The Teachings of Don B. Read online

  “Short of this, I recommend a visit to the moon rocks at the Smithsonian. Accompanied by my young daughter, I stood in line at the Smithsonian for two hours. The child went to the bathroom six times. A man standing behind me began telling me about the moon rocks. ‘They represent the finest single human triumph of all time,’ he said. I said I was looking forward to seeing them. Then a man standing in front of me turned around and told me he hated the moon rocks. ‘When I think of what that money could have been used for . . .’

  “Then we were in the Moon Rock Room. There they were. The moon rocks. The moon rocks were the greatest thing we had ever seen in our entire lives! The moon rocks were red, green, blue, yellow, black, and white. They scintillated, sparkled, glinted, glittered, twinkled, and gleamed. They produced booms, thunderclaps, explosions, clashes, splashes, and roars. They sat on a pillow of the purest Velcro, and people who touched the pillow were able to throw away their crutches and jump in the air. Four cases of gout and eleven instances of hyperbolic paraboloidism were cured before our eyes. The air rained crutches. The moon rocks drew you toward them with a fatal irresistibility but at the same time held you at a seemly distance with a decent reserve. Peering into the moon rocks, you could see the future and the past in color, and you could change them in any way you wished. The moon rocks gave off a slight hum, which cleaned your teeth, and a brilliant glow, which absolved you from sin. The moon rocks whistled Finlandia, by Jean Sibelius, while reciting The Confessions of St. Augustine, by I. F. Stone. The moon rocks were as good as a meaningful and emotionally rewarding seduction that you had not expected. The moon rocks were as good as listening to what the members of the Supreme Court say to each other in the Supreme Court locker room. They were as good as a war. The moon rocks were better than a presentation copy of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language signed by Geoffrey Chaucer himself. They were better than a movie in which the President refuses to tell the people what to do to save themselves from the terrible thing that is about to happen, although he knows what ought to be done and has written a secret memorandum about it. The moon rocks were better than a good cup of coffee from an urn decorated with the change of Philomel by the barbarous King. The moon rocks were better than a ¡huelga! led by Mongo Santamaria, with additional dialogue by St. John of the Cross and special effects by Melmoth the Wanderer. The moon rocks surpassed our expectations. The dynamite, out-of-sight, very heavy and together moon rocks turned us on to the highest degree. There was blood on our eyes when we had finished looking at them.

  “We have seen the moon rocks and they are ours, irremediably.”

  SWALLOWING

  The American people have swallowed a lot in the last four years. A lot of swallowing has been done. We have swallowed electric bugs, laundered money, quite a handsome amount of grain moving about in mysterious ways, a war more shameful than can be imagined, much else. There are even people who believe that the President does not invariably tell us the truth about himself or ourselves—he tells us something, we swallow that.

  In the history of swallowing, the disposition of the enormous cheese—six feet thick, twenty feet in diameter, four thousand pounds—which had been Wisconsin’s principal contribution to the New York World’s Fair of 1964–65, is perhaps instructive.

  The problem was that Wisconsin, the fair being over and all that, did not want the cheese back. Jurisdictional haggle between the state of New York, host state as it were to the enormous fromage, and the state of Wisconsin, the gorgeous gouda’s owner of record, was carried on over a period of months.

  The then-governor of the Dairy State wrote officially to the governor of the Empire State, suggesting that the cheese be thought of as a gift from the people of the Dairy State to the people of the Empire State. The latter could, for example, eat it, he said. The governor of the Empire State replied courteously that although he, the elected jefe grande and representative in all matters of the people of the Empire State, was deeply sensible of the honor being extended to the people of his state by their well-loved fellow citizens in Wisconsin, there just wasn’t a whole bunch of interest in this-here six-foot-thick, twenty-foot-in-diameter, four-thousand-pound cheese among the insensitive civilians who made up the raw material of his (the guv’s) suzerainty, and could the state of Wisconsin have it off the premises by Thursday.

  The governor of the Dairy State then wondered, by registered letter, if the governor of the Empire State might not in some sense be offering insult and hurt to the people of his own (Dairy) State by rejecting this beautiful gift which was, all authorities agreed, not less than top-hole in its line—that is to say, cheeseness.

