London Calling: An American Stoke City Fan in Millwall’s Lion’s Den

By Stew Magnuson

Seeing how Millwall is traveling north to play Stoke this weekend, I thought it was time I finally wrote down my memorable day in South London watching my beloved Stoke City FC play the infamous Millwall on Oct. 26.

I say “infamous” because as soon as I knew I would be attending an away game there with my wife, more knowledgeable fans than I started issuing warnings.

“I would think twice about bringing your wife,” my friend, a Burnley supporter, said. Don’t wear your Stoke jersey around the neighborhood. Go incognito.

“Awful people,” said a Bristol City supporter and her husband who invited me to share a drink with them in the Holiday Inn in Stoke after the Stoke-Bristol match, Sept. 14. They traveled all over England following Bristol, but she said they would never return to Millwall after being there once.

I got similar comments when I mentioned I was traveling to Millwall on the Facebook Stoke fan pages. Apparently, when British TV and movie writers need to portray some kind of violent football fan, Millwall supporters are their go-to hooligans!

Amongst all these comments, a news article was published online declaring that Stoke was number one in all of England when it came to “football related arrests.” Port Vale was third and Millwall was nowhere to be found on the list. “Hey, who’s supposed to be afraid of who here?” I thought.

Contrast this with a game I attended earlier in the week Oct. 22 at Hillsborough Stadium to see Sheffield Wednesday. No one issued me any warnings, so I walked proudly around the stadium prior to the match wearing my full red & white garb and hat. No problem. Not only that, a couple of nice Wednesday fans — seeing a confused look on my face as I searched for the away team gate — stopped and asked if I needed directions.

Fast forward to the Millwall game.

It was a chilly, rainy Saturday and my wife had been battling a cold all week, so I let her off the hook and went on my own.

I’m a former foreign correspondent. I never reported from war zones, but I did cover some riots and a three-day coup d’etat. I’m not going to let a rough neighborhood scare me. Nor was I looking for trouble at age 56. My fighting days are behind me. I did indeed stuff my jersey under my jacket and take my hat off as the train approached Bermondsey Station.

As I streamed out of the station with the Millwall fans, to my right was a phalanx of mounted police — an imposing wall of horseflesh and a man barking that all Stoke fans must go behind the police line to the away gate.

I wanted to see the rest of the stadium and check out the team store, so I ignored him and followed the Millwall crowd through the neighborhood to get to the main gate. It really looked like an ordinary lot of fans. There were families. No one was drinking. Everyone was just shuffling along. Maybe all the warnings were for nothing.

(Bear with me. The scene after the match was a completely different story).

Eventually I did make my way to the away gate, where I chatted with a couple of Stokies who had come down from Birmingham. I was determined to give my wife’s ticket away to some lucky Stoke supporter, which was harder than I thought it would be. But I finally found a guy walking up the ticket office on his own. He was very grateful for the freebie. Pay it forward, mate!

Of course, all the people I encountered asked me the same question: How did an American become a Stoke fan? For that, link here and read my previous blog in case you missed it.

Thanks to the great staff at the Stoke ticket office, I had a seat in the away section for the Millwall and the Sheffield Wednesday games. The staff also gave me the royal treatment with a tour of the Bet365 Stadium pitch prior to the Bristol City game, one of the highlights of my life as a fan.

Inside “The Den” as the stadium is known, they played Oasis, A Town Called Malice by The Jam and finally London Calling by the Clash before the match got underway. Being a geezer who spent a formative summer in London back in 1983, I thought that was great.

We lost, of course. I was 0-3 in the three games I attended this fall. I was hoping I would be some kind of good luck charm, but I wasn’t. The Stoke fans on the north end and the Millwall supporters next to them spent the last half trading insults and graphic hand gestures.

The Arlington Soccer Association where I live is putting together a “once in a lifetime” tour of EPL games this spring for its youth members and sends me emails about it occasionally. Every time I get one, I think back to the three games I attended, “Those kids are going to learn some interesting new vocabulary words.”

On the way out of the stadium, the police were there in full force. I again zipped my jacket up and put
away my cap. It’s a small train station and there were thousands of fans making their way there.

I noticed a young father holding the hand of a boy of about three years in front of me, then I got distracted by some Millwall fans giving an older Stokie bravely wearing his colors a lot of grief.

All of the sudden, the dad was holding the boy in his arms while threatening to fight another, much older, but bigger man. I don’t know what the beef was about. I don’t think it was a Stoke/Millwall thing. I believe it was two Millwall fans. But it was pretty disturbing. I mean, who threatens to fight someone while holding a toddler? The antagonist was no better, yelling “run boy, run” at the terrified kid. All along,

other people in the crowd are telling the two to knock it off: “You’re scaring the little one!”

A female bobby put herself between the two, ensuring the exchange of words didn’t escalate as they climbed up the stairs to the platform.

That’s the last I saw of them: but the terrified look in that little boy’s face still haunts me.

I made my way farther down the platform. It was raining so I put my cap back on.

A friendly Millwall fan struck up a conversation. After the train pulled up and we sat down, he asked if I was headed back to Stoke. “No actually, flying back to the States tomorrow.” Which led to the same, how did you become a Stoke fan question.

Just as I was answering it, a brouhaha broke out in the train car doorway.

A group of about 10 Millwall supporters were being shoved into the car by a smaller group of bobbies. A full-on shoving match was suddenly underway a couple feet in front of me. I stuck my hat under my jacket and moved to the back of the car.

For an American, witnessing someone assaulting a police officer and yelling the f-bomb in their face is pretty shocking. The bobbies seemed to be determined to get this lot off the platform and into the train.

The doors closed, leaving all us peace-loving fans alone with the ruffians, where we had to pretend to ignore them all the way back to London Bridge Station. Fortunately, it was only one stop. They sang and chanted obscenities the whole way.

