middle east

Among other things, my father wanted to draw a line in the long hallway of our house, a time line, so to speak, to trace the happenings of Watergate. He was "damned certain" he could figure out who Deep Throat was if only he could do this. My mother, in turn, hid all pencils. And Dad wouldn't do it in crayon.

My dad got stuck in the Denver airport one time. He'd been to Anaheim; he worked in Systems Analysis and he was always taking the red-eye for some weird jaunt that he couldn't tell us about; he was in Silocon Valley before it had that name. And he hated to travel.

By the time he got to Denver, flights were stopped. The snow was blinding. My father spotted a taxi driver, an "Arab" and offered him a thousand bucks to drive Dad to Topeka. The Arab grinned broadly and it was ON, baby.

Dad said he just sat in the backseat and prayed. He said this "raghead" passed other cars, even semis, and hooted with delight every time he skidded. He kept turning to my father and saying, "What great fun for us two, no?" and my father would just grunt.

When they got here, Dad asked the guy to wait while he came in to get the thousand dollars. The guy accepted the money and said, "Good bye, dear dear friend!"

My father said, "I'm not your dear dear friend. I'm a paying customer."

The Arab pulled out of our treacherous driveway yelling out the window, "Good-bye, dear dear friend!" and my dad muttered something.

Then my dad came up with an idea. He figured out, on that taxi trip, that middle easteners are not afraid of dying. So he figured our mass weaponry was a waste.

His idea was to TP Iran. That is correct: drop thousands upon thousands of rolls of toilet paper over the middle east, preferably in the rain.

Not one to hide inspiration, he wrote up his "plan" and sent it to the President. I believe it was Jimmy Carter at the time.

He should not have been shocked when three days later, two gentlemen "wearing suspicious shoes" were ushered into his office. My father was very high-up on the totem pole, he was brilliant and driven. His office was the only corner office and had windows all around, and he had his own secretary, an elderly woman named Gladys who appeared to understand him. (My father had an eerie habit of non-sequiters, just right in the middle of a conversation he'd say "I wonder what a THREE-inch nail would do?" and we'd just pause and go on. We never knew what the hell he was talking about.)

The men visiting were FBI. Or CIA. Or the Secret Service. It depends upon what mood my father was in when he told this story.

One of the men said, "The President is in receipt of your letter outlining an attack plan upon the Middle East."

My father chuckled and said, "Well, did he like it? Cheap, easy and nobody dies. What'd he say?"

The 'bad cop' FBI/CIA/Secret Service guy said, "He won't be seeing it, Mr. Smith. But we'd like to know about...your 'plan'."

My father leaned back and studied them. Finally he said, "Well hell, I wrote the plan. I figured you boys could handle it from here!"

There was more talk back and forth. They asked if my father had a cache of toilet paper. Dad said, "God no. I'd suggest hitting up Kimberly-Clark for the product, they'll probably donate. And who makes some of the others? They'd probably ALL donate in the name of peace."

My father got it, all right. He knew he was in trouble. But, as he said later, he just couldn't take it seriously. Not after Watergate "for chrissake".

The men finally left, nothing more was said. At least, not that my father reported.

My father died on November 12, 1995. I found, on the internet, a "Known Dissident" file.

My father is on that list.

God he must love that.

And so do I.