  The governor of the Empire State then hinted telegraphically that the motives of the governor of the Dairy State might be something less than unimpugnable, might in fact have something to do with certain expenses incurrable by removal of said artifact to turf of origin, and further toyed (telegraphically) with the possibility that cheeseparing in the pejorativist of senses might be a way of life in Madison, Milwaukee, and Eau Claire.

  The governor of the Dairy State countered in a bull covered with seals and ribbons and delivered by a masked motorcycle messenger once in the employ of the late Jean Cocteau that since it was well known that his dear friend and fellow practitioner of the governor hustle presided over what the World Health Organization had demonstrated to be the densest rat population per square mile in America, perhaps the cheese might be utilized for the nourishment and basic rat needs of this important part of his esteemed colleague’s constituency, and speculated further that the renaming of the Empire State to something on the order of the Rat State might not be such a bad idea either.

  The governor of the Empire State riposted by fast gunboat complete with captain’s gig with gold trim and naval officer with dress sword, white hat under left arm, curly hair, deep blue (piercing; steady) eyes that the governor of the Curd State, as he (the governor of the Emp. State) liked to think of it . . .

  From there the dialogue degenerated. The cheese meanwhile was developing a certain fetor.

  The problem was solved in the following way. The cheese was presented as a gift free of charge and for nothing and with no strings attached to a young poet. The poet, starving as all poets are ordained to be in their beardless poetpuppyhood, had been subsisting on a daily input of one (1) pot of warm water over which one (1) chicken bone had been waved, once. He immediately boogied out to the former fairgrounds and took up residence in, around, amid, etc., the six-foot-thick, twenty-foot-in-diameter, four-thousand-pound cheese. It sustained him for two years and three days. He prospered and grew fat and his art prospered and grew fat also. He wrote verse melic and gnomic, odes and epodes, dithyrambs and dirges, hymns, chanties, lays, epithalamia, and things to be chiseled on tombstones in fine-flowing Caslon letters than which no letters are more comely. He lives among us still and there is no tree from which a bird cannot be charmed by the sweet soft steel of his verse. His best-known line, one that will undoubtedly sing forever in the hearts of men and possibly their heads also, refers directly back to his experience of the cheese: “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”

  The American people have swallowed quite a lot in the last four years, but as the poet cited goes on to say, there are remedies.

  1972

  THE YOUNG VISITIRS

  Basker and Letitia Filter had been in Washington only two days when a fairly good friend invited them to the White House for a party to be hosted by the President himself.

  “Basker,” Letitia said, “maybe this will be too fine a party for us plain folks from the South. They will just look at us and know that we are plain and from the South and not high and mighty.”

  “Stuff,” Basker replied. “We are as good as anybody and fairly mighty, too, since I made my fortune in the Persian Gulf, and, besides, I voted for him.”

  “But do not wear the green hat,” Letitia said. “It clashes and makes you look as if from the South.”

  “This i
s the finest hat in all of Oklahoma,” Basker said. “And, besides, I have stuck some poems in it by Walt Whitman, the poet of Health, Education, and Welfare, that I plan to read to the Chief Executive if I get a chance.”

  The first person they saw when they arrived was their friend Code d’Havenon, who was a well-known intimate of the President and had fixed them up with the invitation. Code was wearing glittering court dress, accompanied by an appropriately plummy manner, which contrasted sharply with Basker’s and Letitia’s air of social unease. “Well, there!” Code exclaimed. “It’s old Basker and Letitia! How are you chaps tonight? Basker, take off that green hat. Letitia, you are as heartwarming as ever!” He bent and kissed her hands as they walked through the long lines of silent gendarmes toward the fun.

  Then, the famous East Room, where a sparkling throng was displaying a lot of flash. The electricity was being wasted with a lavish hand, and there were three string bands in strange uniforms. Code d’Havenon took Basker and Letitia around, introducing them to the top levels of American productivity.

  “But where is the President?” Basker asked. “I don’t see him. Is he here?”

  “He is upstairs in his study, working on the nation,” Code said suavely. “Usually, he doesn’t come down until eleven o’clock, to tell us that it’s time to go to bed. He is the father of us all, and that is heavy work, believe me. And now I must leave you, because I spy over there the head of the World Loan Office and I have to speak to him for a moment about a matter. Have a good time and try not to be too gauche.”

