the bad habit of staying up night after night until well after midnight...
...Right now...
...I went back to the wooden footbridge...
...and if you do forgive me, I promise just as I have always promised before, that I will never do any of it ever again....and this time Hillary will be watching to make sure I keep my word, and you can all trust her...
...It worked fine...
...After relentless grilling, Tommy told me that his "friends" had talked repeatedly about how cool marijuana was and how they enjoyed smoking it...
...I shouted to them...
...Most of the congregants were Polish friends of Wlady's family...
...That means hordes of people at the public pier next door...
...It's a miracle...
...My pal, Sue Hatch, is here and she's going to make me lunch, so I think I'm all set...
...Trial balloons are hovering in the summer air over the White House and Capitol Hill...
...77 Flowers on national TV with my wife sitting right beside me...
...And then, heaven...
...They came to America, and became household help to the movie star Constance Bennett in Hollywood...
...Tyrmand and Leopold Labedz and future victims whose names only Andrzej Pleszczynski, Wlady's father, remembered...
...When the Soviets invaded from the East, he was briefly captured but escaped...
...Thank you, God...
...This morning I was awakened at about 7:45 a.m...
...The stock market down over 250 on the Dow...
...That was pleasant until at about two in the morning I heard screaming and laughing outside...
...I knew it had to happen...
...What an eyesore...
...Today we took it out...
...Sandor says he has marijuana at his house...
...Wlady was bearing up well...
...You went off without me and went where I couldn't see you...
...It was a deeply affecting moment...
...I kept thinking about those lucky flies and the mother's face...
...Not good...
...Then, he should lay out for the American people the questionable behavior of other American presidents and compare his misdeeds and put them in some kind of reasonable context...
...Then, through the night to Sandpoint...
...They are so loud I have to wear earphones while I work on my laptop...
...44 Thursday I give up...
...My whole idea here is to keep you alive," I said to Tommy...
...If the Wave Runner interferes with that goal, the Wave Runner has got to go...
...Then there would be an emotional, Checkers-like appeal for forgiveness so that Nixon could go on with his bold initiatives for creating a generation of peace...
...Off we went...
...The main surprise was Wlady's mother...
...However, once in Spokane things were in apple pie order...
...I awakened Tommy...
...I took one last blast across the waters near Contest Point...
...Riding a Wave Runner in open water across a long stretch might just be too much for him...
...Sunday very awful day...
...I tried to be patient...
...These were often places that Wlady's father had a hand in designing...
...I started to get hysterical...
...This is all I need...
...The beast was startlingly powerful...
...Usually I am sad to leave Sandpoint, a place I love deeply...
...She asked me if I were looking for three boys with fishing rods...
...Now, the funeral is to take place at the Santa Barbara Mission, where I have never been...
...Tuesday T here's something happening here...
...There has been a fair amount of really trashy construction around Coeur d'Alene and Hayden Lake...
...Not enough people make food for me...
...Let's give it a whirl: "My fellow Americans, yes, I lied during the 1992 campaign, right in your faces, about sexual relations with women before I got to run for president...
...I guess that's why I never felt like disobeying him....He was gentle, a gentleman...
...No answer...
...Yes, my wife and I fired the totally innocent workers in the White House travel office, libeled them, initiated malicious prosecution against them, all to help political cronies and relatives...
...We unpacked and I signed onto my ancient, lumbering Canon laptop...
...And what is it compared with my great foreign policy initiatives in the Balkans and my success in dealing with Iran and Iraq and bringing China into the family of nations...
...Yes, I defied federal court subpoenas for records concerning the health care task force and ran it in flagrant violation of law...
...I found the Old Mission and pulled into a parking place...
...They moved to Santa Barbara to help design the freeways and stayed there in a lovely house on a big lot with redwood trees in the front yard...
...The dog, Susie, the last surviving Stein dog, jumps on the bed and begins to have a mock fight with the kitty...
...I bid a fond farewell to Sue and Rachel, and then off I went...
...I visited for a long time with Wlady's cousin Marta, a fellow toiler in the Hollywood vineyard, and then had some delicious cold cuts, and then walked outside with Wlady to commiserate...
...They are so loud they go right through The American Spectator • October 1998 59 the Bob Dylan or Rolling Stones or The Who...
...What happened to the peaceful, old-fashioned approaches to Sandpoint...
...I am not going to have a 4-year-old argue with me...
...In July 1974 the noose was tightening around Our Boss...
