Charles Murray’s goal in his new book, Coming Apart, the State of White America 1960-2010 is “to induce recognition of the ways in which America is coming apart at the seams–not seams of race or ethnicity but of class.”

Not surprisingly, the ink on the book was hardly dry before liberals began screaming “Foul!” Murray, a libertarian, has been a pariah among liberals ever since his first book, Losing Ground, published in 1984, led to a complete restructuring of America’s disastrous welfare system.

The author’s focus in Coming Apart is the evolution in the last fifty years of two new classes: the new upper class, and the new lower class, which together are imperiling what he terms the American project–the continuing effort to demonstrate that human beings can be free as individuals to live their lives as they see fit, coming together voluntarily to solve their joint problems.

Tocqueville observed that Americans thrive in democracy because they naturally share four values: Industriousness, Honesty, Marriage, and Religiosity. Murray writes that the new lower class is steadily abandoning these values, and the new upper class exacerbates the problem by its failure to understand this.

Murray’s description of the condition of the new lower class is disturbing. These are Americans who have abandoned the core values Tocqueville observed long ago, in favor of living dissolute lives.

The new upper class has a subset Murray labels the narrow elite, numbering not more than 100,000. These are the people who run the nation’s economic, political, and cultural institutions. This is the cohort who most influences and makes social policy. Because they congregate in what Murray calls Superzips-enclaves of high wealth, education and priviledge, they are  physically and culturally isolated from the new lower class, thus oblivious to the conditions and mores of the people for whom they legislate.

The new upper class has liberals and conservatives in their number. Their debate on how to solve the social issues plaguing the country is ineffective because it revolves around how much welfare should be extended. The real issue is how to restore among the new lower class the old ideals: that any kind of honest work is self-actualizing, and that family and faith are the bedrock values for personal happiness. In short, the discussion needs to be about what should be done to create social capital in the community of the new lower class.

The core values are alive and well in the new upper class. However, the unseemliness in many of their life-style excesses diminishes their ability to be the standard bearers for America’s wonderful traditions.

In most parts of the country the new lower class is barely visible, making it easy for those of us who remain culturally in the middle class to say its not our problem. It becomes our problem when the crime, the exploding prison population and indigent health care costs of  the new lower class  put an ever rising tax burden on us.

The American project is in trouble. Rather than present solutions, Murray suggests two ways in which the future of the nation might evolve–one pessimistic, and one optimistic. What we all do in the years ahead will determine how this plays out.

Coming Apart is an important description of a society in peril. If you are reading this, you have a stake in the outcome. Now more than ever, I believe, Americans should consider the state of our community in a thoughtful way and vigorously engage the issues wherever we can. Reading Coming Apart is a good start on the matter.

Cheers,

Rod

What do I make of this? Here’s Brian Williams telling me on the evening news the price of gas will skyrocket this summer. Why’s that, Brian, when I’m staring at a chart showing a collapse of petroleum and gasoline usage?

Oil companies would love for high prices to persist, but storing gas is costly and, sooner or later the stuff moves into consumption channels at a clearing price that will tempt drivers to drive again.

I like Brian. Wish I could afford his tailor. But methinks he’s consulting an economist, and you know how wrong they are. Over at my broker’s, the economist is forecasting an economic recovery. Really? How come the sale of diesel fuel, a proxy for trucking and shipping activity is suddenly unraveling?

The way I see it, the economies of Asia, Latin America, Europe and the US are buried in crushing debt, and will be that way for years. Peak oil production may, indeed, have passed, implying restricted supplies over time.  But that argument has been around since the beginning of the decade and it didn’t keep oil from doing a swan dive in ’08 along with the other markets:

Crude Oil, Monthly

The oil crash in ’08-’09 was even greater than for stocks:

Dow Jones Industrial Average, Monthly

Both stocks and oil have had typical counter trend rallies, and both are now showing signs of exhaustion, so, to me, a rise in gas prices doesn’t compute. Strictly shooting from the hip, I say gas will be under two bucks a gallon by 2016. Sounds nice, but not many folks will be able to fill ‘er up by then.

