From Polio To Black Belt: A Soldier’s Unlikely Path (Andrew Glenn)

A draft notice rerouted Andrew Glenn from German beer halls to a rain-soaked tarmac at Fort Campbell, where a drill sergeant’s bark split his life into before and after. What followed reads like a map drawn in pencil and sweat: infantry training, a near-miss with OCS, boredom punctured by juggling rocks, and an arrival in Korea under red alert that replaced comfort with diesel stoves and steel seats in eighteen-below cold. On a base with little to do, he found a doorway: a Korean lieutenant with mirrored shades inviting him into Mudokwan Taekwondo. Dawn runs, barefoot streets, cigarettes pressed into palms, and a black belt test that measured presence, not violence, turned fear into discipline and discipline into identity.

We follow Andrew from hilltop outposts, where he read by the strobe of a dripping fuel stove and completed coursework between patrols, to the hard exit of service and the harder return home. The applause he craved wasn’t there; protests were. He threw his voice into student strikes, then into dance studios, mime stages, and finally opera halls. Seattle’s gentle winters helped him heal; Philadelphia’s grit sharpened him. Along the way, he co-built a coffeehouse before coffeehouses were everywhere, a convivial room where cantors, violinists, and neighbors met, and helped produce a film spotlighting “design outlaws” who treated ecology as invention rather than doom.

The story refuses straight lines. There are vans crossing mountains at 55, Juilliard sessions won on perseverance, retirement communities where stoic faces hold back floods, and small miracles—a Nigerian traveler who buys him time with a hundred-dollar bill; a teacher who says seven years, not seven weeks; a black belt awarded after two shadows vanish through opposite doors. Through it all, one principle holds: risk is a compass. Andrew argues that most regret grows where risk dies, that shooting higher than your fear—into languages, arts, and disciplines you haven’t earned yet—is how identity expands.

Come for the soldier-to-black-belt arc; stay for the reinvention that follows: dance, poetry, activism, coffeehouse culture, and song stitched by grit. If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s too late to pivot, or whether discipline can coexist with rebellion, this conversation offers both a blueprint and a dare. Listen, share with someone wrestling a crossroads, and if it moved you, subscribe and leave a review so more people find these stories. Which risk is calling you next?

Transcript

Childhood, Polio, And Minnesota Roots

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Today is Monday, February 9th, 2026. We're talking with Andrew Glenn, who served in the United States Army. So good morning, Andrew.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Good morning.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

We're gonna start out fairly simple. When and where were you born?

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Uh St. Paul, Minnesota, March 6th, 1948.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Okay. And always lived in Minnesota then?

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

All right. Well tell me.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Well, I've lived other I've lived other places.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Oh, okay. All right. But uh so for your your childhood and growing up, did you stay in Minnesota?

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Yeah, I uh I grew up uh in Minnesota until I was 18. And I grew up some summers in Georgetown, Colorado. Oh. So kind of a split residency.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

And what took you to Colorado?

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Um well my father uh decided that this winter was too gloomy here, so he packed the family into our 58 Mercury and uh drove out, got you know we all wanted to do this anyway to go skiing. He was an enthusiast. And um he kind of represented heart skis. So we uh I had my first uh ski lesson in Rappahoe Basin, Colorado when I was eight years old.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Wow. So uh skiing's been a part of your life then.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Pardon?

SPEAKER_01 2:06

I said skiing was a fairly significant part of your life then.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

It sounds like well, yeah. It was uh well my father was a kind of a gung-ho outdoorsman, so he said, Well, we're going, you know.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Yeah, so let me let me back up a little bit though. So you have uh did you have brothers and sisters?

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Yes. Um I had an older brother, and I have a younger sister. Okay and I had a younger brother who died from polio.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Oh, all right, and how old was he?

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Um he died at one year old, and my brother and I, all three of us got polio in 1952, and uh we all went into Anchor Hospital, and my little brother died there, and my older brother got meningitis, and I had a light case of polio, and I had crutches for about a year.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Oh my gosh. All right, yeah. And and so, I mean, how did that how did that impact you as a as a child then?

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Um you've really hit a good hit on a my first experience of being out of my body was being four years old and uh watching dead children being wheeled out of the children's ward with sheets over their faces. And it was bad, but I just remember a feeling of complete vulnerability. And uh I became somewhat autistic, and my parents came and the doctor said, Well, we better, uh uh Henrietta, you better watch this kid, he's he's checking out. So that really helped, you know.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Yeah, so that's that's quite an impact at a quite a young age.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Yeah, yeah, and then I had to wear these little, you know, they were like foot-long uh pole leg braces. And I had to walk to school in the morning, and it was oh, you know, it was winter in St. Paul's, 20 below zero. And my mother would say, You're no cripple, get out the door and go to school.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Well, so yeah, yeah, it sounds like it. It sounds like it. So uh what did your dad do for a living?

SPEAKER_02 4:31

Uh my dad um was a very interesting man. He um he was appointed to the Supreme Court when he was 43 uh to the uh the outer the outer uh what you call it, the outer the 16 uh outer rim court. He wasn't in the central court, but when he did that, he was also appointed as as uh probate judge for uh Ramsey County.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Okay. All right. And that that allowed him then to in the winters go out to Colorado and and ski?

Skiing Colorado And Family Synchronicities

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Yes, you got it. Uh it was kind of privileged existence. I think I think he had uh pretty heavy caseload um up till December 15th, and that's when he took us out to Colorado. Um actually, this is a very interesting story because in the summer of 1956, if I can diverge a little here, absolutely. He uh he was a um a hunter. He hunted he hunted mountain goats and all kinds of critters, which I didn't I didn't like hunting. But anyway, that's another story. So he came back from Colorado and he walked into the front porch on the out in the country. We had a fishery, and he'd walk in the front door and he says, Henrietta, I just bought a house in Colorado. I can remember that. And my mother turned around and said, What? So uh they were great adventurers, both of them. So uh we um we packed up that summer 1956 and took my baby sister with us, who was uh you know, like six six months old. And uh we uh discovered this house, which was built in 1861, and it was completely dilapidated. You know, just windows with newspapers in them. And we went in this house and it was filled with uh antiques from uh you know 1790. The woman's name was Pulsiver, and she'd been a music teacher in this mountain town. And outside there was a plaque on the on the house next door that said um both these houses were built by Erskine McClellan uh in 1860 to 18 1861. And my father looked at my mother and said, Is that my missing uncle?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

What?

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Well, the Historical Society researched it and found out that, well, as my father told me, and his um grandmother in 1925, when he was 12 years old, said that uh her brother Erskine McClellan had been an artillery officer in the Confederacy, and his brother Job went west to discover gold in the hills of Colorado in 1863, and nobody ever heard from him again. It's so this is my story of synchronicity. Yeah, yeah, isn't that terrific? So our jaws just fell open.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Yeah, that's I mean, I don't even know if the word coincidence fits the bill here. That's just that's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

It's it's really crazy, yeah. And uh so that's what got me into finding out all about the McClellans. So I looked up Erskine McClellan and he had built the um the Georgetown Opera House, and he burned it down in a fit of rage over a woman, and he didn't have any insurance, and he he got caught, or he had insurance, he got caught. But he he died in a bathtub with a prostitute when he was 88 years old. But he had built, and they named McClellan Mountain after, I thought after Erskine McClellan. McClellan Mountain is is uh a big mountain of Colorado. Anyway, so to make a long story short, I researched this, and in in his obituary, it said Erskine McClellan gave uh$5,000 to the son of his cousin, General George McClellan, the commander of the Potomac. And I thought, wow, this is cool stuff.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

That's uh that's quite a quite a history and interesting, interesting that you found out about it the way that that you did. I mean this the story was interesting enough when your dad just came home and said, Hey, I bought a house, but then it it turns out to be much more than that.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

It's extraordinary. And uh I've always been kind of a history buff. I I'm a writer, and uh I live pretty much in the present as a as an entertainer. And it started me on the track of history, and it began to uh occur to me that we really, you know, as as Emerson said, out of our eyes pure our ancestors. And it it's really kind of makes your hair stand up when you think about it.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Oh, yeah, it definitely does. Um now I do want to uh go back a little bit too. So you uh you're eight years old and your sister's uh just a baby at this point, um, and you go out to Colorado and you're you're kind of coerced into taking uh uh ski lessons. I'm just curious, how did your bout with polio impact your ability to ski? And were you not wearing um the braces anymore at this point?

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Yeah, um, yeah, I was fine, except that I I had um uh atrophy of the uh certain muscles in the um transversalis muscles in in my gut, and I couldn't do sit-ups till I was about 30 years old. I was I was crippled in it, but I played football. So um no, I was okay. I was okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Okay. I see. And and so you you're splitting your time really between uh Minnesota and Colorado um growing up. Can you tell me a little bit about what school was like for you? Now you were saying that when you were young and wearing braces, your mom kind of said, Hey, get out the door, you're not crippled, you can go, you can go to school. Um, but what was school like for you as a child?

SPEAKER_02 11:31

Oh, I loved it. I it was um sanity, order, very orderly.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

So my my parents uh were concerned that I was overly neat. I probably I probably got this from General McCollin, who he could all his uniforms were neat, but he wouldn't go into battle. Right. Uh yeah, so I all my little shoes were lined up and my crayons. I was I wanted to be a wildlife artist, and I sketched a lot, and everything was so neat in my room. They took me to a psychiatrist, and uh, you know, I was six or something, and psychiatrist said, Are you are you people crazy? Are you lucky to have a kid like this?

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Right, right. Who takes their kid to the psychiatrist because he's too neat? That's quite interesting.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Yeah, you know, I don't know, maybe helicopter parents, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Yeah, that's uh that's pretty early on for that, isn't it?

School Rigor, Pranks, And Early Music

SPEAKER_02 12:35

What was I gonna say about Colorado? The uh the mountains were an extraordinary experience, and uh in 1960, and this changed my life. Um I well dur during those summers I befriended a Cuban family uh of Raul Gadoy, who was and I befriended uh uh Stevie, who became my friend, he was my age, who's a champ, was a champion kid skier. And uh I lived in that house, and that's where I learned some Spanish. You know, I was in and out of that house, and they had a they had a a Kubano maid who was a Negrito uh black woman, and it was the first black woman I ever met, and she used to hug me in her big huge breasts, you know. She used to pick me off the floor. And um, and when we went back that winter, on January 2nd, we were in Fairmont here in St. Paul, a man knocked on the door. You know, in those days the door was open, and there was this little man that looked like Pablo Naruto with a black hat, and it was the presidente de Banco Cuba. He was the president of the Bank of Cuba, and Castro had put a hit out on him, which I learned later. And my father, my father had given him sanctuary in St. Paul and spoke for him. You know, and and I'm thinking of all the stuff that's going on in Minneapolis right now. But anyway, it resonates. But uh Stevie later in my life, I was a drummer, and he got me auditions with uh bands uh with Santana and Zephyr in uh down in oh what was it, Colorado Springs. We went to uh Santana uh Carlos Santana's house, and I was a good conger drummer, and I was about 23. And uh the back door opened, and this big cloud of of marijuana smoke came up. And there was Carlos's wife, and she said, Carlos Noaki, noaki, ahora no aquí. So that was the end of my audition for Santana. Oh but yeah, you had split.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

So that's no good. That's no good.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

But my my Latin drumming started with with uh was Stevie, who was a guitarist, and uh anyway.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

So how old so how old were you when you started playing the drums then?

SPEAKER_02 15:21

I was I was about 13. I was uh I started in tablas, Indian tablas.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

And then you just kind of moved the drums. So has do you feel like um that was kind of the musical influence that started for you, or were you interested in music prior to that?

SPEAKER_02 15:39

Well, I just couldn't keep my hands still. You know, I I beat out rhythms on the headboard of my bed. My father would say, Would you stop that? You know, it's two o'clock in the morning. So they they just you know gave me a pair of bongos.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

It saves wear and tear on the headboard, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 15:57

Yeah. But then what was happening was this is really this is a really cool segue. Um the um Dave Lee, he was a um he was a border guard. Uh this again ties in with this whole thing in Minneapolis. Anyway, um I was 12 years old and I was in the kitchen with his wife Muriel, who was my babysitter. And Dave Lee owned the Scholar Coffee House, and he said, This kid named Bobby Zimmerman keeps pestering me to play his guitar, and he he looks like a drowned rat. True story.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Oh my gosh. So did he ever let him in to play?

SPEAKER_02 16:43

Yeah, yeah. I bet he remembers him too. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. So this so this whole time you're you're in um you're in school. Now, were you in uh public school or private schools there in Minneapolis?

SPEAKER_02 17:00

Oh, uh my parents asked me if I wanted to go to public school. I said no, they sent me to SPA, which was uh English country day school. Uh-huh. Very upper class. And uh I studied Latin at 12 years old, and I'm very thankful for this education because I I had to I had to learn Latin and German, and I hated it, of course. But I got good grades until I turned a sophomore. And then they I kept flunking math, so I had to leave.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Oh. So did did you end up going so so first of all, math wasn't your forte, I I take it.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

Yeah. No, as hell.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yeah. Yep. So you so then did you end up going to uh public school from that point?

SPEAKER_02 17:51

Yeah. Um one of the things that drove me out of SPA is that we marched every we wore uniforms, and we marched every day. Well, maybe Tuesdays and Thursdays, company marches around the school. But I like that because of the tattoo, the drum tattoos. And I could, I could kind of I got in trouble for like like bopping when I was marching and stuff. So um I was kind of a trouble. I was kind of a problem for the school, I think.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Yeah, well, you know, I find it interesting, um, Andrew, that uh here you are, this neat tidy kid, so neat and tidy that your parents are concerned about your mental health. Uh and you you you go to you go to this school and and I'll bet the neat and tidy worked out really well, but the the like the inability to just kind of be still just didn't work out.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

No, it didn't. And God, I I sang, I was singing, um I was singing American art song at at six, fifteen years old. I was singing it well. Um Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood, Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood, and I took the one least traveled by stuff like that. Um which I picked up again then when I was 30, and I began I sang German leader professionally. So um SPA gave me a lot, but I just couldn't. I started a gang. We would run around and we would flick ink on the back of uniforms, and that's what I think essentially got me kicked out. It was devious.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Wow, yeah, that is pretty devious.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

And then Mason Benape would flush M80s down the toilet. Oh, that really so I I was a kind of a ringleader of pranksters, and well, there you go.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Yeah, yeah. This is uh this is interesting. I'd never I never would have guessed, but that's the best part about interviewing is learning uh about these things with with folks. So what was the transition like for you then from SPA to public school?

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Um astonishing. I regret leaving SPA. Um the first day at Central, people were sleeping with their during class with their heads in their arms, and then they had whiskey bottles sticking out of one kid had a whiskey bottle sticking out of his back pocket. I was shocked.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Yeah, that that's that's pretty shocking, even I would say, even by today's standards.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

Yeah, and uh at SBA when I first began to write poetry, I discovered that I could write poetry really well. And uh and then I was getting serious about literature, and uh half the class was sleeping. And um, we had a great English teacher, and uh we studied the existentialists, and uh that was just fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

So, you know, how many how many kids in in that well in that class in particular were like you that were actually interested in in what was being taught.

Draft Clouds, Germany Escape Plan, Decision Point

SPEAKER_02 21:17

I would say about 10 out of 30. We had kind of an intellectual clique of existentialists and um I was into French, the French stuff, but German idealism and Hegel and Kant and all that was was would come later. And uh but there were a lot of black kids, not a disadvantaged kid, as they're called. And yeah, and the teacher said, Mr. Esslini said, I'm giving you all A's so you can relax.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Apparently they relaxed. They really relaxed. No kidding. Now, so this would have been if you were 16 or 17, this would have been in like the mid-60s then?

SPEAKER_02 22:10

963.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Okay, so things were just sort of taking off in the United States too, right? Like questioning and protesting and things like that. Yes. Do you think that that um that added to your interest in like existentialism and kind of uh reading what you like to read?

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Oh no. I remember being oblivious. Kennedy's death the year before. It we just kind of all took it in stride. It was um, I didn't integrate social movements and forces around me with intellectual ideas. I was really more of a scholar type. I was really interested in um the great poets. I mean, the Norton anthology was my Bible, and I could, if you asked me about the poet uh Emerson, you asked me about uh John Crow Ransom, the poet, I would tell you what his structure of his poems was. I had everything figured out, at least I thought. And I was such a snob, I wouldn't read Walt Whitman.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Oh, so you were a you were a true intellectual then?

SPEAKER_02 23:31

I was a true poetic intellectual who would not tolerate even T. S. Eliot, because he was Catholic. You know, I was I was such a fanatic. So um I think my narrow-mindedness, my my opinions helped me to write to really define my own writing. And I still have this problem that it's hard for me to appreciate other poets who are really good. And uh this kind of intellectual bigotry really landed me in in the school of the lake poets. The great poets to me have always been not Tennyson, but Coleridge and uh the great lyric poets of English tradition, the pastoral tradition. And that kind of sticks, that's kind of like saying, I'll listen to Beethoven, but the rest is crap, you know. So and that's not true of me, I listen to all music.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Right. So what what's it like to be that age and to to have that sort of intellect? Was it did it, I mean, did it make it easier or harder to to make friends and have relationships? Um, and you know, especially at that, you know, you're in high school and and you're kind of at that age.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

Well, there were friends who we shared the same um opinions and thoughts about poetry, and I had poetry friends, a few, not many. I felt uh very isolated, but it wasn't painful. Uh you know, I wasn't one of these manic depressive, or maybe I am, I don't know, but I wasn't one of these long-suffering, highly gifted types, you know, that are that have what what now they have labels for them now. Extremely gifted and um aspergic and all that kind of thing. No, I didn't I felt normal.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Yeah. Well, and talk to me a little bit about um, you know, high school outside of the academic part of it. Um, what sorts of things did you do? What sorts of things did you enjoy?