...And, my Tommy boy has taken on a sullen, unfriendly quality...
...Some of them are skinheads...
...My wifie was waiting at the gate...
...It is sad to lose your parents...
...Maybe this is going to be a tougher speechwriting job than I thought it would be...
...Friday fine meal at Morton's, my terrarium, with my two dear friends, Phil DeMuth and Al Burton...
...Several healthy-looking young men and women were swimming off the pier, nude, getting out, jumping in again with the waves crashing around them, with lightning and thunder lighting them up and encouraging them to laugh even louder and jump even higher...
...Plus, the older people at that pier are starting to worry me...
...Come back right now," I said...
...I followed on my Thompson boat to keep an eye on things...
...However, about ten miles past Hayden Lake, the night takes over...
...He tipped it wildly from port to starboard and back...
...He jumped wake at high speed...
...We didn't get a chance to catch anything," Tommy said...
...All nice and quiet...
...At one point he cut right in front of the Thompson so that I had to swerve drastically to avoid collision...
...Don't tip it over...
...True, I illegally solicited contributions from the White House and then lied about it...
...The morning was spectacularly beautiful, with a hint of misty fog on Pacific Coast Highway as I headed north past County Line and along the most beautiful stretch of ocean-front driving in Southern California...
...I wonder if they were related...
...To have Tommy start smoking dope at age 10...
...For years now he's been ill, suffering with perfect stoicism, and last weekend he died...
...Yes, I orchestrated the firing of all federal prosecutors and replaced them with my own henchmen to make sure I would be protected...
...I don't feel well...
...This is no vacation...
...Safety first," I yelled...
...The rest of the town is an oven...
...14 The American Spectator October 1998...
...Relentless and very unpleasant packing...
...You disobeyed me...
...Then one of Tommy's questionable friends appeared in the kitchen with another boy whom I recalled as somewhat questionable from years past...
...When we get home, you are to rest and contemplate how maddening you have been to me...
...He pretended it had all been fine, but I could tell he was truly upset...
...Other gas stations, all ten times brighter than they need to be...
...Uh-oh...
...All in all, it is a heck of a powerful machine for small children...
...Not good...
...I was terrified...
...Too, too horrible...
...He stood up on the thing...
...Tuesday I awakened feeling deadly ill from what must be a powerful virus...
...What are all of my lies and frauds and sexual assaults and coverups and libels and slanders compared with my bridge building to the twenty-first century, without which we would never even get to the twenty-first century...
...I have banned Tommy's visitors and now just have him to myself...
...They wanted to fish near the Windbag Marina...
...One of the questionable boys played on sympathy for a relative to get me to buy him a bike before I left...
...And, yes, I did lie about Monica Lewin-sky on TV and in a sworn deposition...
...He had refused to stand when ordered to as someone played the song associated with Marshal Pilsudski, the interwar dictator...
...Not good...
...That Avis counter is the friendliest spot on earth as far as I'm concerned...
...No answer...
...Then the two hulking brothers appeared yelling and screaming in a canoe...
...This talk about honesty and asking for forgiveness (always good things) is bringing up a flood of memories from the summer of 1974, when I was a very junior Monday p in the morning here in Sandpoint to read the newspapers and look out at the shimmering lake...
...I did not even know the name of the other boy...
...My own thought, from the lowest ranks, was that he should go on national TV and admit that he had played a good-sized hand in obstruction of justice...
...Forget it...
...Then I sat in the shade with a Spectator fan and talked to Keith and his sons, who run the Marina...
...Past signs for Carpinteria, past huge stretches of beach, past the oil-drilling platforms, and then into lush, wealthy Montecito, where families with real money live behind gates and behind stands of trees...
...We're out of here...
...The service was in the Mission's cozy church...
...It was a lovely place, with a broad main street leading to the ocean and various small shops and cafes...
...The best person I have ever known in my life, my wifie, and she was there waiting for me...
...So utterly kind and so totally lost...
...Avis, as usual, had a lovely car waiting, along with two lovely clerks, Sheena and Dawn...
...Welcoming words from my fellow diners...
...There were two simply overwhelming moments at the grave side...
...Yes, I sold vital, basic satellite and rocket technology to the world's most dangerous nation, Red China, a flagrant violator of arms control agreements and a nation that has threatened to blow up Los Angeles, in return for campaign contributions from the Chinese government—one of the worst human rights violators left on earth...