A police escort was on the platform waiting for them. The cops followed them all the way to the Underground, where — just my luck — they were headed to the same line as me. I made sure not to get in the same car with them. When I got off at the Old Street stop, I could still hear them singing in the carriage ahead of me.

There is a postscript to the story.

My other passion is baseball. Within 24 hours of the end of the Millwall match, I was back in Washington, D.C., sitting in Nationals Park for Game Five of the World Series. I landed at Dulles Airport at 4: 30 p.m., dropped my bags off at home, and went right to the game. (Thank God the plane was on time.) While we lost that game, the Nats went on to win the series and bring the nation’s capital its first baseball championship since 1924.

Stew Magnuson is the author of three editions of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83. His book The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder, winner of the 2009 Nebraska nonfiction book of the year award, was recently named one of the state's 150 most important literary works. Contact him at stewmag (a) yahoo.com.
There is no truth to the rumor that he will be taking over the role of the team mascot next year as he plans on going on a diet!

  

  

The Making of an American Stoke City F.C. Fan

By Stew Magnuson

On September 14, 2019, if all goes as planned, I should be sitting in bet365 Stadium in Stoke-on-Trent watching the Stoke City Football Club, for the first time since I became a fan in 1985.

So how did an American, now living in Arlington, Virginia, and originally from the Nebraska, end up a Potters fan? For when you do come across an American who follows English football, they are almost always a Manchester, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool or Chelsea supporter. Over the years during my overseas travels, whenever the subject of football has come up and I’m asked who I support: the answer “Stoke City” always elicits a “Huh? What? Why?”

It all began, not in England, but Bordeaux, France, when I was doing what we Americans call a “junior year abroad.”

I quickly fell into a group of British students who were there “doing their languages” for their universities. These students were not required to do much. They didn’t have to attend classes. They were in the university dormitories, but that was as close as they got to academia.

Since they had little to do, life there was a series of parties we organized in our dorm rooms with beer and cheap boxed wine. Since the French students were so diligent and preferred to study, each party — with about 15 of us crammed in a shoebox-sized room — would inevitably result in complaints and letter of reprimand from the dorm supervisors stating that if there was one more party, the host would get kicked out. So someone else in a different room would have to volunteer for the next party. (Falling into this crowd is pretty much why I can’t speak French worth a damn today.)

One of these Brits was a huge Stoke City fan. He would go on endlessly about his team, while everyone else would take the piss out of him for being a Stoke supporter. But he was quite funny about it. Keep in mind, Stoke was in the middle of its worst-ever season: fewest wins, fewest points. He had to suffer a lot of slings and arrows.

I was a big Chicago Cubs baseball fan. For those who don’t know, the Cubs at the time hadn’t won a World Series since 1909. They were America’s lovable losers and the way this fellow described Stoke, the Potters sounded like the Chicago Cubs of English football. He had a lot of self-deprecating jokes, similar to the American comedian Bob Newhart, who said about Chicago, “Being a Cubs fan prepares you for life’s disappointments.”

So I declared myself a Stoke fan, which, to be honest didn’t mean much for the next 30 or so years. I spent many years living in countries that showed English football, but Stoke was never on. I would take note in the International Herald Tribune as to whether they had won or lost and watched the tables, but pre-Internet, there wasn’t a lot of information out there.

But that all changed a few years ago when NBC sports began broadcasting the Premier League here in the United States. Lo and behold, I could watch live games and Stoke was no longer loveable losers, but on my TV live many Saturday and Sunday mornings playing in the top division.

That truly solidified my love of Stoke as I could follow players, the storylines that unfold over a season, cheer when they scored or feel down when they lost. And unfortunately, watch in despair as they sunk into the relegation zone. When you experience all these emotions watching a team, it means you’ve become a true fan.

Since relegation, that’s all over. Last season, I searched for a substitute. A English friend from my year in Bordeaux tried to get me to root for his team: Burnley. I like Harry Kane as a player and enjoy watching the Spurs. This year, we Americans football fans are intensely watching Christian Pulisic, and I’m rooting for him as long as he’s in the game. Last Sunday, as soon as he was pulled from the Leicester City match, I didn’t give a damn whether Chelsea won or lost.

None of these have turned out to be a substitute for Stoke. It just isn’t the same. If there is a way to stream Stoke games, I haven’t figured it out. I’m back to reading articles in the Internet and following the comments of fans on Facebook and Reddit pages.

But the good news is that I’m returning to England for the first time since 1990. I have a conference in London the week of Sept. 9-12 and the morning of Sept. 13, I’m getting on a train to Stoke to the see the city for the first time.

The problem is: I’ve forgotten the name of the fellow who started this all way back in 1985. I have many pictures of nights of drunken debauchery in those Bordeaux dorm rooms, but he isn’t in any of them. I’m writing this essay in hopes that he recognizes himself, or someone reading this knows of a Stoke fan who studied in Bordeaux in 1985 and passes it on to him. And he contacts me at stewmag@yahoo.com. 

It’s a longshot, but maybe we can meet up for the Sept. 13 game.
For anyone else, I'm the guy in the photo. I've gotten a few recommendations for pubs to visit prior to the game. I'll be wearing a black DC United t-shirt (at least until I make it to the team store go on a spending spree). If you see me Sept. 13-14, say "hi."

NOTE: Since posting this, I've had several tips on how to stream Stoke games. Thanks. I plan to try some of them out this weekend.

The Perfect Lob: A Story From My Year of Reporting in Cambodia

By STEW MAGNUSON

I have so many memorable days from my 15 months working at the Cambodia Daily.

One was April 1, 1998, the day after the return of Prince Ranariddh to Cambodia.

