Sometimes when I get involved in something, or something gets me involved in it, I become aware that what is really going on is the "transaction" is a probe, and the point of the probe is to see what comes back in response.
The spirit world, or if you wish, angels, watch such things, even if human beings don't. What the angels do with what they see is above my pay grade. My job, although perhaps not so much as in past times, is to engage what comes my way, in ways angels trained me, and then I try to get out of the way.
Alas, it is impossible to get all of the way out of the way when I am writing about what is in the way, and I am part of it. For example, this unfolding book, about which I dream during naps and after I turn in at night and go to sleep. Two close friends also dream about this book, and report their dreams to me.
We know this book is ... different.
We know it will not please many people, if they read it, or only some of it.
We know there are forces behind the scenes - ghosts, souls, spirits, whatever - that do not care for this book.
We sometimes feel those forces' displeasure in our dreams, psyches, minds, emotions, bodies.
We understand, if I don't write this book the way it needs to be written, which has nothing to do with what other people, society, religions, etc. might or might not think, then I will pay dearly for it.
I will pay dearly, because what needed to come out of me, stayed inside of me, and it kept poisoning me, as it had poisoned me for decades, and I am the victim of my own faltering hand and spirit. If you view that as New Age psychobabble, consider:
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
– Gospel of Thomas, verse 70
So, sallying forth again into where perhaps even angels fear to tread ...
The law firm I joined after leaving Golden Flake was located in the City Federal Building at the intersection of 21st Street and 3rd Avenue North.
The firm had three lawyers. They took in another lawyer and me at the same time.
Right away, I made what, in retrospect, was a BIG MISTAKE.
Golden Flake's holding company, Golden Enterprises, had acquired a real estate/mortgage company owned by very good friends of my father. The company had a large residential real estate sales force and a mortgage originating department, which "sold" new residential mortgage loans to secondary investors.
As a new lawyer, I had no clients. No legal fees were coming in. I signed up for court appointments in criminal cases and joined the Birmingham Bar Association's Lawyer Referral Service. I hustled clients away from the law office, such as in bars, after work.
However, the easy way was to get the real estate/mortgage company to send me residential real estate sales and mortgage loans to close. I chose the easy way, because I felt I needed to do something to bring in legal fees and carry my financial weight in the law firm.
I went to the real estate/mortgage company and talked with the owners, who knew me very well. I met their sales manager and their mortgage loan originating officer. They started sending me some of their real estate and mortgage loan closings, and I was generating revenue for the law firm.
I also handled other kinds of cases, criminal, wills, contracts, divorce and child custody. I felt like a lawyer when I handled those cases. I felt like a clerk, or a cop out, or a whore, when I handed referrals from the real estate/mortgage firm.
I didn't have much money. Dianne and I were headed toward a divorce, which my senior law partner would handle. We had two young daughters. My father's father had set up a trust for each of his grandchildren, and I was getting the income from that. I gave the trust income to Dianne as child support under our divorce settlement agreement. I think it was about $1,300 per month, which was a lot of money back then.
I was drawing enough money from the law firm each week to pay my rent, groceries, beer, meals out, car maintenance, etc., and to make deposits into a City Federal savings account. I had not made enough money before that, to save some of it. That felt good.
My father's father had leukemia and didn't have much longer to live. I went to see him in the hospital, where my daughters had been born, and where an internist friend of my father's doctor brother Leo had saved my life, at age 21.
I was running a Golden Flake route salesman's route in Shelby County, below Birmingham, while he was on vacation. I ate in a restaurant that carried Golden Flake products. I got infected with dysentery and was throwing up and shitting all over myself, before going to the hospital.
My father was out of town on business. He called my hospital room when my mother was there. She answered the phone and told him what was going on and handed me the phone. My father said, "That's a really interesting way to get out of work." My mother let him know that didn't sit well with her.
If I'd had any sense, or any wits about me, perhaps I would have taken the dysentery and my father's reaction to it as a sign from God that I was not supposed to be working for my father?
Hello?
Many years later, I am in the same hospital visiting my grandfather, whose wife had caused me, my mother and my father so much trouble during World War II, and who had bought Golden Flake and made my father a junior partner.
My grandfather says he isn't feeling too well, and I say I'm sorry. He asks me if I have anything to say to him? Looking down, not caring for that question, I say, no. He stares at me. I leave soon after that. He dies a few days later.
In his last will and testament, he left each of his grandchildren $300,000 cash, as I recall the amount. That was a lot of money back then. My money struggles were over. Yet, something nagged the back of my mind, that I should put the inheritance away and not rely on it. I should try to make it on my own.