Observations

For consumption to recover, we’d have to have a big time renewal in consumer confidence. My expectation is that with a global population of some 7 billion persons, there are probably twenty billion spending decisions made every day. For the next few years, most of them are likely to be made with the thought in mind to economize, either out of habit, fear, or desperation.

We know that conventional price forecasting is prone to error  because it is mostly done by projecting the present condition into the future. The situation today is very deceiving. We are seeing better business and more profits and, consequently, the forecasts are for a rosy economy and higher prices for things like gas. The Wave Principle indicates this will turn out to be wrong and the error of this assumption will be hardest on the uprepared. So do prepare.

Cheers,

Rod

The author makes no representation as to the accuracy of the quoted material, but believes the sources to be reliable. No one should consider any part of this presentation as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities whatsoever.

Same thing today: “You need to take on more risk,” says the chief executive officer of the world’s largest money management firm. “You need to have your portfolio 100% in equities.” Another analyst interviewed in USA Today last week said, “The backdrop that is forthcoming is going to be a nightmare for those who are underinvested in U.S. equities.” Still another: “I’m terrified I’m not long (invested) enough!”

All the brokers I survey are on board with the idea of being fully invested, and that’s no surprise. But the stridency in these guys’ pronouncements is a major red flag. At tops, they just seem to have to scream buy, buy, buy!

Investors are just as optimistic. The American Association of Individual Investors poll shows 19% bears today, the same figure as at the all time high in ’07, and a complete flip flop from the 70% bearish reading at the lows in March ’09.

It’s everybody in the pool, now. Mutual funds have no cash left. The cash position is 3.5%, just a shade over the 3.2 figure at the ’07 top (vs. 12% or more at bottoms), so everywhere you look, you see total conviction. This is a very bad thing.

Finally, and this will seem silly, but the News Magazine Cover Story Indicator is operative again: one of the most reliable indicators of an impeding reversal in a rising market is a cover story in a general news magazine featuring a notable figure in finance. Here is the current one:

There are two things about this cover that give me pause: 1) It’s on Warren Buffett, a guy who has always preferred to be out of the limelight, and 2) Buffett is portrayed as The Optimist. How can this be? Buffett always said “We are fearful when others are brave, and very brave when others become fearful.” What has changed? Is this time any different than other wildly enthusiastic tops? With respect for one of the best investment guys of our era, I don’t believe it. Not for a minute.

Observations

Business is brisk for several of my friends. It should be. Optimism seeps into business decision making when the market has risen for a long time. Socionomics tells us to expect this. But, lest it lull you into complacency, the Wave Principle forecast is that the next five thousand point move in the Dow Jones Industrial Average will be down, not up.

Cheers,

Rod

The author makes no representation as to the accuracy of the quoted material, but believes the sources to be reliable. No one should consider any part of this presentation as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities whatsoever.

NFL players are passionate about the game, but ask any retired football player what he misses most about his playing days and he’ll tell you he misses the locker room. Not the room itself, or the wet towels, the dirty uniforms or the jacuzzis or the massage tables. He misses the unity and  camaraderie of a group of talented people with a shared purpose and a selfless commitment to something bigger than themselves.

People like to work together. It is a most human trait. Everyone must meet their own material needs through some kind of work, and I would argue it is most satisfying to do so by being a contributor for a common goal. That’s why I disagree with the notion that the corporation is dead.

Much of the current thinking on the matter posits that, in the future, it’s every man for himself. Go to Amazon and type in “Free Agent Nation, the Future of Working for Yourself” and you get Dan Pink’s book by that name and a raft of similar works: Escape from Corporate America: A Practical Guide for Creating the Career of Your Dreams, Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives, etc., etc., etc..

Well, OK, but you know what? Most of this is a reaction to how dystopian the system has gotten. It sucks, but abandoning the system that  produced the highest standard of living for the greatest percentage of the population in any country in history is a lame idea. Americans don’t like America just now, either, but that’s no reason to move to Tobago.

