2013: Memoirs of a Writer: A Year of Travel, Interviews and Reflections on Life

By Sheldon Burton Webster

On New Year's Day 2013, Sheldon Webster was watching the college bowl games from his man cave in Birmingham, Alabama feeling frustrated that the Khmer Rouge war tribunal in Phenom Penh continued. Being unable to finish his third historical novel, House of Kampuchea, Cambodia's CIA Killing Fields that required six years of research and travel, he felt the inspiration to write 2013: Memoires of a Writer. The author would begin by recording significant events which occurred during the year of 2013,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781682890066

Book preview

Burton Place

The first time Sheldon Webster took his wife, Susan, to Burton Place and shared his dream of building a cabin, she pronounced, Go right ahead, but count me out, my dear. I’m not coming to this rattlesnake-infested pine thicket at the end of a dirt road. So he needn’t bother ever bringing her back. Susan, an Alabama lady, was not to be trifled with. But Sheldon is a man of compulsive determination. The next time he brought Susan back was on an April Fool’s Day under the pretext of attending his Mississippi State roommate’s daughter’s engagement party in Starkville. Upon arriving, Sheldon said they were early, knowing that Birmingham etiquette required that Susan would never be early. So when he suggested a short drive to kill time, she assented.

As they drove down the dirt road on a beautiful spring morning, there suddenly appeared a stone and timber lodge still in the making on a fourteen-acre lake. Yet to be built were the guest quarters and tornado shelter, a boathouse, and a pier on six acres of landscaped grounds. It was the beginning of the Magic Kingdom of Burton Place.

Susan, an interior decorator, was speechless. Then, recovering with wifely pique, she demanded, You built this without telling me?

I did not, Sheldon protested. You told me to, remember? Now I need your help decorating. Susan did, in a most rustic and elegant manner.

As the son of a forester and manager of the Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge, Sheldon knew trees. In the winter of 1953, he and his father planted this cornfield in pine seedlings. He had indeed grown up in this very pine forest, traveling fifty miles by bus daily to attend school in Starkville. When his dad, Burton Webster, died, he left Sheldon one hundred acres and left the remaining land to his other siblings.

With woods in his blood, Sheldon managed his inheritance into valuable timber. In 1998 he clear-cut sixty-seven acres, netting more than $300,000. To build Burton Place he invested the proceeds in three stocks, which doubled in value, then sold before the 2000 stock market crashed. It helped that I sold at the top, he laughed.

By profession, Sheldon is an accountant. By passion, he is a writer with four novels to his credit and two cooking. He’s also a hunter, mountaineer, and Southern story teller. In the evening, the screened back porch of the lodge is a place to drink and recall. For a Yankee like me, hearing the exploits of Billy Dale and Elvis, Paint Ball Paul, and Marvelous Mauritius is like listening to a Faulknerian novel. Drag racing, moonshine, women, wild turkey hunts, broken bones and beer joints, an occasional belt lashing, and in the background the patient, Marjorie, Sheldon’s mother. Each alone is a story, I think.

But the real telling of Burton Place is not about the land and structures or even the architecturally conforming fieldstone tornado shelter, complete with a case of Pol Roger champagne—or even the stories themselves. The intrinsic value is its timelessness. On a June evening sitting on the porch with the moon broadcasting a tinged yellow through a mottled sky, I abandoned all thinking to the deep-throated mating call of hundreds of bullfrogs and thousands of cicadas playing through the pines. Then there are the deer, wood ducks, alligators, cattle egrets, otters, largemouth bass, and, yes, rattlers, water mocs, and copperheads. This is a twenty-first-century outpost carved out of land as primitive as the beginning of time.

Indeed, the first thing you see today at the entrance is a jagged marker of 280-million-year-old Appalachian granite that reads, Burton Place 1953. That was the date Big Burt Webster bought the land. A graduate of Syracuse University’s school of wildlife management, Burt had joined Fish and Wildlife Service in 1937 in Arkansas, went off to war, and elected to move to Mississippi in 1947. It was a raucous time. The Roosevelt administration had bought up small subsistence farms under a Depression era program to help struggling landowners, but many already hated the government and were in a vile mood.