Then, my grandfather's wife died, and each grandchild received about $200,000 cash, as I recall. The same nagging returned, and I ignored it again. Over the years, I sometimes wondered how my life might have gone, if I had tucked those inheritances away and tried to make my own way?
When my father was in his teens, an uncle died and left him and his brother Leo $8,000 each, as I recall the amount. Their father's Troy childhood friend, Frank Samford, had bought Liberty National Life Insurance Company out of bankruptcy somewhere up north, and had brought the company to Birmingham..
Samford made my grandfather an outside director of Liberty National, which began to do well. My father and Leo invested the cash inheritance from their deceased uncle into Liberty National common stock, which was traded over the counter. Liberty National kept doing well, and its common stock kept rising and being split. Liberty National stock made my grandfather and his very for that day and age.
Leo became a pediatrician, and half of his babies belonged to Mt. Brook families, who had money and could pay. The other half of Leo's family lived in Birmingham, where his doctor's office was. They were working people, who didn't have much money. Some were poor. They were Negroes, Italians, Greeks, and Lebanese. Some of them paid Leo with garden vegetables and home-cooked cakes and pies. If they couldn't pay, Leo treated their kids anyway.
He made house calls every day and even at night. He was a real doctor, and he was a healer. His kids often got well simply because he was their doctor. Most mother's feared or didn't like Leo, because he didn't put up with their commotion. Their babies loved him.
Leo relied on his inheritance to enable him to be that kind of baby doctor.
My father earned his own way at Golden Flake and in the stock market, and later in oil and gas exploration. He sometimes used his Liberty National common stock as collateral for loans, such as to buy Golden Flake from his father and his father's brother-in-law. But, he didn't sell any of his Liberty National stock.
When I was a boy, I asked my mother why Dr. Leo was not my father, because he loved to fish, and I loved to fish, but my father did not care about fishing? My mother said she did not know why. Later, she told me that I had really hurt my father's feelings. How'd I hurt his feelings, when I didn't say it to him and it was the God's awful truth?
So, I had two father figures in my youth. Two very different male role models.
Looking back at all of that, I wonder if there was something else in play when my Bashinsky grandfather and grandmother died?
I did not then have a clue what my son's gift was to break me loose from all my family programming, outlooks, beliefs, etc.
My gut distress was ever with me when I practiced law. It affected my moods. It did not let up.
I took on two major federal court litigation cases, for underdogs. I felt God and the law and the facts were on my clients' side, but the judges ruled otherwise. Losing those two cases broke my spirit and killed my yearning to be a trial lawyer, instead of what I was.
As the years passed, and I slowly and painfully realized I had a good legal mind, but maybe I was not going to make it as a practicing lawyer, those inheritances kept me going.
Interest rates went straight up and killed the residential real estate market. I no longer was making money as a real estate lawyer.
The University of Alabama School of Law offered a Masters in Taxation program, which was taught part time for two years in Birmingham. I did that, hoping it would breathe life into my law practice.
Probably nothing was going to do that, but I kept trying, and trying.
After both of my daughters reached 18, the income from my Bashinsky grandfather's trust was paid to me.
The bank trustee then screwed up an investment. I called them on it and they did not like it. They had me meet with a woman in-house lawyer I had known from a small experimental church in Birmingham, called The Church of the Transfiguration, or simply, Trans Fig, and a male in-house lawyer I knew somewhat. In house meant, they worked in the bank, for the bank,.
The male lawyer, who had never been roughed up by practicing law, tried to play like he was a real lawyer. He argued that I was a seasoned investor, able to do my own research and make my own evaluation of the security the bank trust department had highly recommended for the trust.
I told the lady lawyer to get rid of the male lawyer. After he was gone, I suggested the bank take the loss, since it had made the mistake. And, if the bank wanted to be rid of me, then distribute the trust securities to me and we part ways. The bank agreed to that, and I got all the trust assets, worth about 900,000, as I recall. Most of it was greatly- appreciated Liberty National common stock.
I lived comfortably, but not extravagantly.
I closed my law practice and wrote my first book, HOME BUYERS: Lambs to the Slaughter? I found a small local book producer, who had a very talented artist daughter. He formatted the manuscript, and she drew the wicked cartoons of sheep and wolves I saw in my mind's eye, for the front jacket of the book and for each interior chapter.
The book wasn't long and was published as a saddle-stitched pamhlet. I got some traction with it at magazines that catered to public protection, such as Mother Earth News. Nader's Raiders gave it a nice kudos. I was selling it by mail. Sales were not brisk.
