Settling Down in Life and the Law

Ill-Fated Book Attempt

Though I was discharged from the Army in May 1971, I didn’t plan to start work for Roan & Grossman (at the time Roan, Grossman, Singer, Mauck & Kaplan) until that fall. Though far from the Vietnam warzone, my Army work in its own way had been intense at times and I wanted a breather before resuming my legal career in earnest.  As I exited the Army, I believed my three-year experience had been an extremely unusual one due to my work in the middle of the racial unrest of the day and the companion civil dissonance flowing from the war. I also thought a break like this would give me a chance to see if there was a book in me that might capture some of the bizarre events I had been witness to during President Richard Nixon’s first term in office.  After several weeks of largely staring at my typewriter housesitting for a friend in upstate New York, I was rescued from my failing effort. I had only completed a single chapter. Worse, my meagre output only dealt with the evolution of domestic intelligence in the FBI and the military during the Red Scare in World War I’s aftermath.

NY Farmhouse

Writer’s block venue in Patterson, New York

Travel

My savior of the day turned out to be a friend I’d met in the Army in Washington, Larry DuBois. He had been a reporter in Time Magazine Washington bureau, but at that point had left to work as a freelance writer. He said he had been commissioned to do a Playboy Interview with movie director Roman Polanski at his home in London. In one of the more shocking events of 1960s America, Polanski’s wife Sharon Tate and others in her Los Angeles home had been killed in 1969 by followers of cult leader Charles Manson. It was to be Polanski’s first interview after the event. Larry wanted to know if I’d like to take a break and join him and his wife for some rest and recreation before and after his interview. With my writing task foundering, I leapt at the chance to plug a real vacation into the time gap I’d created before having to turn up to work in Chicago.

The London part of the visit lasted only about a week but was fascinating.  We’d booked rooms at the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane near Hyde Park Corner.  First off, I joined Larry for a tour of the nearby Playboy Casino.  It was new and already running full tilt.  Before long, Polanski’s chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce picked us up and dropped Larry  off at Polanski’s mews residence for the interview.   I had never imagined that just 60 days after mustering out of the Army, I would be chauffeured in solitary comfort back to my London hotel in the limousine of the Oscar-winning director of Rosemary’s Baby.   After the Polanski interview had been completed, there was time for a cruise on the River Thames.  We also took time to poke around Carnaby Street where we saw remnants of the London of the “Swinging ‘60s.”  The fashion and cultural revolution that had brought stodgy and conservative London into the modern age was still in view.

Shortly after I had arrived in London, Judy Arndt, whom I had dated in Washington when I was in the Army, heard of our outing from Larry’s wife and joined the largely unplanned excursion. With a week in London passing quickly, we made side trips to see Billie Jean King play at Wimbledon and the busby-wearing guards in red tunics at Windsor Castle.

Then it was time to plot our next step by looking in the Sunday paper for a package trip to a sunny place. The task was to combine an inexpensive charter flight with a week’s house rental somewhere. With not many Englishmen wanting to vacation in the south of Spain in July’s Mediterranean heat, we quickly found a place. Our party of four was immediately enlarged when our mutual D.C. friend Bob Raymond heard about the plan. He promptly quit his job with the Navy and shortly joined us in San Pedro Alcantara, on Spain’s Costa del Sol.  While there we drove along the Mediterranean coast to see the Rock of Gibraltar, took in a local bullfight, and paid an off day visit to the oldest Spanish bull ring in Rhonda.