SPEAKER_02 25:59

Um I was a total athlete. I was a jock intellectual. So uh I track and field. Um I got state record in the 175-yard dash when I was 14. And they thought I was gonna be some track star, but I never got bigger than five foot seven. But that be but even that, you know, they're short sprinters and went to the Olympics, so I just never got faster. So um and the shot but I put the shot but till it till it nearly killed me.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

So so I gotta hear that story. How did it almost kill you?

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Well, I broke my wrist.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

And it I didn't find out ten years later. Oh. But yeah, I got I got to the state, but I was too short, and then I I was in flight 44. That shows you how far I could throw the shot. So I was kind of butting my head. It I wouldn't face reality that I was just you have to be tall to be a great shot putter. And I threw yeah.

Basic Training Shock And OCS Crossroads

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Well, so so the you know, I it kind of begs the question, you know, hearing about your early childhood and and then you're an athlete and a and a runner, um, you know, did you or did any did did was there any residual effects from from polio and all of that as you got older, or did they just sort of disappear?

SPEAKER_02 27:38

No, it disappeared.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

So I think it was a full recovery.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

So it didn't hold you back then at all?

SPEAKER_02 27:49

No, I don't think so. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Were there other sports that you looked at?

SPEAKER_02 27:58

I should have gone to a chiropractor because I I had scoliosis and lower dosis, I had twisted spine. And it it screwed up the firing mechanism. Um in the in the in the abduction, adduction of the I'm I'm a massage therapist, so I can talk like this. Um you know, it it screwed up the ability, uh screwed up my core muscles. And because of that, I had to create the body creates compensations. So I really the whole thing about oh, being crippled or wounded, um the body is a homeostatic mechanism and it it will compensate as best it can. And it's almost as if you don't have the problem. But I should have had some special treatment, and uh but but modern dance is what saved me because you have to have tremendous core muscles to be a dancer, even more so than football or anything else, because the art form is so torsive. And uh, when I started studying at 23, I was finally able to do sit-ups. Now I can do 50 of them, but back then I could do three. So I had scar nervous scar tissue.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

That's kind of uh backwards. Most people as they age can't do as as many sit-ups as they used to do, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:33

Yeah, well, I work out pretty hard.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

Yeah, yeah. So you uh uh let's uh go back to high school a little bit here. Um, you know, you uh is there anything that we haven't covered from high school that you wanted to talk about? Um anything that I've missed, maybe?

SPEAKER_02 29:51

About what?

SPEAKER_01 29:52

About high school, about your time in school?

SPEAKER_02 29:57

Well, I was girl crazy, and my parents didn't want me to have a girlfriend. I thought that was really cruel. You know, there was this keep them away from girls. And uh anyway, that's another story. But high schigh was I think athletics saved me. And and I had a very my father was a had been a college football player, and I had a very my mother had been a pre-Olympic diver. I came from a a gift, a gifted family of athletes, and I felt kind of inadequate compared to my dad. He played for the Gophers. And yeah, a little feeling of having to striving to get where my dad was because he was a pretty amazing person.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Well, tell me a little bit about that. A little bit more about your dad there.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

Well, he uh he was a speed skater, but in high school, they were the Minnesota football team. The three brothers, Tim, Tim Andy, and Bill Glenn, were the backfield for the Minnesota High School All-Stars. Oh. And then my dad got got into the Gophers as a center linebacker, I think as a fullback. But in the first game, Bronco Nagersky uh stepped on him and broke, punctured one of his lungs in 1931. Is that right?

unknown 31:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:38

And that was the end of his career, and he said, screw this, you know. He said, I'm gonna go, I'm going to law school.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Good choice. You know.

SPEAKER_02 31:48

Yeah, good choice. So he ended up um clerking for his father, who was uh a Third Circuit um federal judge, and lived in the house with his six sisters and brothers. And they did, you know, during the depression, they did well. My my uh grandfather had a private practice as well. He my father was a Republican, and I think there's a lot of snootiness in that because as a family they didn't suffer like everybody else did during the depression. Uh I don't think they had it easy. But my dad ran for mayor of St. Paul in 1946 as a Republican. But the guy was not, you know, how do you say stingy or lacking compassion? Um, his one of his platforms was uh to expand the GI Bill. And I was thinking about this the other night, that I come from Scottish people, and my grandfather was a working-class guy who wanted to get out of being, you know, uh working in the baggage department of the Pacific of the train in Minneapolis, and he told his three sons, if you don't go to college, he said, I'm gonna disown you. He was a tough guy. He was a tough Scottish, you know, no nonsense. Well, three of the two of the sons became research scientists, and then my grandfather uh became, got first in his class in law school. He was a brilliant man. And became a federal bankruptcy referee and judge. And he was known for his brilliance, and that he was found dead in the river in 1944. Nobody knows what happened. And I think what happened was he was murdered.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:54

I think it was payback for the depression, and he foreclosed on a corporation. Uh, nobody, this is what my cousin says. So my father, when he went to court, he always packed a 25-caliber pistol in the shoulder holster, you know, when he go into the courtroom.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 34:16

And the marshal, the federal marshal who's a nice guy, had a tiny office next to my father's office. And the federal marshal always had a pistol, but it was on his hip. And he could look, he could look down the entrance and watch anybody who comes into the courtroom. Because probate judges um were often um targets of very disgruntled people. And his father had been essentially a probate judge on a federal level. So there was a lot of guardedness in my father. He's very discreet. And um he didn't like talking politics with me because I was a progressive democrat.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

That must have made for some interesting dinners.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

Oh my God. So Tom Brokaw, Tom Brokaw was married to my cousin, and one day we were sitting there, and Tom Brokaw came on TV, and we had a big argument about progressive. He said, You Democrats are all a bunch of uh cronies, he said. I don't know what that means.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

I think it's just a it's it's another term that people throw out there, isn't it?

Weapons, AIT, And Land Navigation Wins

SPEAKER_02 35:44

Yeah, she just had this, yeah, he had this thing about Democrats, and I think it goes back to FDR. And maybe, and maybe his father, who was a Scottish, and had that Presbyterian um dislike of wealthy people or power or something. I don't know what it is. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

And interesting, interesting that he you know became a judge um and actually wielded some power and had some privilege in his life. It's um it's uh it's interesting how we how we sometimes grow differently from the from the people who raised us.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

Yeah. Well, one of the you you've brought up an intuitive point here. His brother was an opera singer, Timothy Glenn. I used to tell my uncle Tim, I wish you were my dad. He'd laugh. But but he was he sang Gilbert and Sullivan when he was 16 years old. He was brilliant. He was a church soloist and uh sang with the St. Paul Opera. And he he worked at 3M as an engineer. And in World War II, he designed the cockpit of the B-25 Mitchell bomber. No college degree, no engineering degree. He used to say to me, he said, these young punks with these engineering degrees, they come to me, they come to me telling me what I'm supposed to do.

SPEAKER_01 37:18

That that that is uh that's a tale as old as time, right there. I'll tell you that. Because I remember my dad saying some things like that when he worked in the factories.

SPEAKER_02 37:27

Yeah, these young liver slappers.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

And now we're the old guys talking like that. That's what's funny. But uh, yeah, so so you uh I want to I want to go back just a little bit. Um now you um you make it through high school, and uh you I'm assuming you graduated with a degree or with uh with your diploma?

SPEAKER_02 37:52

Yeah, I got yeah, I graduated. Okay. I didn't like I got a s I think I got C.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Uh-huh. And then and then uh what happens after high school?

SPEAKER_02 38:06

Oh, well, this is when the things start to really pop. Well, I was working at 3M uh in a factory, so my dad, my dad raised me in, excuse me. Oh, nope, go ahead. Okay. So in the summers I worked in 3M, and then I also worked for my dad in the fishery. Brutal, absolutely brutal work. And I did road construction, I did, you know, and I was a strong kid, so I could handle construction. But working for my dad was pure hell. And then um he just made me work harder, you know. So yeah, then I got a job at 3M in the tape department, the mailboy, and all that stuff. And I was getting depressed. I couldn't see how life could get any better, and I was writing reams of poetry, and this woman, this girlfriend wanted to get married, and I didn't want to get married, and I was just a mess. And uh I had to think of something. My parents were starting to get on my case. They're always on my case, but uh work hard, work harder, uh you know, Scottish stuff, right? So I remember dreaming up a way to get out of this whole thing because they were grooming me for 3M, because my dad's friend was the was the chairman of finance. And you know, this is they were upper, these guys were, you know, swinging it. They were they were in charge and they were gonna protect me. And Vietnam was on the horizon, and my brother got in trouble and ended up in Vietnam. The judge told him he had to go to Vietnam. Um, he threw a smoke bomb off the Eiffel Tower, and uh it was a federal charge against my brother. He was he was a prankster.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

My brother was brilliant, he was an engineer, he was an inventor. And uh the judge said, you go to jail or you go to you go to you enlist in the military. So my brother I volunteered for Vietnam and became a medic. Um tough guy. He was always really tough, you know.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

Yeah.

Korea Arrival Under Red Alert

SPEAKER_02 40:31

And I wasn't, I was just I didn't want anything to do with wars. So my brother was in Vietnam. I thought, well, um I'll appeal to my father to lend me money so I could study at the Goethe Institute in Germany. Because I was interested in, I was just interested in getting the hell out. And I had a lot of energy, and he said, okay, and it was$300 the tuition. So I took all my factory money and got on a plane and landed in Munich in April of 1967. And then I received a letter from my parents addressed to the school saying your draft notice has arrived. Oh shit. And there was enclosed uh the Department of Defense has uh is uh informing you that you have that you are something to do with you're going to be drafted in September of this year, and this is a a warning to be, you know, something like that. So then I got bad grades at the Goethe Institute. I just didn't, I was drinking a lot of beer at night. So um I left the Goethe Institute and worked in a restaurant in Germany, and I thought, why don't I just stay here? And uh I was in the Hofbrug House about the time Arnold Schwarzenegger was there, uh, in May of 1967. I came out the door, and there standing in front of me was my best friend. He had taken a boat, and he knew I hung out at the Hofbrug House, and we got talking, and he said, look, you know, you could you gotta serve your country. You can't you can't run away from this, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. So I thought about that, and I thought, he's crazy. And then I thought of staying in Germany, and then I thought, well, I could get the GI Bill if I went into the Army. So I finally relented and went back, and that's why I went in the army.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

Okay. Now, when you got your draft notice, were you did you have the ability to choose the service you want? Could you like enlist before you got drafted? How did how did all that work for you?

SPEAKER_02 43:14

Yeah, how do you know all this? I I I enlisted.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

I've interviewed a couple people, Andy.

SPEAKER_02 43:22

I enlisted in the Navy, the Air Force, and something else, but I never signed papers.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 43:31

And I just uh screw this, I'm not gonna go back and sign.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

So then your your I'm assuming your draft number came up then?

SPEAKER_02 43:44

Yes, it did. And uh then I was notified I I would have to appear on September 17th downtown. And I was in Germany. I stayed there six months, so I came back, came back in August. I had slept in every every park bench in Germany. I was having so much fun. I just had endless energy. I was writing poetry, sleeping on park benches.

SPEAKER_01 44:15

Just having a great time, right? Just living the life.

SPEAKER_02 44:19

Right. And then I met this uh this guitarist who put me up in his garden house, and I looked him up the other day. I remember his name, and now he's a famous rock musician in Germany. We were we were dynamic.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:35

All this cool stuff happened. So regretfully, I went back and I thought I can get see, I can get my GI Bill, I can get medical afterwards. And I thought now the first thing I did is I applied to the Rhodotom uh Dance Academy to study ballet. I thought I could, no, no, yeah, I did that when I came out out of the army. So I went into the army, came out of the army, went back to Germany, and in 72 I applied for the ballet academy for the GI Bill, but they turned me down. The Army turned me down. So I see I went to Germany once after the service, I went back to Germany and then returned to the United States to study dance.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

Okay. All right. Well, let's let's um let's go back though to your you uh you're you're in the army, um, right? So you you go to your so how does this work? You get your draft notice, your number comes up, and then you do you go before the draft board or do you go for your physical? How does that work?

SPEAKER_02 45:44

This was a moment of of of great chagrin. I I was totally unprepared. I didn't understand how to get out of the army, how to, you know, how to get uh 1 a.m. I can't remember. So there were these men staring at me, and I and they said, Well, Mr. Glenn, uh, you've applied for conscientious objector. Um, have have you are you a member of uh the Latter-day Saints or any church that uh renounces war and killing? And I said, uh no. And uh they kind of looked at each other and they said, Well, unless unless it's not good enough that you as an individual do not want to kill people, you have to be a member of a church. And I said, Well, I'm a uh member of St. John Evangelist. They said, that's not good enough. And they said, You've been denied. The guy just looked at me, he said, You've been denied.

SPEAKER_01 46:51

Wow. And then so then from there you get scheduled for your uh your physical really cold.

SPEAKER_02 47:00

Um yeah, and then I tried to get out with my football knee, but the doctor wouldn't do it. Right. He was honest.

SPEAKER_01 47:09

Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's doing his job, right?

SPEAKER_00 47:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:14

So for for all your work to to not go into the into the military, um, it sounds like every turn that's the direction you're headed.

SPEAKER_02 47:26

Yeah, it's like a canoe hitting rocks, bouncing off.

SPEAKER_01 47:31

Right, right. So um you get through your physical, everything's done, they're like, you're qualified, you're going in the military. Is that kind of what happened?

SPEAKER_00 47:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:42

All right. And did you have time between then till the time you went to basic, or did you just go to basic right away?

SPEAKER_02 47:51

Oh, God got on a plane in two days, and um, that's when I felt this really weird psychic depression. First time in my life, I felt at a loss. Sitting on that bus when it pulled out of downtown. But then, after the flight to Fort Campbell, it was like an epiphany. I got off a plane and it was raining, and it was cold, and it was eight o'clock in the morning. And the sergeant came up to me, he said, Your soul belongs to Jesus, but your ass belongs to me. And we all laughed.

SPEAKER_01 48:29

Yeah. Yeah, he wasn't joking though, was he?

SPEAKER_02 48:32

He wasn't joking. And I just felt this like fight, you know, survival, uh bolt of energy. I just felt this. So, like two days later, I was mark he see the sergeant said, anybody here have military experience know how to march? And I said, I put up my hand and said, I know how to march because of SVA. So he said, March, march the company over to the barber shop. And I did, I did it correctly. I said, you know, calm laugh march and uh at will over the bridge, and they all went down in the culvert, you know, and they got lost. And I was right out of right out of Bill Murray, you know, it was just hysterical. Oh no. So after that, we got our haircuts, and then the sergeant came up to me. We took tests. The sergeant was this little little black man with a with a wandering eye that when he looked at you, go, his one eye would be stationary and the other eye would go back and forth to the right and the left. He's looking at me and he says, You have the highest intelligence. He says, He says, You have the highest um intelligence scores in the history of the of the 7th division. And I thought, well, this is bullshit.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

Right.

Camp Humphreys Hardships And Culture Clash

SPEAKER_02 49:56

But what if it's true? And he said, You've been recommended for general staff college if you become an officer. You'd be immediately transferred to general staff college with an IQ that high. And I said, What is it? He said, 139 out of 140. So I don't know what that means. So he's I said, okay, I'll take the OCS test. And then I opened Stars and Stripes, and it said, Oh, average life of second lieutenants six weeks.

SPEAKER_01 50:29

Yeah, that will cause you to rethink that decision, right?

SPEAKER_02 50:35

Well, I went and took the test anyway, and I got halfway through it, and then I just started to fill in the blanks randomly. Uh-huh. I thought I can't do this. I if I succeed, I'm just gonna keep going forward and I'll become an officer, and then I'll go to Vietnam, I'll get killed. Well, my brother was in Vietnam. I didn't think of that.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

Right.

SPEAKER_02 50:59

So a test came out, I missed by one point. So I filled it out randomly.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

Yeah, that's uh imagine if you'd actually like taken the rest of the test. Yeah. So they so you so you don't get accepted to OCS clearly, and you went back to just your regular basic training then? Yeah, that's right. How far into basic training were you when you had been asked to take the test?

SPEAKER_02 51:35

Uh three days.

SPEAKER_01 51:36

Oh, so pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_02 51:39

Yeah, it blew my mind. You know, uh, I remember getting on the the on the bus from the the center in St. Paul and being transported to the airport, and I just felt this cold depression come over me, and I'll never forget that feeling. It was the realization that I was somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 52:03

Right, right. You in in you know, not necessarily by choice, this is where you were going.