During the July 7-8 coup, he had fled the country but the next year he was allowed to return to run in the upcoming elections.

I was assigned to cover the crowds of his supporters who had gathered outside Le Royal Hotel, where he was staying. By the late morning, a few police showed up and began to move the crowd away from the hotel. By the time they reached the Wat Phnom traffic circle, the supporters gathered their motorbikes and signs, and began an impromptu motocycle parade/demonstration through the city.

The Funcinpec demonstration/parade

I paid some motodop to take me around and I snapped pictures and took notes as we made a grand tour of the Phnom Penh. They gathered more and more riders as they went, their numbers swelling to some 150 riders.

They stopped at CPP-run ministries, who had caught wind of the demonstration and were shuttered.

They shouted “youn” a slur for Vietnamese, at CPP headquarters and individuals walking down the streets.

At one point, they rolled into Funcinpec headquarters where they were given bottles of water, signs and a Prince Ranarridh portrait to parade around.

This went on for the better part of the day, with the riders eventually stopping back at the south end of Wat Phnom.

Unbeknownst to me — but known to other members of the staff back at our office — a counter protest organized by CPP supporters was making its way out of a squatter camp. The CPP supporters, some of whom were allegedly paid, were gathering makeshift weapons, rocks and loose concrete as they marched toward the riders. I went back to the office to file my story, but someone said I had better go back there. A photojournalist, Jerry Redfern, the husband of staffer Karen Coates, who had been taking pictures for us, came with, or was there, I’m not sure, as was Catherine Philp.

I arrived just in time for the battle.

The Funcinpec riders, way overconfident, rode their motorcycles toward the line of CPP protesters and were met with a barrage of rocks and cement.

Jerry snapped a photo that would end up on the front page portraying the moment the two sides clashed. It was a masterpiece. It showed one of the Funcinpec organizers fleeing, his motorcycle not quite hitting the ground yet, and a CPP thug trying to kick him, losing his shoe in the process. The shoe is suspended in mid-air. Did a better breaking news photo ever appear in the CD for the remainder of its run? It was much better in color, of course.

The moment I will never forget came shortly after as the two sides hurled projectiles at each other. One of the CPP organizers wearing a straw hat, carried a bullhorn and was shouting into it nonstop. I didn’t understand Khmer, but man was he annoying. Anyone shouting through a bullhorn is annoying, of course, but this guy was ratcheting up the tension with his incessant jabbering.

The victim

Then to my right, I saw a Funcinpec demonstrator lob a softball size hunk of concrete at bullhorn man’s direction.

It all unfolded seemingly in slow motion, as if I were watching an NFL replay of a Hail Mary pass. As I followed its arc, I thought, “By God, that’s got a chance!”

Indeed, it was the perfect lob. Bullhorn man had no clue it was coming and was yakking right up until the concrete landed square on his straw hat.

He staggered, completely stunned. He didn’t drop, but wobbled comically about until he was taken away, not to be seen again that day.

I confess that I laughed a bit. 

For the full story as reported that day by the Cambodia Daily staff, and some more pictures, see below.

Catherine Philp at the CPP-Funcinpec clash

Most of my photos are blurry. Here is one of my better ones. Gotta love the panda.

Twenty Years Later: Memories of the July 5-6, 1997 Coup d'etat in Cambodia

By STEW MAGNUSON
Twenty years ago today, July 5, 1997, I found myself in the middle of a coup d’etat in the Kingdom of Cambodia, where I played a small part in producing and distributing a newspaper in the middle of a city being torn apart by political factions waging street battles with guns, tanks and rocket-propelled grenades.
Earlier that year, I was working in Tokyo as a newspaper page designer and copyeditor, but I wanted to do more reporting and writing. I can’t remember how I heard about The Cambodia Daily, but its publisher Bernie Krisher lived in Tokyo, so I had lunch with him one day and he offered me a job on the spot.
Four years earlier, the United Nations had brokered a deal between the Cambodian Peoples Party — run for years by strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen — and the royalist FUNCINPEC party led by Prince Norodom Ranariddh. After a contentious election, they agreed to share power. I won’t go into details on this ill-fated plan, but by 1997 it wasn't going well.

As part of the UN-brokered deal, the parties agreed to allow a free press.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, July 6, 1997. Credit: Stew Magnuson