...It's very quiet as you go past Careywood and Cocolalla, and then you come to the gloriously old and solid Long Bridge over the Pend Oreille River, dividing river from lake,and there you are in Sandpoint...
...The house we're renting is lovely with very high ceilings and lots of windows—but no air conditioning except for the little unit whirring loyally in my room...
...They look dangerous, violent, unpredictable...
...I can hardly write about it now without crying, but I'll just say it went over the lovely places in Santa Barbara that Wlady used to go with his Dad—beaches, parks, overlooks...
...But also like an east European lodge...
...What if there were maniac child killers hidden in the shadows waiting to pounce on three not very smart little boys...
...Garish fast food places with lights that stand out in the North Idaho night...
...He was fast asleep...
...They drive me insane...
...Yes, I lied explicitly about my relationship with Gennifer44 After relentless grilling he told me his 'friends' had talked repeatedly about smoking marijuana...
...Every time it goes down a hundred points, that's a year of Tommy's college education...
...I gave Tommy and his pal a major lecture on what not to doon the Wave Runner: "Don't jump wake...
...17 Friday F finally, I have figured it out: Alaska Airlines has a promotion going for its frequent drinking passengers...
...Look," I said...
...What thoughts after hearing about charging the Panzers with horses, and then going down to the beach at sunset in glorious, blessed America...
...Tommy rubbed water from the little stream onto his sweet little legs...
...My suggestion and a draft speech embodying it went over to Ray Price...
...I fell asleep and was awakened by a booming thunderstorm lighting up the lake and the mountains...
...I lie in my bed and listen to Mozart's sacred arias softly on my faithful little stereo...
...Thursday An awful day...
...Forget it," I said...
...The town was empty as we drove to our rented house on the river near the public pier...
...But don't argue with me...
...I guess it'll be work/study for Tommy after all...
...She wouldn't care," he said with a shrug...
...And I have instructed my attorney general, Janet Reno, to refuse to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate what are very obviously serious illegalities in my 1996 campaign fundraising and to ignore lawful subpoenas of Congress...
...But you can probably see them if you walk back about a half mile to a clearing...
...When war came, Wlady's father fought against the Nazis—and by the way, the Poles, wildly outnumbered and with very inferior equipment, gave an excellent account of themselves...
...Safety is everything...
...The rest of the house is an oven...
...By the way," I asked, "how would your mother respond if you blithely disobeyed her...
...He looked resigned, but Sandor started to argue with me...
...Today it was so bad that I had to ask the flight attendant—who had been shoveling booze at the passengers right in front of me —to calm them down...
...That's not the point," I said angrily...
...Still ill...
...Dizzy, headachy, disoriented, feverish...
...My son sounds relaxed and happy for the first time all summer...
...No, I think this is heaven...
...That's better, but there are other problems today...
...It looked very old and craftsman-like...
...I rode first to make sure it worked...
...She looked just as my mother had looked in her later years...
...Plus, he watches TV every moment he can, setting a bad example for Tommy...
...Overwhelming, hideous red Texaco gas stations...
...Then, according to personages as diverse as Orrin Hatch and Leon Panetta, the president might go on with his business (which is presumably finding new and better versions of Monica...
...Argue with your teacher...
...by two little girls who have just moved in next door with their family...
...I think I'll just lie in bed and moan and groan...
...Wlady's father has been a mythic figure for decades now because of the stories that Wlady tells about him...
...They, two bearded men, gave me a highly offended sniff, and then passed out...
...I am too sick to deal with all this madness...
...I drove them there and waited under a shed while Tommy and his pals fished off a pier...
...Hmmm...
...But this summer has been different...
...Most of all, he was a hero to Wlady...
...She looked so sad, so weighted down, so frail, and yet so lovely...
...No luck at all...
...Don't come anywhere near boats...
...In other words, Nixon would say he had done wrong, but remind the nation that his were bread crumb sins, small, scattered, trivial in any reasonable context...
...It looked much as I expected it to look...
...Then he simply demands that I take him to Wal-Mart and buy him toys or CD's or shoes...
...Then back to Wlady's ancestral home among redwoods and sand...
...Did I mention that we did not even get into Spokane until about ten at night because the first flight we were on was simply canceled with no explanation...
...It took forever, but thanks to Keith's son, we finally came up with John Paul Stevens and had them...
...Is this possible...
...They nodded and promptly waded into the vegetation and disappeared completely...
...I give up...
...I take him and the others to one of the best restaurants in Sandpoint every night, and every night this little boy insists on ordering the most expensive thing on the menu—and very often asking for two desserts...
