by Earl Nelson
It was just as well I didn’t get the trophy; Mary might hock it for the money. Maybe not hock it but she could stain it by serving tea.
After the official presentation, I had to do interviews. Jim MacKay was first up. He had a surprise for me. His network had flown in Coach Crowley and Coach Stone.
We had a brief reunion. You could boil the interview down to one phrase, “Who would have thought.”
I asked them how the athletic programs were doing at BHS. It was strange to think I would have just graduated last June. All was fine with the school. Golf was now an immensely popular sport at the high school and even at the junior high level.
I was asked if I would give a talk if I was ever in the area. I said I would, but the chances were slim.
Coach Crowley presented me with a BHS football autographed by the players from the class of 1962. Written on it was thanks for not playing football and best of luck in golf. Smartasses.
Coach Stone had brought a new box of golf balls and asked me to autograph them, he would hand them out to the golf team and any supporters who deserved one. I thought it was over the top but signed them.
After that, it was the reporter wolfpack. Now that I had a grand slam and proved myself to be the best golfer in the world what were my plans?
“I need to fly to China and check on port construction, followed by a trip to Vietnam for the same reason. After that to Australia to buy a station, then to England to rob some dogs for the Queen.”
The last had them talking to each other. I used the slight silence to thank them and ducked out.
Back at the rental house confusion reigned, and a celebration had started. There was a slew of telegrams from world leaders.
I loved the one from North Korea, their leader for life told me if I came there, he would beat my ass in golf. I didn’t doubt it, he would win even if he had to have my legs cut off. Think I will pass on that match.
People who none of us knew were coming in the door. Dad finally let out one of his piercing whistles which I had never been able to do. It got everyone's attention.
“Everyone out right now. I’ve called the cops.”
That worked. The only people left were our group and a young couple. Dad asked them why they stayed. They explained they were the Bacons, and it was their house which they had rented to us.
They were staying with friends across the street and were scared to death the house would be destroyed. They had come over to see what was happening.
Now they knew it was under control they would go back across the street. Their baby Kevin needed his parents.
There were all sorts of phone calls and more telegrams. I was asked to do the complete round of TV shows but didn’t accept any of them. I needed some quiet time to decompress and remind myself that I wasn’t the best golfer in the world.
The best golfer was one of those professionals who would do this day in and day out for years. I truly was an amateur.
The next morning, we took separate limos to the airport. We had a hard time getting out of the neighborhood. The police had blocked off access to the street we were on, but there was a line of TV trucks and reporters from all over the world waiting for us.
There had been one telephone call I couldn’t ignore. JFK wanted me to stop by the White House.
I took a limo down to DC. My 707 would be flown to Baltimore to pick me up for my trip to LA. The ride down took the better part of three hours. This gave me plenty of time to worry about my future.
My immediate future was in DC, I was certain the Kennedys just wanted to congratulate me in person and have a photo op.
My concern was what I was getting into on the world stage. So far, I had been acting on impulse and had been lucky. As much as I hated to admit it John Kennedy had been correct when he said I wasn’t devious, but the Chinese were.
This could be true of every world leader and their staff that I dealt with. Each leader owed their allegiance to their country and should try to get the best for the country. If Rick Jackson got caught in the middle, oh well.
This included those I have trusted the most. Namely Queen Elizabeth. Now Empress Ping was on the list of those that I trusted but had a country to take care of. I knew the Empress could be ruthless.
Then there were those that I owed my best. My family of course, but also the Jackson Enterprise employees.
Now I was the Duke of Hong Kong, I had been told to take care of those people. Did I owe it to them?
Through my businesses, I was helping England, China, Germany, and the United States. What if it became a choice of my business or a friendly country? Should I go with my feelings or the cold calculations of accounting? What if there is no happy medium?
I had Recently had to play hardball with the Kennedys, and it came out okay. Did I have it in me to do this regularly? Would I lose my soul in the process?
Faking it in the movies is one thing, real-life another. Thinking of my recent school days they were a permanent holiday compared to what I was now facing.
On reaching the White House I found that I was half right. There were congratulations and a photo op. There was also a more serious discussion.
JFK started with, “Rick, you have proved adept at dealing with world leaders. For someone, your age amazingly so. I would like you to continue what you are doing but with a limited ambassador's portfolio.”
“Your primary mission would be to gather information.”
“What sort of information?”
Thoughts of James Bond went through my head. When it had been a daydream or movie part it sounded fun. This was scary.
“In your conversation with leaders, you will be told what they want, not only from you but the United States. I would like you to report what you are told directly to me. Then the State Department can match that information up with what we are trying to achieve and come up with a win-win situation.”