Great rises in social mood, rises of the type America has experienced for the past eighty years (1932-2012) produce great bull markets, an excess of risk taking, and a power vacuum that comes from complacently permitting the leadership of the country and its institutions to run things for their own selfish gain. Inevitably, the sociopaths take over, which is where we are today. The answer is to fix things. The constituents–citizen voters and stockholders–must demand change, run the thieves out of office, and we start all over again with new leadership, just like we’ve done in the past.

Entrepreneurship is not necessarily a panacea. It has it’s own hazards. About 145,000 businesses start up each year and about 137,000 businesses declare bankruptcy each year (www.moyak.com/papers/small-business-statistics.html). But we do have several successful entrepreneurs in my family. They had a passion for what they proposed to do. They thought about it long and hard before setting out. They were mentored in the early stages, and they had an indomitable will to succeed. They had the eye of the tiger. They would not be denied.

Not surprisingly, these were the very characteristics shared by the CEOs of the extraordinarily successful companies Jim Collins and his team identified in Good to Great, Why Some Companies Make the Leap, and Others Don’t, a study of eleven companies that made a successful transition from mediocrity to sustained greatness.

The companies Collins picked began their transition from a weak, almost ruined position. They made a management change, mostly promoting the new CEO from within. The most significant fact about the new leader was his passion for the success of the company–a passion that way superceded his personal goals. In fact, none of the Good to Great CEOs had stock options.

The very first thing each of these new leaders did was to put the company through a process Collins’ called, “getting the wrong people off the bus, and getting the right people on the bus.” The result was to change the culture from whatever it might have been–sociopaths, clueless and loser types, into the paradigm of a great locker room like that of the New York Giants, with a passionate coach and a team of fully committed players intent on turning the company into the best of its kind.

Observations

The remainder of the bear market in this country will serve to put many poorly run companies out of business and force many viable ones into a radical culture change, making them excellent places to work and excellent companies to invest in.

The reality is that there are always great companies to work for. If I were starting out, or starting over today, absent a burning desire to do something on my own, I’d study Fortune Magazine’s 100 best companies to work for ( http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2011/full_list/) and find one that I really wanted to join. I’d get to know them and I’d get them to know me well enough to want me to come to work for them, because, as my pal Dave says, great companies are always looking for good people.

Cheers,

Rod

]]> http://rodroth.com/2012/02/05/on-work-part-ii/feed/ 0 http://rodroth.com/2012/02/01/on-work-part-i/ http://rodroth.com/2012/02/01/on-work-part-i/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:24:09 +0000 rodroth http://rodroth.com/?p=1606 Continue reading →]]> Take a look at them. They’re all nice guys. But they finish last…
—Leo Durocher, 1939

The beatdown of the American middle class is especially hard on employees of public corporations today. It has not always been so, but it is now, and, until the culture changes, betting on  a career with a big company is a high risk proposition. Anyone having a choice in the matter would do well to consider this before going after that cushy job with a Fortune 500 company.

Hugh Macleod draws a brutally honest cartoon that portrays the players in corporate life:

Venkat Rao elaborates on the dynamics that govern the relationships between the various types in The Gervais Principle, a brilliant series of essays in which he uses characters in  the television show The Office to make his arguments. The following is my very short take on the matter, based on thirty seven years spent in corporate life:

You’re a guy/gal with a home schooled set of values – a moral philosophy. You go to work for a company, and you are too distant from corporate headquarters to know anything about senior executives, other than the commentary of your immediate superior. She is a sycophant, but  that little datapoint escapes you. It never occurs to you that sociopaths run the company.

 Busy trying to make your mark, you bring energy and enthusiasm to your job and you expect that if you are honest, loyal and diligent you will be duly rewarded. You expect that, over time, you will be promoted. You harbor faint thoughts, even, of making it all the way to the top floor at headquarters.

You perform well, maintain a terrific attitude, get along with most of your co-workers and, in due course, are moved up on the company ladder. It is said that you are being fast tracked for greater things. Twenty years later, your career has taken you in one of two directions: 1) You long ago plateaued in a minor company outpost, or, 2) You appear to be a star in the corporate firmamant. Either way, you are called into headquarters.