Krisher — a longtime journalist in Asia and Japan who had become wealthy starting then selling a Japanese language version of a news magazine — in 1993 filled a longtime dream of being his own newspaper publisher — and started The Cambodia Daily. He staffed it with idealistic young Americans, Canadians and Brits, some fresh out of journalism school, and Cambodians who would both serve as assistant reporters and produce a Khmer language insert.
As I served my last months in Japan at the Asahi Evening News, I was wondering whether I would arrive in time. Reading the wires in the weeks prior to my departure, the country seemed like it was coming apart. Not long before my departure, someone threw grenades into a peaceful demonstration in a park near the National Assembly killing 17 and wounded 150.
About three days after my arrival, CPP and FUNCINPEC aligned bodyguards fought a small skirmish on the streets of Phnom Penh. The street battle took place blocks away from the Foreign Correspondence Club where I was stuck for an evening as gunfire continued through the night.
The crux of the issue was former Khmer Rouge fighters who had been holed up in a remote province were now ready to defect. Rumors that they would align themselves with FUNCINPEC would tip the balance of military power in favor of the Royalists. That was a move the CPP could not tolerate. While there was a power-sharing agreement, with two prime ministers Prince Ranariddh and Hun Sen, the CPP maintained its grip on real power.
Phnom Penh didn't have much in the way of movie theaters instead, it had little businesses and let you rent out video discs and sit in a small room with a sofa, have a drink and watch whatever you wanted.
That's what I was doing on Saturday, July 5 — a day off for the newspaper staff — in the early afternoon. After watching a movie in a dark room, I e,erged to the bright afternoon light to the sound of thunder coming from the direction of the airport. There was a small thundercloud in that direction, but mixed in with the rumbles was something else: the unmistakable sound of explosions. The Cambodians on the street were looking toward the airport with apprehension. With all the rumors swirling around and the political tension, I knew something big was happening.
There are many stories surrounding the fighting in the streets that day but I'm only going to recount what happened to me as best as I can recall after two decades.
I flagged down a motodop, one of the legions of young men who made their living taking passengers on the back of their 125cc motorcycles, and had him take me to the Cambodia Daily office, where several staff members had gathered.
I was very green. I had only been there a few weeks and had been  disappointed to discover that new staffers had to spend six months serving as copyeditors and page designers. That was exactly what I was doing when I left Tokyo. So I had not been doing any reporting up to that point.
At the office, I found that several other reporters and staffers had arrived. There was the editor-in-chief James Kanter, Joe Cochrane, Catherine Philp, Deborah Boyce, Marc Levy and Chris Fontaine, Guy Nicholson, Stephen Kosloff and probably some others I can’t remember (Possibly Jeff Hodson and Jeff Smith). I did whatever I could to pitch in and help.
Some of the more experienced reporters like Joe had me make calls to track down rumors. For example, we had heard that someone had taken over the power plant, or a factory, by force. I called there and found out that it wasn't true. I was disappointed that I couldn’t deliver this big piece of information. Throughout the day other people showed up including a Cambodian reporter Rathavary Duong, Sydney Schanberg the Pulitzer prize winning former New York Times reporter who was a main character in the movie The Killing Fields and his wife Jane. He was there on assignment to write a magazine article and found himself in the middle of this big coup d'état. Radio programs from all over the world were calling our office to find out what was happening.
I listened in as Joe Cochrane tried to reach a FUNCINPEC aligned general. He actually had his personal cell phone number and called it. Amazingly he picked up.
“Joe, Hello. Can't talk now. Busy fighting.” He then hung up. No one heard from we him for months and we feared that he might have been killed. He did turn up on the Cambodian-Thai border later and very much alive.
I remember James Kanter having an intense discussion with another editor, probably Chris Fontaine, as to whether we should describe this as a coup d'état or not. James wasn't so sure. Eventually we had a policy to call that weekend “the events of July 5 and 6.”
I also remember James blowing his top at a Canadian guy who was a well-known junkie. He'd been sidelined from the staff and given the job of writing copy for advertising. During the course of the coup, he was apparently taking the information we have gathered and calling a news organization in Canada to earn some money as a stringer. James caught him talking to the news organization on the phone and snatched it from him. He asked the people on the other line who they were and informed them that the person they were talking to did not represent the Cambodia Daily. He hung up the phone and screamed at the top of his lungs that we were all working very hard here and has doing nothing and to get the hell out of the office. He was literally red in the face. “You're crazy man!” was the junkie's reply as he beat a hasty retreat. (He would later that year abscond with some of the newspaper's advertising money).
As the day wore on and the battle grew closer, we put mattresses against the windows that we hoped would stop stray bullets or rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) shrapnel. Wishful thinking perhaps. It was growing apparent that we wouldn’t get back to the two group homes where the expatriate staff members lived.
One problem is that we didn't have any food. There was a popular restaurant nearby called The Mex that made an attempt to approximate Mexican food. We actually called them to see if they would deliver. “Oh no we're not delivering food today,” the man who answered the phone said.  Another complication was that the printing press was on the other side of the town. We would not be able to safely bring our pages there to be printed and the press operator was probably at home with his family anyway.
Instead we decided to put out a simple four-page newspaper. It would be printed on the largest size photocopier paper we had in the office and then folded to make a four-page Cambodia Daily that was pretty much packed with all the information about the coup that we knew. My contribution to the newspaper was basically doing what I had been tasked to do since of my arrival and that was to layout the paper and copyedit.
The office was actually a former brothel. The upstairs floor where I had rarely ventured actually had a series of very small rooms, which apparently was where the prostitutes would take their clients. They were in the inner part of the floor and away from windows, so this was the safest place to try and sleep. As gunfire and RPGs popped all around us, I found myself on the floor with a very thin rug. I slept fitfully.
The next morning, we printed hundreds of papers that we had printed up on the office photocopier. Now we would have to distribute them.
We divvied up where we're going to take the newspapers. Someone said they would take copies to the big, four-star hotels where many expatriates were holed up for safety.
I decided I would take mine to some of the lesser-known hotels where the backpackers and NGO workers stayed.
There was a lull in the fighting, but still some gunfire and RPGs popping above me as I found a brave motodop to take me around. I dropped the newspapers off in the no-star hotels and one with the gatekeeper of a Swedish woman with whom I had gone on one date. (She was later very appreciative that I had stopped by to give her a newspaper  —although my act of bravery wasn’t enough to earn me a second date.)
After dropping off all the newspapers, I went back to the group house that I shared with other reporters. I don't remember who else was there. I did have some instant ramen noodles stashed in my room, the first meal I had in a day.
I got so little sleep the night before, I tried to go to sleep again but the sound of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades  grew closer. When I did sleep, my dreams were wild and tense. 
I slept maybe to 11 a.m. and went upstairs to the roof and took pictures of thick back smoke on the horizon. I learned later that this was from a gas station that someone had shot with an RPG. (See picture)
It was my intention to go back to the office for the second day but first I had to make an attempt to be a real war correspondent. I got my camera, my notebook, and walked out the gate of the house intending to get to the main road to see what was going on.
Several guards manning the gates at the other homes on the block watched  as I walked bravely up the street to the main drag. Just about then, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded right above my head — or at least it seemed like it. I thought better of my plan and turned around and started walking back to the house much too the amusement of the Cambodian guards.
I wanted to get back to the office. I did somehow manage to find a motordop who was willing to take me there. We only got a few blocks when I realized that something really really bad was happening ahead of us. The explosions and crackling AK-47 fire was intense. Little did I know that I had chosen the worst possible time to try to get to work. At that very moment CPP forces were attacking Ranariddh’s compound a block or two from the office. I wisely told the driver to turn around and go back.
I never did make it into the office the second day of the coup July 6. I heard the food situation was there was even more dire.
In my absence, the other staffers put out a six or eight page paper on the second day. I made it in for the third day and I believe that's when a picture was taken with myself Sydney Schamburg his wife and the staff members on hand. I don't remember if any of the Cambodian staff ever made it to the office July 5-6.
This is just one small piece of the story of that weekend. The fighting died down, leaving many combatants and some innocent bystanders dead. Ranariddh fled Cambodia.
I would go on to do more reporting later. I would write the one-year anniversary story about the March 30 grenade attack, the day when Prince Ranariddh returned to Cambodia, the violent elections, and its aftermath.
Hun Sen and the CPP have maintained their grip on power ever since the July 5-6 “events,” which has always been a coup to me.
A year later I wrote a novel based on that weekend. The manuscript is collecting dust. Maybe one day I'll publish it. 
Thanks to the miracle of Facebook I'm still in contact with many of the expatriate and Cambodia staffers I worked with during that year. Most of us have gone on to successful careers in journalism and in other pursuits.
Although my memories are starting to fade it really doesn't seem possible that 20 years have passed.
 