“When we try to gather this information through formal channels there are so many filters that the message doesn’t always get through.”
“I can see that. If it is not breaking a confidence, I will do that. But I can see conflicts arising if I’m given information that would benefit the US or England, but not both.”
“If I get a reputation as being a tool for others, I will not be able to see to my business interests. I have to decline your request Mr. President, but I will freely pass on any information which is not in conflict with my goals or something that could harm America.”
The President was gracious, but I could tell I hadn’t won any points today. This was exactly the sort of thing I was worried about on the trip down. Was I up to this?
It was a funny flight from Baltimore to LA. Everyone was up about my golf win. Suddenly, the Grand Slam looked like a childish game. I was playing with the possible fates of millions of people. I sat in my office with the door closed and brooded while John and the flight crew whooped it up.
Chapter 10
By the time we landed in Los Angeles, I had made several decisions. First, if I was going to do a lot of business in China, I had to learn to speak Mandarin. It was the most widely used.
I had to spend serious time in Asia and the various countries I had committed to help. On top of that, I needed to pay more attention to my business operations on a routine basis.
It wasn’t that I didn’t have good people taking care of things, it might be that they were too good and insulated me from the problems that came up.
Not the minor stuff, but I thought some large issues had been handled without my knowledge or input. Not that I would have been able to help, but I would have been able to learn.
When I got home the first thing, I did was to call Jim Williamson and asked him to consider how to set up a daily brief for me of large issues that faced the company and what was being done.
He told me that he already had that in place for himself and all the other company-level managers to keep them apprised of the business in general.
I told h
im that I wanted to be included in the distribution as part of my business education. They were doing a great job of running the company and I would be a fool to think I could do better at this stage of my life.
He replied that I might surprise myself, but in general, he agreed. The truth of the matter was that things had grown so quickly that every member of the management team was stretched in their growth.
I asked him if he knew of any Chinese immersion courses in the area. I shouldn’t have been surprised when I found out that our company already had a contract with one for our engineers going to China and other points in the Orient.
There also was a group that taught our engineers Spanish. That I didn’t need. There weren’t any schools that taught Russian. I asked him to have a look around for one. It also was on my list. That and German.
From wondering how I would spend my time, now I didn’t have enough.
Dr. Deming’s trip to Hong Kong had been set up five weeks from then and I had agreed to go so I had time to spend one month in the immersion course. There was a side benefit to taking the course. I would disappear from the public eye for a month. That would allow time for my current notoriety to settle down.
I did take the time to drive over to the Forestry Service station, sorry George, to thank Sam for all his good work.
He told me he was happy that I had won and that I was paying to keep the practice range up for the Forestry Service. He and the head ranger were talking about setting up a nine-hole course with the goal of having eighteen in the future. Some hardship post this would be!
That evening Nina and I went out to dinner at the Brown Derby. We both knew the result would be our pictures in the tabloids with lurid headlines. So be it.
We had a nice time talking together. Things had changed between us, there was no groping in the backseat at a drive-in now, and we were more serious about getting to know each other.
We were both afraid of each other. Before we had a natural acceptance of each other. Now we examined our thoughts and actions. It was a slower but truer learning experience. Who was this person and how did we relate became the unspoken question behind almost every comment? The more I learned about Nina the more I liked her.
I’m not going to use the love word because I’m not certain what that is, but I knew I liked her, and she was my best friend in the world. Did I mention that she is very good-looking in every sense of the term?
The next week the tabloids had their field day. The most common theme was, “Reunited, pregnant?” We both had many phone calls and were badgered in public to deny or confirm the stories. We both knew better than to say anything but, “No comment,” and not even that if possible.
If there were witnesses available it was no comment, in private nothing.
Jim Williamson got back to me; a slot had opened in the Chinese immersion course. I grabbed it starting immediately. It would get me out of the public eye for a month.
I imagined that I would go to this office building and be immersed in the language eight hours a day and then go home.
The reality was I told to pack a week's change of clothes, as laundry would be done on-site. When I went for registration, it was at a hotel that was one step up from a fleabag. I was told it was a typical Beijing hotel, very upscale compared to those out in the country.
Instead of going home every day, I would be living here for the month. When they said immersion, they weren’t kidding. It started at check-in.
The verbal questions were in Chinese, I could answer in English. That was almost fun as I tried to guess what they were asking. I was glad there was no line because it took over half an hour to give my name and address and to be assigned a room.
The course was intense. The company had paid for me to have one on one training. There was a rotating group of instructors that would start on me when I woke up and keep at it until I went to bed.
There was truly little downtime. Meals were the only place where I interacted with other students.
Even there the rule was Chinese only. I had just thought I knew how to use chopsticks. Within a week I could have snatched a fly out of the air if there had been any flies.