The outcome in both cases is the same: you are put in a room with two of your peers. A senior manager comes in and tells the group that the departments you three manage are being consolidated into one. One of you will manage all three. The other two are to be terminated with their vested pension and a buyout that won’t get them through six months of living. You are stunned to find out you’re one of the separatees. Adios, dream career, and you are now middle aged. You have devoted half of your life to a dead end proposition because you have, all along, been clueless about the nature of corporate life.

You got aced out by a sociopath. Global wage arbitrage and technology is shrinking the number of middle management jobs, and the survivor in the competition for what’s left is the guy whose operating mode is in tune with the goal of senior executives:  maximize the numbers for this quarter, no matter how you have to do it.

Quarterly earnings drive stock option compensation. In all too many instances, senior executives of public companies are interested only in these numbers. Ambitious underlings understand this, and respond accordingly. They manipulate clueless employees into actions that massage the short term results, leaving them to clean up the mess when they, themselves have moved on up the ladder. To be sure, not every company in the country is run this way, but many are in the present era. In those instances, the clueless employee works very hard and gets screwed.

This leaves a third category of employee: the loser. The loser figures out early on that to really succeed in the firm, he would have to be a sociopath. He’s not interested in this, and has no desire to be manipulated like the clueless employee. Instead, the loser opts to treat the job as just a paycheck, puts in the minimum amount of work necessary to remain employed, gets a life outside the company, and probably has the last laugh.

A company run by (and for) sociopaths will provide extraordinary compensation to the cohort at the top over the short term. Eventually, the company loses its integrity, its customers and its market share. Eventually, it goes bust, and the senior execs walk with a ton of money. We read about it every day. Macleod’s cartoon below depicts this lifecycle in a clockwise evolution:

Observations

Greed, excessive compensation and intense focus on short term results are typical of the corporate culture at market tops. Lax governance, and stockholder complacency are the causes. Three eras have had this kind of cycle: the 1890′s, the 1920′s and now. The previous two were followed by stock market crashes and severe depressions. Here’s the good news: each time it happened, the culture underwent a radical change during the subsequent recovery, and both working for and investing in big companies was once again worthwhile.

If you’re headed for the corporate world, you want to try to avoid the pitfalls I’ve described here. In my next post, I’ll discuss what to look for when you aim for employment with companies of any kind.

Cheers,

Rod

]]> http://rodroth.com/2012/02/01/on-work-part-i/feed/ 0 http://rodroth.com/2012/01/26/on-the-taxonomy-of-gloom/ http://rodroth.com/2012/01/26/on-the-taxonomy-of-gloom/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:36:11 +0000 rodroth http://rodroth.com/?p=1473 Continue reading →]]> Most of us view the world as more benign than it really is…
—Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

Message from a friend I haven’t seen for many years: “Maridel (my daughter) told me about your blog. I see you are still gloomy.” Oh, well…he’s talking about my market forecast. I’ve been in cash for over a decade. But that’s an investment decision, having nothing to do with my mood, which is pretty chipper, these days.

My own mood doesn’t matter at all in investing. To make money, I have to evaluate the mood of the crowd, so that I can get into the market when the crowd is gloomy, because that is when they undervalue investments.  Then, when social mood and valuations reach optimistic extremes, I have to sell. Presently, the crowd is still pretty gung-ho, but sentiment figures are beginning to slip as the lack of  performance grinds them down. A forthcoming seige of losses will send the crowd’s mood crashing again.

Anger and recrimination are the first reactions to big portfolio losses. We got a whiff of these in ’08-’09, but nothing like what is coming down the road. Next leg down–which gets started anytime, now, will be when the crowd gets majorly pissed. By the time the Dow is down below 6,000–probably before the year is out–the crowd will be wanting to string up portfolio managers, investment bankers, and their sheepishly apologetic advisors.

The socionomic hypothesis holds that social mood drives all of the activities of a society, including politics. There is a moment in the cycle when the process is dominated by what Kahneman calls the Affect Heuristic: where judgement and decisions are guided directly by feelings of liking and disliking, with little deliberation or reasoning. Are we there, yet?