Stew Magnuson is Acting Editor of National Defense Magazine in Arlington, Virginia, and the author of several books, including three editions of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83, Wopunded Knee 1973: Stil Bleeding, and a novel, The Song of Sarin. His book The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder, winner of the 2009 Nebraska nonfiction book of the year award, was recently named one of the state's 150 most important literary works. Contact him at stewmag (a) yahoo.com  

Star Wars Episode V: A Memorable Day Spent at Omaha's Cinema Center

By Stew Magnuson

As a new Star Wars movie opens this week, and the sign for the now-closed Cinema Center in Omaha has reportedly come down for good, I’m reminded of one of the oddest experiences of my childhood growing up in Omaha, Nebraska: the afternoon I spent with two jailbirds waiting in line to see Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

It was May 21, 1980, and I was a junior at Omaha Central High School, and the much-anticipated sequel to Star Wars was debuting at the Cinema Center.

At that point in U.S. history, we as a society were not yet camping out days ahead of time to be first in line for a big movie. But that day would be a small step in that direction.

My plan was relatively simple. I would write a forged note from my Mom excusing myself from classes after lunch for an orthodontics appointment and then take a series of city buses to the multiplex and get in line as soon as I could. I reckoned that I would be close to the first in line if I arrived there by 1 p.m.

I did confess to my Honors English teacher Mrs. Bernstein that I planned on carrying out this caper. Not only didn’t she mind, or rat me out, she asked if I could hold a spot for her and her college-aged daughter.

It all went as planned, although I was not the first in line. About eight or nine fellow nerds who liked to call themselves the Red Squadron beat me there. They were dressed as X-wing fighter pilots, Princess Leia, and so on. This movie really was a harbinger of things to come.

Content to be about number nine in line, I began my long wait for the 4:30 matinee screening with nothing but a paperback book to keep me occupied.

I was returning to where I saw the first Star Wars as an eighth grader in 1977. Like most kids, I had no inkling that the phenomenon was coming. I had seen the move poster, but no trailers, and I hadn’t given the movie much thought. But a kid in my shop class at Lewis and Clark Junior High had seen the movie on its opening night and was gushing. “You gotta see this movie,” he kept saying over and over. A fan of science fiction and comic books at the time, I didn’t take much convincing.

So a buddy of mine went that weekend. I remember an usher coming up to us to hand out blue “May The Force Be With You Buttons,” which proves that even the studio didn’t know what it had on its hands. It felt the need to hand out free promotional items to get folks to show up to the movie. (I still have that button.)

I don’t think I will ever forget the feeling of exhilaration hearing the first notes of the John Williams-penned theme song, the opening crawl setting up the story, then the battlecruiser emerging and rolling across the screen in the opening scene. It was the most memorable moment of my movie-going life. My friends and I had a competition that summer for bragging rights on how many times we could see it. I watched it 10 times, at least once on the Indian Hills Theater Cinerama screen.

I’m not sure why I couldn’t convince any of my friends to join me on my escapade three summers later, but there I was alone when a sedan pulled up in the parking spot next to where I was standing. Out popped two white dudes, probably in their late 20s, or early 30s, who were much better prepared for the long wait.

They had folding lawn chairs and a cooler full of Miller High Lifes in the trunk.

It didn’t take them long to get set up, placing their folding chairs behind me in line and in front of their trunk. They filled their plastic cups full of beer and started to drink.

They were quite friendly and introduced themselves. I have long since forgotten their names — let’s call them Joe and Don. Joe was the taller, beefier one with curly blond hair and matching mustache. Don was about a head shorter with back hair.

They offered me a beer. I declined, being a teetotaler, and even if I wasn’t, I’m not sure I would have drank in broad daylight in a movie theater parking lot at age 16.

It wasn’t long after getting set up when Joe said: “This is perfect timing. I saw the first one right before I went into the joint. And now the second one is out the day after I get out.”

What?

For those who didn’t grow up with a steady diet of 1970s police shows, “the joint” was slang for prison. I was impressed with myself for knowing this “hip” slang, having watched a lot of Baretta growing up.

As the conversation proceeded, I gathered that Don had met Joe in prison.