SPEAKER_02 52:09

Yeah, and it was and I'd been on a lot of adventures in my life. Um, I went to Germany and I studied, and and I, you know, I was a ski racer. I did all these dangerous things, but I finally met my match.

SPEAKER_01 52:25

Absolutely. But now I think you were saying, though, that by the time you got there and got off the bus, your your feelings have changed a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 52:34

Yeah, um, exactly. Uh the plane landed and it was a cold rainy day at uh Fort Campbell, Kentucky. And uh, you know, it was like a beautiful example of uh um uh Murray the comedian, you know, he's he's standing there and uh DI comes by and says, Your soul belongs to Jesus, but your your ass belongs to me. And I just had this sudden exhilaration that I was leaving one way of life and entering another.

SPEAKER_01 53:14

Yeah, and that's I that's a great way to put it because I think that's for a lot of people that's how that feels. And so, you know, kind of walk us through basic training and what was that like for you.

SPEAKER_02 53:25

Well, everything was kind of neat and tidy. And I I had gone to a military school, uh country day school, where we marched, we wore uniforms. So some of the regimentation wasn't it it looked like you know, like Camp Widgeywagon with cabins all over the place. And and I and then I remember my watch was stolen the first day, and uh the first day when we got into our barracks, my father gave me a watch.

SPEAKER_00 53:54

Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_02 53:56

Yeah, and then I thought I gotta do something, you know, what's this all about? And then the corporal said, uh, does anybody here know how to march? And I said, I do, which is only, you know, I do I knew how to march because of uh uh D and B training in the school. Right. That's kind of like kind of like Trump, you know, you went to a military school. Okay. So um Yeah, I so I jumped out in front of the uh the company and none nobody knew how to march. So I said, um uh right flank, and nobody knew what, you know, turn right flank, and nobody knew what that meant. And I said uh forward march, and so these guys were all falling all over each other. It was a Bill Murray scene, you know.

SPEAKER_01 54:51

I was gonna say it sounds like something right out of stripes.

SPEAKER_02 54:54

It was exactly when I saw stripes, I thought this is exactly what they really nailed it. And I was Bill Murray, you know, right and uh and I think these guys, I said, I said, proceed it well over the bridge. And uh they went right into the culvert, which the bridge was over the culvert, and they were milling around, and I said, um, okay, you guys, attention, and then let's go up to the bridge and we're going to the barbershop. And the corporal was laughing, you know. And I I wasn't very confident, but I was kind of spitting this stuff out, you know, thinking on my feet. And um, so that's that we got the barbershop. That's when I read that stars and stripe thing about uh the second lieutenants living six six weeks.

SPEAKER_01 55:48

Right.

SPEAKER_02 55:49

And he he moved in. The corporal really moved on me fast. He says, you know, um, we have these uh I have this intelligence test, and you have the highest scores in the history of the regiment. And I and uh company commander says you should go to you could be a a general staff college, you know. And so my mind was going, let's see.

SPEAKER_01 56:14

Right. Just not in the cards, right? It's not in the cards.

SPEAKER_02 56:18

It's not in the cards.

SPEAKER_01 56:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:20

Or well, I was really attracted to the idea, and my father had been a had been a commander in the Navy, and my uncles were officers, and uh, you know, but that I was thinking, uh, do I want to kill people and do I want to lead men in battle? And I thought, not really.

SPEAKER_01 56:39

Right, right. Yeah. And it's uh, you know, it's it's this not a bad thing, right? It's it's not for everybody.

SPEAKER_02 56:48

Yeah, yeah. And it was I could remember that moment thinking, I better not fuck this up.

SPEAKER_01 56:55

Right.

SPEAKER_02 56:56

You know, this this is serious stuff.

Discovering Taekwondo And Harsh Mentors

SPEAKER_01 56:58

Right. Yeah. So I I'm assuming you all made it to the barber shop, then I got your hair cut.

unknown 57:04

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 57:07

Oh, everything else aside. So then so kind of how was how was the rest of basic training? Did you get these guys in shape to uh march um or did you give up, or how'd that work out?

SPEAKER_02 57:19

Um let's see. Uh, you know, basic, I at Fort Campbell, it was it was beautiful. Fall was beautiful, my memories, and it was just the usual, and there was a hard time where I I I called my mother on the phone. Oh, it's horrible. I was so depressed, you know. And then um, but I remember this scene where we were all the company was information, and Captain came out and he had Pearl Handle 45s. He had Pearl Handled cowboy, like six-shooters, yeah. With the with the butt of the pistols facing forward, and he was standing in a four 40-degree rain in a sweater. And I thought, this guy's really a hard guy, you know. And um there was a big commotion on the left, and uh these these two African American gentlemen decided to sit down and refuse. And they sat down and said, We ain't doing nothing. I looked at the yeah, I looked at the guy next to me and I thought, you know, and he was a Hispanic, and he said, They be out soon. And uh the next day we're in formation, and uh company commander pointed at this Jeep and he said, They've been kicked out of the military. It's a warning. So uh that was kind of an interesting memory.

SPEAKER_01 58:59

Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I think you see all sorts of things in in basic training, right? I mean, um I I recall a guy uh in Navy basic training that wanted to go A-WOL, so he jumped the fence, but ended up in Marine Corps basic training where they kept him for two weeks. So geez. So it takes takes all kinds for sure.

SPEAKER_02 59:22

Oh yeah, yeah. And then um I lost my ID and I had to go in front of the captain, and he says, he said, Private Glenn, are you gonna be a problem? And I said, I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand. And he and uh he said, Follow me. And so he said, Open your foot locker. So he went, you know, we went down to the barracks, and in my I had um uh books on Marxism. I had a book on Marxism, and then I had a book uh called Love's Body by Norman Brown, which is a a radical, yeah, and it was kind of a radalist, a radical existentialist book on uh erotic freedom. And he was looking at these books, he said, Are you gonna be a problem, Private Glenn? Are you a communist? And I said, No, sir, no, sir. I I just like to read.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:22

Yeah, they don't they don't take too kindly to Marxist books in basic training, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:27

Yeah, you know, uh I'm I was clueless, of course. Right. But uh but I was an intellectual and I wrote poetry and that's all all I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:38

Uh-huh. So I was so did that did you find that to reconcile that, did you was it like difficult going through basic training then? Having, you know, kind of having that sort of ambition?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:53

Yeah, I I had no I couldn't understand why I was there. I understood why I was there, but I didn't I felt out of sync with the whole thing. Like if I had gone to OCS or something, then I would have been part of it. So I felt disappointed, you know, that life was like this.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:15

Right.

unknown 1:01:17

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:17

So I slept I slept along, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:21

Kind of kind of did what you had to do and and and got by.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:25

Yeah, and I I won the low crawl. I got the record in the platoon for you know crawling fast under barbed wire. Which was remarkable, I thought. I was overweight. Um and then, you know, I did okay on PT and all that. Let's see.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:51

Now was being was being um you know overweight, was that an issue? Uh you know, while you're in boot camp, or or did that just sort of kind of resolve itself?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:03

You have a way of nailing it. Yes, it was an issue. I had I had this um the staff sergeant. He was um, oh my god, this guy was like Jack Lane, you know, just fit as can be and proud to be in the military, had these eyes that were almost messianic. I thought, this guy's nuts. But he did me a great favor. He singled me out in front of the platoon and said, some of us in the United States Army use food as an excuse for their emotions. And uh I thought, God, he's really nailed me, you know, because I was getting I was getting kind of a gut, you know. So and I didn't like it. I didn't like being I was 185 and uh 170 pounds, 170 pounds would be right for me. And uh, you know, so I was kind of ashamed.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:07

Yeah, I think that would I think that would be tough for anybody. And um so as you as you go along in basic training, uh is there anything else that kind of sticks out in in your mind before uh before you uh graduate?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:23

Well, I started juggling. I start you know on the on the you know on the marksmanship courses and marches when there was spare time I'd juggle because I used to juggle.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:34

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:35

And and some somebody said, Hey, you should be in the entertainment business. And uh they thought I was pretty funny, you know, and I'd crack jokes. And these these were southern boys for the most part, and then Hispanic. And um they'd laugh at me because my jokes were so odd.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:54

Well, I want to be honest, you know, we've done 140 of these, and I never had a sentence start out with, I learned how to juggle in basic training.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:02

Yeah, I well, the stones, you remember the the broken the broken rocks?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:07

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:08

Yeah, I just pick them up and juggle. I was bored stiff. So I later in life I became a four I could juggle four balls well on the stage. That was part of my act, you know, 20 years later.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:22

Right, right. So I mean, that's a transferable skill you learned in basic training, right there.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:30

Yeah, and taking apart those anti-personnel mines, uh-huh, god, that was so boring. You know, the poor lieutenant would say, no, this is a fuse, you screw this in, you know, and I think, oh my god. Can't anybody could learn this.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:48

Right. I think the difficulty is for a lot of people, especially intelligent folks, is when you go to any school, really, basic training is just a school, really, um, you have to bring it down to the lowest common denominator, which it which doesn't help the guy who's bored because it's like, are you kidding me? I don't, you know, this is super easy.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:09

But I then I fall asleep, you know, and somebody whacked me in the back of my helmet.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:14

Right. That'll wake you up. So you uh you get you get through basic training then, and then do you is your uh what was your your uh your MOS your MOS or your job in the in the Army at this point?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:29

Yeah, 11 Bravo.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:31

Oh, okay, so infantry.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:34

Yeah, weapons. It was a weapons platoon.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:37

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:38

Yeah, um, let's see. I was good I was good, I was expert with a 45, marksman with the M650. What was it? M14.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:48

M14, yeah.

Training, Discipline, And Black Belt Trial

SPEAKER_02 1:05:50

Yeah. And um, but with the 50 caliber, I was an expert with the I I got expert on that. So they that was my MO, my uh specialty was the 50 cal. Noisy bugger. Oh, jeez.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:06

Oh yeah, we still used them uh when I was deployed in 2006, we're still using the the uh 50 cal, the moduce. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:16

Yeah, ka chunk, ka chunk.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:19

Yeah, yeah, it does it does a lot of damage too. That's that's uh oh geez. So you now did you go was your AIT right there at uh at BASIC then as well? So you just kind of stayed there to give us some results.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:33

See, we went home for Christmas, and um then I went on to AIT in California, and that was lovely. You know, it was uh this it's now a wine region, but it was next to um uh where uh Clint Eastwood was mayor of Carmel.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:53

Oh, Carmel, yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:55

Yeah, and it was a really pretty place, and um that's where I learned, you know, dead rack name, compass, you know, direct. And then I was leading a platoon with compass, and we won the compass orientation. These guys were knuckleheads, I had to scream at them, you know. So, you know, all you have to do is take the azimuth and go 150 yards and stop and plant the stick. You know, they go, What do you mean?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:23

You know, well, and and honestly, I mean it's no small feat to uh to be good at that because uh a lot of people struggle with land navigation. It's you know, anybody who hasn't been in the military, you know, they give you a compass and they give you a map with grid squares on it, and they give you a um what's that little tool they give you to use the uh you know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:53

Anyway, I can't remember.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:55

Yeah, a little it's a little plastic square with some with some lines on it, and uh you know you've got to get from point A to point B, and sometimes you have to go around obstacles and other and lots of uh other things, swamps and hills and uh don't know what you're doing. It's easy to get lost.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:12

Yeah, this is Snow and Valley, and there was this rolling, very gentle rolling hills. And I would say, we have to re-or said, I want you guys to re-or reorient every every 50 feet. And the guy would say, What do you mean, reorient? I said, Well, you want to stay on the azimuth. You have to keep taking the direction so you know you're on the correct azimuth. There's always going to be a deviation of 30, 40 feet. And he says, What do you mean? But I used to survey with my father, so so you kind of had a leg up, right? I had a small leg up, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:46

That little plastic thing's called a protractor, that's what it's called.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:49

Yeah, protractor. I remember that. I just threw it out. But yeah, we we ended up doing that. That that felt good. And then um, I kept thinking of Hollywood. I remember, you know, the beautiful scenes around, you know, I'm thinking I could be in Hollywood right now, I'm not in the army, you know.

unknown 1:09:13

Anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:14

But there you were. So so you're uh you uh you make it through AIT, and um, where do you go from there?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:22

Um this was kind of this was some tough stuff. We had our three-day uh no sleep or one day no sleep. One day no food, I can't remember. And um I things got tense because orders are being caught for Vietnam, and this is the height of the draft. And the sergeants just kind of disappeared and left us in the in the bay. And um there was a cadets, a cadet uh sergeant who was, you know, we were all the same age, and he was a snooty, snooty Germanic-looking guy, kind of arrogant. And he's I'm going to NC Old School and then I'm going to Vietnam. And but that didn't bother me. He started dissing a Jewish guy in the in the unit. He started talking anti-Semitism, and I just saw red because I'm I'm very affiliated with Jewish people, very close to them.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:26

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:26

And um, he said, You and me are gonna settle this. So he came back in the bay, and the next thing I knew, you I stretched him out on the floor, and then he picked up a fire extinguisher and and threw it at me, and then we duked it out, and kind of a it was a draw kind of a thing. And then we became friends afterwards, of course, you know, like John Wayne.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:54

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:55

I was kind of uncomfortable with that. So I'm standing in the middle of the bay, and I broke into tears. He's on the bunk holding it, I broke his nose, he's holding his nose. And uh this Mexican guy came up to me, and there's a lot, a lot of the Mexican guys were were in there for felonies. There was about 10 who were hell's angels in Los Angeles, and these guys are rough customers. And he came up to me, he said, Hey man, why you why are you crying, man? You kick his ass, man. And I said, Oh, hey, Jose, chill out. So then the company commander, this new company commander, heard about it, and he took me into his quarters, and there was a big picture of LB LBJ, or was it Nixon? I can't remember. And he and I started to snivel again, and he said, knock the shit off. He says, You're a good soldier. What's all this sniveling? We don't want any babies in our company. And I said, I'm done with this place. He said, You're about to get promoted. What are you talking about? So I learned my lesson there, and then there was a lot of crazy stuff going on. We had a capture the flag uh thing where if you got caught, you got put in a coffin. Oh uh yeah, it's war games. So I hit out. I did a I hid out and refused to expose myself. And I sir I survived, and a couple guys got put in the box. Uh I'm I don't like that kind of thing. So what happened after that? Um then the orders came, and I remember thinking they can't send me to Vietnam because my brother's there. And I had this kind of figured out, sort of. It never occurred to me that my brother a week before could have had been killed or wounded or moved out of Vietnam, and then I could have been sent to Vietnam. It's never occurred to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:07

Right.

Outposts, Reading By Stove Light, Self-Study

SPEAKER_02 1:13:09

And then there's the uh McShannon law, I think it's called, where a brother, two brothers cannot serve in the same combat zone uh unless there's uh a triangulated agreement between the parents and the sons or daughters, uh, whereas voluntary. Now I didn't know the specifics of that, but I just had this feeling I wasn't going to Vietnam. And they took the company and right around H or J, it was everybody beyond the letter G went to Vietnam, and everything from G to A went to Korea. And I thought I was wrong that they're just they just divided us alphabetically. So I went, oh, thank God. And uh so after that, we just got on the plane, and I landed in Kimpo, and I landed, and this is this is the clincher. You can't you can't you can't write this stuff in screenplays, right? We get off the plane, it's 18 below zero, and they're issuing weapons as we're stepping off the bus inside the hangar. We're we were being issued one clip and an M14. And I said to the sergeant, what's going on? And he said, Red alert, we are technically at war with North Korea. And I thought, oh, this is just a war game, and it wasn't. It was the real thing, it was the real thing. I thought, hmm. And I didn't feel panicky, and other people were nervous a sec, but I I was just, I was thinking, hmm. And then as we're getting on these buses, we're getting, we got on uh buses. No, we got on another flight. See, we gave the weapons away, and then we got another flight. We uh we landed in, I think I have my airport screwed up. We went from Japan, I think it was in Kimpo, that we were issued the weapons, and then we gave the weapons up, and then we took buses to this god awful place. Uh it was uh Camp Humphreys, but it it was uh kind of a holding area, and there was no heat. There were 50-gallon uh diesel heaters inside these quantites, these are aluminum quantit huts, and I thought these things aren't insulated, it's 18 below zero. You know, I'm from Minnesota, and it's you know, and it was just freezing, and we had um no plumbing, and we had steel toilet seats and concrete outhouse. There's no warm water, and the southern boys were like looking at each other like, what the hell are we getting? Did we get into it? I said, Oh, this is nothing, it's just it's just cold. So they hated me, I think. Yeah, that's from Minnesota, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:29

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:31

So then we went uh we were transferred to Camp Humphreys, and you know, Camp Humphreys was about I think about 400 acres, and it was a really a um an ammo depot for the train, the old train line that the Japanese built from Seoul down to Camp Humphreys, and had a small airport, which the French built after the war, World War II.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:58

And and interestingly enough, though, I mean this is kind of off topic, but the French had also been in Vietnam before we were there.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:09