Big Burt knew what he was getting into, says Sheldon, but even then it was piece of work. As he recounts in an oral history, Burt said he came from Arkansas, but they knew in a shot he was a Yankee. Burt Webster had to win over the Mississippians and bind their farms together into what became the Noxubee Refuge, named after the river. He did it by opening the refuge for hunting for the locals to once again take ownership in their land. When the bureaucrats dangled a promotion to Washington for a job well done, he refused, saying his life was with Noxubee. That made him, said Sheldon.

Today the Refuge is a gussied-up place. It’s got a new visitors’ center, a fleet of white pickup trucks, even its own cop, Bobby Gentry, who has radar, FBI forensics backup, all the tools of modern police work. Then there’s the Friends of the Noxubee Refuge, a nonprofit established by local notables who recently exercised their political clout to protect the red-cockaded woodpecker. Good for nature. Maybe it is a little tough on locals who make a living with selective logging in the Refuge. Just down from Burton Place near the visitors’ center is hallowed ground, the Webster Oak Memorial, with the six varieties of oaks planted to memorialize Burton Webster’s commitment to nature.

Sheldon, as a Birmingham-based traveler—he’s been in 124 countries and plans to see the rest—has friends around the world who visit BP. Some come for water fowl season or deer, others just to kick back. Some provide grist for his war novels dealing with CIA skulduggery and Washington power-grabs. It’s all part of Sheldon’s ethic that the real patriots are the foot soldiers. The former army captain recently installed a plaque with the names of four childhood friends who died in Vietnam on a tall cedar post in the yard. On top is an 1836 no. 3 brass dinner bell to toll their memory, along with the brass number 58,262, the number of names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall on the Mall in Washington, DC.

You’ll often hear someone say they love a place so much they want to be buried there. At Burton Place there’s an Indian-style burial mound Sheldon erected across the lake as his gravesite. It’s a little unnerving at first. Then you think, what is more fitting than to lodge your soul in the land that created you and is placed in trust for future generations to enjoy?

Bob Dowling

Retired International Editor,

Business Week Magazine

Acknowledgments

Writing about the events occurring in my life during the year 2013 has been a rewarding and very challenging literary assignment. I feel I have accomplished my goal of recording the known and unknown. I could not have completed this book without the help of many people, especially those twelve individuals allowing me to tell their life story, along with many others whose paths I happened to cross in my travels. These Good Samaritans responded to my questions and give this book an authentic reflection on how foreigners feel about the United States, Americans, and our government in Washington. Their names are mostly anonymous: the taxi driver, bar patron, old men on benches, and fellow travelers, whether in Africa or Eurasia. With few exceptions, they responded to my interrogations with civility, and I thank them for their time and candor. Praise God for the English language—it has made communicating with the people of the world possible—and also to the jet age for whisking me to any point on the planet in less than twenty-four hours.

There are no footnotes in this book. Footnotes, as we know them, are passé except for scientific and scholarly studies. In the technological world, smartphones, tablets, and computers are much more meaningful than going to the library to find the writer’s footnote source. My research can easily be verified instantly on Google.com or Bing.com if additional documentation on what was written on subjects is desired. I attempt to refer to my source in the writing or by referring to my other published works of historical fiction, including interviews with acclaimed individuals. I never write about a place without having first traveled there to see the landscape and get the smell and taste of it. Before I depart, I study the history, economy, religions, and politics of the country and arrive with an open mind while keeping in mind I am a guest. I place the same degree of accuracy required in performing a forensic audit and use many of the same professional skills and techniques that I have practiced successfully for over forty-five years as a certified public accountant. Trust but verify is my motto taken from the words of President Reagan, which I apply in research. Events must appear logical at first glance, or I become instantly skeptical and investigate until I feel comfortable with the issue.

This book serves as a quasi-biography of Sheldon Burton Webster’s life, and therefore, in the writing the author switched off my fiction enabler to deliver an unembellished and factual account of who I am and what I stand for as an American. For the past forty years I have kept a diary, which was invaluable in getting the times, dates, places, and people accurately recorded. Unfortunately, my older sister Ruth Kromer and my parents, Burt and Marjorie Webster, are no longer alive to help verify events that transpired during my childhood. I do, however, have my father’s correspondence to use as a source and many friends, too, to call on.