A fellow moved to Birmingham, who was a white water paddler. As was I. He said he'd heard I wrote books. I said I wrote one book. He said he worked for a publisher in North Carolina, and he wanted to see my book. I gave him a copy. He said they wanted to republish it, if I expanded the content. I said, okay.
He assigned an editor to me. She turned me every which-a-way but loose, upside down and inside out, in a good way. I was grateful for her help, even if my ego was black and blue.
Menasha Ridge Press republished HOME BUYERS: Lambs to the Slaughter? in hardcover.
I hired a publicist in Birmingham to promote the book. She arranged in-person media interviews in Birmingham, Alabama, Nashville and Knoxville, Tennessee, Louisville, Kentucky, Columbus, Ohio, and Atlanta, Georgia. (In hindsight, that was stupid, (because we did not have bookstore distribution.)
The media interviews went great. During call-in radio shows, the statIon telephones never stopped ringing.
My white water padding friend was disturbed that the publisher and I had jumped the publicity gun.
That disturbance got greater after I was invited to be interviewed by Jane Pauly on the Today show. All of a sudden, I was known all over America. But there were no books in bookstores.
Menasha asked me to write a book for home sellers, which I did. SELLING YOUR HOME $WEET HOME. It also got me lots of media attention, but there were no books in the bookstores.
Menasha asked me to write a book about lawyers and clients, which I started on.
At that point, Menasha presented my writings to the New York publishing house Simon & Schuster, which agreed to take the two real estate books, and was amenable to taking the lawyer-client book, after I finished writing it.
I finished writing Kill ALL THE LAWYER? A Client's Guide to Hiring, Firing and Using Lawyers. Simon & Schuster accepted the manuscript. I went to New York City to meet them. They didn't care for the title, but liked the material, which killed some but not all the lawyers, and did feature some clients no lawyer would ever want to represent.
Simon & Schuster acquired Prentice Hall, which published legal books for lawyers. Simon & Schuster transferred my books to Prentice-Hall, which published Kill All the Lawyers?
The co-owner of a very respected Birmingham bookstore told me, better to have no publisher, than to have Prentice-Hall.
Simon & Schuster was acquired by another company.
It was all a big mess.
I was being interviewed by a lot of media, including in-station at CNN in Atlanta and Los Angeles, CBS Morning Show in New York, RKO in New York, and lots of radio. The Birmingham Post-Herald gave KILL ALL THE LAWYERS? a rave review. But there were no books in bookstores.
Over lunch one day, my father told me that a lot of people were upset about my books. I said I knew that, and I asked him how he felt? He said he told them that it looked to him that all I had done was tell the truth.
Another time over lunch, my father complained about how much a flats fishing guide in Islamorada was charging. The guide was a good friend of mine. I fished with him whenever I could. He was booked solid. He was educated. He was a marine biologist, and President of the local Sierra Club. He testified before the Florida Legislature in Tallahassee, regarding pollution of Florida Bay and Florida Keys waters.
Flats guides in Islamorada charged the same rate. At that time, $200 a day. When I first fished with flats guides, they charged $40 a day. I told my father, "Rick charges $200 a day, which is $25 an hour. I charge my clients $75 an hour, and Ricks a hell of a lot better fishing guide than I am a lawyer." I did not tell my father that Rick had told me that my father was the only client he had ever fired.
Looking back on all of that, I dunno whether I jinxed myself and the books, by spending a lot of money on publicity for the books and their author, who very much hoped the books would make him rich like his father, as well as famous?
Or, was I supposed to take away from how all of that went, that I was not supposed to be like my father at all? I was not supposed to be a capitalist, but an artist, a creator, whose instrument was my pen, and I was supposed to write as if my very life and soul depended on it?
What do you think I was supposed to make of the first two poems that fell out of me a few years later?
Living Poets (1991)
Dead poets are poets who never writeWho obey shoulds and oughtsWho live to please othersWho value money over GodWho die without ever having livedDeath is their markDead poets are remembered by the living.Living poets are remembered by timeDead poets never sing their songLiving poets nover stop singing itThe difference between the two is this:One worships fear, the other lifeTo be a dead poet is hardIt requires being someone elseTo be a living poet is easyIt only means being myselfOne choice is hell, the other heavenThat is what is meant by free will
The Mockingbird (1992)
I happened upon a mockingbirdsinging his fool head off.I asked him how and why he sang?But all he did was look ahead,all he did was sing.He never turned to see if I was watching,Or listened for money jingling in my pockets,Or asked if I liked his music,Or expected a recording contract.He was too busy singingto pay any attention to me.In this way I learnedthe greatest sin of allis to kill a mockingbird.
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