Yes, that's correct.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:11

But the the French, um I don't know, they may have been contracted to build this airport, but you know, the South Atlantic Treaty Organ organization um made it that there was a transfer of power from back to the South Koreans who had been um had been independent, but from 1939 or something until 1945, they had been under Japanese jurisdiction. So I don't know where the French, but the French, of course, were in Vietnam and as of 1945, so they must have had uh SETO uh uh units because the CETO the CETA was French, British, Dutch, and Turkish and American soldiers, or five UN contributions to the CETO system, which was to guard Southeast Asia. And uh the Turks we we never met I never met a Turkish soldier, but everybody was scared of him. There was a you know small uh you know um military installation, and nobody went near the Turks because they were extremely violent. The South Korean police were scared to death of these guys. So um yeah, so there I was in uh Camp Humphreys, and it was just a bunch of quantit huts, there was no movie theater. It looked like a mash set. You know, there was if you saw a movie, it was in the Chow Hall, there was no gymnasium, no, no anything. So we really bored. You know, it was a boring place to be.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:13

It doesn't sound like there was a lot to do. It was ridiculously cold. It just doesn't sound all that great.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:20

No, it sucked, actually. So I'm sitting in the barracks, I'm overweight and thinking, what the heck, you know? And then walks this guy who looks like a a movie star. He looked like I thought he was a colonel. He had four white bars on his shoulder, and he he held himself with great dignity, and he had reverse, he had sunglasses which were reflective, uh-huh, and a little guy next to him. And um he said, he said, he looked around arrogantly at most of us sitting there smoking pot, you know, and he said, I am Song Chung. I am a recently commissioned second lieutenant in the Korean Army, and I would like to start a karate class here. Are anybody interested? He was actually R O T C. And I and I just looked at him, I said, Yes, this is my key to get out, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:18

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:21

And it turned out to be a great friendship, and uh in spite of the fact that his English was terrible, but I saw things that are just, you know, it it it's like uh like I told you before, it was like uh that French karate guy going to Asia to study with the master. Um Jean-Claude uh Vendamme.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:49

And I I wasn't that skilled at karate, but I was you know, I had a potbelly. And I'll tell you in one month that potbelly was gone.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:00

Kind of kind of whi whipped you into shape, huh?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:03

Oh my god. And they they taught me not to uh Chung would say self-pity is is for women. Oh well, he was a hard man. And then he and he and and Lee we go to a beer hall in South Korea, and they put cigarettes out in each other's palms, staring at each other to see who would flinch first. Uh that was too much for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:31

Sounds like something out of a really bad karate movie.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:35

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And one day Lee and Chung showed up, and uh I was uh there were about four students, and Chung had his arm in a sling, and and then Lee had a bandage around his head, and I said, Uh-oh, what happened? I'd hate to see the other guys. And uh Chung said, Oh, we have rumble with gangsters.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:01

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:02

She said, Three go to hospital. He said, I put three out. Oh man, these guys were hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:11

Sounds really, really tough. So so you uh so they start setting up this karate school then um with you.

Muster Out, Homecoming, And Friction At Home

SPEAKER_02 1:22:20

Yeah, so I went to Lieutenant Leaper, who was all who was potbellied, and I I started to become a kind of a jerk because I believed that everybody should be physically fit. And uh I quit drinking beer and and I should have gone through the sergeant. I jumped the chain of command and I went to Leaper's uh Quonset Hut and I knocked on the door and he said enter. And I said, he looked at me quizzically, and I said, Sir, and I saluted him. I said, uh, I'm Private Glenn, and um I I would like to request that we get a Quonset hut for our karate club. And he looked at me, he said, What? He looked like personally offended. And my mistake was the next sentence was and and Colonel Colonel Jones um said, if you need anything, come to me. And I didn't realize that you know what was I doing. Well he stood up and he said, Who do you think you are? He said, Have you gone you should have gone through the sergeant? And I said, Well, I couldn't find the sergeant. So we got our quonset hut. Oh. Yeah, he was angry. Oh, he was angry at me. And then I invited him. I said, Why why don't you come? You know, we had four or five sergeants and privates.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:00

So you had a pretty good, a pretty good group that uh that wanted to participate then.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:05

Yeah, yeah. But that most of them bailed out, it was too hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:09

Uh-huh. Well, so like what was uh as you're you know, you so you got your quant set up, you you're ready to start training folks. Um what was like a typical training session that that made people not want to participate?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:26

Um Korean karate is it's um it's very athletic, it's almost a dance form, and it it involves a lot of kicking and a lot of punching in a kind of a rectilinear manner. It's not it's not like the Japanese forms, which are which are more graceful, like you know, Bruce Lee. Uh, very gymnastic. And it requires a lot of a fair amount of coordination, but it's mostly boring. So it's boring in the sense that it's just hard work, uh-huh. Like calisthenics. And um, but I was a fanatic, and uh then we then Lee and Chung gave a demonstration and if for the comp for the battalion, and we had all these chairs lined up and stacks of roof tiles, and and Chung would come out and I'd hold roof tiles and he'd I'd hold them up and he'd break them, you know. It's called hoop chuggy. He would jump and and break the tiles with the bottom of his feet. Pretty impressive stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:44

Yeah, I'll say, I mean, I I I've seen him like like break small, you know, one-by boards in half and stuff like that, but I think roof tiles are a little tougher than that, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:59

Yeah, yeah. Well, they're old cement roof tiles, and they're not quite as tough, I think, as as modern roof tiles. And then then Chung he says, stack up 14, put tall on top. And he bent over and he cracked all 14 right down to the bottom. And the the colonel was sitting there, majors and the lieutenants, and they're going, oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:27

Were they thinking that maybe they wanted to make this required training?

SPEAKER_02 1:26:31

I don't know. You know, and we were, and I was uh like a green belt after a year, I was a green belt. And uh I had with all my training, I was heading for a black belt, and I didn't think I could pass the test. Uh so we went out, the company went out to Woju, and then we came back to to uh Camp Humphreys. And uh, you know, in the meantime, I'm standing guard around uh Young Ri, which is the village across the river. So every two, three days, myself and a Katusa, a Korean soldier, would you know get our ammo and our backpacks and guns, and we troop to the top of the these hills, you know, around Anyang. And the hills were maybe 800 feet high. And uh it was all bitch and bone all the way because in summer it'd be slipping and sliding. And there were no trees. The trees might have been a foot high. So we'd sit on out, I'd sit on an outpost for for 24 hours, sleep up there, eat up there. So that's that was the duty around Camp Uh Camp Humphreys.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:52

That doesn't sound very pleasant.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:56

Um no, it wasn't. It was kind of brutal, actually.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:00

So but but I do have a question though, Andy. So you know, I I know that we talked about how you like to read and how you're intellectual. When you're out of these outposts, um I'm it sounds to me like it's not a whole lot going on there. Did you were you able to take that opportunity to you know do some reading or um just do some contemplative thinking? I mean, were there things that you did to kind of pass the time?

Campus Activism And The Minnesota Protests

SPEAKER_02 1:28:24

Yeah, that was exactly I'd practice my karate uh katas. Like I'd I'd I'd divide my time between Between pounding sandbags to toughen, trying trying to get where I could to a point where I could break objects, which I never could do anyway. But then I'd practice karate, then I practiced meditation. But mostly I read, and I read it's very hard to get books, but I got um The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Schurer, which is 2,000 pages long. And I'd I'd read at night with to the light of the uh the stove. The stove was like three feet long and a foot deep, and it had a gas carburator on the top. So it would it would flash every second. When the gasoline would drip in, it would go whoosh, and it would light up, and I would read, but I blink as I was reading. Because it would go out and then it would come back on, or I'd have a flashlight, a little tiny pen light, and I'd read the book as best I could in that light. And and then I took, I enrolled in a correspondence course, and I studied, let's see, five credits in English, I think it was. Let's see, English and history. And I completed the correspondence course over that period of a year while I was sitting on the outposts.

unknown 1:30:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:06

So you I mean, so you kept yourself occupied for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:09

Yeah, I was occupied, not terribly, not really bored. It was kind of dangerous, actually.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:17

Right. Right. Because it's not I I don't in hearing your description and comparing it to the descriptions of people who have who were in Korea much later on in the 90s and the early 2000s, it's really changed since then, of course.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:32

Um yeah, yeah. I I Googled Camp Humphreys, it's now four square miles of hotels and health spas, and it's just disgusting.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:45

Right. Right. So how uh so you know uh back to the your your dojo. How many so how many of your fellow soldiers actually stuck with it then?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:57

Um they all fell out, all five of them.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:01

So it was just you.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:02

Yeah, they never even got to a green belt. They just quit. And one was a sergeant. I said, why'd you quit? And he said, Oh, it's too much work, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:11

Wow, it's just me.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:13

I had I had this is like studying piano with two of the greatest you know, pianists in the world, and I had them for a year. And and then they take me out and wine and dine me. And one day we ended up, this is hilarious. We went I went to an officer's club and I I told Chung, I can't go in there. I said, Well, you're a guest, you know, I'm a second lieutenant. And I said, I want you to meet my uncle. He's the commander of the ROTC unit at Seoul University. So let's see, I was I was in uniform.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:49

No, I wasn't in uniform. I was wearing a baseball cap. So we go into his office, and here's this man behind a desk, and another officer was a general or something. And um, so this these people were upper class Koreans. I didn't know that. And uh and he introduces me as Soe. So we Glen. So we means second lieutenant.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:16

Oh got a promotion, did you?

SPEAKER_02 1:32:20

Yeah, and then he elbows me. I thought, I looked at him, I went, what are you elbowing? He said, he said, take off hat. Oh and the colonel's looking at me, bored stiff. And he asked me a question. Then we went to dinner, and there was a beautiful woman sitting across the table. She was just gorgeous. And his uncle and the general were sitting there, and the minister of finance of Korea was on the right. I'm not making this stuff up. The woman was the daughter of the Minister of Finance of South Korea, and Cheng was the son of a general. The met general there was his father. And he says, I am presenting uh Soe Glen. He is my he is now my student, and he will take his black belt test in in one month. And I will, I what?

SPEAKER_01 1:33:27

That was news to you, huh?

SPEAKER_02 1:33:29

Yeah, I was like being thrown into this thing, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:34

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:35

And he then as we're going, as when we were leaving, he says, No, I want you to sign out a quart of scotch. I said, like, you know, only officers can do that. He said, Well, just put don't put lieutenant, just put or put a different name there. So that was my only act of evil.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:57

Stealing stealing a bottle of scotch. I don't I don't I'm not sure that's too evil there, Andy.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:02

No, I no, I bought it.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:04

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:06

Then there was the then I told Chung that I wanted a date with this woman. I was getting pretty haughty.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:14

And he he said, no, no date her. No, very bad. And he wouldn't talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:21

Do you do you think do you think that maybe I mean, since his his father was a general and this other guy is the finance minister, do you think they were trying to set him up with her?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:35

God, that's really good. I never thought of that. I never thought of that because he was kind of the golden guy. He was uh, you know, Chung was really, I thought he was a really brilliant, very older than his years. Yeah, Chung had uh had this charisma, it was just unreal.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:59

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:00

He was about five foot eleven, 175 pounds. So I act oh go ahead. Yep. He acted like Napoleon. I could see why people didn't like him.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:12

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:13

Chest, chest out. Kind of dramatic.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:18

Kind of puffed up.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:20

Puffed up.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:21

Yeah. Yeah. So so I'm curious, did you end up getting your black belt a month later?

SPEAKER_02 1:35:26

Yeah. Um he took me on these um things to toughen me up because he said it's going to get tough from now on.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:35

And we're what weren't you thinking it's already tough?

SPEAKER_02 1:35:39

It's already tough. So he had us running at six o'clock in the morning uh through the village, barefoot, in our gis. Gee is your outfit.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:49

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:51

And he was parading me all over the place, actually. And uh I went to a party or two, and they're very humble affairs because the people were poor. You know, you drink you drink mockley out of a little aluminum saucer. It's delicious. It tastes like bananas, and you get really smashed. So we get we would go to these mockley huts and just get bombed. You know, and I got in trouble because I I stayed out. I was off limits. And my sergeant said he was going to beat me up if I ever did it again. He hated my guts. Now, this is a side, kind of a segue. Um, Wenland was a nice guy, he really cared a lot about people. He was he was an Alabama dirt farmer and he had an eighth-grade education. He didn't like arrogant people, and he thought I was arrogant. He thought Chung and me were arrogant. And one day he he said, I went into the EM club and he said, and those guys stood up and turned around. They said, and he he said, if you ever go off limits again, we're gonna beat the crap out of you. You know, he had this southern accent, like you all gonna ever do that again, we're gonna kick your ass. So I stayed away from Wendelner was the friend, but then I stayed away from him, and then like two or three months later, I was up in the CP and there were shots rang out, and uh there was an old Korean War veteran sitting sitting there, and I like this guy. He'd tell me war stories. He said, Hit the deck. And a round bounced off one of the buildings. And it was Wendland having a shootout with a black man. And that's the last we saw of Wendland.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:40

Sergeant Wenlin was These were two American soldiers having a shootout with each other there in Korea.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:47

In front of the EM club, and he shot the guy's left ear off. And uh after that, nobody said anything about Wenland. Sergeant Wenlin.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:59

Wow. You know, makes you kind of wonder what that was all about.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:05

Well, Wenlin was underneath it all was a really angry man.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:10

Yeah.

Europe Again, Art Sparks, And Choosing Dance

SPEAKER_02 1:38:12

He had a sour look to he looked like kind of like Patton. He had a real sour look to his face. So anyway, getting back to the karate, um, we ran, we would run for four or five miles in the dark. I'd say, I'd say to Chung, you know, what if we step on glass? And he said, Glass no hurt you. He was unreal, you know, and he was right. I he said, it'll make you watch where you are stepping. He said, you must use your mind over your body. God, he taught me a real beautiful lesson. And I never cut my feet, and my feet we do this a lot, and my feet became really, really tough, like leather. You know, and we'd run in the winter too. So and I he'd say, feet no freeze, always move. And that we didn't do too much of that. But but the the karate, the black belt test, I was exhilarated, and he really believed in me. And he took me to this gymnasium with very old, like hundred-year-old dark oak walls, and on the wall was Kong Ik Li, who was the uh South Korean Mudokwan Taekwondo master. He was like a ninth degree, and it's this old guy on the wall with a grim face. And then there was a a table with three men, very stern-looking people. And whenever you enter a dojo, you bow to the picture and the Korean flag. I I still have these, uh, I still have my karate uh certificate. In the center is a fist, a silver fist, and then you have uh uh the Korean flag above it, and then you have Kangi Klee's face, and uh then you have hexagrams, the various hexagrams that signify east, west, north, and south. And I, you know, I have to say a lot about Mudokwan. It's really a religion, and a lot of people don't understand this. That it, although it in its lower form, it's a fighting form, its higher form, it's a form of a my it's a form of spiritual mastery. And in the center is the country, and it's it's based upon an allegiance to the Korean people, which really drives a lot of this reunification energy, is the sense of the Korean people having, you know, been subjected to Japanese domination and Chinese domination through the years. They still maintain these, they're almost secret societies. And so when you fight, you don't fight to hurt the opponent. It's counter coup. It's very much like the American Indians. As you go into battle, you don't go into battle to kill. You you have massive self-control. So when you spar with an individual, you draw the punch within an inch. It could be a killer punch, but you it's not like boxing, and it's not like what's happened to karate in this country, which is it's a fighting form. It's a it's a dance of self-mastery. And I it's it's just extraordinary when I think about this. What I was going through, I didn't understand that at that time. I did intuitively. And Chung would say, No emotion allows. You you get angry, or you've been angry. Do not if and they they would hit me. They would hit me on the shoulder with what's called a dragon's tooth. If I got mad at the two of them and I was sparring with them, they'd whack me. And then they'd then they'd stand back and laugh, and I get really mad. And then I start laughing. So they taught me how how to how to grow up and really take the hits of life.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:29

Yeah, well, it's interesting. I mean, the your description is really uh I don't know, I find it intriguing because yeah, you do think of martial arts as a form of uh violence or fighting, um, but you're really describing it here as a discipline or religion which puts a whole different kind of light on the practice.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:54

Yes, yes. And it's it's not that it cannot be used as a tool of violence, it is only as a last resort. And but in the sparring, the young people have to, you know, they young these I've seen young black belts in Korea just incredible, but they get angry, the jealousies, and so the masters have to take them aside and say, look, uh, I want you two to shake hands. You know, it's it's a common theme in these karate movies. Um but getting back to the test, so there I was, and I Chung said, he said, no problem, you just do it. I said, Do what? He said, You will know now. He said, stand in the middle of the room, bow to the three men. And I went out to the middle of the room and I bowed to the three men. I'm alone in this gymnasium, and out of the left door comes a this man who was must have been seven feet tall, he's probably six, five, slender in build, dressed in black. And out of a right door comes a short man dressed in white. And they proceed it, they proceed to a point on the floor and they turn left and they come at me diagonally, just staring at me. So I stood my ground, and the next thing I know, this leg, this long leg sweeps, sweeps around and catches my nose.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:29

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:31

Oh my god, how'd this guy know that he could get that close to me? And that's a coup to get so close that you brush somebody. That's like five points. And I and I went after him because he was the most dangerous looking. Meanwhile, the other guy's coming from behind, and I I fight him out uh and I'm quick. So I I all I remember there was just a flurry of arms and legs and spins, and then I hear this uh chuggy, stop. And they both bow to me and they go back through their doors. And it lasted about three to five minutes, three minutes. And I had no, I it was like I don't even remember what I did.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:24

So so I'm curious, you know, it didn't last that long, but did it did it feel like it was a longer period of time?