A special gratitude of appreciation goes to my editors: five wonderful friends who had given of their time and literary talents to make this book come to life in a readable form. Alice Helms, my retired longtime professional colleague at Borland Benefield CPAs, who edits the first draft of every page, along with the countless rewrites, and finally the draft manuscript that goes to my four editors.

Sir Lawrence Wilson, CPA, my Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity pledge brother, is an editor for Commerce Clearing House Publishers on the most technical accounting issues imaginable. Larry in his own right is a major leaguer of Securities and Exchange Commission regulations and reporting and has experienced the financial world at the highest levels of the accounting profession. Larry served also as a Soviet source for the book, having spent years in Russia and the former Soviet Union with Arthur Andersen, and witnessed the 1993 attack on the Soviet White House. Larry has known me since I was eighteen. Throughout my adult life when asked, he has always been available to advise and help me.

I thank Steve Coleman, my fellow writer and Rotarian, the Duke University English major possessing a command of English prose unparalleled. Steve is a sailor and adventurer, holding a Coast Guard master’s license for ocean sailing as a yatchman. He is a man whose life experiences provide excellent recommendations of ways to give the book’s storyline an intriguing twist of the tale. Steve has the reputation for being a bibliographer, having achieved great fame recording the lives of noted Americans.

Attorney Edward M. George, my legal editor, is a noted poet, songwriter, artist, musician, and literary scholar. Ed served as an Army Security Agency specialist assigned to the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. His knowledge of the intelligence community gained in his military service is invaluable in editing the subject matter in this book. Ed holds this writer’s feet to fire when it comes to controversial issues, of which there are many in this book. As a lawyer he cross-examines to make sure the facts are accurately reported.

Robert J. Dowling, my mountaineering partner and internationally acclaimed journalist whose life became very much intertwined with mine in the book’s storyline. For years Bob has been a major mentor of this writer, always patiently coaching and praising my literary efforts. There are few people that have the knowledge and experience that Bob has in life with international politicians and business tycoons he interviewed. His credentials as the retired editor of Business Week Magazine International and having covered the White House through four election cycles make him a tremendous source. His journalism awards are too numerous to begin to list.

Tommy Terrell, my Wells Fargo advisor and fraternity brother of the Order of the Garnet and Gold, is an avid reader and tough critic of what he reads. This is comforting to know as a writer that Brother Terrell reads not to placate but to critique and improve my writing skills.

There is one source that stands out among many, Attorney R. Scott Colson III, economic director for the Office for the Mayor of Birmingham. I was fortunate to come in contact with Scotty late in the book’s writing. Scotty also serves as the director of the Birmingham Sister Cities Commission and was appointed in January 2008 honorary consul for Ukraine to Alabama. The City of Birmingham has two Ukraine sisters, Krasnodon (1999) and Vinnytsia (2003). Scotty, as director of the commission, possesses the knowledge and experience of Ukraine politics, culture, and economy to be envied by every State Department official involved. Thank you, Scotty, for your valuable insight into the political and economic issues facing Ukraine and for editing my research.

Susan, my beautiful wife of twenty-eight years, has been far more patient than Job of her husband, whose work, like all writers, becomes a very solitary and selfish endeavor. During 2013 Susan was left alone for days while I traveled the world to get the story. Susan is fortunately fiercely independent, and when I depart for dangerous places, she tells me always to be careful and stay safe. I thank Susan for her patience, moral support, and love.