...That was bound to happen...
...I guess we'll soon find out...
...There is a lot of talk running around today about presidential candor...
...I surrender...
...The road is just south of the Navy Base at Point Hueneme...
...Contrition is bulls–t," said some high adviser to RN, and a few weeks later RN resigned...
...I headed back to Malibu in a sort of haze...
...A possibly high Tommy, with possibly high friends, riding their bikes near a major north-south highway...
...For once in a great while, I had nothing particular to do that afternoon, so I stopped at the town of Carpinteria...
...For one thing, after that first stormy night, it's gotten unbelievably hot...
...You, Tommy Stein, are grounded," I said to him...
...How does it feel to be high, daddy...
...The balloons say that maybe the smart move (never the morally right move) for Bill Clinton might be to own up to his affair with Monica Lewinsky, own up to his lying about it on national TV and in a sworn deposition, and ask the American people for forgiveness...
...Sandor is 14 and Massie is 15...
...Hmmm...
...Hmmm...
...Slept more...
...There he went to school with future anti-Communist writers Leopold BENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...Then Wlady's father studied and became a civil road building engineer...
...The boys exited their area in a highly desultory way...
...I am in awe of Wlady's father, even though he's dead, because he was so incredibly brave, and because he obviously was such a model father to Wlady...
...I really need to have my head examined about this kind of thing...
...I also hired men and women to libel and bully them both and to humiliate them and attempt to break their spirits...
...Hmmmm...
...Then I pat her and she starts to purr...
...What if they had fallen into a swamp...
...As I think you can guess, I was sobbing madly...
...But after the run we've had, we eventually had to pause and pay the piper...
...After the war, he met Wlady's mother in a displaced persons camp...
...It's 62 October 19 9 8 • The American Spectator good to be taken care of...
...WHAAT...
...58 October 19 98 • The American Spectator The first was when Wlady's ten-year-old son, Benio, a little angel, played Dvorak's "Going Home" on his alto sax, and then Brahms's lullaby...
...Moments later, I saw Wlady and his mother standing in front...
...I Usually I'm sad to leave Sandpoint, a place Hoye deeply...
...Yes, I did all of that, but what is that compared with Nixon'sobstruction of justice in a burglary in 1972...
...The boys said they were not catching the fish they wanted to catch (isn't it funny how often you hear that from fishermen...
...Hmmm...
...From there it either went straight into the trash can or maybe made it to Al Haig's desk before it was vetoed...
...What does it mean for me to show contempt for law and place myself above law and humiliate innocent people compared with my fine work at reconciling differences among the races, which will eventually come to something, I promise you...
...Right now...
...The American Spectator • October r 9 98 61 speechwriter for Richard Nixon, working under such superiors as Ray Price, Pat Buchanan, and Dave Gergen...
...He had been a major patriot in school as a youth...
...He doesn't need to go to Yale...
...Thank you, God...
...It's a thirty-three, but still fast enough for everything except downloads...
...Back to my house in Malibu, back along the timeless ocean...
...It's so sweet that Sue Hatch is waiting impatiently to make me a "basted" egg...
...But I was furious...
...And I lied about Paula Jones and about Kathleen Willey, both of whom I sexually assaulted and then bullied and libeled...
...Then he took Tommy out and again proceeded to do exactly what I had told him he could not do...
...Mind-boggling...
...But Wlady's speech about his father was deeply moving...
...I really could not get over how much Wlady's mother looks like my mother...
...I walked for a long time on both sides of the main street...
...We want him to read, not watch endless cartoons...
...Again...
...One point of Wlady's talk was that his father already lived in paradise—Santa Barbara—and therefore did not need to die to be in paradise...
...The sound went right through my air-conditioner, my window, my ear plugs...
...Later that night, Tommy started to ask me strange questions...
...I looked in on Tommy...
...Plus, I am feeling so, so sick...
...Beyond amazing...
...Still, if I, world's least coordinated man, could ride it, then it will probably be all right for my boy...
...My wife's laughter is the glee of a child, so spontaneous and infectious that it sends warmth through the whole house...
...When you squeeze the throttle with your right hand, it throws you back on the seat with its mighty acceleration...
...I tell him over and over again that it's not suitable for a 4-year-old to order the most expensive item night after night, but he does it anyway...
...They jump in the water and just scream like banshees all day...
...He let me do whatever I wanted...
...Except what's this...
...It was painfully hot, as it has been day after day...