Politically, yes. Newt  Gingrich has tapped into a seething cauldron of discontent. Overnight, in South Carolina, his candidacy came from way back and surged to the front by a wide margin, just because he told a journalist to go screw himself on national TV. Exit polls indicated that most of the people who voted for Gingrich changed their minds in favor of him instantly, upon witnessing Newt’s tirade. No rational deliberation involved. It was, “never mind who the guy is, dammit–I just want someone to go to Washington and kick some ass!”

My view is that the national mood is a tinderbox on the verge of a conflagration. This election stands to be about ass kicking. The political attitude the next four years could be like my mother’s, some mornings: “Whatever you want, the answer is no!” Along about 2016, after four years of tearing Washington asunder and cannonading Wall Street, the market will be down 90%. And, sick and tired of being sick and tired, the electorate will run the disrupterator out of office and vote for the wise old uncle who, they imagine, will deliver them from the maelstrom.

The mood will be gloomy. It will be time to move cash–if we have any– into the market. Damned if I know whether I’ll be able to do it. I’ll be gloomy, too.

Cheers,

Rod

The author makes no representation as to the accuracy of the quoted material, but believes the sources to be reliable. No one should consider any part of this presentation as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities whatsoever.

Tamales, she sells. From a shopping cart, standing in front of a downtown Manhattan deli. And Mole Poblano, which, you understand, is a sauce of divine origin. In the 16th century, the story goes, an angel visited desperate nuns at the convent of Santa Rosa in Puebla de Los Angeles during an all night prayer vigil, inspiring them to create a dish that would spare them from the mortification of having only a tough old turkey to serve when the Archbishop came the next day to visit.

It is no wonder Genoveva sells out two hours after she sets up. Two or three days a week, from the tiny kitchen in her apartment, to the shopping cart, to the larders of the cognoscenti who make up her clientele. She makes $800-1,000 a month, which supplements her husband’s income from his job. No fuss, no muss, no permits, no taxes. Genoveva, who arrived informally in the country a few years ago, is in the informal economy.

Kate is also in the informal economy, but, unlike Genoveva,  Kate originally hails from Maine, is white, and highly educated. She is a jewelry designer, and a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. Kate bakes unusual pastries using olive oil in her own home for sale in the trendy Manhattan coffee shop of a friend. It is an important source of income for her. Genoveva operates an illegal, unregulated, unlicensed business. Kate does the same thing, but refers to it as income patching.

Euphemisms notwithstanding, both women are bit players in an economy that is anything but small potatoes. Journalist Robert Neuwirth cites studies in Stealth of Nations, the Global rise of  the Informal Economy that estimate the global informal economy at $10 trillion. It would be the second largest economy in the world, after the US. Virtually all of it goes unreported to governments and unnoticed by mainstream economists. It is the only economy that is growing. It has exploded since the financial crisis of 2008. Half of the global population now works in the informal economy. The OECD estimates that by 2020 two thirds of the workers of the world will be employed in unregulated, untaxed businesses.

In street terms, the phenomenon is known as  System D, a slang phrase pirated from French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean. The French call particularly effective and motivated people debrouillards. Hence, the term Sisteme de Debrouillards, shortened to System D. One such businessman describes it as a business that exists solely on individual effort, with no help from the government.

Not surprisingly, underdeveloped nations have been the locus of  most of System D. In Africa, the percentage of GDP in System D ranges from 30 to 60%. The same is true in Latin America. In Russia, System D accounts for over half of the total economy. So far, System D business is only 20% of the US economy, but there is good reason to expect it to be the greatest, perhaps only the only source of economic growth for some time to come.

System D emerges when people who have been passed over start to act. This is such a time in the nation’s history. World 3.0 is doing a number on the educated American middle class. Thirty years ago, new college graduates were besieged by employment offers from American industry. It was a question of sorting out which corporation offered the best retirement plan.

Not so, today. The jobs are fewer and the qualification requirements are greater. Everyone knows kids that come home after graduation and lay on the couch for a while before they get situated. Shhh, don’t say a word, but they are the luckiest crop of graduates since the Great Depression. They have been saved from entering American industry to serve out their working lives in soul killing jobs that offer little job satisfaction and virtually nothing in the way of a life after work.