They were actually gregarious and otherwise normal appearing guys. I never felt scared even as they became drunker as the afternoon wore on. Joe was the leader of the two and the most outgoing. Don was a little quieter.

I spent the next couple of hours talking with the pair, about what, I don’t remember very well. But I do recall being very interested in why they went to prison. I listened carefully to what they said for clues, but I didn’t get any. At one point when he mentioned jail in passing, I blurted out “What were you in for?”

Photo courtesy of Charles Martens and the Forgotten Omaha Facebook page

He completely ignored the question, pretending as if he hadn’t heard it. At that point, I knew it was a question neither of the pair was ever going to answer. I never had the impression that they were violent. Since they were in for about three years, I was guessing theft or robbery. But that was just a theory.

As they day wore on, they knocked back more and more Millers. The line behind us also grew longer. And in front as well. The Red Squadron let some of their pals cut in line, and there was now more than 25 moviegoers in front of me, not the original eight. This was decades before you could buy a ticket in advance. I was assured of getting in, but now I wanted a good seat.

My two new buddies had been talking like we were all going to be sitting together, but with Mrs. Bernstein and her daughter coming, I was already plotting how to give these guys the slip.

Suddenly, there was stirring beyond the plate glass window in the box office. The Red Squadron went on high alert. By this time Joe and Don were completely stumbling, slurring and sloppy drunk.

The line behind us by this time—comprising mostly Dads and their kids—stretched all the way down the parking lot, then hooked west behind the building. There had to be more than 200 hundred people that I could see.

Joe and Don realized that they had to decamp. After putting their folding chairs away, they both unzipped their flies, pulled out their private parts and began pissing on the bumper of their own car without making even the slightest effort to shield themselves from the hundred plus people in line.

Good God, I thought. Looking away. I was glad Mrs. Bernstein hadn’t shown up yet to witness that. (I’m not sure how many noticed it, but exposing yourself to a hundred kids nowadays would certainly get them three years in the “joint.”)

Don, realizing that he had an unopened bottle of Miller to deal with, lifted the trunk back up and began repeatedly shoving the bottle into the ice.

The glass broke, resulting in a long gash on the outside of his hand.

At that point, I judiciously let the pair go ahead of me in line. A red rivulet of blood dripped off of Don’s hand. He had no means to staunch the flow, but he was so inebriated he didn’t seem to care.

Mrs. Bernstein and her daughter showed up at the nick of time, only a minute before the door flung open. Everyone began to surge toward the doors. I pretended not to know Joe and Don, who were angling for a good position to squeeze in the door.

I suppose it is necessary to mention at this point that Joe was wearing a white T-shirt. My last image of the two jailbirds is Don repeatedly wiping his bloody hand on the back on Joe’s white shirt. It was a horror show.

Mrs. Bernstein, her daughter and I snagged pretty good seats, front and center about four rows back. I kept slouching hoping my two buddies wouldn’t spot me.

I never saw them again—fortunately.

 Stew Magnuson is the author of three editions of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83. His book The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder,  winner of the 2009 Nebraska nonfiction book of the year award, was recently named one of the state's 150 most important literary works. Contact him at stewmag (a) yahoo.com

 

Sayonara to Mac and Mac Bar, Hiroshima, Japan

Mac, 1995 at a wedding.

By STEW MAGNUSON

You always think that you will return to your favorite watering holes in the world, maybe one last time, and all the people you knew, would be sitting right there where you left them, and it would be as if you never departed.

I always thought that I would get back to Mac Bar in Hiroshima, Japan — someday. As the years went on, and I moved back the States, got married and began raising children, that became less realistic, but I never shook the desire or the notion that I would return there someday. Even though the bar I went to in 1992-1993 changed locations, it would still be pretty much the same, I reckoned, with Mac spinning discs, his partner Yuri, smiling, maybe vaguely remembering me as the gaijin who only drank Coke, taking my drink order, or perhaps Boku-chan, Mac’s right-hand man.

A few months ago, word reached me that Mac’s final location in Hiroshima had closed down. Then I woke up Sunday morning to discover that Mac had passed away, one day shy of his 67^th birthday.

And so Mac’s — the 1990s location — now will only live in my memory.

How to describe Mac’s?

First and foremost, it was a “gaijin bar.” "Gaijin," meaning foreigners. Located in a prime spot at the convergence of two main shopping streets on the edge of town’s entertainment district, this is where the Americans, Brits, Aussies, Canadians one notable Frenchman, and such congregated late at night.

It was also a dive — the lone remaining business in a building that should have been condemned. You climbed up a set of narrow stairs with broken-out windows until you reached a heavy, steel door, then entered a tiny room that cold fit may fifteen people comfortably, but crammed in multitudes more. If it were late on a weekend night, the floor would be a toxic mix of cigarette ash, spilled beer and shards of broken glass. The second-hand smoke was stifling.

There to greet you was Mac, who between taking drink orders, was mostly preoccupied with digging out a CD or vinyl album from his vast collection to satisfy a customer’s request.

Yuri, the co-owner and Mac's life partner was the simply sweetest woman in Japan. She always greeted you with a warm smile, spoke excellent English and never seemed to get cross about anything — taking the antics of drunk foreigners in stride, and giving advice to newcomers such as myself. Like about 1,000 other gaijin men who arrived in Hiroshima, I had a crush on her the moment we met. It could be called the “Hiroshima Yuri Syndrome” as a foreign man walked into the bar, met her and was immediately smitten wondering if he had any chance. They didn’t. Soon, enough they were told, or figured out, that she was with Mac, and they moved on to some other probably very nice  — but never as nice as Yuri — local woman.

Yuri and I at some party somewhere (1994?)