  “That Code has got a little stuck up since he’s been up here in Washington, you know that?” Basker said to Letitia.

  She was grazing among the stumpy bottles of the drinks table, looking for some grass. “Well, he is a famous PR man, well-known for his fabulous entrée into the regime,” she replied, “so I expect that’s the way they act and he’s just doing what he must. Don’t be so hard on people, Basker. You’re not perfect, either, you know.”

  Then, magically, the President was in the room, flanked by tackles, guards, and ends, and backed by three very big linebackers. “Peace, my children!” he said, and then everyone got up from a kneeling position and resumed their conversations, sort of, but turned now toward the sun of his high visibility.

  “You reckon I ought to ask him what I want to ask him now?” Basker said worriedly. “Or wait?”

  “Well, Godamighty, Basker, I’ve never known you to be bashful before,” Letitia said. “And, besides, you are an influential citizen on your home ground.”

  “But he never answered my letters.”

  The President was bent over a lady, smiling and holding on to her fingernails.

  “Citizen President,” Basker said, “my name is Basker Filter? And I’m from Norman, Oklahoma? And I just wondered if you had a minute? ‘Cause there’s some things I been wantin’ to speak to you about?”

  The guards and tackles and linebackers moved in on Basker very fast, but the President stayed them with a hand.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Filter,” the President said. “I’m always pleased to speak to any of my children—even the bad ones. What’s on your mind?”

  “Well,” Basker said, “the folks back in Norman—and, indeed, the whole state—are gettin’ kinda upset about the teeter-totter. The giant teeter-totter you’re buildin’ for us that’s gonna reach from Maine to California?”

  “Are you referring to the U.S. Interstate Bicentennial Teeter-Totter?”

  “That’s the one,” Basker said. “I know we don’t know anything about anything, being from the South and all, but a bunch of people down home are still hongry. And this here teeter-totter is costin’ just a sight of money, and half the schoolhouses in Norman don’t have no chalk, and some folks in Norman are eatin’ chalk, and—”

  “Those individuals are certainly welcome to stay in any country that welcomes them,” the President said. “We all make mistakes, and in my view eating chalk is a mistake. But we have to pay for our mistakes. That is a rule of life. They certainly can’t expect to ride on the Teeter-Totter. Teeter-tottering is good for you and it has important moral/economic ramifications that you don’t understand, being underage, morally/economically speaking. But let me give you something to take back to Norman with you. Ralph?”

  One of the linebackers offered the President a brown paper bag. The President stuck his hand in and pulled out a large, red, round lollipop. “Here you are, Mr. Filter. Enjoy yourself. With my blessings and good wishes.”

  “Mr. President, this here is a poem by Walt Whitman,” Basker said. “It makes what I feel is a very important statement?”

  The President looked puzzled. Then he reached into the bag again and pulled out another lollipop. “Here you are, Mr. Filter. Enjoy yourself. With my blessings and good wishes.” And he moved away.

  MY LOVER SAID TO ME . . .

  My lover said to me, Sing me a song of Military Technology. So I said to my lover, Of course, dear lover, and sang her the song, drawing my inspiration from the pages of Military Technology, a hefty and lavishly illustrated journal issued thirteen times a year by the Mönch Publishing Group, in Bonn, in which the richnesses of the international weapons industries spill forth as from a cornucopia with no apparent terminus. I sang in the Plethoric Mode, accompanying myself on a small KDAR (Klein-Drohne Anti-Radar device, now undergoing testing by Dornier GmbH, of Friedrichshafen, West Germany).

  I sang to her of Royal Ordnance, once wholly a U.K. government operation, now a public limited company. RO produces or manages the production of an amazing range of things, from bayonets to tanks, scattering poetic touches along the way. I needed only to invoke warheads and fuse assemblies for the SEA CAT, SEA WOLF, SEA SKUA, and SEA EAGLE systems, or the redoubtable SWINGFIRE, RAPIER, BLOWPIPE, and JAVELIN. The names of these systems are always printed in caps and suggest, always, either animal vitality (SEA CAT) or ironic homage to the technology of an earlier day (BLOWPIPE). The GIANT VIPER, from Royal Ordnance, is an explosive hose two hundred and thirty meters long packed in a wooden box. A multiple rocket drags the hose across a minefield, and the hose, detonating itself, clears a zone claimed to be seven and two-tenths meters wide by as much as two hundred and thirty meters long. Come with me, Priscilla, and we will watch GIANT VIPER as it slithers toward its metallic apotheosis.