They will hang out until they get sick of daytime TV. Then they will go out and try something and fail. Then they will try something else. And, if history is any guide, they will, out of desperation, figure it all out and become debrouillards, non pareil.

How lucky can you get?

Cheers,

Rod

It comes to me now in song: “Woman,” the songwriter sings, “Best you be a looker, a hooker, a pretty good cooker and interesting to talk to!” And, when I was old enough to be told so, Dad allowed as how Mom was all of those things.

If I didn’t know she was beautiful, all my friends did. “Gosh, your mommy’s pretty,” they said, which called to mind the dictum: “When you see a pretty girl, just remember, she’s a pain in the ass to somebody!” Hoo-boy! Mom was a piece of work. She should have been a movie star.

In fact, I would have just as soon she’d been in the movies. Then I could see her Saturday afternoons at the picture show instead of having to face her at home after I’d been up to no good. Admittedly, I was a hellion, but I am persuaded that, with Mom, it was a case of “takes one to know one.”

I am sketchy on the details of her early life. I know she was the youngest of nine children whose parents died when she was very young. She hailed from Kensett, Arkansas. She would not admit this, and I don’t blame her. Kensett was the hometown of Wilbur D. Mills, an influential United States Representative during the sixties. Nothing notable happened before, and very little since. According to the town’s home page ( http://www.kensett.net/): “The population was 1,791 at the 2000 census. It is also currently home to a very exotic Zonkey, who is usually used as one of the main attractions of Kensett and has become a very important part of White county’s entertainment.”

I am not making this up, and I know Mom is now turning in her grave.

I have it that she left Kensett as soon as she could, went to live with her sister in Houston, married, had my wonderful sister, Sylvia, got unmarried, went to Argentina to hang out with friends, and, when she was running out of cash, boarded a ship back to the States.

It was the same ship on which a bachelor named Dave Roth was making his way home on furlough from his bank job in Japan. A shipboard romance ensued, followed by marriage, and another boat trip, this time back to Japan. The year was 1938. She bore me the next year.

You would have to say my Mom had moxie. For Americans, life in Japan in the late thirties had gotten extremely tense. In 1940, General Douglas MaCarthur, Commander of US Forces in the Pacific,  traveled from the Phillippines on  a diplomatic visit to Japan. My mother was the woman that cornered him at a reception and pressed the case for arranging for American women and children to be shipped back to the States. This he did.

Women and children duly shipped out, and my Dad and other men remained behind to close down the bank’s operations. When our ship arrived at Wake Island, we were informed that all remaining Americans in Japan had been interned. My mother was in a state of panic. It was not until we arrived in San Francisco that we got the news that one more American vessel had departed Japan, and my Dad was aboard.

Dad’s Latin American posts, which included Argentina, Peru (where Steve and Stephanie were born), Uruguay and Mexico, were where Lera made her bones as the wife of an American executive abroad. With each of Dad’s promotions the social obligations grew. By the time we were in Uruguay, Dad was the bank’s resident manager, which often meant serving in de facto diplomatic roles. When President Eisenhower’s brother, Dr. Milton Eisenhower visited Montevideo, it was Mom that hosted the reception. In Mexico, where Dad was resident vice-president, it was non-stop entertaining both local notables and visitors. We all were called upon to participate regularly. I came down on leave from the Marines on one occasion and went to a garden party and got to visit with General William Westmoreland.

Lera’s star was ascendant, but not without problems. Heavy entertaining is the perfect milieu for alcoholism, and Lera suffered from the family disease. Over time, it took it’s toll on her, and greatly affected the way she interacted with the family. I had it too, and two people with that issue have difficulty relating to one another in a healthy way.

Each of her children had their own way of being with Mom. Sylvia says she had a lot of fun with her, especially in the earlier years. My relationship was more of an uneasy truce, which I handled by being mostly absent. For a long time, I held her responsible for our lack of closeness. But, eventually, I got into recovery from my own disease, and was able to recognize that it was as much my doing as hers.

