My old friend Bob Kenyon was the town drunk for decades in Nevada City
CA. His friend Judge Wilson, the cracker barrel judge of Truckee fame,
told him after yet another drunk-in-public arrest, "Bob, this time I'm
saving your life. Six months." Bob wound up in the Nevada County CA
jail at the same time Timothy Leary was being kept there on a witness
protection program. I asked him once what Leary was like.
"He couldn't play chess worth a shit," Bob said. The next day he
brought me a ruby-faced digital wristwatch that showed the time in
line segments when you pressed a button on the side. He had won it
from Leary in a chess game. Later, I passed it on to a friend who was
born on April 16, 1943, the birthday of LSD.
Bob had an uncanny sense of what was going on around him. He was the
guy who brought the jokes and stories from one shop to another every
morning as he made his rounds. He also had the insight of a jazz
clarinetist before WWII rearranged his face in a torpedo attack on his
ship.
One observation he made for me is appropriate to what the General
Motors story is today. He pointed out that a fellow came into town,
opened a hat store, sold everybody in town a hat, then sold the store
and left town.
This is a micro version of what GM has done on a macro level: arrived
as a corporation with a person's rights, sold the country a bill of
goods (i.e., individual car ownership at the expense of mass transit),
sold the ravaged store to the taxpayer, and then left the hemisphere.
By the way, after six months in jail, Bob never had another drink or
cigarette.
Jail works.
We should use it.
Dan Scanlan
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