Winter 2013

Burton Place in winter

Washington’s Military-Industrial Complex Conspiracy…W/M-IC

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

—President Dwight D. Eisenhower,

Farewell address,

January 17, 1961

E-mail Sent January 1, 2013

From: Sheldon Webster

To: Bob Dowling

Subject: 2013 Literary Inspiration and Happy New Year

Hello, Bob,

Many thanks for your missed call on Christmas Eve, and I’m sorry it took so long to get back to you. When you called, I was at Burton Place watching the new sign being erected by Alabama stonemasons on a very cold, rainy, miserable afternoon. This granite slab of 8-inch-thick rock weighs over a ton and was quarried in the northeast Alabama Appalachians near Chattanooga. The granite slab is flat, but not smooth like a cemetery marker, which would appear unnatural in this most natural of places on Martin Meadows on the south shores of Burton Lake. Measuring 7 feet across the base and standing nearly 6 feet tall, it is shaped like my native State of Virginia with Burton Place Est. 1953 engraved in 10-inch black tombstone letters on the face. There is also an etching of ducks flushing from cattails on the upper-right-hand corner to give it a sportsman’s flair.

This granite was formed some 280 million years ago, and the stonecutters stated that it was the hardest rock they had ever chiseled. My thoughts are that the Burton Place sign will withstand the test of time and also Mississippi State college boys who have a long history of decorating dorm rooms with stolen Noxubee Refuge signs. If a heist is attempted, it will require a massive 992G Caterpillar wheel loader to dig it out of the concrete base that my caretaker Tommie Robinson formed up and poured in rebar pilings buried deep into the earth. You’ll be impressed with the masterful masonry work he did on the base and flower box.

Tommie is a craftsman of all sorts with a green thumb as well who keeps Burton Place manicured in addition to being a paraprofessional baseball coach at East Oktibbeha High School. Tommie has natural athleticism in his DNA, being the second cousin of Jerry Rice, the greatest NFL wide receiver of all time whose father was a brick mason from Crawford, Mississippi.

It is good to have 2012 behind me after losing my sister, Ruth Kromer, on January 1, 2012, at age 71 of pulmonary edema, along with 12 other close friends and colleagues. All of the deceased were outstanding and highly successful individuals who had a very positive influence in my life. Most of them died from heart attacks or cancer, except Mike Beal from Clay County, Alabama, who at age 60 got killed when his zero-turn lawnmower turned over. It was shocking to learn last November at my 50th Starkville High School reunion that of my six linemen classmates, only two of us are still standing, both of us tackles.

All of these deaths reminded me of my own mortality, so I have been working with my estate lawyer, Charles Fiedler, of Puyallup, Washington, to get my affairs in order. This includes arranging my burial site atop Mount Burton and preparing detailed burial instructions. When I asked Susan to join me on this berm of earth excavated from the lake, she replied, Are you kidding? Buried on a Maya Indian mound at the end of a dirt road in Mississippi?

So I will rest on Mount Burton alone in the peace and tranquility of nature absent from all manmade sounds, including Susan’s. Pray God, I do not have to send out save the date announcements just yet, but I have prepared a list of people to be notified.

The year 2012 had its great moments, including the honor of your June visit to Burton Place, and my trip in August up to be with you and Erin at your Rocky Point home in Rowayton, Connecticut. I made four trips to Central America doing BKR recruiting, along with my annual pilgrimage to Kelly Lohn’s private North Secretary Island in the Straits of Georgia, British Columbia, to escape the repressive July heat in Alabama. I also visited 10 new countries, eight of which were in former Yugoslavia in September. I went to Guiana and Surinam in South America in December, which makes my tally 110 of the world’s 202 sovereign nations.

Bob, as you know, one of my missions in life is to see the world. This was never by design. The idea came into fruition when I was renewing my passport in November of 2011 and took inventory and realized I was over halfway there. I lived and traveled throughout Europe as a young army officer and then Asia, the Americas, and Middle East professionally with BKR International. There were mountaineer adventures, many of which I traveled with you, my friend. At this stage of my life I like being a solo traveler looking for new adventures and interesting people of which the world has many.

I’ve decided to go for the International Grand Slam of Nations before my time and money run out. Time is of the essence as I approach seventy, with money not being so much of a worry. I have worked hard, invested well and lived a modest lifestyle, and been damned lucky to accumulate some shekels. I must visit Antarctica soon, which is the last of the seven continents. If you are interested, please consider going with me.

Starting the 2013 New Year on a positive note, I am most thankful to have a number of great friends left on this earth of which you, Robert J. Dowling, top the list. I would not be writing this e-mail if you had not saved our lives when we were falling to our deaths on July 24, 1997, while descending the West Buttress of Mount McKinley in that terrible arctic storm.