Lera West Roth had a short, spectacular life. She was a brave, beautiful shooting star, and it was over at 54.

…And it seemed to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind.
Never knowing who to cling to when the rain set in

And I would have liked to know you, but I was just a kid.
Your candle burned out long ago, but your legend never  did…

I love you, Mother,

Rodney

The word was, he once owned an elephant. It’s a plausible story, given his fine sense of the ridiculous. It would be the thing a bachelor living in Asia during its heyday would do. More interesting is how he got from the American heartland to the exotic Far East in the first place.

The year was 1930. Dave Roth, son of a Cincinnati bond broker, quit his studies of Greek Mythology at Kenyon College after his sophomore year, sold Chevrolet cars back home in Cincinnati for a time, then abandoned his familiar surroundings to explore life in New York City. Downtown at Broad and Wall, he flipped a coin to decide whether to go into City Bank or Chase. City Bank won out and he went in. He told me about it when I was six. “I said I want work,” he said to me, “I didn’t say I was looking for a job.” The story, meant as a teaching moment, let me understand that getting work requires that you act like you really want to work. I never forgot the lesson.

Several months after being hired, he was at work as a teller and he heard that the vice president in charge of the Far Eastern division was interviewing candidates to be his personal assistant during his upcoming tour of the bank’s Asian branches. Dave applied for and was scheduled for an interview, which he prepared for by asking earlier interviewees what the man wanted.

When it was his turn, the vice president said, “Can you take dictation?” Dave answered, “No sir, but I could learn.” Then he asked, “Can you type?” “No sir, but I could learn.” And, finally, “Do you know how to develop film?” Dad’s reply was, “My roommate is an amateur photographer. He can teach me.”

It was a slam dunk. None of the earlier candidates had shown that much initiative.

“You are to be my assistant,” he was told. “We sail in sixty days. Prepare yourself.” So, Dad worked at his cashiering job days, and went to Spencer Business College at night, learned speedwriting and typing, and got his roommate to bring him up to speed on film development. In the late fall of 1930, the vice president and his new assistant set sail for Bombay, India.

The tour lasted nine months. By ship and train, they visited the bank’s branches in India, Ceylon, Burma, Australia, New Zealand, The Phillippines, Macao, Honk Kong and, finally, Japan. When the vice president was ready to return to New York, Dad was granted his request to be posted to one of the Japanese branches.

Dad was to remain in Japan until 1940. On furlough back home in ’38, he met Lera, a beautiful young woman, and Sylvia, her beautiful little daughter. He made Lera his wife and brought her and Sylvia both back to Japan. I came along in ’39. We left that nation a year later, just ahead of the hostilities that followed.

Our steamer trunks were never unpacked for long while I was growing up. Between 1940 and 1966, Dad was posted to branches in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Lima, Peru-where my younger sister, Stephanie and brother Stephan were born; Montevideo, Uruguay; and, finally,  Mexico City before returning to New York for his final years with the bank.

I am often told I was very fortunate to travel and live in so many places growing up. I won’t deny it. Despite the stress of having to make new friends every few years, I do appreciate these experiences. But, far and away the real blessing in my life was was the influence of my Dad during those years. I wasn’t really aware of it, because Dad never tooted his own horn. He had little in the way of ego, and was inclined to be self-deprecating. That may be why friends, family, and co-workers loved him so much.

Dave Roth was a straight shooter who didn’t wear his integrity on his sleeve. He did the right thing because it was the right thing to do. That was what made the biggest impression on me. He would be bemused by the self important people in our midst, but was too forebearing to bring ‘em down. Not that he couldn’t. My brother, Steve, said the thing he like to do was to hang around the adults when they were talking. Dad had a very sharp wit, but he used it gently, and even the folks that were being skewered could chuckle at his on-the-mark barbs.

I miss my Dad. He was taken from us too soon. I wish I had been near him when I was grown. Like most American kids living abroad back then, I was sent back home for high school and college, and after that, time and distance kept us from being together much.

