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A Language He Understood

When the taxi passed through the main gate at Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Siagon the driver should have turned left and taken the shortest route into the city. But the driver turned right instead and took a longer, less traveled road toward Siagon, by way of a rubber plantation.

During the Viet Nam War my brother-in-law, Jack Lambert, then a captain, later a colonel, was stationed for a year at Tan Son Nhut. Normally he would have taken a Navy bus to his quarters in Siagon but he had worked late, it was after 10, and now he had to take a cab.

Capt. Jack E. Lambert
Capt. Jack E. Lambert

The wrong turn made Jack nervous, because three American officers had simply disappeared from the air base. Had they been kidnapped? By a taxi driver? No one ever knew what happened to them.

Jack tapped the driver on the shoulder, pointed back in the other direction, away from the rubber plantation.

“I told him to turn around and go back.”

But the driver kept going.

He told Jack, “No good.” But did he really understand what Jack wanted him to do?

When the driver missed a second turn, and headed toward the coast, Jack was more persuasive –he pulled a .45 caliber pistol and put it against the man’s head, behind his ear.

Now the driver understood perfectly. He turned around and took the shorter route.

Postscript:

“He did a 180,” Jack said. “I would have shot him if he had kept going.”

Coming Monday: A New Boy

Calm Down, Pat

During the 42 years I worked as a newspaperman I made a couple of wrong turns into editing, once for eight months, once for 18 months. I thought it was time to try to start working my way up the management ladder. I had done all right at reporting so they pretty much had to give me a shot.

I didn’t like editing and, truth be told, I wasn’t all that good at it.

As a reporter it got to the point where I rarely had to work with anybody I didn’t respect, who couldn’t carry their end of the stick. As an editor it wasn’t that way, I had to make do with the reporters I was given — some of whom were excellent, some of whom were, I’m being generous, pretty average.

There wasn’t anything I could do about that. It was frustrating. I couldn’t fire them or discipline them. And I didn’t have the temperament for holding someone’s hand, coaxing good work out of them or, at least, better work.

This is what one reporter said I needed.
A reporter told me I needed less of one and more of the other.

Maybe I was a little too intense.

I got into a dispute in The News & Observer parking lot one afternoon with another N&O employee who had parked in my spot twice.

“You better calm down,” he told me, “before you have a coronary.”

A reporter who worked for me, at least in theory, told me the same thing, but more gently. He said I ought to get a dog and quit drinking coffee.

Coming Friday: A Language He Understood