Mac’s was all about music. Mac was in the process of transitioning from vinyl to CDs when I arrived in 1992. He prided himself on being able to fill any request, although he reportedly wasn’t a big fan of Queen. He had a vast collection considering the small amount of space behind the bar. If you stumped him, he would scratch his head with his index finger, and either come up with the song after an extensive search, or apologize. He would take a mental note, though, and the next time you came, he had it. He had dug the record out of his collection at home, or bought the CD.

I’m sure I annoyed him with my habitual request for “A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request’ by Steve Goodman, but he never failed to play it.

I liked showing up right at 10 p.m. best, when there were few customers and Mac and I could talk music. And yes, he opened around 10 and stayed open until whenever. I did leave there on occasion when it was light outside.

I guess I was the oddball, the teetotaler who hung out at the bar all night.

I can’t say I knew Mac or Yuri as well as some of the long-timers in Hiroshima. My time there was short. I spent one year in Hiroshima, and one year in nearby Fukuoka. Yet in that brief time I met whom I consider some of my dearest friends in the world at Mac’s, even though I never get to see them anymore.

Neil Van Wouw, a Canadian computer programmer, and singer-guitar player in the town’s best band, AKA Toe Jam, became one of my best friends, and I still consider him as such even though I haven’t seen him in 15 years.

The same for Margaret Stalker, another Canadian, who upon meeting, when I asked her where she was from, said: “The capital of Canada. Do you know what that is?”

When I answered correctly, she decided we could become friends. 
Richard Parker and Carol Rinnert, Jeff Beineke, Amanda Hyde, Alain Paquet, I met there, many of whom I am back in contact with thanks to the miracle of Facebook. If I recall correctly, the first time I saw Peter Berg at Mac's, he was dancing with a chair.

There are too many personal anecdotes to record here that began or ended at Mac’s. A few of them I am not proud of and it probably should remain that way.

The Mac Bar Baseball team, which actually played a game at Hiroshima Municipal Stadium, is a story that warrants its own blog.

There was the time I met a young American woman at Mac’s from Arizona, who asked me where I was from.

“Omaha.”

“Oh really, my Dad’s first cousin is from there.”

“What his name? Maybe I know him,” I said.

“Warren Buffet.”

(Look of surprise)

“Oh, but we’re not rich like him. He does give my dad free financial advice, though.”

I got into my second to last fistfight at Mac’s.

Some lanky Peruvian a head taller than me standing next to two Japanese women started swearing and cursing at me. I had never spoke or had any interaction with him before, so I could only guess he was trying to act tough in front of the two ladies. I stood there doing nothing until he said something about my glasses and attempted to either poke them or take them, at which point I landed two quick left jabs followed with a right hook, which put him down and shut him up.

The only regret I have was that I returned to Mac’s three hours later, and the Peruvian was still there. He came at me with a beer bottle declaring that he was going to kill me, but some others grabbed him from behind before he could get to me.

Later, Mac admonished me, but only for coming back the second time. A few weeks later, the Peruvian and I found ourselves back at Mac’s, but much earlier in the evening when he was sober.

“You two aren’t going to fight, are you?” Mac said chuckling, and we both sheepishly shrugged our shoulders.

I never found another place in Japan quite like Mac’s even though I ended up living there off and on another five years.

I send my deepest sympathizes to Yuri-chan and Boku-chan. And rest in peace Mac. Know that you created a place that will live on the hearts of so many like myself, who remember it and the three of you as being one of the best things about Japan.  

Link here to the Mar Bar Facebook page.

Stew Magnuson (stewmag (a) yahoo.com) is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, and  The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition. His book The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder: And Other True Stories from the Nebraska-Pine Ridge Border Towns was the 2009 Nebraska nonfiction book of the year and was recently named as one of the state's 150 most important literary works. He also penned a novel, The Song of Sarin, based on his experiences living in Tokyo during the Aum Shinrikyo nerve gas attack.

 

The Secret of the Western Hillls Elementary School Roof Revealed!

The Western Hills roof as seen from space!

By STEW MAGNUSON

Omaha Public School’s Western Hills Elementary after 63 years has met the wrecking ball.

Now that a new building is taking its place, it’s time for the secret of “The Roof” to be revealed.

This is the story about three young teenage boys with too much time on their hands, who pulled off a visually spectacular prank one night involving 16 garbage cans and the north side of the school’s façade.

It is a prank almost no one witnessed and is probably remembered by only these three individuals, now all middle-aged men.

Although the statute of limitations for teenage pranks and petty vandalism has long since passed, the other two culprits in this affair are still residents of the greater Omaha area and do not wish to be named. I, however, live in Virginia and my crack team of lawyers will fight any attempt at extradition. My two partners in crime will be known as “Chester” and “Ratso.”

Ratso and I attended Western Hills from kindergarten through 6^th grade. Chester started there in 5^th grade.

To begin this story, the secret of the roof must be explained.

Many who attended the elementary school may have known that it was ridiculously easy to climb up onto the roof from two sets of ledges located at the front door. This spot was also secluded — not visible from the relatively busy Western Avenue. The only risk that someone would spot you was the occasional dog walker.

The architect created an easy two-step “ladder” to the roof, which could be accessed by first stepping on the ledge of a window pane, pivoting, then grasping on to the edge of the door’s overhang. From there, you could either get a boost from a friend or take a running jump and grab the edge and pull yourself up to the roof.

For many years, there was a tall pine tree growing to the right of the door that made it especially easy to make it on the ledge. It was eventually cut down, but the structure remained.

The roof could be easily accessed from the ledge by the front door.

I didn’t discover this myself, but I had seen older kids make it up there when I was too little or too afraid to do it myself.

One day, the summer after we had graduated from Western Hills, Chester and I were hanging out at the school grounds, when we spotted some kids on the roof. They were climbing up there in broad daylight to retrieve a Frisbee. Chester had no idea that you could climb up there. I told them how they did it and we went to the front door and for the first time, climbed on top. As I said, it was the middle of the day, so we only stayed a few minutes before scrambling down.