So I have made a New Year’s resolution to start associating with a younger crowd of men while staying clear of younger women just to survive to age 95. That way I am guaranteed to have friends in attendance at my Burton Place funeral. So make sure Dowling sticks around because afterward I’ve planned a dandy of a celebration of life reception on Martin Meadow on the Lake Burton southern shore. Music will be provided by Earl and His Squirrels, a country and gospel band from Sturgis. There will be an open bar and all the dinner fixings with a microphone for testimonials from those who get loaded and want to say anything good or bad about Sheldon Webster.

As a full-time writer my frustration needle is pegged red since I am unable to finish the House of Kampuchea until the war trials end in Cambodia. So this afternoon in my man cave I got this great creative inspiration to keep me busy. I’ll write a book about all significance events, either planned or unplanned, occurring in my life during the year 2013. I will include interviews with a dozen or so unique and unusual friends and my travels while giving my geopolitical viewpoints on things I see and experience.

The book will also be a quasi-autobiography, a tell-all story of my life with no fiction. Fortunately, I have maintained a daily journal since 1983, and before then I will have to recall from my memory, which is still plenty good. My sources will be the people I met, the Internet, and news media, in addition to performing extensive research. With nearly 50 years of practicing as a forensic auditor, I invite my readers to Google anything they question and check the facts.

My political opinions are slightly right of center as an independent endorsing neither the Republicans nor Democrats. Without a tinge of Libertarianism, don’t label me a Christopher Hitchens quasi-contrarian either. This book is not intended to be a political basher but rather a political motivator for the silent majority of center America to become active in politics or at least go to the polls and vote. Americans must stop blindly following the Washington politicians or cowering to the fears of Fox, MSNBC, and CNN cable news propaganda like a herd of sheep on the way to slaughter. The book will hopefully serve as stimulation to enter into a meaningful political debate to make America better.

I must complete the piece, which Susan thinks is silly, by the end of 2014 to be of any interests to my readers. I am thinking about titling this work 2013: Memoirs of a Writer—A Year of Travel, Interviews, and Reflections on Life. Please e-mail me your thoughts.

Got to run, Susan just texted me that she has dinner ready. What in this world would I do without that woman? May the New Year bring the best of health and good fortunes to both you and Erin!

S

Birmingham, Alabama

Crape Myrtle’s Café

January 10, 2013

It was a cold and dreary Thursday at the Crape Myrtle’s Café when the captain came in out of the rain at noon. Doesn’t look like anyone from your crowd has shown up yet, said Jim, the café owner, with a shrug of his shoulders.

From my perch at the end of the bar I watched the old man take off his raincoat as he looked around rather annoyed. Catching my eye, he wandered on over to where I was reading the New York Times and asked, Excuse me, you with the Annapolis Alum?

No, sir, I just got my haircut though.

We’re supposed to be having our monthly luncheon, he continued, sweeping the café tables for familiar faces.

Please have a seat and join me while you wait, Admiral.

The captain chuckled. No, no, just a captain. Annapolis Class of ’49. Submarine engineering officer, name’s Jim McVoy, he said, sticking out his paw of a hand and flashed a gentlemanly smile.

Captain McVoy, I was a captain.

You were!

Yes, sir, but in the Army of the United States, O-3 pay grade, Finance Corp often referred to as the Jewish Infantry, I replied, saluting.

What about now, Sheldon?

I’m rewriting American history in order to get to the truth. So far we learned nothing from Vietnam and keep getting in these preemptive wars like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The captain shot me a skeptical look. What are you, some kind of liberal or libertarian contrarian or something?

No, sir, not at all, my captain. I consider myself an American patriot, like you, sir. I spent over eight years in uniform in defense of the United States. I have worked hard as a professional, over the years employed a lot of people and paid a hell of a lot of taxes of which the United States squanders in the Washington/military-industrial complex conspiracy. I might also add that I was selected as one of 160 civilian participants in the Forty-Eighth National Security Seminar at the Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, back in 2002.

The captain raised his eyebrows. "So, what’s it that you are

writing?"