...More crying from Tommy...
...They just sat themselves down at my kitchen counter, took out cereal and milk and orange juice and sausages, and started making themselves food...
...What it is ain't exactly clear...
...I don't need to be waked up before eight by screaming little kids...
...Safety last...
...He's making me crazy...
...I sure hope so...
...I called out to them...
...Then off to Calvary Cemetery for the interment...
...When we got to Bottle Bay, I yelled at him...
...Then Sandor said we had to head through some chest high grass and brambles and across a small stream to get to the fishing spot...
...It was as if my mother were back for an afternoon...
...Just for example, I'm reading my newspaper and what do I see...
...It cuts between two unequal halves of a huge rock, and skirts the ocean within a few feet for miles...
...Now, I am trying to imagine what some young speechwriter would be able to do with Clinton and his litany of sins...
...No problem, except that there were more screaming little girls, hitting exactly the horrible high notes that pierce right through my ears to sizzle my brains...
...Before I could call the police to make them leave, they jumped out of the water and ran madly down the pier—nude, clutching their clothes—got into an ancient Subaru, and drove off...
...Our kitty, Peabo, jumps up onto my chest and lies down with her tiny face and light green eyes facing me...
...Susie jumps around with her long Dalmatian tail and Peabo grabs the tail between her paws and pretends to bite it and then they frolic more and run away and then come back...
...But for a very sad afternoon...
...Many of them have tattoos...
...I feel as if all the demons of hell are attacking my lymph glands, whirling my head around, making me insane and physically ill at the same time...
...No one else on earth is as foolish about money as I am...
...This morning I had to get up early (for me) and head up to Santa Barbara for Wlady's father's funeral...
...This place is a duplex so I hear them and their hulking bike-racing brothers every time they make a step on the stairs...
...He looked shame-faced and said he was sorry...
...The Mission is vast, sprawling, old, discolored, but still dignified...
...was so happy to see her you can scarcely imagine...
...Sandor supposedly knew a secluded spot on the far edge of the lake where they could and would catch more fish...
...I am home, home, home, home, safe, laughing, purring, tail-wagging home...
...But this summer has been different...
...What's the difference between a bong and a joint...
...Yuck...
...Outside my window I can see our immense eucalyptus tree and several smaller palms fluttering in a slight breeze, illuminated by the pool lights reflecting off the blue green water...
...Then he calmed down and solemnly promised to do better...
...There were cattle lowing in the distance, little tadpoles and minnows in the stream, and the air was free of the screams of small girls...
...I throw in the towel...
...But, apparently it is true...
...I like it, but I also like trees...
...That thing is slow, but it has served me well over the years...
...Then they come back and they are sullen and withdrawn and difficult...
...Hmmm...
...From my son's room, I can hear my wife and my son laughing at something on "Animal Planet...
...I slept more...
...I'll just lie in bed, feel sorry for myself, think about all the money I have lost on the stock market today, and then about how sick I am, and then either get better or die...
...As for me, I was a basket case...
...The girls were on my beach, right under my window, screaming...
...I just didn't know when...
...There were no trees or only very small ones...
...It might be possible to get it done...
...What is that compared with anything any Republican ever did...
...How do I have any left at all...
...What if they had cut themselves badly on brush...
...I was eager to get away from the screaming little girls so I followed Sandor, Massie, and Tommy along a pleasant walking trail and across a little wood footbridge over a placid stream...
...What thoughts, I kept wondering, must have young Wlady had here...
...He was a member of the Polish nobility, although at a modest level...
...Certainly, it would be Clintonesque in its long-windedness...
...I saw them on the shore of the lake 60 October 1998 • The American Spectator a distance from here," she said...
...Then several stalwarts of the Polish Army, comrades of Andrzej Pleszczynski, burst into a hymn called "God, Who Watches Over Poland" in Polish, first in a low murmur, and then as more mourners joined in, in a loud, proud song...
...This is as close to heaven as it gets...
...On my beach, not theirs...
...Riding the Wave Runner...
...One of the kids makes me totally wild with fury...
...And he had not made a large fortune in telecommunications while serving in public office the way LBJ did, or make up a Tonkin Gulf incident...
...Wow, do I hate packing...
...Then we marched back to the car...
...Last fall, I bought a Wave Runner...
...For that he was expelled and sent to a predominantly Jewish high school in Warsaw...
...The stock market is crashing...
...It's amazing...
Vol. 31 • October 1998 • No. 10