SPEAKER_02 1:45:31

It it felt like an eternity. I felt like I was fighting for my life because that guy, first thing he did was he jumped in the air, a reverse spin kick, and brushed my nose. And I I didn't even have time to relax to react. You know, and the other guy tried to knock my legs out from underneath me, and I screwed him up, you know. I've I got away from him, and I got away from both these guys, which was I didn't go in for the attack, I had no idea how to attack them. And and then we left, and Trump says, Tomorrow you will know. And we had a beer, and then he said, You pass.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:16

Wow. It's amazing. It's just amazing. Well, do you do you feel like part of that test was to see if you would get angry?

SPEAKER_02 1:46:25

Um yes, and it was to just to see the instinctive reaction, the instincts of the individual. It's more than the ability to parry or you know, like these fabulous stunts you see Van Damme was incredible. Uh you know, could deliver technical blows at genius level athlete. It wasn't about that, it was about uh uh handling a situation that was hopeless. These guys could have killed me instantly.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:30

So was there was there a certain level of fear for you while you were doing this?

SPEAKER_02 1:47:35

No, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:36

Okay. Well that's interesting to me. I feel like I would have been terrified.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:40

But maybe your training I think that's what they liked. I never had a sense, I always knew that you know it my two teachers could have, you know, destroyed me.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:55

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:56

You know, maybe not, I don't know. But I'm thinking now that having been a performer in the arts all my life, that the thing auditioners look for is a certain kind of uh fearlessness, a duende spirit, uh in the moment. And if you have that, it it makes you a good commander, you know, a good a good platoon lieutenant. He knows how to control a situation. It comes comes from nowhere. I don't know where it comes from. And uh I think they're better black belts. First degree black belts is nothing. You know, it's just the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:39

Yeah, for some people, I think they see that as the goal, right? To become a black belt. They don't realize maybe that there's more to it than just that.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:48

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like having drinking mockley with with his relative, drinking, going to dinner party, and getting to know Koreans, getting to know the culture, or it it I I completely left the consciousness of being, well, not really. I was still a soldier, but you know, it was uh in my hobby, hobby space, or whatever you want to call. Then I started reading Korean poetry, you know, trying to learn to speak Korean, which didn't work out very well.

Companies, Mime, And The Pull Toward Song

SPEAKER_01 1:49:22

But well, I think I think you know, if you circle back in what we were talking about kind of at this at the start of um your journey in in the martial arts, is that this particular discipline is really about the Korean people and the unity. And in you know, reflecting, I think it's interesting that your um teacher took you to these places. Had you meet his family to really kind of um in a good way um integrate you with the Korean people, so you really kind of understood what you were doing.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:01

Yes, no, I I appreciate that now. Thinking about what Cheng was doing, um he took me up to a Zen monastery. Um, I can't remember. We I was in uniform. He took me up to, I think he stole me. He came up to the my guardposts, and the Katusa was up there, and I went down in the valley with him and took this little tiny thing inside of the mountain, this little hut. And there were two uh Buddhist monks sitting there. And he's you know, he just wanted me to see these people. It was very nice. Yeah. Yeah, there was a side to Chang, you know, he was only 22. And uh and what that thing you touched on is it's very true. Um to get a sense of the Korean people, uh how intense. Unified, they were efficient. And the poverty, you know, these kids around the around Fort Humphreys were Camp Humphreys were very poor, ragged clothes, and and the farmers in the valleys, and they had thatched rough houses and oxen. But uh oh, what I wanted to say about the black belt test, about a week later he brought me the my uniform, and it was um it was laced in black. The entire it's just this beautiful black hem around the ghee the ghee, and the black belt had my name in English, and on the reverse side was in Korean. And uh that was that was really beautiful feeling.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:52

Yeah, that just sounds that just sounds amazing. It really does.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:57

Yeah, and those these guys back you know in the bay where I stayed, they were they they didn't know what to think anymore. And then I would then Lieutenant Leaper made me the the squad leader, and I take them out on patrols and stuff, but uh they started to respect me.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:17

Finish your black belt test, and I'm not really sure where we're at in your deployment.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:23

Oh, well, I'm at the end. Um I mustered out April 21st, and I think the black belt test was April 4th. And um so let's see, so that's where we ended. Um yeah, yeah, it was very um getting the um karate uniform was really great, you know. That that embroidery, and it's in the pictures I sent you. Did you get the pictures?

SPEAKER_01 1:52:52

Um, I got uh uh notification, they'll be here today.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:57

Oh, yeah. Without tipping the candle over, putting out the flame.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:07

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:08

And uh the lot there's a lot of other photos of me uh with my with pictures of Song Chung, the two instructors, and and there's a picture of my brother in Vietnam as a village medic. So I think you'll find that interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:27

Yeah, um I can't wait to see those. And so so so actually, shortly after your black belt, you're you're leaving Korea. How was that for you? What was it like to leave after it sounds like a pretty good experience?

SPEAKER_02 1:53:42

Actually, it was. And um, you know, you had the calendar inside your locker and had four 440 uh boxes to check off, and it was it was kind of a whirlwind. I couldn't believe I was leaving, but I wanted to leave. And then uh Sergeant and the sergeant came up. I like this guy. He he came up and tried to talk me into re-enlisting, and um he says, You're you're too hard on yourself. He walked away. I don't know what he was done. Kind of strange, but it was that strange state of mind where you know you realize it's it's over and you gotta leave. And um yeah, th those accusations of being gay and stuff didn't make any sense because I wasn't gay. And right uh, but I didn't I just didn't care, so to hell with them, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:35

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:35

So yeah, so I landed in um Fort Lewis, and I could remember the extraordinary, you know, the exhilaration. I felt like I was left, I the the lid of the box had opened and I was out.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:51

That's a great way to describe that, Andy. That's a I love that description.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:55

Yeah, did you feel the same way?

SPEAKER_01 1:54:58

Yeah, but I mean I'm uh I have a little bit different experience because I was in the Navy, and then when I left the Navy, I felt that way. Uh and then I went and joined the National Guard. But when I retired, uh the same thing, like this is kind of freedom that overwhelms you almost.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:15

Yeah, yeah. So uh I I it was I could remember when the lid of the box closed, when you know, and I got on the bus leaving uh to go to in the very first days of Fort Campbell, and then that that strange sensation of being let out of the box. And the next memory was taking a taxi into Seattle, and it was I I felt really unstable because the suspension was so soft, and I was like I was rolling on a wave. Because you know, I've been in Deuce Naz for a year.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:55

Yeah, they're not known for their comfort, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:55:58

Yeah, and then we we were we did so much walking, you know, I uh uh walking up OPs, up to the OPs, carrying lots of ammo and stuff. So I had been like an eighth century person, you know, living in a in a more well, as an Asian environment we just walked all over the place. So, you know, we weren't we were in trucks maybe once every week at the most. So I felt disoriented going up the freeway, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:29

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's it's interesting for me when I came back from overseas, it was the smell of clean air that I hadn't experienced in a year.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:40

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:42

Yeah. So you uh is Fort Lewis where you ended up like mustering out then? How long were you there?

SPEAKER_02 1:56:49

Oh geez, I don't think more than one day. Oh, and then where did I go? I can't remember where I was oh we went to the C CTAC, uh-huh, and you know, I had my ticket home. So I was dressed in my you know summer uniform, and I had my good conduct medal and then my uh Josun Reservoir Medal, which was just given to you for being there, and I felt proud of that. And then I had my marksmanship badge, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:21

Yeah.

Seattle Creativity And The Singer’s Grind

SPEAKER_02 1:57:22

My parents, my parents didn't show up at the airport. So, and uh friends or anything else. And I remember this woman staring at me malevolently. She was the only woman in the reception area, and she stared at me like I was evil, you know. And that was uh a premonition of what was to come. Because the next few days, you know, I was walking around wondering what's this all about. So I got home, and uh my parents were kind of blasé. It was strange. My mother gave me a hug, but uh my father was just kind of uh kind of blasé about the whole thing. Kind of annoyed me. So see, I think I what did I do? I worked for my father, we had a fishery, and um then I let's see, I could remember um I was having a lot of problems with my dad. And I now as I look back on it, I realized I I wanted some kind of recognition, something, you know, some kind of understanding that the war was was such a futile thing. And I was a Democrat and he was Republican.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:43

That probably didn't help things.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:47

Well, I was kind of trapped there trying to figure out what to do with my life, and uh he one one day he was driving me to summer camp. I hate I hated going to summer camp because I had a um four-month obligation, 19 months duty, and then 20 24 months obligation. So I went to summer camp at Camp McCoy in Wisconsin, and I had to take the bus. We had an argument, and he says, he says, you didn't suffer. He says, what are you whining about? You had easy duty, which was true.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:27

Right, but in and you know, if you look in retrospect, though, it's still the military, you're still away from home. It's still not necessarily the safest place to be. I mean, that's that's where I that's where I struggle with the hierarchy of service, right? Like everyone served. We just served in different capacities.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:46

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was a kind of a what's that term for kind of a holding, it was a state of suspension.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:57

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:58

You know, and it and now I look back on it, I it's funny, I never thought of that. So I was having emotional problems, and I'd stay with my artist friends. Uh my cousin was an artist, and she she knew these guys that had kind of a an arts colony in Wisconsin, so I'd hang out with them. And they I I was really kind of wounded. Um I can't explain it exactly, but they were really um really nice to me, you know, being they're softer kind of men.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:32

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:32

And they they hate they hated the war. And and that that was kind of nice because they helped me heal that that kind of uh disagreement I had with my father.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:46

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:47

You know, I was twenty, what was I? 21. I was 21. So I decided to go to school and I went to the University of Minnesota and got the GI Bill.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:01

Well, that's not that's uh that's a really nice uh deal. Um, you know, I know it's changed quite a bit, but uh I know the the GI Bill paid for my um college as well. What did you study?

SPEAKER_02 2:01:14

Well, um I was actually thinking very practically because then I didn't have to work if I could be sly about it. Um I rented a friend and I came back from the Marines. We rented an apartment, and it was kind of an experiment for young men, you know, it's like, oh my god. And I had a girlfriend and he didn't, and but it was like 150 a month, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:01:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:42

So I got 150 a month for uh GI Bill, and then I got my father paid for my education, which was a nice gesture, you know, kind of a privileged family. But back then, let's see, the tuition was 500 a year, I think. So that was a good deal, and uh what happened? So by the time let's see, by by the next spring, I was getting kind of stir crazy. I was taking courses, I was taking art courses, and I was drumming, and I was training as a drummer, and um I got involved in in May April in Earth Day at the university, and then I started to become interested in protesting the war. So I I got involved with the Student Strike Committee, and uh out of that came the Minnesota Five, Bill Tilton and those guys, they went to jail a couple months later for pouring blood on the uh on the uh selective service files. So I was involved with those guys going around the university in my ike jacket with a red armband giving speeches that although I'd been in the service, I felt it was time to end this thing. And I was kind of torn by that because my my father again was he hated it, and I ended up on television and uh he saw me and uh uh he says he saw me on WCCO television.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:32

Which which probably didn't make him very happy.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:35

No, so dad's pissed off. And uh I found out that Bill Tilton, who is the head of the student strength committee, was the son of his best friend. So that was strange.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:49

Yeah, that sounds like a little rebellion uh between the generations there.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:54

Huh, tell me about it. Well, it was about time, you know. I don't know. So I was kind of drifting along there, and um, I think I only had to do one summer camp at Camp McCoy. And they just said, get out of here, you know. It was so boring. It was oh god, it was boring. Yeah, going out to Wisconsin and playing our war games. So let's see, that that's when I got it really seriously involved with dance, and um there were bench warrants issued for our arrests because we took over the student union and put two by fours across the doors, and there was a big event. It was in, I think it was May 1st, and a very famous uh supporter of SDS, a wealthy man, uh Don Dellinger. What was his first name? Anyway, I be I became his bodyguard because I was a karate guy, and I didn't know anything about being a bodyguard.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:10

Right.

Philadelphia Opera Steps And Coffeehouse Vision

SPEAKER_02 2:05:12

So here I am on a stage with one of the wealthiest uh supporters of the Democratic Party, looking for people with guns and knives. And there's a crowd of about a hundred people, two hundred, and they're all staring at him. Suddenly there's a ruckus, and they grabbed this guy. I saw the knife and they grabbed him. The people in the crowd grabbed him, and I didn't do a thing, I was just standing there. But so that was my experience with that. And then Mayor Stenvig came trotting up um on horseback, no, the chief of police, and they were wearing weapons, and I said, They've got live weapons, you guys, so don't do anything. And they had those funny ray guns that would shoot, you know, uh uh pepper gas.

SPEAKER_00 2:06:08

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:09

Yeah, and they're very formidable looking. It was like a platoon of cavalry, and they kind of surrounded, they were created kind of a oh semicirc at the back. Um, because this the big street, 4th street, runs right through the campus at at Kaufman Union, and they crossed over the bridge, and all of this was illegal. They weren't supposed to be on campus with live weapons, but apparently the National Guard was behind them. Oh God. So what we did is we hightailed it. And the next day, well, he got out there with a bullhorn and said, We are breaking up this demonstration.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:57

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:58

You know, so we all dispersed. And um the next day I heard that bench warrants had been issued for for the 11 people on the student strike committee, which I was part of. And I thought, uh oh.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:16

So now you're a fugitive.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:18

So now I'm a fugitive. Everybody's dispersed, and Bill Tilton was arrested along with the minute they're called a Minnesota Five.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:28

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:30

And then the math building in Wet Mass, Wisconsin blew up. Somebody put dynamite in it, killed a janitor. And there had been an SDS guy in our group who advocated violence, and I said, no, violence no good. And all this time I was uh working with Marv Davidoff, who's kind of a peace hero around here, and he studied with Saulinsky.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:55

Yeah. And uh Davidoff was great. He had been in the army in World War II, and he said, Look, you guys, we're gonna go over to uh Honeywell, the corporate offices, and we're gonna sit down in front of the doors, and we're gonna hold flowers, and we're gonna have it's gonna peaceful demonstration. Under no circumstances make eye contact with the police, and just do not resist. If they grab you, just go limp.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:26

So we did that.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:29

He did that, right? And uh Monte jumped up, and Monte was an SDS guy who believed in violence, and you we were in disagreement with Monte was a pain in the neck, and Monte threw himself at the glass doors, and he he was he was grabbed immediately, and the rest of us just sat there peacefully singing, We Shall Overcome. So there was a Honeywell project, and Marv Davidoff was really instrumental in getting, he sat down with the CEO and they talked, and uh, you know, and it helped stop the anti-personnel uh mind thing. So after about a week, I thought I better get out of here. My dad said, You better get out of here.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:23

So I uh took my savings and I I re uh I re-enrolled in the Gerdi Institute in Germany. I had been there before military, and now I was gonna go back.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:38

So I just hopped on an Icelandic flight, and there I was at the German Institute again. And I thought this time I'm gonna stay. So I stayed about six months. I worked in you know hotels, kicked, slept on a lot of park benches, and I got really poor because I ran out of money.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:58

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:59

So I met this guy, I met this guy named George Standing, who was an electrician or an electrician from England, and I had no coat. All I had was a sweater, and I it was uh Chris uh Chris Kindernacht in Nuremberg. Uh Nuremberg's where my great great-great-grandfather came from. I found out later. And uh he was an inventor. I think he was Jewish, but I don't know for sure. Anyway, so I was freezing my ass off, and this Englishman said, I say, oh man, you look radical. Why don't you take my cup? And it created a fast friendship with this guy. And uh I realized I had to come back.

SPEAKER_00 2:10:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:44

You know, I had to come back. So I had just enough money, I think it was$89 to take a Lufthansa flight, and then I flew back to Minneapolis.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:55

Well, I want to I want to circle back a little bit and talk um a bit about the the the Minnesota Minnesota eight, right? They you so were you you were arrested as part of that Minnesota eight, correct?

SPEAKER_02 2:11:07

No, I we were warned.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:11

The inner circle, Marv David uh not Marv was also might have been arrested, I don't know. But uh the five, the names I forget, but I'll never forget Bill. And uh within that week they spilled blood on the um they broke into the Selective Service office and just trashed it. And I don't know how they caught him, but they got him and they went to jail. He went to jail for two years, I think.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:45

Yeah, I I did a little, I actually did a little reading on it, and um yeah, it they they were actually the the F somebody had tipped off the FBI, that's how they got caught. Someone ratted them out. There you go. Yeah, so the yeah, so just kind of for posterity, right? It was Bill Tilton, uh you, Andrew Glenn, Bob Bly, Timothy O'Brien, Richard Miller, Mike O'Connell, Marv Davidoff, and John Hansen were the eight eight involved in all of that.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:19

But was my name involved?