"Rewriting is a better word I prefer to use, sir. I’m rewriting contemporary American history starting with the Bay of Pigs and going forward to tell the ‘back story’ of how the Washington’s military-industrial complex conspiracy operates."

Hold it. How do you come up with this crap?

Research and interviews with men who made history, military and intelligence officers, men like you, sir. Great patriots like Colonel Joe Shannon from Birmingham, who trained the CIA exile-Cuban Air Force to fly B-26s in the Bay of Pigs. Patriots like Gray Lynch, the former Special Forces officer turned CIA officer who killed the first Cubans on Red Beach in the Cuban invasion. Both Shannon and Lynch despised the Kennedys for abandoning their troops and not providing air support.

The CIA screwed that up.

"Yes, I wrote a book on the subject. Now, take General Heinie Aderholt, he is also a Birmingham native, known as Air Commando One, who ran the Air Forces’ covert air war in Laos, bombing the Ho Chi Minh trail during Vietnam. Neither Washington nor the Pentagon would listen to Aderholt’s warnings that jets were unsuitable for bombing the Laotian mountainous jungle terrain. If they had listened to Aderholt’s recommendation of using propeller-driven A-1 Skyraiders, hundreds of young American pilots would be alive today. As a matter of fact, Aderholt was the American general that stood down the American forces to end the Vietnam War, which left 58,272 dead. Sadly, little is known about the ‘last man standing.’

You know this better than I, military and intelligence officers have often been muzzled by the US government. They are threatened with imprisonment or loss of their pensions if they speak against the administration’s official White House position. These decisions are politically driven by the W/M-IC merchants of death. Patriots that are, or were, in the twilight of their lives want the truth to be told…Deep Throat in Watergate. I took it upon myself to write history truly and accurately, sir, and quite frankly, most Americans couldn’t care a rat’s ass less.

The captain, now in his eighties, leaned back on his barstool and took a sip of coffee. He cocked his head to the side. Maybe this Webster fellow is less of the radical liberal than I thought.

Captain, I never write about a place unless I travel there to get the smell of the land, talk and drink with the locals, study their history and economy, respect their religion. I’ve seen firsthand what happens when Americans leave behind one hell of a mess in places like Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, Lebanon, not to mention many countries in Central America. The politicians say, ‘This war is over now, and we are bugging out.’ Afterward Saigon fell, Baghdad’s civil war, as will be the case in Afghanistan, all at a cost of trillions of dollars to American taxpayers and thousands of soldiers’ lives. Who prospers? The arms merchants!

That’s about right. Ever feel threatened?

In Columbia, Guatemala, and Cambodia, I have had AK-47s stuck in my face. Bad feeling it is looking down the barrel of a Kalashnikov with some scared shitless teenager who never shaved itching to pull the trigger, if you know what I mean, my captain.

Captain McVoy, a sturdy man for his age with a razor-sharp mind and a sense of humor, was listening to me now.

After the United States bombs a country in the W/M-IC conspiracy, the Wall Streeters profit from war, be it from oil or opium or armaments. It takes three generations to pass before the bomb recipients stop hating Americans.

You’re implying, Sheldon, we don’t need a strong military to protect our national interest? the captain asked abruptly.

No, sir, I’m saying just the opposite! We need to be Billy Joe Badass and no one fools with us. What I’m saying in my four books that end with the Contra War in Central America in the mid-1980s, the truth must be told. The real underlying reason to declare preemptive war when our national security is not being threatened by ‘foreign enemies’ is greed. We must reevaluate how in my lifetime the United States has transgressed from being the world’s savior from the Nazis and Fascists to the world’s bully for Wall Street and the W/M-IC economic interest. The United States foreign policy is one to create war and thereby a market for our munitions industry’s arms.

I disagree with that totally.

And I respectfully appreciate your opinion, my captain, knowing that you’re a professional military man and perhaps have strong ties to the W/M-IC. Let me make this one point. President George Herbert Bush did not finish off Hussein in the First Gulf War because it would take away the Saudi’s market that spent $27 billion in the following years with the W/M-IC. It is my opinion that being a bully is not what’s in the hearts, minds, or will of the American people or in their best interest, sir.