My Dad was a good man. Never much of a churchgoer, he would say, ”My religion is people.” It puzzled me then, but it doesn’t now. Hafiz said, “Everyone is God speaking. Why not be polite and listen to Him.” My Dad was a good listener.

Cheers,

Rod

–Douglas Porch, professor, Naval War College
Newport, Rhode Island, 1996

“Reckon we’ve fucking bought it, Dave?”

“Nope. Paddle.”

My teammate,  corporal David Merwin, First Platoon, First Force Recon Co., United Stated Marine Corps was at his badass best at this moment. Four hours earlier, Dave and I locked out of the forward escape chamber of a submerged Navy submarine, surfacing in the Straight of Formosa for what was supposed to be a twenty minute swim to a spot on the beach. It was a training mission to clandestinely reconnoiter suitable helicopter landing sites for a Combined Forces Exercise in which elements of the U.S. Marines and marine forces of the Government of the Republic of China would stage a mock invasion of the mainland.

Our launch had been scrubbed the night before due to the swiftness of the litoral current. It was not much slower on this night, but Central Command said it needed to go off because the main exercise was to take place in six days. So, we’re in the water trying to swim an Easterly compass course while being pushed Southwest by a current that was about a half mile an hour faster than we were swimming. By a miracle, we avoided getting swept out into the South China Sea when we managed to push into a cove at the very southern tip of the island, and in the quiet eddy finished the swim, dragged ourselves inland and got our bearings. The rest of the exercise went off about as planned and, three nights later we were pulled off the island by a chinese fishing vessel hired for the mission.

Others of us were not so lucky. I was relaxing back at base camp a few nights later when I was called out of the base movie theatre by my commanding officer. By then, the mock invasion was in full swing, with several hundred troops, support vehicles and weapons making landfalls off ships. Some advance troops, members of a combat recon platoon went missing. My CO volunteered me and Gunnery Sargent Patterson to go looking for them. We were dispached in the dark by helicopter to God knows where with a map and instructions to poke around  in the area where they were supposed to be and then rendesvous with a helicopter at 800 hours the next day at some other place. If this sounds like the stupid idea a half drunk captain thought up at the officers’ club, it damn sure was.

Gunny Pat and I were duly dropped off in the jungle and began our search in the dark. We did not know where we were and we did not find the missing men. We did run into other troops. A column of Marines came by us as we paused by a stream. They were carrying what looked like a log wrapped in a shelter half. It was a dead Marine. He’d been bitten by a cobra. We’re losing a guy on an exercise without a shot fired in anger. Disheartening.

Daybreak found us at a bend in a road beside a native village. We decided this was the rendesvous location. We moved out on a dry rice paddy to wait for the helicopter. Hearing the sound of a helo in the distance, we broke open a smoke bomb and waved as it came over. It kept on going. We were in a flight path, and helicopters were passing over regularly. They were not taking notice of us. By now, the villagers had all gathered around the rice paddy and they just thought it was hilarious that we were waving and setting off smoke signals and the helos were flat out ignoring us.

Eventually, one of them landed. “What do you want?” the pilot asked. “You’re supposed to pick us up, right?” we said. “Not that I know,” he replies, “Where are you going?” “Any fucking where you are, sir!” I said. He ferries us back to his base and we go into base ops to explain that we need to get back to our outfit at Kaohsiung Naval Base. We are instructed to get on the mail helicopter. The helo takes off, gets to two thousand feet and has a massive engine failure, which the pilot manages to correct before we crash. He lands us back where we started and we are now looking for alternate transport.

Eventally, we hitch a ride with a supply truck and, two days later, get back to our outfit. We head over to the officers’ quarters to report back to our CO, and are informed that he has been rotated back Stateside, and his replacement has been wondering why the hell we were missing roll call.

The troops we were looking for were eventually  found. They never got to the beach. They were making their landing by rubber boats and they were swept out to sea, ending up on an out island. Scuttlebutt was the natives were friendly. Fed them, did their laundry. Could have been worse.

I made none of this up. If you have served in the Armed Forces, you understand it was SNAFU. If you do not know what that means, you could look it up in Wikipedia.

Cheers,

Rod
Cpl. USMC, 1957-60