SPEAKER_01 2:12:21

Yeah, your name is uh is is shown as part of that, just so you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:26

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:27

Google yourself and you'll see it.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:29

Oh shit. I'm telling you, dude, I don't you know, I uh it's a connection to this. I was playing tennis 25 years later. I was I was about 50. I was about 48, and I was in my singing career, and I it was really slowing down. And I used to play tennis by myself, or I would, you know, I would uh I go to the tennis courts at the University of Washington. Because I lived right near there. And I wrote a lot. And uh it was a lull in my singing career. So I was really enjoying myself. I had no money, and I was whacking a tennis ball against the backboard. And this kind of collegiate dude said, You want to, you know, kick the ball back for us. So we so we volleyed and had fun. And uh he said, I'll take you to lunch. So he takes, so we go down to Starbucks and had a sandwich, and I was looking at this guy, and uh I thought he's CIA. Just the thought went through my head.

SPEAKER_00 2:13:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:41

Because my dad had his best, one of his best friends was the head of the C uh, he was the CIA director for the Puget Sound area, and I had dated his daughter. And I had this into intuition that this guy was connected somehow. And um I said, uh, you're field agent for the CIA, aren't you? And he said, that's exactly why I have here.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:11

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:12

He said, we need people like you. And I said, What are you talking about? I said, look, he said, I was I'm an artist and a rebel. And uh but what I'd like to know is why did you find me? How did you find me? And he said, Oh, he said, we have our ways. I have a dossier on you, as thick as my thumb. And I said, What for? He said, Oh, back in the student strike days, we were all over you, you know?

SPEAKER_00 2:14:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:50

And he says, uh, then we followed your career in German and you speak a little Spanish, and you're just perfect. And then you're in theater, you're just perfect to be an agent. I said, Well, how much do I get? And he said, 80,000 a year. Now this is this is uh 19, this is 93.

SPEAKER_00 2:15:11

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:13

He said I was 45. He said, Um, but you have to work um five stories beneath Pittsburgh in a window, windowless room interviewing illegal immigrants from Europe and Mexico.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:31

I think I might say no, thanks to that.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:34

Yeah, and I said, pal, I'm too far down the line, you know.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:39

You uh declined the CIA offer. Um, but let's go back to you took your$89 flight on a Lufthansa airplane and came back to Minnesota then? Is that what happened?

Design Outlaws Film And Paris Detour

SPEAKER_02 2:15:52

Uh yeah, and I stayed with parents through the winter. And uh remember a banjo player, a friend of mine, committed suicide, and I felt really bad about that. And uh was a brilliant guy, and uh anyway, that I don't know why I'm bringing that up. But anyway, I so I I really wanted to dance. What I learned at Jeremy, oh my god, it just blew my mind. I was in the Gurde Institute, and they had on television I saw these dancers talking about this style of life, and um, you know, from I'm a very athletic person, I thought, I'd like to try this. And um, and then I this is that really blows my mind. I met two people with the same surname, uh William and Mary Glenn, and they were young actors from Massachusetts, and they said we have an extra ticket for the Firebird at the Munich Opera House. And that's what did it. I I I went to I was up there in the Munich Opera House watching, God, it was that fantastic French dancer. Uh anyway, I can't remember. He had this red plume and a black cape, and he was it was the London Contemporary Dance Theatre. And I said, that's it. That's what I want to do. And it hit there, I got brick. So what did I do? I wrote a letter to the London School of Contemporary, you know, to the dance school.

SPEAKER_00 2:17:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:17:29

And um, they said the GI Bill wouldn't work. Or no, and the American government said I couldn't pay for it. And I said, oh shit, you know, and I then I wanted to stay in Germany, but I realized that if I went back to the States, I could uh study dance at uh the Guild of Performing Arts and I could get paid to go to school. So I went to the Guild of Performing Arts, uh, and it was the McAllister College Summer School of Dance. And I was 22, but I looked young. So my good buddy Bruce Drake, who ran it, he s he snuck me in illegally, and I got my first dance lesson in modern dance, and I was hooked. It was a religious experience. And from then on, I was uh then I went in, I I got so full of myself, you know, as a male dancer surrounded by beautiful women, I had no apparent talent. And Nancy Housing said, you act like you're the you act like you're the best in the world. You've got at least five years left before you're technically sufficient. And she was right. And I got depressed. I got so depressed, I just took my car and I just drove west and slept in my car. And I thought, I'm gonna drop out of civilization and I'm just gonna live in the woods. So I linked up with my brother who came back from Vietnam, and he was um a science guy. He actually worked in computers, um, computer systems before anybody knew about it. And we were camping out near Las Vegas and looking up at the stars, and he said the most amazing thing I've ever heard. He said, he said, someday, he said, the whole world will be surrounded by a net, and it'll bounce off of the moon, and we will be able to communicate through with handheld phones like we did when we were kids. We had these walkie-talkie things. And he said, the whole world will be a net. And he and I said, Whoa, and he said, because I always want to understand electricity, and he was brilliant with this stuff. And he said, You will have two choices, you will be on the net or you'll be off the net. There won't be anything in between. He said, the net will create these spaces, and you can drop off the net and drop out of the world, but you if you come back, you've got to come all the way back. And I thought, what the hell is he talking about? Well, my brother um invented, he jammed the um television network. He created a Morris code system, he had a he had my father's Morris code set, and he hitched it to um hitched it up with a uh Chris Crystal radio set. And he would send Morris code to friends who were watching the news across the television set. And Mr. Donnahauer, who was a Navy guy, he called my father and said, he's fucking up the uh the news broadcast at six o'clock on WCCO. So with his Morris code. And uh so my father got a call from the FCC saying your brother's in your son is in serious trouble. My son, he my brother was eight years old. Oh gosh. He was so brilliant. He is oh god. So anyway, back to Las Vegas, I thought, what's he talking about? And then I realized I couldn't run away. So I I went back to the University of Minnesota and I said, I'm gonna get a dance degree, and I went to University of Oregon, and I started really studying hard. And then I got into theater. I did um waiting for Godot, University Theater as a mime. I took mime training, and uh I was real successful with theater. They wanted me to do Death of a Salesman and all this stuff, but I wanted to be a dancer, so after a quarter, I decided um that I didn't want to live in Oregon and get a dance degree because I was wasting time. I was already 20, 26, so I came back to the University of Minnesota and I joined a dance company, and then I met the first love of my life, my life was Sarah, and she was Jewish. I joined, I was really part of the Jewish community in Minneapolis. They're wonderful people because they supported the arts, and she would say, you don't have to be a lawyer, you don't have to fight your father, you don't have to rebel, just be an artist. This is a great message because I had all this hangups about um, you know, just hang-ups about being the son of a judge. He was a very influential person.

SPEAKER_01 2:23:08

So uh so and Andy, I don't mean I don't want to interrupt, but there's there's a point here too that um she right she was really saying is just be yourself, right? Yeah, it wasn't necessarily the arts, it could have been anything, but but the arts is what you were tuned into. And so I think really the message she was giving you was hey, just be yourself. Like you that's all you can be.

SPEAKER_02 2:23:36

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, um she was yeah, I went through certain forms of therapy when I was with her, like uh reevaluation counseling, all this different stuff, but it was it's kind of putting men through a meat grinder. She was a feminist and a communist, and I didn't like any of that. So I just felt like as a man I was having being ground up. But anyway, um the director said, if you study at a dance camp, I said, I'll consider putting you in the company. So she and I went to San Diego and joined a professional dance camp, um, which lasted eight weeks. And then when I came back, she said, You're in the company. So then I was in Molly Lynn's company, and then I went, and then her second company when I was, then I uh got into Martha Graham's work with the American contemporary dance theater, North Repos Auditorium. I wasn't in Martha Graham's company, guys, in her choreography. And then I knew I then I was really hitting it, I was really getting it. You know, off all these years of training. This is what it's like, you know, you train, train, train, train. Finally, you know, you're doing it. And then I got into Molly's new company, and that was kind of prestigious. You know, we performed at a lot of colleges, modern dance, traditional modern dance. And then we had a big falling out, and I left and said, the hell with it, I'm going back, I'm going to Seattle, and I'm going to my back was going out. So I took uh Skinner Releasing as a therapeutic movement system uh out in Seattle. And it Seattle completely changed my life because the windows winters were nice and warm, and oh my love life was fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 2:25:44

So before we get too far into that, so you and uh you and Sarah at this point have broken up then. You're not together.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:51

Yeah, we finally broke up.

SPEAKER_01 2:25:53

And how long how long were you together?

SPEAKER_02 2:25:56

About two years.

Running A Cafe, Community, And Frayed Trust

SPEAKER_01 2:25:57

Okay. So now you're uh Oh, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 2:26:01

Yeah, my brother committed suicide when I was in uh in the company, and that was you know, that was a knockout punch. And uh, you know, it's it's like Gerd Yeev talks about the shocks that human beings are need to wake up. And I really was starting to wake up. And of course, suicide is you can't you can't fight it, it's just it happens. So I decided I gotta get out of here.

SPEAKER_00 2:26:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:26:34

So I moved to Seattle, but uh, I moved to Seattle with a new girlfriend. So uh she wasn't a dancer. And uh we were entered this beautiful house on Lake Union with surrounded by uh beautiful flowers, it was so romantic, and the seaplanes taking off in the morning. You could look down at the seaplanes if they're lifting off, you know. And that that relationship went to hell very quickly because I started to work as a massage therapist, and she got jealous and felt I was uh cheating on her, which was wasn't true. So um she was actually cheating on me, and uh so I ended up single in Seattle, starting a new career.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:30

That's that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:33

Yeah, just a great place. It was uh then I met Kenny Mandel, who is uh see, then he was the nephew of um Johnny Mandel and I think Johnny Mandel, but Lou Ayers, who was Perry Como's uh artistic director, a Columbia artist, and he stayed with me for eight years. He played Shakahachi flute and we choreographed, and I started a company, and I became a pantomime. I went around, I toured the western states as a mostly in colleges, giving mime performances. And I produced about produced about eight shows of my own. So I had a board of directors and I had, you know, I had an agent, Jeff Bidwell, I had these people uh really helping me, you know. I was attracting all these people as a soloist. Completely different from being a in a modern dance company, where you're you know you're an actor in a troop. But this was different, and I became more like Marcel Marceau, you know, whiteface on a stage dancing around.

SPEAKER_00 2:28:42

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 2:28:44

But in the meantime, I was uh studying voice, and Perry Como was my hero, and um I started to sing, and after eight years I decided uh I wasn't going to pantomime anymore and I was gonna sing. And I tried out retirement communities and worked out, and uh I developed a proning program similar to Frank Sinatra or Ferry Como.

SPEAKER_01 2:29:10

Yeah, yeah. Hey, I wanna this is gonna sound silly, but when you mentioned Marcel Marceau, it reminded me of uh Mel Brooks' um silent movie. Where remember the whole movie is silent, but they ask Marcel Marceau if he wants to participate. He's the only one that speaks. He says no.

SPEAKER_02 2:29:35

Yeah, I saw that clip. I never saw the movie. But uh Mel Brooks is my favorite.

SPEAKER_01 2:29:42

Just amazing. I yeah, I didn't mean to sidetrack us, but when you said Marcel Marceau, that's immediately what came to my mind. He was the so he's this famous, you know, Panama Imer mime, and he's the only speaking part in that whole movie. I thought it was great irony.

SPEAKER_02 2:29:58

Well, you know, the joke is uh did you did you have you ever heard Marcel Marceau's best-selling record?

SPEAKER_01 2:30:13

I think this is a joke that only a few are gonna get, but I love it.

SPEAKER_02 2:30:17

Yeah, yeah. Well, uh Marcel Marceau, when I I studied with um fellow by the name of uh oh shit, I forgot his name. Uh how can I forget his name? Anyway, he was really big on Broadway, and Marcel Marceau asked him to join his troop. And we were all living in the same house, Sarah and myself. And uh I said, uh, I said, Ms. Mike Hennessy, I said, Mike, um, wow, congratulations. The great Marcel Marceau wants you and his troop. He said, I turned him down. Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_01 2:30:53

What an idiot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:30:57

He laid he he made it on Broadway with great reviews as a kind of a Marcel Marceau, and then he quit. I haven't heard nobody heard from him since. I don't know what happened.

SPEAKER_01 2:31:07

Kind of like a cat Stevens almost.

SPEAKER_02 2:31:10

Like Cat Stevens? Well, we had parties in that house that the cops would come three times a night. It was just insane. We had uh I had a flamenco dancer with long red hair, and her boyfriend, Greg Wolf. Uh, you know how much noise that makes.

SPEAKER_00 2:31:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:31:32

And then and then Dimitri the Clown doing acrobatics in the living room, but Dimitri the Clown was an internationally famous clown. Then Mike Kennessy, you know, and and myself were all singing, and the cops came three times one night. I mean, we almost blew that house off the planet.

SPEAKER_01 2:31:52

Oh my. So so Andrew. How old were you when you started singing then?

SPEAKER_02 2:32:00

Well, I I sang in high school. Um, I had a good voice. Uh I sang in Glee Club when I was 15 and 14, but we sang classical Glee Club. We sang uh, you know, Copeland, American Favorites.

SPEAKER_00 2:32:15

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 2:32:16

And I didn't think anything of it because I came from a family of singers. My uncle was an opera singer, and everybody sang. My father sang. We didn't have a radio in the car, and he'd sing all the way across Colorado, you know.

SPEAKER_00 2:32:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:32:31

And I never thought about singing as a career. And I knew I had a fairly good voice. I never even I wasn't, I didn't have an ego about it. And uh, and then it hit me, you know, it just kept creeping up on me when I was doing all the silent dancing. So why can't I, why can't I be like uh, you know, uh what's his name? Uh the famous singer-dancer, Gene Kelly. Why can't I be like Gene Kelly? You know, he sang too. So I started to sing, and the guy said, you know, you've got a you've got a strong Italian tender voice if you if you develop it, but it's gonna take you seven years. It always takes seven years.

SPEAKER_01 2:33:16

It's never overnight, is it?

Voice Teachers, Touring, And The Road Economy

SPEAKER_02 2:33:18

Oh shit. It and it took seven years, I'll tell you. So I so while I was doing the mime work, I would go to this opera, famous opera woman, and she'd say, God, you suck, you know. And it was like, this went on for years until I finally could put it all together and sing properly, was called a a correct voice. And so I moved in. This this is the Sandy Deary story. I moved in with this playwright, and Sandy was uh she wrote scripts for MASH. She's a brilliant woman. And she was the voice of NPR, and she had a job at her business bureau, and I didn't have a job, and she I said, I want you to be my agent. And I had Columbia artists coming to my door. I was 40 years old, and they said, We're gonna set you up with all these symphonies, and you're gonna be the funny guy in front of the symphony before they do, you know, Beethoven's ninth. So uh, but she didn't want to do it, and then the then the Columbia artist guy disappeared. Poof. And I called Columbia artists and I said, you know, do you know a guy? Do you have an agent named Joe Blow? And they said, No. Oh, huh. Jesus Christ, yeah. So here I am, 40 years old. I've been running my own, producing my own little shows, and I'm living with this 25 year old genius. She looked like Deborah Winger. So um, she's a beautiful woman, and uh she was a political. And a novelist and a playwright. And she, you know, she didn't. You get two artists living together. They're so absorbed in their material. It's very hard to live with each other.

SPEAKER_00 2:35:12

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:35:14

So after about a year of that, I said, guess what? I'm going to become an opera singer, and I'm going to go back to Philadelphia, where this is where she came from. So it just broke my heart. I said, Well, look, follow, you know, come with me. We were fighting all the time. I said, move back to Philly and we'll be we'll live together. She didn't want to do that. So I I really like Philadelphia. It was the opposite of Seattle. Seattle was ethereal and spiritual and healing and gentle. And Philadelphia was brutal. East Coast, brutal. But I what but I like that. And uh when I got into the singing business, holy smokes, did I learn what real singing is? Auditioning for the Philadelphia Opera Company. So I got I got into the Rutgers Opera Company, and I was an understudy. I was an Italian tenor, and we sang Donizetti, uh Chill Green, Verdi. We sang Verdi. And uh here I was 46 years old and being used by a college opera company, but my director was this genius and Carnegie Hall Opera Orchestra, Martin Dillon, and we became good friends, and uh this led to some really interesting uh escapades. Yeah, yeah, that was uh Martin Dillon. And um, well, what I did was uh actually was fairly drastic. I probably should have studied tenor work in uh Seattle, but I wanted to leave Seattle, so I kind of made it hard on myself by um moving across the country to to an apartment that actually uh my girlfriend had set up for me. That was really nice. And I thought she might want to come and you know move back to Philly, but she didn't. So there I was, and um like the first three days in Philadelphia, I parked my car. Oh, that dog's I'm down in the basement here. Um anyway, um yeah, it sounds like a wind blowing through the trees. Oh, geez. Uh so uh I suppose I shouldn't mention anything besides uh this narrative. Um so I parked my car under a bridge and I went to a Puerto Rican uh celebration and I got back and my car was gone. So that was my introduction to Philadelphia.

SPEAKER_01 2:38:03

Well, and I find it interesting when we were talking um, you know, about your move that you one of the reasons you wanted to move to Philly was because it was hard, and and you know, where you were at seemed kind of soft and spiritual, and you were kind of seeking a harder life almost, is what it sounded like to me.