But this began a relationship with “The Roof” that would last more than a decade, and into “adulthood.”

The roof on summer or weekend nights soon became the center of our lives outside of our homes. The names of those who joined us in our escapades up there changed — we brought many of our friends up there — but Chester, Ratso and I were the core.

The early years were marked by petty vandalism and mischief, I must admit. When we were about 12 to 14 years old, we would break the floodlights with the gravel that covered the roof, knock over vents and throw fist fulls of pebbles at cars driving by. The most fun was when one of these drivers got mad enough to jump out of the car and run up to a row of bushes, assuming that we were hiding there. They never guessed that we were above them containing our laughter.

I wasn’t there, but a cop did spot Chester and Ratso on the roof one night. However, there was an escape route at the back doors. You could hang off the ledge, drop down about six feet, scurry up the hill and disappear into the neighborhood.

The “mischief” years soon gave away as we grew up and the roof became more of a place of quiet contemplation and solitude. We would talk for hours, telling jokes and stories and occasionally confessing to each other our secrets. The skylights along the hallways below us gave off an eerie glow. A barn swift, we simply called “the bird,” would dive at us from time to time. The highest point and the best view of life below was above the gym/lunch room. It was a hundred foot high imposing brick wall that would have withstood a siege in the medieval days.

The stars shined through as best they could with the city lights, and we could watch thunderstorms flashing like paparazzi cameras as they rolled in from the west.

The big prank was just before Chester was about to move to Ralston when we were about 14 years old. I’m not sure how I got the idea, but one night I decided that we would take the school’s garbage cans and put them on the roof. I was so enamored with the prank, that I stayed awake half the night cooking up the caper.

It was a Saturday night when we executed the plan. Ratso and I told our parents that we were doing a sleepover at Chester’s house because it was last weekend there, but it was really because he was the closest to the school and it was easy to sneak out of his back door and walk a short block to the school.

We began the operation after midnight.

Western Hills still placed its refuse in aluminum garbage cans. There were 16 of them, all mostly empty. The wall next to the janitor’s entrance where the garbage cans were kept was almost as easy to climb as the front, with three tiers to the top. However, it was not nearly as secluded. Passersby could see the whole area. Step one was knocking out the flood lights to lessen our exposure.

With Ratso, being the tallest, standing on some plastic milk crates, Chester and I took the garbage cans as he handed them up. We had to listen for cars, and wait them out but part one went off almost without a hitch. “Almost” because at one point, a garbage can we thought was empty in fact had a significant amount of filthy, putrefied garbage water at the bottom, which spilled all over Chester’s pants. Despite the gag-inducing funk, Chester soldiered on. That step took the cans up to the roof over the janitor’s room, but not onto the roof over the school.

We then retreated back to Chester’s house — where he changed clothes — and waited an hour to make sure no one had spotted us.

When we returned, we had a second ledge to haul the cans up to. This was still not out of the line of sight of the street, so we had to be careful.

About in the middle of this part of the operation, Ratso was handing me a can, and I lost my balance. I had an instant decision to make: try to let the can down easily but probably fall directly onto the cans below, or jump clear of the cans and let the can go. I chose the latter and escaped serious injury by landing on my feet but had to fling the can away from me.

It crashed on the roof making the kind of racket only remembered by those who recall what those noisy old cans sounded like when the garbage man arrived at 5 a.m. In the still of the night, you could hear a beer can tossed out of car roll down a hill three blocks away. The impact should have woken up the whole neighborhood. We dashed south out the escape route, with Ratso and I arguing the whole way about who was at fault. (It was him, of course.)

An hour later, we returned, but nothing had changed.

So we proceeded with step three, the most physically taxing part, moving them up to the roof above the gym. This part was completely shielded from the street. There was a metal ladder built in to the side of the wall to make climbing up there easy for maintenance workers. We handed them up, walked them across the roof and placed them a few feet out of sight.

We returned a third time just before dawn to place them on the ledge. To put a cherry on top of the prank, each can had its lid.

Our mission complete, we returned to Chester’s house to get some sleep.

After about three hours, around 8 a.m., we woke up and walked up the hill to see the fruits of our labor.

It was quite a picture: 16 garbage cans, perched on the ledge of the wall towering over Western Avenue, the soft light of the morning sun reflecting off the silvery aluminum. It was both a stunning and absurd sight. A few motorists slowed down to take a look.

The genius part of the prank, I believed, was that since we had done this after midnight, the cans would remain there all day Sunday. Who would be around to take them down? We went back to Chester’s house and fell into the kind of deep sleep only teenagers can enjoy on weekend mornings, pulling ourselves out of our stupors sometime after the noon hour. Once again we went up to revel in our work.

But they were gone.

The 16 cans were placed above the school name.

GONE!

We couldn’t believe it. Put back in their proper place. Already?

All our planning and hard work seemed to amount to nothing.

Some 39 years later, it is a prank remembered by only three middle aged men, perhaps a few early birds who passed by, and the poor fellow or fellows who were tasked with removing the garbage cans on a Sunday morning.

We continued going up on the roof into our college days and a few years beyond. Ratso got a serious job, which he would have lost if he had ever been caught up there, so he was the first to stop going. I left Nebraska after I graduated from college, but Chester and I would climb up on occasions. Eventually he lost the will as well. I for one, would have required a step ladder to get up, having put on a few pounds.

I will remember fondly the seven years I spent as a child at Western Hills Elementary. But knowing that The Roof is gone, saddens me the most. 

Stew Magnuson will give a presentation about Highway 83 at the Great Plains Black History Museum, Crossroads Mall, Omaha, