From where white boy Jimmy Ray stood at the back of the nightclub dance floor he could see the two-tone couple glistening beneath the blue spotlight, dancing slowly, sweating, hardly moving pressed that tight against each other.

In a dress that matched her pale freckled skin, the white woman confused Jimmy Ray by keeping her eyes closed. He couldn’t figure out if she was just trying to be trouble out on another cheap night on the town or was she scared, not knowing what to do to get away from the Black man’s grip?

Jimmy Ray eased his way through the crowd. Close enough now to watch the Black man’s hands, he felt uncomfortable, embarrassed at the way the man held the girl against him with his large palm pulling at the small of her back.

None of this would be happening if the owner didn’t let Black people in the club. Why make normal white folks uncomfortable by mixing races in the first place? Not everybody wanted to mingle. I bet Black people don’t even want to be with white people most times unless you’re a Black man looking for white women. Then you crave it. You need it. You take it the same as heroin or robbing a liquor store.

Jimmy Ray moved closer.

It’s 1945. The war’s over. We won.

Does that give Blacks the right to dance with our women? Go dance with the Germans or the Japs. We got rules here, even laws that say no crossbreed marriage. That includes slow dancing. I was too young to enlist after Pearl Harbor but I would still love to kill some Japs. Just look at them, not even human with their teeth and thick glasses.

The Germans at least look like us except for the pretty boy Aryan blond hair and blue eyes like Swedish pinup girls. Not like guys I work with at the shoe factory. Nobody I pal around with looked like those spit-shined Nazis.

And nobody I know is Black dancing with white women. Who does this tramp think she is unless she’s dancing with him because he’s holding her hostage? Blacks play on white women’s guilt. What, you won’t go out with me because I’m Black?  Somebody better save white women before it’s too late. These girls don’t know better and don’t sense how dangerous it is to be out alone and vulnerable without somebody like me looking after them.

Jimmy Ray would have tapped the Black man on the shoulder real hard and cut in had he known how to dance. His mother tried to teach him when he was about 14, but he felt silly there in the living room trying to learn how to dance with his own mother, holding her at arm’s length moving two steps to the left and two steps to the right like some country clod. Dropping his hands after a few awkward minutes of feeling like a pervert and ducking his head so his mother wouldn’t see him blush, he ran out back to shoot targets with his deer rifle. Now, that he could do. Jimmy Ray sure knew how to shoot. Blasting bullets through beer cans made him feel better than learning to swing and sway with Sammy Kaye.

When the song ended the Black man and the white woman turned and went in separate directions. Jimmy Ray followed the Black man outside where they stood smoking cigarettes at opposite ends of the parking lot. The Black man walked one way up the street. Jimmy Ray walked the other.

The feelings that made him sick to his stomach and dizzy with anger that night stayed with him.

All those years later, for whatever the reason, Jimmy Ray thought about the white girl as he loaded his rifle.

He thought of the Black man as he pulled the trigger.

Fate didn’t care which Black face came to mind, the dancer or the preacher.

As far as Jimmy Ray was concerned, they all looked alike.

News of the ceramic baby Jesus stolen from the church manger scene broke like five-dollar dinner plates in a drunken wedding anniversary argument. In the chilly aftermath, Big Mike’s words went viral, shooting off from his big Pittsburgh mouth like fireworks or foam from a shaken can of Iron City popped the day bosses at the last steel mill within driving distance laid him off.

All over Pittsburgh, especially in his Southside neighborhood, Big Mike’s bold edict lives each year at Christmas when countless celebrants repeat his words as they raise a glass and toast the Nativity. That day in history Big Mike made three little words famous.

“Take me, jagoff,” he said.

Big Mike locked and loaded his favorite word as soon as he read the Sunday paper reporting the theft, registering raw contempt in his limited manner of expression. But that’s all he needed. Pittsburghers got the point.

“Jagoff,” he said.

Looking at his wife Alice he lowered his voice to a cross between a rattlesnake hiss and a psycho whisper the way he always did when he was ready to snap even when he didn’t have too much to drink.

“Do you believe this shit?”

“Excuse me,” Alice said.

“Some jagoff stole the baby Jesus right out of the manger scene at St. Pat’s.”

Alice stiffened.

“Where was Little Mike when it happened?”

Hunched over an overflowing bowl of Lucky Charms, 14-year-old Little Mike picked his nose and took immediate offense.

“Mom, I’m on juvenile probation, OK? I’m on my best behavior. I pee in a bottle every day.”

“Don’t blame the kid,” Big Mike said. “The cops profiled him because he’s Irish and looks like me.”

With all the work involved in baking gingerbread men Little Mike left headless and strewn all over the kitchen, shopping and everything else Alice had to do that her family didn’t appreciate this time of year, she couldn’t be bothered with a swiped statue normally stored in a musty Catholic Church closet.

“So some jagoff stole Mary’s little lamb. What do you want me to do about it?”

“Show some respect,” Big Mike said.

“OK, what are you going to do about it?”

“Don’t push, Alice.”

“I’m not the one daring Mr. Jagoff to take me.”

By dusk Big Mike was stretched out on his postage stamp-sized front lawn, lying in the manger he built from two-by-fours he stole from a construction site and planned to sell. He stuffed the manger with pink and green colored straw left over from the Easter beer can roll the guys at the Irish Club did for the poor kids each year. A handmade sign Big Mike made with Little Mike’s graffiti spray paint and stuck in the grass beside him said, “TAKE ME JAGOFF!”

Reclining in what Alice derisively called his “waddling clothes,” he drank a six pack before anybody in the neighborhood stopped to ask him what he was doing.

“Using myself as bait for the jagoffs,” Big Mike said.

Wrapping himself in an itchy tan Army blanket he bought when the marriage counselor suggested they try camping in the state park a couple of years ago, he tied a white clothesline around his belly so the front wouldn’t open and expose his privates. That’s all he needed, to expose his privates in the manger while portraying the Christ child at Christmas.

“You’ll freeze to death,” Alice said.

Big Mike pointed to the five lumps in the Army blanket.

“Hot water bottles,” he said. “I duct taped them to myself like a suicide bomber.”

By Christmas Eve, thanks to cable TV and social media, the whole world knew Big Mike’s name. The Steelers didn’t matter. Neither did the Pirates or the shuttered steel mills for that matter. National television newscasters debated on the air whether Federal Communications Commission rules allowed them to quote Big Mike. A local historian explained how The Oxford English Dictionary acknowledges the Three Rivers slang as a legitimate word meaning an utterly “stupid, irritating or contemptable person.”

Big Mike didn’t need a dictionary to explain the difference between right and wrong and the breakdown of 21^st Century society. He could smell a jagoff coming a mile away. Standing on the steps of his red brick row house in his bare feet in mid-December, he used what academic linguists called fighting words every time a newscaster shoved a microphone under his nose and he repeated his challenge.

“Take me, jagoff,” he said.

As you might expect, the reviews were mixed. You were either for him or against him. Men mostly rooted for Big Mike. Handmade signs went up all over town, in bar and office windows and even on a couple of billboards. Women saw him as just another big goof like their husbands or boyfriends, overreacting, loaded and making an ass out of himself for the holidays.

Big Mike saw himself otherwise, of course, and explained his pure intentions to Alice.

“I’m like them Christmas mice ornaments we put out each year my mother gave us, the ones I thought were real stuffed rats when I was a kid,” he said.

Alice looked at Big Mike like he lost his mind, found it then sold it on EBay at a discount.

 “How are you like the Christmas mice, Mike?”

“Weird but lovable,” he said.

Within two days news crews started showing up from all over the world.

“I’m a Christmas miracle,” Big Mike told the BBC.

And so he was the reason for the season, confident enough to drink two six packs of Iron City a night and let people take pictures and selfies for free. Not an argument or fist fight broke out at Big Mike’s Christmas crèche while he sprawled in the manger. Senior citizens sometimes blessed themselves when Big Mike belched.

“If that doesn’t signal world peace, nothing does,” Big Mike told CNN.

“You know what you’re doing is sacrilegious,” Alice said one night when the crowds went home and Big Mike came back inside.

Incredulous, he highlighted his success.

“You been counting the cash in the donation basket at the end of my shift?”

“Three grand so far,” she said.

“It’s a godsend,” Big Mike said.

Alice saw the opening and tried to lay hands on her own Christmas miracle.

“Can I buy a new vacuum cleaner?”

“And a crock pot for the kielbasa,” Big Mike said.

That was their best Christmas ever.

Little Mike even got sprung from juvenile probation.

And nobody stole Big Mike from his gala Yuletide display.

Not even a jagoff would want him.

Laughing aloud at the far end of the state prison cell block, two veteran prison guards on duty in the hospital unit for the criminally insane snuck Marlboros under the stairs and gawked toward the cell in the middle of the isolation unit.

“Go on,” Christopher Rawlings said. “Go on down and see this crazy bastard for yourself.”

Corrections Officer Matthew Ford dropped his cigarette on the cement floor, squashed the butt with his spit-shined tactical boot and strolled to the middle of the cell block where he stopped to eavesdrop through the metal door slot.

The inmate inside screeched like a rabid hoot owl.

“There’s COVID in the giblet gravy,” he said.

Looking through the small cell window as he passed, Ford saw the naked prisoner with the homemade face tattoos of a spider and a fly holding his hand to his ear with his elbow bent the way you would if you were cradling a telephone. Ford couldn’t make out another faded green tattoo at the base of the inmate’s skull and another above his nose between his reddish-blond eyebrows.

“There’s COVID in the white meat, too,” the inmate said. “I don’t eat dark meat but Chinese spies put it in there, too.

Stolen cell phones, no pun intended, occasionally showed up in deranged inmates’ hands. But this nut wasn’t holding a phone. He was barely holding on to his sanity and probably lost what was left of his mind a long time ago.  The inmate was talking in two different voices, a man’s voice and a woman’s voice, talking for two different people, talking for himself and for a female who wasn’t even there.

Now the maniac began to laugh, a long, high pitched howl that sent a chill up Ford’s back. This kid scared him and Ford was a black belt, a combat veteran and all around shit-kicking bad ass. Yeah, this kid scared him.

“I’m gonna ask for seconds,” the inmate said into his imaginary telephone. “I want all the COVID I can eat. Gobble gobble.”

 Ford went back to the control room where he read a gun magazine and tried to put insanity out of his mind. Still, the guard wondered who this madman thought he was talking to. Thank God this sicko was locked up so nobody else would die.

Lunatic number 865-H-87 listened to his girlfriend’s voice pulse like an open head wound.

“I’m sorry we won’t be having Thanksgiving dinner together, baby,” she said. “I’d love to dig into those giblets with you. We’re a team. Nothing can hurt us. Nothing can stop us. Nothing can keep us apart.”

The skinny inmate with the twisted mind and scarred wrists teared up.

“I’m so happy you came into my life,” he said. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“A life ender, too,” she said.

Shrieking like a loon, the frazzled inmate imitated the hysterical high pitched howl of a woman, then a man, then tried to put their holiday screeches together.

“You’re so funny,” he said.

The inmate listened to her every word, tasting her breath on his brain stem with love pounding in his heart as she whispered marshmallow soft words deep into his dark soul.

“And you’re my little sweet potato,” she said.

The unhinged inmate began to hyperventilate.

“Mashed sweet potatoes,” he said. “Like the leftover mashed brains I’ll chew from bloody cracked heads of people who put me here.”

“We’ll get you out,” she said.

“When?”

“Before Christmas.”

“How?

“Just leave that to me,” she said.

“Can we kill somebody for Christmas?”

“Ho ho ho,” she said.

Again they howled.

“I miss you,” the fried inmate said.

“I miss you, too, my little pumpkin, but I have to go,” she said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“I love you, Syrah,” he said.

“I love you, too, Pug.”

“The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”

Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels

Imagine the primal power of an outlaw motorcycle army thundering through otherwise civilized streets on the road to a cemetery. Think about the force of the mighty Hells Angels intent on a sacred mission of raw revenge. Ponder their tragic loss as they step closer to the edge of their dead brother’s grave. Take a moment to reflect on just what they plan to do about Christian Harvey Tate’s murder.

Now ask yourself if justice will be served.

Nineteen years later, thick grass blankets Christian Tate’s tomb. A gentle breeze feels like baby’s breath as it blows past emerald leaves on the shade tree that marks his final resting place. Morning is quiet here as his black headstone shines even on a gray day.

The rumble of rolling Harleys that carried about 700 of Tate’s grieving brothers to Santa Maria, Calif., for his 2002 funeral has long ago disappeared. What remains on the Central Coast halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco are whispered prayers for a fallen Angel, threats and blood oaths to avenge his loss matched with promises to live to the fullest his legacy of freedom.

Payback is required no matter how long the mission takes.

The violent death and unsolved murder of this righteous Hells Angel on a barren stretch of road near Ludlow, Calif., remains a mystery. Few can or will say whether his fatal shooting is connected to the shootout that killed three other bikers (two Hells Angels and a rival Mongol) and took place around the same time at a gambling casino in nearby Laughlin, Nev.

What can be said is this: Family, friends and brother bikers swear almost everybody loved the fearless 28-year-old renegade his Hells Angels brothers called Christo.

Now he’s an Angel’s angel, a hallowed symbol of all that’s holy about this unholy brotherhood. But Christian Tate was more than just a brother. Deep personal roots reflect from the gravestone that glistens wet in the damp mist of a cloudy summer day.

The engraving on the front of the stone reads as follows:

Christian Harvey Tate; May 15, 1973; April 27, 2002; Treasured By Family And Loved By All; Lily’s Gentle Father; Samantha’s Forever Love; Two Souls Eternal.

The United States Coast Guard emblem is carved into the left side of the tombstone. A simple cross that resembles the metal cross a loving son once made for his mother is carved on the right side of the marker.

At its base the inscription reads: “When you awaken in the morning’s hush, I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds encircling flight, I am the soft star that shines at night.”

One night long ago, in September 2002, after paying my respects at Christian’s grave, I sat with his father, Steve, 50, and grandfather, Harvey, 77, who listened in deep silence as I read aloud the poem from a photograph they showed me.

The dining room table of their neat Santa Maria home overflowed with photos of the funeral, pictures of unforgiving Angels burying their motorcycle martyr using sharp shovels to pile moist earth on a fresh burial ground.

Many of these same untamed men also laid tender homegrown orchids on the coffin to soothe Christian’s last journey in floral colors bright as new chopper headlights that shine through the darkest night.

Grandpa Harvey Tate, who had not long before the funeral lost his wife of 53 years and bought his first motorcycle in 1944, grew those orchids in the garden of the same Santa Maria home where Christian laughed and loved as a joyous presence since he was a baby. When the child grew old enough to understand, he, too, learned at the hands of the master how to raise and care for these delicate, exotic flowers.

Hard men who specialize in orchids are hard to find, but Christian’s dad also spoke of the joy of growing orchids and the bigger joy of raising the growing boy of whom he was so very proud. Big, tough, fair and bright, Christian was a Santa Maria High graduate and Coast Guard veteran who distinguished himself as a member of the sea search and rescue squad.

In another photograph Christian is young, handsome and smiling. Standing beside a Coast Guard helicopter he looks like he’s ready for anything. Such acute awareness further complicates his murder.

“My son was smart,” Steve said.

Still, he died fast and hard, shot several times in the back and torso while heading home on his bike to a family party in San Diego where he lived and faithfully wore the colors of the “Dago” chapter.

Who executed Christian Tate on that dark, bone dry desert highway? Rumors and speculation run wild. The Tate men vowed that first night we talked to never give up their search for the killer.

Another picture they passed around in hands cracked from lifetimes of labor and exhibited at the head of the table drives them deeper into their cause.

Lily, Christian’s infant daughter, smiles with big eyes from the center of the cherished framed photo. The men said when she one day bows her head above her daddy’s grave, she deserves to know what happened to her smiling guardian Angel.

By the summer of 2003 Steve’s tone had turned harsh as he spit a man’s name as if deadly poison filled his mouth.

“Bill,” he said.

Leaning thick arms on the dining room table, Steve Tate’s face twisted into a furious look. A growl of emotion erupted in confusion.

“Who’s Bill?”

According to a federal criminal indictment, “Bill” is the member of the Mongols motorcycle club whom Hells Angels blamed for killing Christian when bullets tore into his Angels colors and blew him off his motorcycle on a desolate stretch of Interstate 40 in San Bernardino County.

“On or about September 17, 2002,” a Hells Angel “was provided with the physical description of a Mongol named “Bill” who it was believed was bragging about killing (San Diego Hells Angel) member Christian Tate,” the indictment said.

Federal prosecutors charged members and associates of Christian Tate’s former “Dago” chapter with crimes ranging from drug dealing to racketeering to extortion to “acquiring firearms, scopes and silencers to be used to murder Mongols,” according to the indictment.

Several “Dago” Angels eventually pleaded guilty to conspiracy and other charges and served time in federal prison. Other mass arrests of Hells Angels in Arizona also gave Tate family and friends hope that police investigating the murder might one day solve the case. Undercover federal agents in that roundup infiltrated the Angels and became trusted confidants.

Since Hells Angels rarely cooperate willingly with police, it’s not surprising that detectives investigating Tate’s assassination long ago said they had not received help from Tate’s former brothers in the club. Yet, indictments and the threat of lengthy prison sentences have a way of uncovering information that might otherwise never surface.

Cops and accused alike sometimes cut deals amid the murky middle ground that exists within the law. Even among a normally stoic brotherhood, Christian Tate’s memory could drive some members to help his still grieving loved ones find consolation.

To be sure, Christian Tate took great pride in living the life of a fully patched Hells Angel. He also felt great pride to be an honorably discharged Coast Guard vet who helped in the grueling search for the bodies of two California Highway Patrol officers who were swept away in 1998 when Highway 166 collapsed after heavy rains.

Angel or no Angel, Christian Tate remains the victim of a ruthless crime. Steve Tate said police never called to tell him about “Bill” or discuss how the indictment for a murder conspiracy might help shake loose more information about his son’s killing. The Tate family first heard that news on television.

Despite being ignored, Steve Tate and his family placed faith in the system because they are cornerstones of the system, hard-working, good citizen taxpayers who have always done their part to help their neighbors.

All Angels aren’t angels, but Steve Tate has no reason to believe his son was anything but a free spirit who rode the open road and valued the camaraderie of rugged men like himself. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, Christian Tate deserves the benefit of the doubt.

On another day, Steve tried to relax while daughter Brandi busied herself cooking for her children and remembering so many good times growing up.

Steve and Harvey had taught Christian to ride motorbikes as a child. Those childhood lessons grew into a passion for building, repairing and riding motorcycles. One day Christian, 12, grabbed a pizza pan from the kitchen and tied it to his bike, instructing 11-year-old Brandi to sit tight and hang on as he pulled her around the yard in a cloud of dust, just two kids laughing and loving the innocence of their lives.

Such revered memories struggle to live amid today’s merciless reality. But remembrances of that soft past help cushion the grim details of death. Yes, even an uncertain future holds hope. But fulfillment will only occur when somebody pays for pulling the trigger.

That “bill” is long overdue.

In May 2004 the exact reason why 300 or so Hells Angels rolled into Santa Maria was anybody’s guess.

The manager of the Preisker Lane campground where the Angels set up headquarters for a Central Coast run said she’d been leaving flyers all over the place announcing that the site is biker friendly.

“This is beautiful country,” said the manager, who asked that her name not be used.

Steve Tate has another theory.

“I’d like to think it was a memorial run for my son,” he said.

But he doesn’t know for sure. Was this gathering of Angels just a coincidence so close to the second anniversary of Christian Tate’s shooting death and subsequent funeral that drew hundreds of Angels to the city cemetery from all over the world? Or, was the get-together a powerful public acknowledgment that members of this notorious tribe will always remember where Tate was born and where he is buried?

On a late Friday afternoon the first wave of Angels crowded the registration desk to check in at the Holiday Inn on North Broadway. Society’s best known barbarians all wore the red and white colors of the club. Fat Boy silver hogs and fire-breathing custom painted road dawgs shined in the sun and lined the parking lot outside the hotel. More glistening Harleys ringed the building. Swaggering Angels bouncing on beat-up boots hung loose and cool everywhere. This gang doesn’t party in Santa Maria often. But they showed this time ostensibly for a Mother’s Day run that included guests, wives and children.

Across the street from the Holiday Inn and just down Preisker Lane, the Angels set up a security post at the gate to the Pines Campground where they reserved space for the weekend and paid in advance. Beneath the cover of a huge rented tent, Angels prepared to cook and serve three meals a day, including a Saturday night barbecue at $30 a ticket.

A group of prospective club members called prospects guarded the entrance and milled around a sign that warned the property was closed to the general public, although the campground manager had given long-term residents red passes that allowed them to come and go.

I stopped by the gate and asked if prospects would tell Ventura chapter president and club national spokesman George Christie I’d like to talk with him. Christie, who has since left the club, denied my request.

Steve Tate and his father stopped by early Saturday night. They invited me inside as their guest, but I respectfully declined. Most Angels who had come from all over California and elsewhere hadn’t known Christian, Steve said, but a few remembered him well.

“I brought photographs of Chris on his bike and handed them all out,” he said.

Only one member of his son’s San Diego chapter was around when the Tates showed up.

“He used to lift weights with Chris,” Steve Tate said.

Steve and his dad walked around the campground and visited for a while before deciding to head home rather than stay for the barbecue. Seeing Angels having fun with family and friends felt good. Enjoying Christian’s brothers’ company felt good.

But the void hammered hurt into their hearts.

For the loving family of a murder victim, pain always looms nearby. For a Tate, no matter how many Angels get together for a run, the most important one will always be missing.

Without renewed interest from police, Tate knows his son’s death will continue to be forgotten.

“I think my son deserves more than that,” Tate said. “I have not had one call from any law enforcement officer saying, ‘Steve we haven’t given up on you.’  I think about it every day. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about my son. But there’s no closure.”

Steve Tate meant no disrespect when he said he believed police might have worked a whole lot harder to solve the case had it been a cop’s kid who died on that motorcycle rather than his boy. But he will always hold cops responsible for a thorough, ongoing investigation.

“It’s the responsibility of the police, by God, that was my son, he was a good boy. It’s no closer than it was three years ago.”

“I want justice,” he said.

After almost two decades we should all still want justice.

When I checked last month with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, homicide detectives called the Tate murder “an open cold case” and said they could provide no other information. Police wouldn’t even tell me what reports I could see or if they returned Tate’s prized motorcycle to his family.

Police in California and elsewhere need to work harder. If Christian Tate had been a cop’s son like I am, I have no doubt investigators would have taken his death more seriously and treated the family with ongoing respect.

Steve Tate still has not heard from police at any level.

Although President Joe Biden’s Justice Department still works overtime to hunt down outlaw motorcycle club criminals, how much time do agents put into tracking down killers who gun down unarmed outlaw motorcycle club members?  What do federal law enforcement officials at the FBI, the ATF and the DEA know about Christian Tate’s murder? Even decorated retired special agents should want to use all their muscle to right a vicious wrong. 

Did the feds ever locate and interview “Bill?” How hard did America’s supposedly best and brightest gangbusters look for the mystery Mongol that the government’s own indictment says Hells Angels believed had been bragging about killing Christian Harvey Tate?

If cops past and present put half the time into tracking murder suspects that Grandpa Tate put into nurturing and transplanting orchids, America would be far better off because liberty and justice for all then might truly be served.

Not long before he died in 2004, Harvey Tate spent an afternoon with me and my wife, walking us slowly, gently and ever so carefully through the meticulous process of transplanting some of his exquisite plants. With the delicate touch of a surgeon this weathered and seasoned motorcycle master arranged flowers, spliced stalks and patted down dirt in all the right places.

Then he smiled his Wild West cowboy smile and presented us with the newly repotted flowers to take home as earthborn bounty given in love from one living soul to others willing to care for nature’s gifts.

The last time I saw Harvey Tate was in the intensive care unit before he died at 79, after a strong male nurse asked if Grandpa could hear him and to squeeze his hand if he could. When he took Grandpa Tate’s hand he quickly flinched, squinting in pain as this seemingly unconscious yet still powerful old man on his death bed squeezed, held on and refused to let go.

We should all refuse to let go of Christian Harvey Tate’s unsolved murder. We should all hold on and squeeze as hard as we can.

Justice only defines our savage land as long as we do something about injustice.

Only then do we step away from the edge.

Only then do we continue to live free and ride.

By the time I got home from President Joe Biden’s Scranton speech last month, I stood with my official White House issued Gonzo Today press credential hanging from my neck, fuming in the kitchen, threatening to tear off my white dress shirt without unbuttoning the buttons.

My fingers hurt so much from trying to undo the tight plastic fasteners on my starched Van Heusen I worried I wouldn’t be able to open my beers.

But my wife Stephanie talked me down from the madness of Biden’s talk at the trolley museum, gently unbuttoning my long-sleeved professional attire. Despite her expertise in soothing the savage beast, I overflowed with a torrent of reaction to the worst of what I had just witnessed: the presidential incoherence, the privileged child, the cupcakes and the masks.

Standing outside in beautiful fall weather before a mostly white male invitation-only crowd of political apostles, the President of the United States took off on yet another irrational flight over the cuckoo’s nest. Pleased with himself and his captive audience of about 100 VIPs, Biden expected applause and got it, telling one disjointed story after another, recalling with a doddering sense of nostalgia his Scranton roots.

Accuracy is not next to godliness for Biden. Was he exaggerating or was the President simply “building back better,” the official theme of his speech and proposed signature legislation.

I won’t ask the White House for clarity.

Overbearing staff there defy explanation.

I also won’t ask my shifty Scranton Hill Section neighbor U.S. Sen. Bob Casey or faltering congressman, U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, to interpret their leader’s moral message. These two Democratic Party company men long ago stopped responding to my phone calls, emails and legitimate questions as an aggressive member of the press.

That’s OK. I’m not talking to them, either.

Biden?

I’ll talk with Biden.

For now.

But Biden’s handlers don’t want him to talk to me or you unless you’re linked to lobbyists, campaign contributors or other bloated plutocrats who can do them ample political good. I asked twice in writing for a five-minute interview with Biden.

Overweening White House weenies ignored my requests.

That’s one reason I’m dangerous. I’m a longtime Democrat, a Scranton resident who voted for Biden. I’m also a harsh critic and caustic member of the press who believes American civic activism and journalism must hold elected and appointed officials accountable.

If I supported Donald Trump and his maniac army, Democrats could just write me off, marginalize my public policy concerns and point to me like I just flew in after hanging upside down in a cave.

But I’m one of them.

If the Democratic Party elite view me this way, how do they view you? No wonder good Americans who want to believe in good government feel marginalized, abandoned and discouraged by the system.

Biden’s jumbled trip down memory lane last month angered me. Only minutes into his speech, he launched into a raving mad story about riding the Amtrak train, a twisted tale he has told many times on the campaign trail that CNN debunked back in June.

I hate to do this to you, but you need to know just how unbalanced Biden sounded as he stumbled through his wilted thought salad that made me squirm. What follows is the President’s word-for-word ramble straight from the White House transcript of Biden’s speech. You are free to open a bottle of wine, eat an edible or brew a soothing cup of chamomile tea as you read on.

Biden said:

“And I — I just want you to know that Amtrak is here. They can tell you that you could — you should name half the line after me. (Laughter.) I am most railroad guy you ever going to meet: 2,100,000 miles on Amtrak. Hear me now? Not a joke. (Applause.)

What happened was when you are a President or Vice President, they keep meticulous mileage of when you fly an Air Force aircraft. And so, about — I guess it was seven years into — to my tenure as Vice President. And I used to always like to take Amtrak home on Friday. My — I’d try to go home and see my mom, who was living with us at the time after my dad passed, and I’d try to get home.

And the Secret Service are wonderful. They’re the best in the world. They never liked me taking Amtrak because it stops too often and too many people get on and you don’t know —

And — but, I — there was a — but I — it turned out I was about number three in seniority on the road at the time, if you — well, in terms of the actual time on the road.

And a lot of the folks in Amtrak became my family. Not a joke. I’d ride every day. I commuted every single day for 36 years as pres- — Vice President of the United States. After my wife and daughter were killed, I went home to see my family and never stopped going — doing that.

And so, Angelo Negri was from — you remember Ang? Ang came up to me one day when I was — when they just had announced that I had flown 1 million some — X-number of miles on Air Force aircraft. And Ang comes up, and I’m getting into the car, and he goes, “Joey, baby. What do you…” And I thought the Secret Service was going to shoot him. (Laughter.) I said, “No, no, no, no. He’s good. He’s good.” It’s a true story.

And he said, “I just read — big deal. Big deal…” — whatever is was — “…1,200,000 miles Air Force. You know how many miles you did Amtrak?” And I said, “No, Ang. I don’t have any idea, pal.”

He said, “Let me tell you. We were at the retirement dinner.” And he said, “We added it up. You averaged a hundred- — I think it says — -twenty-one days a year. One hundred and twenty-one days. Your 36 years, plus as Vice President. Boom, boom. You have traveled over 2 million miles, Joe. I don’t want to hear any more about the Air Force.” (Laughter.)”

Stop!

Stop!

In the name of God and all that’s holy, stop!

Here’s the CNN link that examines Biden’s story.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/30/politics/fact-check-biden-amtrak-angelo-negri-miles-traveled/index.html

With know-it-all White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki looking on (I didn’t see her but her photograph appeared the next day in the Scranton Times-Tribune), Biden seemed thrilled to regale the happy yes-people who filled several rows of seats cordoned off from the working press with his endless saga.

Then Biden got worse, calling Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti “Madam Mayor” while praising her and the job she’s doing.  For Biden to address Cognetti, easily the most competent public official in the history of the city, with such an antiquated 1950s term, the President again shows his oblivious Father Knows Best obsolescence. Scranton’s no longer the lost land of Leave It to Beaver. Or is it? Even when Biden’s complimenting Scranton’s first woman mayor he’s insulting her.

A United States president exhibiting blind benevolent sexism is not good for anybody’s progress, including the future of the lone child who sat among invitees with his state representative father – my state legislator Kyle Mullins, another anointed golden boy Democrat who got my vote when he ran for office.

Mullins flouted all sense of ethics by using his public service position to benefit a blood relative. Why didn’t Mullins give a deserving Scranton child from any number of different cultures a chance to see and meet the President? Why push his own little prince to the front of the line instead of helping a needy youngster he’s paid well to represent?

I’ll tell you why.

Because Mullins flaunts real Scranton values of privilege that control access in politics and business – connections Biden purposely overlooks whenever he romanticizes Scranton values he claims built his “character” yet are non-existent for people who lack inner circle political clout.

Then came the icing on the cake, or should we say cupcakes.

A traveling national pool reporter, in one of the last official emails of the trip, singled out a Scranton business, providing free advertising and promotion other Scranton businesses might love to receive.

“Served on board during dinner were a variety of mini cupcakes from Cupa Cake, a Scranton bakery, including carmel apple, pumpkin, birthday cake, mint fudge and almond joy,” wrote pool reporter Emily Goodin, Senior U.S. Political Reporter for the Daily Mail who traveled on Air Force One for the Scranton pep rally.

How did those Scranton cupcakes get onboard Air Force One in the first place? Did Secret Service agents clear the confections? Are those tasty hometown treats politically connected? Did somebody sitting in the VIP section have a cupcake cousin with sticky fingers stuck in the sugary batter?

Mon dieu!

If the peasants have no bread, let them eat cake!

What’s far more sour than sweet, though, is the way the highly-controlled “Build Back Biden” celebration concluded with the whole cast of characters converging near the front of the stage.

Warmup speakers had included Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, Casey, Cartwright and Cognetti. Each wore a mask he and she removed when speaking. Each replaced the mask when finished until they took their seats in the audience. Sitting unmasked for the one-man show, they laughed, applauded, listened and nodded to Biden’s words.

Except to take an occasional breather far away from anyone, I wore my mask for the entire event.

After wrapping up his almost 50-minute speech, Biden came ambling unmasked off the podium and into the swarming crowd of well-wishers.  Maybe because they felt immune in the open-air setting, Wolf, Casey, Cartwright, Cognetti and the rest of the pack (except for three masked people I counted) gushed and rushed minus masks, kissing, hugging, backslapping and schmoozing in a risky space – a cramped pressed flesh, high-spray droplet-laden petri dish of a viral zone that easily could have become coronavirus toxic for them and others near them – including the President.

Such self-absorbed herd disunity exhibits the lengths to which political animals run amok will go to contaminate the body politic with reckless judgement. Were all VIPS vaccinated? If not, were those miscreants tested? Was anybody carrying the disease? Did anybody think to ask?

“Do as I say, not as I do” Scranton politics is downright infectious.

“Not a joke,” Biden said at one point during his speech.

I’m not kidding, either.

Nobody cognizant enough to face stark reality in Scranton is laughing.

I’m having a flashback.

A blinding California sun hangs like an exploding navel orange in the boundless sky, making me squint in the sweltering summer glare of celebrity.

I think I see a zebra. 

This afternoon in 2005 I’m a guest at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch near Los Olivos, about 125 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Googly-eyed, cramped and sitting with my knees to my chin, I’m riding the kiddie train that chugs through the sprawling 2,700 acre estate.

FOX television blowhard Geraldo Rivera is sitting behind me. Raymone Bain, Michael’s glitzy public relations spokeswoman who invited me to visit, is sitting in Geraldo’s lap. They’re giggling.

I spot my reflection as we pass a polished children’s sliding board. I am the man in the mirror. I’m also a member of the press.

Twenty minutes later I’m standing in Michael’s private Neverland movie theater where countless poor Black and Brown children from inner-city LA race through the lobby grabbing all the free candy bars and free popcorn their tiny hands can carry.

I’m getting antsy.

Heading to the men’s room, I face the wall taking care of business at the urinal when sappy slaphappy music assaults my ears. The following lyrics warble through the loudspeaker: Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay; My, oh, my, what a wonderful day; Plenty of sunshine headin’ my way; Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay!

Ill at ease that Mister Bluebird’s on my shoulder, I want to scream but worry I’ll frighten the kids who by virtue of Michael welcoming them to his house have more than enough reason to be afraid. Looking skyward I scan the flashy toilet for hidden cameras, hastily zip-a-dee-doo-da my unzipped fly and flee.

Next stop the merry-go-round where calliope boop beep beep boop beep beep blasts overload my senses. Ready to freak out I call my partner Stephanie.

“You hear that?”

I hold the cell phone to lunatic tunes and the rising and falling of wooden horses. Painted colors swirl licorice red, sweet pea green and hazy purple. Stallions sneer, showing carved teeth in hideous grins as they call me to trip the light fantastic like I’m Peter Pan refusing to grow up.

Temptation beckons.

”Can I go on the merry-go-round, Stephanie?”

She talks me down the way acid guru Timothy Leary once guided countless mind-blown wayfarers to a safe space.

“Breathe,” she says. “Breathe.”

Now I run to one of many fully-stocked ice cream carts Michael has placed around his amusement park near a flock of dirty flamingos that run frantically back and forth like wild turkeys sensing the holiday ax. I reach deep inside, grabbing two white paper snow cone cups as mementoes to one day remind me I really was there.

And I really was there.

But other than flashbacks all that remains of my adventure down the fairy tale rabid hole are those cups. All these years later I’m suffering yet another Neverland hallucination. LSD isn’t the only mental power source to instigate bad trips to yesteryear. Harsh reality easily jars brain cells and sends me crashing face-forward through the looking glass.

Back in Scranton, PA, for almost 15 years, my inner vision too often returns to when Michael stood trial on child molestation charges in 2005 in Santa Maria, CA, where I lived and worked at the daily newspaper. Now, instead of covering the Jackson trial and spending each hectic day for four months in a courtroom with the so-called King of Pop, my main news concern is whether President Joe Biden will talk to me.

This flashback kicked in after I emailed the White House a September 30 request asking to be the first Scranton hometown journalist (Gonzo Today White House Correspondent, in case you forgot) to score a telephone interview with the President. Amanda Finney, chief of staff for the White House press office, quickly wrote back.

“Thanks so much for reaching out!”

That triggered my non compos mentis reaction. What? What did she say? Did she say, “reaching out” like in Michael’s classic hit where he sings “I’ll just reach out my hand to you?” As in, “Just call my name, I’ll be there. I’ll be there?” Just call my name, I’ll be there!!!

Fueled by sneaky Washington bureaucrats, Finney’s trite government response sparked more than simple personal distress. Her inane sentence propelled me into a psychotomimetic spiral I will forever endure as a result of severe frontal lobular encounters of the worst kind with Michael.

These ABCs of my freaky brush with fame loom large in my mind, often forcing me back to the once-in-a-lifetime day Michael and I found ourselves alone and staring into each other’s eyes.

That day I decided to be the last person in the courtroom before Michael left on a break. I stayed in my aisle seat near the back of the room as he turned from the defense table and began his slow walk, not as slow as the day he showed up in his pajamas, but slow nonetheless. I watched him approach with his long bobbing black hair, his dancer’s delicate balance and huge pale hands with fingers that reminded me of Mickey Mouse hands.

Captivated by his finely tailored suit, the bright armband, the glittering sheen of his shirt and medallion, I kept my eyes peeled as he drew near. Thick fingers the size of sausages on his left hand twitched as he slowly raised his arm.

I first met Michael during his 2002 concert contract dispute civil trial when we talked briefly in a courthouse hallway about a wild spider that bit him, causing his hand to swell. This time, though, with his hand long healed, his jumbo mitt dangled grotesquely by his side as he got closer and closer, continuing to slowly raise his arm higher and higher.

Then, with all the potent power of bodi mindfulness, instant karma and enlightenment rolled into one, I knew. Just like the song, Michael was reaching out to me!

That’s when I sensed his fear – fear of me and what I might do to tell the world what I believed. Michael now knew I believed he had committed the sordid sex crimes against the child he stood accused of molesting.

Before the trial began, back before I visited Neverland, Michael had instructed his PR agent Baine to call me and say he read my columns and liked them. But the columns I wrote during the trial as well as live daily commentary I provided to Sky News and its massive European audience insinuated and eventually proclaimed his guilt. My words laid bare mounting evidence against him prosecutors presented at trial.

Yes, jurors should convict Michael on all ten counts. Yes, he lived a sick and dangerous life. Yes, he should go to prison. Michael knew if I believed he did it the jury might believe he did it.

That’s why he was reaching out.

And I was there, reaching back the way a chaplain reaches out to a condemned inmate or a hospice worker reaches out to a dying patient. Taking Michael’s left hand in my left hand, the same hand on which he wore his white glove when he debuted the Moon Walk in 1983 during a live Motown TV special, I felt his firm yet soft grip.

Our eyes locked as he spoke in a throaty off-the-wall whisper.

“How are you?”

Leery and taken by surprise, I responded.

“Good,” I said.

We continued to hold hands.

I kept looking at him.

He kept looking at me.

The handshake began to feel awkward. Two long seconds passed. Our firm fixing-of-the-fingers felt embarrassing. I sensed Michael’s pulse, his heartbeat. And our handclasp just got downright weird. When the grip felt more like a grope, I pulled back from his slick touch. Michael moved on, a sad ghost floating through a tortured fever dream.

A few weeks later I sat in the row behind Janet and La Toya, Katherine and Joe and other Jackson family members and watched when jurors acquitted Michael on all counts. A conviction could have imprisoned him for life. This stunning victory for him and his army of fans that still believes in their idol’s innocence validated all their illusory lives.

