speedboats at their heads.
The judge says he himself sentenced hundreds of people to this particular punishment and that the felons invariably argued that they had not broken the law, but merely violated its spirit, perhaps, just the least little bit. Before he condemned them, he would put a sort of chamberpot over his head, to make his words more resonant and awesome, and he would pronounce this formula: “Boys, you didn’tjust get the spirit of the law. You got its body and soul this time.”
And, according to the judge, you could hear the deputies warming up their speedboats on the pond outside the courthouse:
“vrooom-ah, vrooom-a, va-va-va-roooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom!”
6
T HE JUDGE in Dr. Bob Fender’s story tries to guess which of the philosophers in the meditation center is the wisest and most contented. He decides that it is a little old man sitting on a cot in a second-story dormitory. Every so often that little old man is so delighted with his thoughts, evidently, that he claps three times.
So the judge flies into the ear of that little old man and immediately sticks to him forever, sticks to him, according to the story … as tightly as Formica to an epoxy-coated countertop.” And what does he hear in that little old man’s head but this:
Sally in the garden
,
Sifting cinders
,
Lifted up her leg
And farted like a man …
And so on.
It is quite an interesting story. There is a rescue of the daughter who has become the soul of a moon rock, and so on. But the true story of how its author came to committreason in Osaka is a match for it, in my opinion, any day. Bob Fender fell in love with the North Korean agent, the Edith Piaf imitator, from a distance of about twenty feet, in a nightclub frequented by American officers. He never dared close the distance or to send her flowers or a note, but night after night he mooned at her from the same table. He was always alone and usually the biggest man by far in the club, so the singer, whose stage name was simply “Izumi,” asked some of the other Americans who and what Fender was.
He was a virgin meat inspector, but his fellow officers had fun telling Izumi that he was so solitary and gloomy all the time because his work was so secret and important. They said he was in command of an elite unit that guarded atomic bombs. If she asked him about it, they said, he would claim to be a meat inspector.
So Izumi went to work on him. She sat down at his table without being asked. She reached inside his shirt and tickled his nipples and all that. She told him that she liked big, silent men, and that all other Americans talked too much. She begged him to take her home with him after the club closed at two o’clock that morning. She wanted to find out where the atomic bombs were, of course. Actually, there weren’t any atomic bombs in Japan. They were on aircraft carriers and on Okinawa, and so on. For the rest of the evening she sang all her songs directly to him and to nobody else. He nearly fainted from joy and embarrassment. He had a Jeep outside.
When she got into his Jeep at two o’clock in themorning, she said she not only wanted to see where her big American lived, but where he worked. He told her that would be easy, since he lived and worked at the same place. He took her down to a new United States Army Quartermaster Corps dock in Osaka, which had a big shed running down the middle of it. At one end were some offices. At the other end was a two-room apartment for whoever the resident veterinarian happened to be. In between were great, refrigerated meat lockers, filled with carcasses Fender had inspected or would inspect. There was a fence on the land side and a guard at the gate; but as came out at the court-martial, discipline was lax. All the guard thought he had to watch out for was people trying to sneak out with sides of beef.
So the guard, who would later be acquitted by a court-martial, simply waved Dr. Fender’s Jeep
The judge says he himself sentenced hundreds of people to this particular punishment and that the felons invariably argued that they had not broken the law, but merely violated its spirit, perhaps, just the least little bit. Before he condemned them, he would put a sort of chamberpot over his head, to make his words more resonant and awesome, and he would pronounce this formula: “Boys, you didn’tjust get the spirit of the law. You got its body and soul this time.”
And, according to the judge, you could hear the deputies warming up their speedboats on the pond outside the courthouse:
“vrooom-ah, vrooom-a, va-va-va-roooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom!”
6
T HE JUDGE in Dr. Bob Fender’s story tries to guess which of the philosophers in the meditation center is the wisest and most contented. He decides that it is a little old man sitting on a cot in a second-story dormitory. Every so often that little old man is so delighted with his thoughts, evidently, that he claps three times.
So the judge flies into the ear of that little old man and immediately sticks to him forever, sticks to him, according to the story … as tightly as Formica to an epoxy-coated countertop.” And what does he hear in that little old man’s head but this:
Sally in the garden
,
Sifting cinders
,
Lifted up her leg
And farted like a man …
And so on.
It is quite an interesting story. There is a rescue of the daughter who has become the soul of a moon rock, and so on. But the true story of how its author came to committreason in Osaka is a match for it, in my opinion, any day. Bob Fender fell in love with the North Korean agent, the Edith Piaf imitator, from a distance of about twenty feet, in a nightclub frequented by American officers. He never dared close the distance or to send her flowers or a note, but night after night he mooned at her from the same table. He was always alone and usually the biggest man by far in the club, so the singer, whose stage name was simply “Izumi,” asked some of the other Americans who and what Fender was.
He was a virgin meat inspector, but his fellow officers had fun telling Izumi that he was so solitary and gloomy all the time because his work was so secret and important. They said he was in command of an elite unit that guarded atomic bombs. If she asked him about it, they said, he would claim to be a meat inspector.
So Izumi went to work on him. She sat down at his table without being asked. She reached inside his shirt and tickled his nipples and all that. She told him that she liked big, silent men, and that all other Americans talked too much. She begged him to take her home with him after the club closed at two o’clock that morning. She wanted to find out where the atomic bombs were, of course. Actually, there weren’t any atomic bombs in Japan. They were on aircraft carriers and on Okinawa, and so on. For the rest of the evening she sang all her songs directly to him and to nobody else. He nearly fainted from joy and embarrassment. He had a Jeep outside.
When she got into his Jeep at two o’clock in themorning, she said she not only wanted to see where her big American lived, but where he worked. He told her that would be easy, since he lived and worked at the same place. He took her down to a new United States Army Quartermaster Corps dock in Osaka, which had a big shed running down the middle of it. At one end were some offices. At the other end was a two-room apartment for whoever the resident veterinarian happened to be. In between were great, refrigerated meat lockers, filled with carcasses Fender had inspected or would inspect. There was a fence on the land side and a guard at the gate; but as came out at the court-martial, discipline was lax. All the guard thought he had to watch out for was people trying to sneak out with sides of beef.
So the guard, who would later be acquitted by a court-martial, simply waved Dr. Fender’s Jeep
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