SPEAKER_02 2:38:23

God, you're really good. I guess. Well, I was looking for more of a challenge, and I knew the East Coast was was a much better uh place to pursue classical music because Seattle was um it had its own classical community, but it was um pretty small. There was only one opera company, you know, and uh so it was really about opportunity, and I think I was right, because um after a few years of work, I I am Martin uh took me up to Juilliard and I got a a free uh recording session at the Juilliard Sound Studios.

SPEAKER_01 2:39:09

Well, that's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_02 2:39:11

Small miracle, yeah. He he was a tenor with the Carnegie Hall Opera Orchestra and um was very you know very prominent.

SPEAKER_01 2:39:23

So wow, that's uh yeah. I mean that's no small feat to uh to be able to do something like that. So what what all did you record then as a part of that?

SPEAKER_02 2:39:35

Um let's see. Uh the recordings I did, I did three recordings. Um Bonancini uh Per la Gloria Dararavi, which is uh which is a Baroque opera, Baroque Aria, and um uh uh The Song Is You, which is a famous uh show tune. And the third one was Um Black is the color of my true love's hair.

SPEAKER_01 2:40:04

Oh okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:40:06

Pretty sure. And those are on that uh CD that you have.

SPEAKER_01 2:40:11

All right, I think maybe we'll share some excerpts of that uh as part of your recording, if that's all right.

SPEAKER_02 2:40:18

Oh, hey, yeah. That's what I'm so good. I'm gonna go to the other side of the house to get away from this uh this drama, the drama of the dog, right, and that angry red-headed single mom who thinks I don't understand her problems. Yeah, maybe it's quieter up here, always go in the bathroom, it's quieter. Yeah, this is better. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:41:06

All right, so you um so it sounds like things are going really well in in Philly with all that's going on. Uh how long did you stay there, and what are some of the other things that you accomplished while you were there?

SPEAKER_02 2:41:19

Um, well, when I got to Philly, I had to make money. So I um I found an agent to be a pantomime in children's um uh birth little birthday parties, and then I did some clubs. It was very weird work because it's commercial work. And I'd been um I'm primarily uh doing concert work in Seattle. So I was I didn't I didn't start concert mime work in Philadelphia. I got actually I did I taught at a private school, did a I did a few workshops, and then I had this agent for children's, you know, for um birthday parties, kind of like a clock a clown at a birthday party. It was it's not work that I particularly like, but you know, and then uh let's see what else did I do. Yeah, I did that and um worked as a massage therapist.

SPEAKER_01 2:42:30

Okay. Now did you stay, did you stay out east for quite a while then?

SPEAKER_02 2:42:37

Yeah, uh I stayed, I stayed there, and this is really amazing stuff because I was um basically not making not making end speed, and I was sitting in a little coffee house at 411. 411 12th Street, anyway, it's right right near University of Pennsylvania, and it was um the the coffee house was up for sale, and there's nobody in it. And this this fellow strode in with his beautiful girlfriend, and he was kind of a Russian-looking character. And uh he was sitting across the room, and uh we got to know each other, and uh he said, What do you do? And I said, I told him I was what I was doing, and he's then I was a writer, and he said, Do you want to work for me? I'm I make films. Oh here, you know, here I was thinking, what am I gonna do now? Right. His name is Chris Zeloff, and uh his grandfather had a um was was the man who met who manufactured Sputniks. Uh-huh. Um these things they put up in outer space in the 60s. He was a Russian. He had a factory in north of Philadelphia. And uh anyway, that's a that's a a segue. Um so this rather strange man who was very, you know, very kind of flamboyant, flamboyant in a long black cape, he says, I'm making a film um where uh I need uh an assistant to carry my cameras and uh to do research for me. And I thought, oh great, you know, and he said, Money's not a problem. I like that.

SPEAKER_00 2:44:36

Yeah.

Poetry, Publishing, And War Testimony

SPEAKER_02 2:44:38

Yeah. And then he says, uh, well, you know, we'll get together. And um and I said, What's the film? And he says it's called uh Design Outlaws on the Ecological Frontier. And what he and what that entailed was interviewing 10 scientists who had invented machines to purify the environment and to make to to make man more adaptable to the environment and to preserve the environment. This is 1988. This was the fall of 88 when I left. And uh so he'd send me to the libraries looking for to research these physicists and so forth. And then he would go out and and he was on um public television quite a bit. He was kind of kind of like Bill Moyers, and he he was a very good uh speaker. And the people that were supporting the film was the uh Buck Buckminster Fuller Society, and uh you know the Diamaxian map and all these things. So his funding, and he had wealth from his grandfather. So then he turns around and he says, I want to take that coffee house, and I'm gonna I want to uh rent the coffee house and start a business, and you'll be the co-director. So we turned the coffee house into Cairo's Coffee House, which had a philosophy of bringing in the University of Pennsylvania and bringing in West Philly, the black population, and getting an integration going culturally between um the various people that made up West Philadelphia. And we do this through culture, through poetry readings and through um um song recitals. So I became the artistic director and I would bring in, I remember bringing in um a woman who was a cantorist, a Jewish cantorist, and she'd sing, and we had these this front window with the stage, and she would sing. And then I'd bring in classical violinists, and then I'd get up and sing, and and then we had a new thing called computers in the basement. Uh-huh. Yeah. And uh, I didn't like the idea of computers, so Chris and I would fight over that.

SPEAKER_01 2:47:16

So what was the per what was the purpose of the computers in the basement?

SPEAKER_02 2:47:20

Well, he he wanted to his um Chris's whole philosophy, like uh Buckminster Fuller, was to show how how technology and how scientific thought is is part of nature and part of culture and part of art. And I never liked Buckminster Fuller particularly. Um, you know, he created the geodesic dome and uh was a tremendous uh teacher. I saw him, I saw him teach when I was very young. Um solid geometry and castahedronic structures, you know, and he patented the Diamaxian car and uh all these different things to show that uh automobile can have three wheels and be a commercial success. All this stuff. The diamaxian car, yeah, that was a trip. Yeah. But you know, I think I think Buckminster Fuller was really one of the most exciting thinkers of the 20th century because everything that's followed, you know, it was like he broke the ground for all of this new technology, now that I think about it.

SPEAKER_01 2:48:37

Well, it's uh you know, I find it interesting, uh Andy, it seems almost like a dichotomy, right? Like you have this amount of respect for what he does, but you don't really care for it.

SPEAKER_02 2:48:48

Yeah, I well, I I learned a lot, and I I was kind of a you know a B student in geometry, and I really enjoyed solid geometry. But like with Chris, I was trying to tell him that you know an artist doesn't function on that level, isn't it isn't that a scientist. Right. So, but what the heck? But we we you know we were great friends and we had a jolly time. And uh so he said we're going to Paris. It was November of November of 89. Coffee house was working pretty well, and hey, you know, the the uh the the New York Times wanted to write an article about it because this was the only coffee house um that was open to the public, uh as you know, like Starbucks. You had you had in the 70s, you had the Allegro Cafe and Starbucks Cafe in s in Seattle, which were very unusual. Um there was only one Starbucks, Starbucks store in 1980. And I used to hang out at the Allegro and I said, someday I'd like to have a coffee house because you know you had 20 tables and you had artists, mostly artist types. But people, you know, from all backgrounds sitting around just like they did in England in the 19th century. Yeah, so when I ended up in Philadelphia, it was like a dream come true. You know, I God, I love coffee houses. So um, what's the point of all this? So Chris had a philosophy of gemütlichkeit, of uh of uh what was the term he used? Convivial, and this was part of the whole intellectual movement of recreating a convivial society by creating new um physical spaces, physical sites, like museums that would have coffee houses or hot tubs, you know. It's all very creative. And the convivial society was part of the philosophy of these scientists that we were interviewing, like uh Stuart Brand's uh The Living House, which was a house that processed its own sewage, it heats itself with its own energy, you know, it's an extraordinary thing. And uh so here we're dealing with these um these experimental thinkers and getting them on film and filming them in their houses, you know, sitting in a chair. You know, so you had all these these famous people in oh, how do you say, environmental science, and who were also physicists. So I'd carry the camera. So once the coffee house got off the ground, he said, We're going, we're going to uh we're going to Paris and we're we're going to interview so-and-so. So I'd carry, you know, the cameras. They were pretty big in those days. So like I would go through a turnstile in Paris, and you know, I'd throw the camera to him on the other side, and then I go under the turnstile. It's an old trick, you know.

SPEAKER_00 2:52:21

Yeah.

Cross-Country Vans, Gigs, And Burnout

SPEAKER_02 2:52:22

But so we rented a uh, we were in this hotel room, and uh Chris opened this newspaper, and it and it's it it said the wall is down, you know, in French. It was the day the wall came down between East and West Germany. So yeah, it was like wow. So I ended up, we'll see, after that gig, I ended up having no money, and Chris flew back to Minnesota to uh Philadelphia. And uh I was sleeping under the myrtle bushes on Lincy Grad in a sleeping bag to save money. I had some money, but then that the plane ticket he gave me didn't work, so I had to live in the airport for four days, waiting for the um ticket to be reissued. Well, this this led to some interesting things. I started to juggle for the people in the airport, and um I I found a way to get out of the airport through a side door. I would sleep on the soccer field at night, and then I had propped the door open with just a little bit for the latch, so I could come back through the side door into the airport.

SPEAKER_01 2:53:47

These are things you could not do today.

SPEAKER_02 2:53:50

You can't you can't do this stuff. No. So then I found out later that uh the village that I was sleeping in was where my ancestors came from. Um not Chatwick, boo, was the name of that town. So anyway, that's a side issue.

SPEAKER_01 2:54:10

So that's interesting, though, that you ended up there, but you didn't know at the time when you were making this plan that it was your ancestor home, basically.

SPEAKER_02 2:54:20

Yeah, it was Gatwick. My great I have a grand I have a uh ancestor who was the sister of George Washington's wife, and they they came from Gatwick. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 2:54:34

That's interesting. Right. So so how so how long did you stay there, like sort of kind of living in the airport and kind of bouncing around, it sounds like.

SPEAKER_02 2:54:47

Well, it's getting on my nerves, and I was reading a lot and writing, and then one day I was juggling, and these people were very amused, and there was this Nigerian prince or some someplace, and he had beautiful robes with a conical hat. He was obese, and uh he was laughing, and he said, Why are you juggling juggling the airport? And I said, Well, I'm waiting for my ticket, and I don't have any money, I don't have any food, you know. And he opened his wallet and he gave me a hundred dollars.

SPEAKER_01 2:55:24

Really? Yeah, just like that. So so I find it interesting though, because today when you mention the term Nigerian prince, they're usually trying to extract money from you.

SPEAKER_02 2:55:37

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, this guy was very, you know, he had that jovial um look of plenitude. Uh-huh. Yeah, and his kids like me, you know. So then the ticket came and I flew back, and then I was really mad at Chris because the ticket was no good. And the coffee house went very well for a year, and we had people lined up, you know, like 10 or 20 people all day coming to the to our takeout window. And we created a takeout window. That was a natural thing to do, and so we sold our most of the coffee through the the windows. But it was the article in the Philadelphia Inquirer that really made a difference. We became too popular. We only had 11 little Italian tables, and we had a 1918 uh steam espresso machine that was gold and silver. It cost like$20.

SPEAKER_01 2:56:44

Wow, that not that today it wouldn't.

SPEAKER_02 2:56:47

No. So what what we had to do in the very beginning was take out this uh this building was built like 1740. We had to really kind of gut it out, and I had worked in the building. Trades in Seattle. And we hired a guy named Tom Shakespeare, who turned out to be a violent drunk. But he uh he ended up working for Garrison Keeler, you know, in his his show.

SPEAKER_00 2:57:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:57:16

But I uh Tom was a real character, so he directed, you know, the operation, which was we had a young African American guy who I hired to be the assistant manager because he was he was dashing and handsome and young and he could attract the young students. Right. And his father was a poet. Well, we built this whole thing, and uh and then we had a sculpture that was made by a guy who's now a prominent painter in Paris named Wilhelm Thompson. And uh it ends up that Chip, uh assistant manager, stole um kited checks from the company checkbook.

SPEAKER_01 2:58:03

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02 2:58:05

So Chris, at the very beginning, he said, don't hire black people. I said, Chris, that's not right. Because you're living in a black community, and he says they steal. And I said, you know, I couldn't deal with that. So I hired black people. He didn't like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:58:24

Well, and and I mean in all honesty, right? You could hire anybody, and anybody could steal from you. Exactly. I mean, that's that's how life works. I mean, just just because uh it in this particular instance, someone who was of color stole from you does not mean that everyone of color is going to steal from you.

SPEAKER_02 2:58:43

Yeah, yeah. So Chris had to work on that little thing um in his head.

SPEAKER_00 2:58:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:58:51

As a friend of mine said, who John, who sold books at a book stand, black guy, he said, I said, Well, what's all this this racism the white people have? He said, Man, you gotta work on your own shit.

unknown 2:59:08

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:59:08

And that's what it is, you know, it's your own shit.

SPEAKER_01 2:59:10

So yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you so how old are you now? You're in Philly, you got this coffee house, seems to be pretty successful. Um, and you gotta be getting what mid-40s now?

SPEAKER_02 2:59:25

No, I'm 40 in 88.

SPEAKER_01 2:59:27

Oh, in 88. Okay, we're we're in 88, got you.

SPEAKER_02 2:59:31

So the coffee house, the really cool thing is I didn't know what I was doing. You know, as like one of these second lieutenants that goes to the sergeant and said, What do I do? Right. Right. He said, You're the manager of the cafe and you're half owner. And so I borrowed$5,000, and then he paid the other$10,000. And so he had say in it, you know. And I said, Well, I don't want to have anything to do with running a daily operation. So I I interviewed these people, and I found this um uh woman from who had a coffee house in Greece, and I said, You're hired, bang. And she did a beautiful job. She handled everything. And we, you know, it's it's like the same model for coffee houses today, where you have uh suites you can buy and a takeout. Um there was nothing in Philadelphia. There wasn't anything in Camden, New Jersey. There were no coffee houses. It was just absolutely zero. You had delies, you know, East Coast, Jewish deli, but there's always only two tables, and young people don't, you know, it what Chris was talking about was really is really an American revolutionary custom, which is you know, the young people dream up shit and they do it in special places.

SPEAKER_00 3:00:58

Right.

Reset, Return Home, And Rebuilding

SPEAKER_02 3:00:59

You know, it could be Ben Franklin and uh English coffee houses, but and so Chris had this idea of revolution and change, which I think was right on. He was really right about this, and he had the power of being a producer of documentary films. It's a real powerful thing. Right. So the the film we made was called uh Design Outlaws on the Ecological Frontier. And Brian Dennis was the co-producer, and it won 17 educational awards around the world. But it's it still didn't make much money, which puzzles me. It's an hour long, you can still get it. You know, you could order it.

SPEAKER_01 3:01:48

Well, and you I mean, I think sometimes that's the way it works, though. Something that's uh uh uh critically successful, right? Uh turns out not to be so financially successful.

SPEAKER_02 3:01:59

Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, I'm in a film right now that is an art film, and uh who knows.

SPEAKER_01 3:02:08

Right. Right. Could could be big, could be great, could be all of those things. So you're really kind of you're really kind of on the cutting edge of the whole coffee house revolution, right? Because if you think about it now, uh to quote to quote an old phrase, you you couldn't swing a dead cat on a street corner without hitting a coffee shop.

SPEAKER_02 3:02:32

Yeah, yeah, and they're and they're so kind of uniform. But what I love about what I really appreciate about Starbucks is they created a place for people in a community to go and and an open exchange of ideas. Like they had a wonderful, Starbucks had a wonderful shop in Stillwater, and uh Stillwater, Minnesota is full of artists. And uh my cousin Jane was a successful artist, she just died last year. But I used to sit in there with during French Club, and they'd have, and the guy next to me was the former uh police chief of Tehran. Wow. You know, it was like all the foreigners. Here they are in rural Minnesota, and they have a place to talk to, you know, uh talk about things. And there was Jessica Lang and Sam Shepard. They'd come in there and they'd sit there. And I I knew Jessica, she was a friend of my cousin, uh, cousin Jane. They were good friends. So um Stillwater's a small town. It's kind of like an art colony.

SPEAKER_01 3:03:58

Yeah. Well, if you think about it too, like in in uh the Middle East and in Europe, I mean, gathering for coffee is is a thing. I know in Greece it's you could sit for hours and drink frappe and and just talk and no one bothers you.

SPEAKER_02 3:04:14

Yeah. Yeah, I do that here at Dun Brothers. They have the that type of setup. It's a circle of old friends for 20 years ago. You know, we still meet. Yeah.

unknown 3:04:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:04:30

But a franchise now is like$500,000. If you want to open a coffee house like Dun Brothers, cost a fortune.

SPEAKER_01 3:04:41

Yeah, and there's no$20 espresso machines either, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02 3:04:46

So yeah, we we put out about$2,000 to get the thing running. We got went down to the warehouse and got these old Italian wire chairs, you know, and the the ceramic wire tables with the curled feet. It was really it was a lot of fun doing that.