Where can I get a copy of your books?

The first two are here in the Little Professor, I replied, motioning behind me to the bookstore. "Publishing the third, House of Kampuchea: The CIA’s Secret Killing Fields, is on hold because the war tribunal in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, drags on and on at a cost of $250 million paid for by mostly American taxpayers. The fourth book on the Contras I have completed the research."

So, what are you writing now?

"I just started a new book last week, 2013: Memoirs of a Writer, which came to me when I was held up in my man cave on Sterling Road on New Year’s Day. If you got time, I’ll tell you about it."

Okay, let me order some lunch first.

"Back in the 1920s when my house was built, the two-room apartment above the garage served as the help’s living quarters, now turned man cave. On Sunday afternoons I escape to the cave to read the New York Times and smoke my weekly Macanudo cigar while watching ballgames and talking to friends on my cell phone.

It was here on New Year’s afternoon that I received this literary inspiration to write a book about the events in my life that occur during the forthcoming 2013 year. With the changing of the seasons as the year progresses, everything of significance, either planned or unplanned, will be recorded, including my international travels and geopolitical observations. During the year I will interview some great patriots to thank them for their contributions to America. With your permission, Captain McVoy, I would like to start by interviewing you for the book.

I don’t know. Tell me some more.

Look, I have no crystal ball, so destiny dictates the storyline. Our meeting here at the Crape Myrtle’s Café on this rainy day is destiny, is it not?

Yeah, all because my damn Annapolis guys stood me up!

This is my good fortune, Captain. You see, e-mails and text messages have become a norm in recording our daily activities. So I will interject my e-mails in telling my story and to also provide some humor. Now that I am on the senior side of sixty, this literary endeavor also becomes a tell-all quasi-autobiography which requires writing in both past and present tense, a style that drives English professors bonkers. After the book’s ending of December 31, 2013, I will reflect on the subsequent events of political significance that occur in 2014 while I finish writing the manuscript.

Now that sounds pretty intriguing, the captain said.

Thank you, sir, but there is a problem. You see, I go scurrying out of the cave to run this book project by my wife, Susan.

Where do you live? asked the captain.

"Sterling Road, sir. Down from English Village in Mountain

Brook."

I grew up on Rhoades Circle, just up the hill on Red Mountain, so go on.

"Susan said, ‘Sounds like a silly idea, my dear,’ standing there in her kitchen cooking black-eyed peas for New Year’s dinner. ‘Why not just get a Facebook page and a Twitter account and be done with it? And besides, Sheldon, you really need to complete your Cambodia book and get all that junk out of my sunroom.’

‘Junk?! Susan, that’s my research material!’ I replied. ‘Kampuchea cannot be completed until the Khmer Rouge war trials in Phnom Penh, now in their fifth year, are concluded and the history recorded. That won’t happen until either the last two remaining of the four eighty-five-year-old defendants die or the court runs out of money!

The captain’s lunch arrived.

So, I walk back to my man cave all dejected, my ego deflated. Around to the back of the garage the cave is hidden from view by the abandoned railroad tracks running to the iron ore mines under Red Mountain.

Yes, I remember those trains as a kid, steams engines. Why this man cave? the captain asserted as only captains can assert.

Oh, sir, it is a sure prescription for escaping from the woman you love. Let me tell you about my cave. A Hail State Bulldog Club license plate hangs over the door, and from the porch you hear the trains. The garage is under this stately old magnolia tree with ivy climbing up the trunk, which keeps the cave shaded from the summer sun.

I love the smell of magnolia blossoms, interjected the captain.

Yes, in recent years the apartment is uninhabitable to keep our four kids from ‘boomeranging’ back home to live in it. The bathroom plumbing no longer exists, requiring me to use the back porch to whizz.

So you just sit out there in a dump and smoke cigars, do you? asked the captain, turning sideways on his stool to look at me closer.

Oh yes, but mind you, my cave’s decor is ‘early decrepit’ with an old armchair with stained ottoman placed next to an overturned transfer box end-table. In the cigar box full of cigar-smoking paraphernalia such as dead lighters, you find cigar cutters to clip the end of cigars and dump it into the brass ashtray. There is a manly smell about the place, a cross between cigars and the gym. I always turn on the wobbly floor lamp with its 100-watt bulb. I never take a nap on the worn-out sofa since mice occasionally scamper in and out.