Four years later, on June 25, 2009, Michael died at 50 of a propofol drug overdose at the hands of another bloodsucking enabler, this time a physician who helped the global superstar permanently self-destruct.

At 70 I’m alive and well despite the cultural chaos surrounding my meeting Michael forever imprinted on my aging psyche, including getting assaulted by a uniformed, on duty Santa Maria cop, cursed by chanting throngs of Michael’s international supporters as I walked into the courthouse each day and hounded by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

https://classic.teamcoco.com/late-night-with-conan-obrien/season-12/episode-121/triumph-the-insult-comic-dog-michael-jackson-fans?playlist=x%3BeyJ0eXBlIjoidGFnIiwiaWQiOjEwMzN9

When a new year blossomed after the 2005 trial, new corporate owners bought my newspaper and, failing to recognize my worth, fired me without advance notice.

Although Joe Biden, trying to be funny during a 1985 fundraiser, introduced a Black band member as “our vocalist tonight, Michael Jackson,” I’ll bet the President never held hands with the real superstar. If not, I’ll gladly reach out my hand when he invites me to the Oval Office for an interview. The President can hold the hand that held the hand of a world-renowned star.

Maybe Biden’s approval ratings will rise.

Either way, just call my name, I’ll be there.

I’ll be there.

Rusty received the letter Saturday afternoon, read the hand-printed message on smudged white copy paper folded three times, went back to bed and lay awake staring at the ceiling until 6 a.m. Sunday morning. When he got up for early Mass the scrawled words still flashed in his head.

“Remember me in Vietnam? You rape me. You burned our hooch at Zippo party. My mother and father die. Call me Rusty from Scranton you say. See you next week Rusty from Scranton.”

At St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church that morning 77-year-old Rusty sat alone in the back, remaining seated during communion sweating fat drips that stained the knees of his dress pants. He dropped a $5 bill into the basket for the collection and left as soon as the priest told him to go in peace. Earlier he ignored other parishioners’ extended hands as they offered the sign of peace.

That night Rusty put the Phillies game on TV, but after eight innings couldn’t tell you the score. The ham sandwich on a hard roll he made for dinner made him cough when a chunk of raw Bermuda onion went down the wrong pipe. His eyes watered from choking and crying as he pushed away the plate.

The second letter arrived Monday.

“Want to see you soon,” the letter said in blood red marker.

Heavy in the front pocket of his short sleeve shirt, the thick square of his silver Zippo lighter felt like a hot brick burning into his heart. The smooth and scratched engraving across the front said, “Kill ’em all. Let God sort ’em out.”

The girl would be 66. That day in the rice paddy she said she was 13. He had just turned 24.

Rusty pulled his old deer rifle out of the closet, his mind banging irrational thoughts against the walls of his brain like a demolition derby at the fairgrounds. He didn’t remember telling the girl his name or his hometown. Wild on adrenaline, running amok in a killing frenzy, he watched his men bayonet toddlers, execute crying mamasans and praying papasans. He ordered his men to machine gun young women and children they pushed into a ditch. One soldier cut out the tongue of a teenager. Another scalped an old man. He should have shot her when he finished but he just pulled up his pants, turned and killed other children.

And babies?

And babies.

The pounding on the door made Rusty jump. Needing to pee but rushing to open the door just a crack he faced Fred from the neighborhood American Legion post saluting on the front porch.

“You ready, Sarge?”

“I’m not going,” Rusty said.

“What do you mean you’re not going? All the guys are waiting at the Legion ceremony for you senior citizen ’Nam vets. The congressman’s going to give you a commendation for all those medals you won in the war. You’re a real hero.”

“No, no I’m not,” Rusty said.

The truth hurt.

Rusty knew who and what he was.

The third letter came Tuesday.

“Almost time boom boom,” the letter said.

Rusty went into the bathroom and threw up.

The last letter arrived Wednesday.

“Get some,” it said.

Soldiers said those two words all the time, U.S. Army talk for killing North Vietnamese regulars, Vietcong guerrillas and anybody else who deserved to die: men, women and children all less than human animals that would kill him so he killed them first. In those days Rusty Collins stood for power, for glory for America the beautiful. Back then he did as he pleased. In return his men and his country loved him for his service. Fifty three years ago he felt invincible.

Today he just felt scared.

No letter arrived the next day. Rusty hid crouched behind the coal bin in the cellar of the house where he was raised. No letter the next day either. Rusty knew because he crawled on his belly like a snake to open the door, jump up to check the empty mail box, slam the door behind him and drop to the floor to slither back to his hiding place.

She was coming.

She was on her way.

Rusty didn’t know her name.

He just knew he was doomed.

Five days later, watching a slim visitor approach his house from the attic window where he set up an observation post, all Rusty could really see looking down was the top of the hat, one of those Non La conical leaf hats VC women wore on search and destroy missions. The visitor walked slowly to the front steps, climbed in a swift motion to the porch, rang the doorbell and waited.

That’s when Rusty turned away from the window, tied the blue nylon rope around his neck, dropped to his knees, closed his eyes and thrust his big body forward until severe pressure on his neck shut down the oxygen flow and he blacked out. Falling forward as dead weight, he went still with the anguished cries of the dying pounding in his ears.

Rusty didn’t leave a note.

The visitor did.

When nobody answered the door the skinny caller in the camouflage jacket, jungle boots and faded farmer jeans wrote a few words and stuffed the paper into the mailbox.

“Sorry I missed you, buddy. I wanted to surprise you after looking for you all these years. Then I remembered Rusty from Scranton. I even wore one of them gook cone head hats I took as a souvenir to help bring back the good times. Remember our little virgin of the rice paddy? Bet she remembers us. Haha. I’ll stop back later. Get some. Your combat brother, Ernest.”