SPEAKER_01 3:05:07

Oh, I'll I'll bet. And so so how long how long how long did you do this? So you I and I want to kind of uh put put it the it in order for me. So you guys opened up the coffee house and then you went to Paris for a while, and then you came back and ran the coffee house still. Is that am I is my timeline right?

SPEAKER_02 3:05:27

Yeah, for about a year, I I accompanied him in his in his various um ventures, once to Paris and then um but mostly we stayed in the in the Delaware Valley. He lived up, Chris lived up in uh in uh Doylesville. Doyle's town, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 3:05:52

Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_02 3:05:54

I don't know if if you know the Delaware Valley, but I I am not familiar with it at all.

SPEAKER_01 3:05:59

But yeah, yeah, that Buck County is extremely wealthy.

SPEAKER_02 3:06:06

Um just old money, you know, Philadelphia. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:06:12

So you uh so uh so then how how long then after that did you so you operated for a year after that or um no after a year of of the coffee house and the I stayed with the coffee house and made decisions while he was gone.

SPEAKER_02 3:06:29

So after about two years, we we decided to break up because the film was over.

SPEAKER_00 3:06:37

Okay.

Later-Career Craft, Audiences, And Meaning

SPEAKER_02 3:06:38

And I moved up to Easton. I did some recording up in Easton. Let's see, I was one of those first recordings. But the most important thing was studying um Italian uh Italian voice and German leader with Rose Geringer, who was my uh she was my first voice. Uh I studied four years with her, and she was um a soprano with the Swiss opera roman, and she was a world class. Uh she was an understudy de Calas. So I had the very finest teachers, and then I went from her to I wanted a male tenor teacher, and so I went to a Martin Dillon at across the river at Rutgers. Okay. And I would take off and I go around the country in my van because uh they wouldn't pay me, and I was getting probably three, four hundred dollars a show singing in mostly retirement centers around the country. So I would drive to Minneapolis and I'd sing all summer. I'd drive back and I'd sing with the opera, but and then he wanted me to sing the lead, a Mozart lead called uh uh Domino, the opera Domino by Mozart, and he wanted me to sing Idomantes, and I I was on the road, so he gave Idomantes to the next dinner, which I of course felt cheated, but I wasn't around, so right, right. But I was getting money for singing, and uh and then I got I got offers from let's see, Pittsburgh Opera, and I I was getting I got a lot of offers, but they wouldn't pay, and I refused to sing without being paid, which could be my downfall, but uh well, right, but I mean you do need to make a living. Yeah, god it was just it was very tight.

SPEAKER_01 3:08:49

Yeah, I can only imagine. So how long did you do this kind of back and forth uh um from the east coast to to Minneapolis and and so on? Did you finally settle down then at some point?

SPEAKER_02 3:09:02

Well, I had an apartment in Philadelphia, and I was having uh I had a girlfriend there, so I was uh I was really part of Philadelphia, but then the summers I would take off for Seattle. I had booked myself in Seattle, so in between I'd stay with my parents, and it it was really hard on my personal life because you know I was uh I was moving around so much. So I did that for then, oh my God, then came Cafe 90. Oh my god. I joined the poetry cafe 90, which I had never knew this kind of thing existed, and it was all the poets of Philadelphia raving and screaming.

SPEAKER_01 3:09:48

The one giant poetry slam kind of thing?

SPEAKER_02 3:09:51

Yeah, it was a little more civilized.

SPEAKER_01 3:09:54

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 3:09:56

But that's when I got my first uh book published at uh at Temple University. They published uh The Road to Epidaris, which was a hundred poems. And I was making I was making some um, you know, I was really becoming acknowledged. And then the Iraq war started, and then uh I joined with um uh Vietnam era veterans against the war, and we spoke in churches, and there were a lot of these old progressives, you know, hanging around. So I'd recite poetry, my anti-war, not anti-war, but my war poetry. So then I pissed off the leader of Cafe 90, who was a politician, and he was running for the uh he was running for the Philadelphia School Board or something. And I I drank, I was staying in his house and I I drank some of his whiskey that was given to him by Jay Guevara or somebody like that. Uh-huh. And he got really pissed.

SPEAKER_01 3:11:15

That's very interesting. So this was just whiskey that no one drank. Is that how that worked? Yeah, yeah, I never opened SDN.

SPEAKER_02 3:11:22

Oh my god. So Lauren, the professor that got me published through Temple, he said, you better leave town. He's really pissed off. I said, I'm not gonna leave town because he's pissed off. But I did, I did move back to uh Seattle, and uh I started singing there, and uh I had some hard times financially. So I I spend a year in Seattle and then I go back to Philadelphia.

SPEAKER_01 3:11:59

So this is a lot of uh a lot of back and forth then for you. And were you were you basically driving between yeah?

SPEAKER_02 3:12:10

I had uh I had this blue um a blue Ford van, you know, with the doors in the back. Uh-huh. And I had bad tires. It was a three-in-a-tree with a doghouse and a cracked windshield. And the the owner said Frank Zappa owned it. I thought that was just bullshit, but it had the inside had this purple carpet that was real thick and hand-carved, you know, I don't know what it was. But uh I pulled up, pulled up the carpet one day, and there were sole cyber mushrooms growing through the rust.

SPEAKER_01 3:12:53

Oh well, very well could have been owned by uh by Frank Zappa then.

SPEAKER_02 3:12:59

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the guy told me he's a he almost cried when he sold it to me. So I drove that thing four or five times across the country. It had about a hundred thousand on it. You know, it was just a three-banger. And uh, but I I had pulled into gas stations and some guy had said, Yeah, you're never gonna get over the poconos with that thing. Clearly, you didn't. But I did. I drove it over the Rockies and I I always went like 55 miles an hour. Wow. Yeah, and I could sleep in the back. I had a little sofa. You know, it was uh pretty sexy little operation.

SPEAKER_01 3:13:44

So you did so you did this kind of throughout the early 2000s, then yeah, I had I had three vans.

SPEAKER_02 3:13:52

So I would tour in the summers, and then once I toured in the winter through Massachusetts, pure hell, five feet of snow. But I was desperate for cash and I like to sing, so um so I had a philosophy of a certain time of year getting set up, um, doing like five shows, five gigs in a row to cut down on the cost of the rent, motels. Uh-huh. So yeah, I did I once North Carolina, I did five recitals in one week.

SPEAKER_01 3:14:32

And they had a hot tub in one of these places, and they put me up, they put me up sometimes, really nice old retirement communities, genteel people with stages and so you're kind of doing the whole uh retirement home circuit then.

SPEAKER_02 3:14:55

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 3:14:56

Okay. Now I have a question about that because we've talked about this a couple of times. Is that like is that a thing where there's like a certain group of people who'd who do that? You know what I'm you know what I'm trying to ask? Like um, you know, some people do nightclubs, some people do concert halls, but uh is there like a certain group of people who actually do this um on a regular basis?

Risk As A Life Rule And Final Reflections

SPEAKER_02 3:15:18

Yes, yes. Um there's a website on Dave Rook you can look up. There's a whole there's hundreds and hundreds of them because well back in my day in the 90s, the corporations didn't own these places. So around 2000, they started tearing them up and building these things, they all looked the same. You know, they had they looked like lifetime fitnesses, right? With peak roofs and the the fake pillars, and you know, though so but back in 1988, 1992, the the they were these beautiful old buildings, you know, Masonic architecture or Elizabethan architecture, and they were very mellow and they're very courteous, and they bring you a check and an envelope, you know, and and they paid twice as much, three times as much. I got$250 in North Carolina in 1993. That's worth almost a thousand now. So yeah, and because these were private endowments. And I get some really classy, well-dressed people. And so it's now it's the rage. Everybody's got a guitar as I can't even get a gig in Minneapolis. It's just hopeless.

SPEAKER_01 3:16:49

Because everybody's out there, everybody's out there doing the same thing then, huh?

SPEAKER_02 3:16:53

Yeah, the phones are tied up, the activities directors are underpaid, and now I get the same amount of money that I did in 1991. Wow. If if you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:17:08

No, I I I hear you. So you I mean you you carried on through this through uh so when did you have you have you like finally then settled down in Minneapolis then? Um when did you like stop traveling?

SPEAKER_02 3:17:23

Well I really yeah, I really hit the wall. Um I went to Germany, I came back, and I had a had auditioned for the the Bremen Opera Company. And I had a Polish girlfriend in in uh in Bremen, and that didn't work out. And the guy turned out to be a crook, the director of the Bremen, he had stiffed my teacher, and I came back pretty disappointed, and that was 99.

SPEAKER_00 3:17:55

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 3:17:56

And I basically had a nervous breakdown. I was driving through it, it was summer, and I was driving through Georgia, and I didn't have any money, and I knew I had to do something, and I I didn't have enough money to get an apartment, and I just froze up, and I thought I was having a stroke, so I went into a grocery store and I just started to weep, you know. And there was a woman there who was a nurse, and uh she said, Come on, honey, we're gonna take you to the hospital.

SPEAKER_01 3:18:30

Probably a good thing, too.

SPEAKER_02 3:18:33

Yeah, my right ankle was swelled up, and uh I had strep at muscular strep in my legs. And and she, you know, they gave me a bunch of ibuprofen, and the doctor said, You're all over the place, man, mentally. Uh he said, You gotta you gotta chill, man. So the nurse said, Honey, y'all gotta go home.

SPEAKER_01 3:19:00

So I did. You took her advice.

SPEAKER_02 3:19:03

Yep, and I went to live with my parents. I was 52. And then I kind of recovered in it. Then I got a gig in uh singing in Philadelphia for the cultural ambassador to the UN from Germany. Wow, what a what a feather in the hat. So I went back to Philly, and it was it was a real experience. But like all of these things where you get into the upper echelons is pretty ordinary. It's not as hard as singing in a retirement.

SPEAKER_01 3:19:52

Right. Do you do you feel that maybe like spending all that time in the retirement homes then kind of contributed to your how you were feeling?

SPEAKER_02 3:20:05

No. I uh yes, yes, because I had the ambition to to really to really sing classical music. Right. And it's so difficult to get a I and I made the wrong moves. The the real move is to stay with your church in your hometown and stay in a community for 25 years. And if you've got what it takes, they'll find you. But what I was doing was running all over the place. Which I like to do.

SPEAKER_01 3:20:41

Yeah, it's at some point that I I gotta I have to imagine that that just gets old, clearly.

SPEAKER_02 3:20:49

Yeah, it is it's old right now because um I could I could sing in an independent living facility, but like last year I did four shows for Alzheimer's people, and it was terrible. It was it was so difficult. Um not to sing, I you know, you deliver the goods, but the audiences are so whacked out. Right. It's you know, and it's it's yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:21:20

So what are you so so what are you doing, what are you doing now? You are um, forgive me, how old now?

SPEAKER_02 3:21:28

70, 78 next week.

SPEAKER_01 3:21:30

Okay. Which in my experience is still pretty young, at least for all the people that I've that I know that are um you know reaching into their late 70s, early 80s. So what what's what's the plan now?

SPEAKER_02 3:21:48

Well, that's uh that's a tough one. I'm um well, telling my life story over the phone, that's one thing I'm doing, but the always writing and trying to get published, and I got I got into veterans' voices. But for the future, my tap dancing is going really well, and the film went well, and there's some prospects of a another film being made by Nick. And uh I wish I had an agent. What I'm really looking for is is uh I was thinking of a speaker's bureau and getting on a stage and talking. Kind of like what I'm doing with you. Right. And making some money and and having an and having an audience that is really interacting.

SPEAKER_01 3:22:51

Yeah, I feel like it, I feel like for for you, you based on what we've talked about, it's important to have that like audience feedback or audience interaction.

SPEAKER_02 3:23:01

Yes. Well, uh each situation is different. Like doing the film is is a very kind of a Beljar situation where you're alone taking direction and there's no audience. Whereas I if I was singing in Nice Polynes, people are screaming every time you open your mouth. But there's a happy medium. You know, I I remember a picture of Frank Sinatra sitting on a stage singing for Japanese audience of Japanese women, mostly women, and they're all holding flowers. And that's like the ideal thing because they're just absorbing this romantic style of singing and smiling, you know. And it's uh children's audiences are great. Yeah, they're just constantly reacting when I did my mind work, they're just constantly wiggling around and and the energy is just moving back and forth. You're feeding them and they're feeding you. As you get in a retirement center, and the amazing thing about retirement communities, if let's say seven out of ten people are pretty sharp, is that this is their music and it's very emotional to them. But up in Minnesota, they don't show it. But there are always women, mostly women down south. The women want to get up and dance with you while you're singing.

SPEAKER_01 3:24:33

Right, because they're you're causing them to remember.

SPEAKER_02 3:24:37

Oh, yeah, it's powerful. You know, I had a 99-year-old woman, she's a she was a black woman. She got up covered with jewels and she said, Honey, let's do let's do a little two-step. And so I kept singing over her shoulder while she danced with me. Four of these elderly women got up, and we're all just moving around the stage. It was really great. But you see, I got that down south. But not not in Michigan, not in Minnesota, never in Montana.

SPEAKER_01 3:25:12

A little more stoic, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:25:16

Uh we just we just don't show things the way I don't know what that's about. We're more stoic, yeah. People like you and you and I, we're you know, if I get mad, nobody can tell. Well, I I I project a lot, so if I get mad at somebody, it scares them. But you know.

SPEAKER_01 3:25:39

Yeah, I think I think it's the the the German Nordic kind of way, right? I I don't know, maybe maybe that's it. So I mean, so so going forward, um, you know, it doesn't sound like you plan it sounds like you're planning on doing some some different things, but not necessarily uh slowing things down very much.

SPEAKER_02 3:26:00

Yeah, I don't feel slowed down. I'm uh I work out every every day and I I tap dance a couple times a week, and that's hard work. Um and I'm always writing. So um what puzzles me is well, I have one alternative, which is to sing in churches, and I don't like singing in churches particularly. But I would be paid. And my Ava Maria is is considered very good, and I could probably sing in a cathedral as a soloist, but those are very hard, jobs are very hard to get. And I could put on I could produce my own leader performances, or I could uh put on performances of uh Stephen Foster and German leader from the mid-19th century, but that's a very special audience, and I would have to put it on in a university uh you know place or maybe library. And the retirement centers are captive audiences. I don't have I don't have to do any promo.

SPEAKER_01 3:27:14

Right. You're gonna show up and they're gonna be there.

SPEAKER_02 3:27:17

Right. And there sometimes it's a table of five people off to the left and they're talking to each other, and then there's three people in wheelchairs who are completely daffy and they're spinning in front of you. Enjoying themselves.

SPEAKER_01 3:27:33

You know, they got dementia, but yeah, never a dare, never a dull moment, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:27:39

So there's yeah, you know, if I if I get a gig tomorrow, it's I have to be uh you know on my toes because every audience is different.

SPEAKER_01 3:27:49

Right. Well, that that makes sense. So, you know, we've talked about a lot of things over the last almost four hours of uh kind of recording your life history. And um, you know, I think as we kind of talked about the future and we're sort of winding down our conversation, I do I do have a question that I would like to ask. Um I ask everyone the same question, and I think it's very important uh for people listening to this in the future. So um, you know, Andy, if someone's listening to these recordings, say a hundred years from now, neither one of us are here, but they're listening to this, you know, what message would you like to leave with people? What would you like them to take away from our conversation? In regards to military service or just uh just your kind of your life philosophy in general. It doesn't it doesn't have to be about the military, it could be you know what what message you'd like to people to take away from really kind of the way you've lived your life and the things that you've done.

SPEAKER_02 3:28:59

Well, live live by the seat of your pants and and um take risks that are far beyond common sense because almost all of the unhappiness in the world for healthy people or people that that want to really dig into life is that they don't shoot high enough. When I was 19, I was kind of in fog down and doing factory work and wondering where where am I gonna go as writing all this poetry and and I thought I wanted to shoot high. I want to go to a foreign country and learn their language, and that was Germany. And I I basically I got I got low grades at the Gerdi Institute, but I shot high.

SPEAKER_01 3:30:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 3:30:03

Right. It's risk. Risk is very, very important.

SPEAKER_01 3:30:08

Well, and I and I think someone someone once said, what, aim aim for the stars, you'll still hit the moon, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:30:16

Yeah, or you know, you just fall flat on your face. I I think fall fall flat on your face. That's the best best advice you can give people. I'm terrified of stand-up comedy. I've done stand-up comedy, I'm still terrified of it. And I did, you know, I used to get a lot of laughs and pantomime, and then I then I started, then I found a way to put stand-up comedy in the retirement communities in the middle of my singing, kind of like Dean Martin. Yeah. But but more, what these are one-liners, you know, really fast. Um Catskill Jewish comedian, fast one-liners.

SPEAKER_01 3:30:56

So I I found a place, but to be billed as a comedian, or to have a to be known as a comedian was was too confining or too scary, or I I feel like you've kind of uh uh lived out a lot of the things that you set out to do, and lived out a lot of things that you didn't set out to do, but turned out to be all the right things for you. And um I appreciate you taking all this time to share all of this with uh me and the other folks that will be listening to it. And uh I look forward to uh talking with you off the record and uh seeing how you're doing in the future.