My God! declared the captain, holding up his coffee cup.

I have an old Magnavox color TV sprouting rabbit-ears that is wired to a digital converter box. You know, it surprisingly brings in a number of channels, but not cable with digital HD reception. The electric heater keeps the joint warm, and I can switch on the oscillating floor fan to keep the cigar smoke circulating.

Captain McVoy was shaking his head. I assume he was thinking, Poor hen-pecked bastard, got to leave his house to smoke a cigar.

Don’t worry, technology in this modern age hasn’t bypassed the cave, sir. I got the perfect perch on the electrical receptacle to hold my iPhone 5. What a marvelous invention—iPhones. Do you have one?

No, don’t need it. All I need is a cell phone to make calls.

I held up my iPhone. But, sir, you now have the knowledge of the world in your hand with Google. At a higher level of technology, I added, there is a direct line of sight across the courtyard into the Big House den where the Wi-Fi router is located. I can beam stuff up on my Acer mini laptop running Windows 8 and send and receive e-mails, etc.

Sounds like a high-tech rathole, if you’re asking me, sighed the captain, shaking his head.

Yes! The worse the cave is, the better, more cave prestige, don’t you see? My cave is adorned with BKR International collectables from around the world that were given to me as gifts over the thirty-five years of my career that I spent recruiting BKR members.

What’s BKR International?

Oh, it is one of the world’s leading accounting and consulting entities headquartered in New York, London, and Sydney. These things are of great sentimental value—like a china porcelain dragon, my Colombia Jeepster, those silver Middle Eastern date palms, African woodcarvings, that sort of junk.

Why don’t you put that stuff in your home study?

Oh, much too tacky to put in her house, Susan says. You know, I never thought about it. I’m damn fortunate to have my man cave to keep my junk from being carted out to the street for the garbage man to haul off.

The captain motioned to Jim for more coffee.

Being a Mississippi State fan, Captain, I have mega Bulldog memorabilia which is banned from the Big House too by my Ole Miss Rebel wife Susan. I have this treasured Mississippi State cowbell whose clapper I rang out onto the fifty-yard line of Jackson Memorial Stadium back in September of 1974 when we last beat Georgia.

No, you beat Georgia a few years ago.

Yes, we did, 24–12 in September of 2010 in Starkville.

Sounds like to me you’re the Caveman of Sterling Road, are you?

Nobody knows it! To hide the place, my window treatments are wooden trellises nailed over the grime and cobwebs accumulating since the last spring cleaning in 1958 when the help moved out. You can’t see inside. The American flag is hanging above the window for saluting when the national anthem is played before kickoffs, tip-offs, and pitchouts. One window had to be recently replaced after grandson Tompkins broke it out chunking rocks.

You just sit up there in all that filth and watch TV, smoke cigars, and talk on the telephone? I don’t get it.

Well now, Captain, it doesn’t mean there is a total lapse in standards of cleanliness. As you sailors say, each spring we have a ‘field day.’ I break out the lawn blower and blow the winter’s dirt and leaves out the door.

What does your wife think of the cave?

Oh, don’t worry. Man caves must be secure from female intruders with a very efficient alarm system. The one I rigged consists of loose bricks on the entry steps that go clickety-clank when you step on them. There is also a password to gain entry given only to a few close and trusted buddies, including my grandsons, Tompkins and Stillwell.

Sounds like you have all your bases covered, Sheldon.

Well, there are a couple of things still to be added. My 2013 Playmate of the Month calendar is on order. I’m still searching eBay for an antique electrified Miller Highlife neon sign to give some class to the joint. Let me tell you about the—

Jesus, just hold it, Sheldon! I get the picture, said Captain McVoy with a flare of his hands, having heard enough.

I laughed. Sorry, Captain, I hope I didn’t bore you too much. Now if you decide to have a man cave, Captain, I’ll be glad to show you mine.

"No, thank you, and besides, no need for a man