My first impression was a dump, but the place was as clean and neat as a pin. Everything was old and worn but clean.
I continued to hate the hole in the ground toilets and vowed to fill the hold of my 707 with rolls of American paper.
After two weeks I realized that I had dreamed in Chinese and was thinking in Mandarin during the day. We talked, we watched movies, and we played games. They had their act together. When I began to look stressed with an exercise, they changed what we were doing.
It was working. One characteristic that I had that few others had was that I could change my accents at will. I could go from speaking Chinese as a native of Beijing, to that of an American, then a Brit from Mayfair to a Spaniard from Madrid.
My instructors would get a pained look when I switched on them. This was the only small revenge I could get. It was funny when one of them would try the accent change. They all sounded over-the-top fake.
One takes one's victories where one can, large or small. From being hailed as the world’s greatest golfer to pestering language instructors within a month was extreme even for me.
Each morning I could go through my exercise routine and take a run. Of course, I was accompanied by an instructor who would talk all the way. The run was always the same guy. He was the only one who could keep up with me and talk at the same time.
One thing that worked in my favor was that Chinese Mandarin was a tonal language, the way a word was pronounced could change its meaning. My facility with accents was a saving grace.
They had a list of three thousand characters which I had to learn. In the time I had, I managed almost fifteen hundred. I was told it would take the three thousand to be able to read a daily newspaper. To come across as educated I needed eight thousand.
By living on-site and working sixteen hours a day I had almost five hundred hours of instruction. The US State department considered Mandarin a category five language, the hardest to learn. They calculated that it takes eighty-eight weeks or twenty-two hundred hours to become proficient.
I would like to say I was a wonder kid; I wasn’t. What I was, was a doggedly determined student. Just like my school days, I spent my time working.
Since I had one on one instruction it was at my learning pace not that of the slowest student in the classroom. When I served my thirty days and was released, I was told that I was rated at ILR Level 2 with limited working proficiency. I could get through a normal day without causing an international incident.
With another thirty days, I would reach ILR Level 3 professional working proficiency as rated by the US government. I don’t know if that was a sales pitch to spend another thirty days, but if so, it didn’t work.
I was so glad to get out of there. I had my driver stop at a Carl’s on the drive home. I was dying for a greasy cheeseburger and fries.
Chapter 11
It was mid-August when I got home, and it was time to fly to Hong Kong. Dr. Deming had already flown over and was touring some manufacturing plants to find out what the state of the art is in Hong Kong.
I got a call from the company that was providing my flight crew. One of the hostesses was getting married and was giving up the flying business. Since my problem with the one that climbed into my bed, they wanted to know if I wanted to interview her replacement.
While they were telling me this, I had a bright idea.
“I’m putting another requirement on the job description. This stewardess also needs to be a native Mandarin speaker. And yes, I would like to interview the person.”
“Why do you want a person who speaks Chinese?”
I explained that I was learning to speak Mandarin and thought that having someone to work with on those long flights would be a bonus.
They found a lady in LA who fit the bill. She was about fifteen years older than me. She ha
d just finished up a degree in pharmaceutical medicine. Like all graduate students, she was dead broke. She was looking for any job until she could find one in her native China.
Tu Youyou was a delight to talk to. Mostly because she didn’t make fun of my limited vocabulary. She was the only one of the three candidates sent that suggested I always have the latest Chinese newspapers on board.
That way I could work on my reading vocabulary then we could talk about the content of the stories so I could learn about the realities of Chinese life.
Her one weakness was she knew absolutely nothing about being a stewardess. I called Hastings Aviation and told them to go ahead and hire another hostess, I was hiring Tu as my interpreter to accompany me on my trips.
She happily agreed to the job offer. It seems she has a boyfriend in China, an old school classmate that she hadn’t seen in a long time.
Halfway through the flight to Hong Kong, I began to wonder if I had made a mistake. The lady was merciless. She drilled and questioned me in Chinese on everything.
I had to read the Chinese newspapers she had brought on board from cover to cover. She would question me hard on the political and financial sections. The depth of her questions made me think she had grown up in that world. The political world had changed, the Empress was now in charge.
When you got down to how the country was run there were few changes. It was very much top-down. Just a different person at the top.
I did find out that being born in the year 1943 made me a Sheep. My lucky numbers are 1 and 7. My mantra is, I am complete all on my own.”
I had never won anything with those numbers, and I know darn well I’m not complete on my own, I need others to be a success. Heck, I wasn’t even that wild about eating grass. So much for Chinese astrology.
Tu told me it was okay not to believe but be careful about sharing that, many Chinese took it seriously and would be offended.