  But there is more, much more. Come with me, Priscilla, and gaze upon the Ultimax 100 Light Machine Gun, drum-fed, from Chartered Industries, of Singapore. It’s the world’s lightest, the Chartered folks say. Regard its drum, a handsome dove-gray affair containing a hundred golden rounds of 5.56 ammo. Pakistan Ordnance offers Pyrotechnics, Flare Trips, Cartridge Signal Shooting Pencils, Fuses, Primers, Detonators, and High Explosives (all types). Its telex address is 5840 POFAC PK. Chile has on sale the new Cardoen cluster bombs, at a hundred and thirty and five hundred pounds. These open in midair to release sophisticated bomblets—the first releasing fifty sophisticated bomblets, the second releasing two hundred and forty sophisticated bomblets. Cardoen’s phone number in Santiago: 231-3420.

  Norway will sell us its OCTOLS, HEXOTOLS, HEXALS, and all types of plastic explosives and plastic-bonded explosives: Dyno Industries there, its touching telex 19105 Nobel N. And Brazil has a new main battle tank for the world market, the Osório EE-T1, designed to be equipped with either the 120-mm smoothbore gun or the 105-mm rifled gun! A good-looking devil, too, low and lean and plated with the famous Engesa bimetallic armor. Let it beware of the new AAW (Anti-Armor Weapons) from the hardworking engineers of FFV Ordnance, of Eskilstuna, Sweden: the well-known Carl-Gustaf 84-mm RCL, the AT 4, the 028 antitank mine, and 7.62 AP ammunition. Soon they will have STRIX, a newly developed target-seeking, rocket-assisted mortar projectile, and ELMA, a weapon designed to force submarines to the surface without destroying them. A bit mysterious, ELMA—how do they do it?—but mystery is part of the song of Military Technology.

  The Swiss offer Sig Sauer pistols, the P 226, P 225, P 220, and P 2
30, the last of these termed particularly suitable for concealed carrying. Checked handgrips and (nice touch) a striated trigger, for slippy trigger fingers. Sumptuous mines, land mines, and scattering systems are available from Misar, of Brescia, Italy. Greece has the ARTEMIS (virgin huntress associated with the moon) 30 antiaircraft system; performs well, no doubt, against moon-drunk pilots, if there be any such still. Israel Aircraft Industries, Ltd., will furnish us with PADS, LANS, GONS, SLOS, and TWMP, which are, respectively, a Precision Azimuth Determination System, a Land Area Navigation System, a Gun Orientation Navigation System, a Stabilized Long-Range Observation System, and a mine-clearing attachment for engineering vehicles. Give IAI a call at Ben-Gurion International Airport, (03) 9713111. Australia stands ready to provide the Carrington Minehunter, a shallow-draft catamaran equipped with the Krupp Atlas MWS80 Weapons System linked to the remote-controlled PAP-104 mine-disposal vehicle. West Germany has the MILAN and HOT antitank systems (developed in cooperation with Aérospatiale France, marketed by EUROMISSILE) and ROLAND, a surface-to-air antiaircraft system, all brought to us by MBB, Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm, of Munich—the grand old names keep coming back.

  Problems with C3I (command, control, communications, and intelligence)? Ferranti, of Ty Coch Way, Cwmbran, Gwent, Wales, NP44 7XX, can accommodate you. Air-defense systems, airborne data links, battlefield control and management systems—whatever your domain of defense, it has the answers to your C3I needs. What has Belgium done for us lately? Fabrique Nationale Herstal has a new Quick Change Barrel for the Browning .50-caliber machine gun and an explosive incendiary round, the APEI FN 169, to match. Where is France? Right behind us, with the GERFAUT pulse Doppler radar, from Meudon-la-Forêt. They are all ours, Priscilla, these or their domestic equivalents, given our three-hundredbillion-dollar defense budget and a world defense expenditure of more than nine hundred and thirty billion dollars last year. That we don’t want them doesn’t matter very much.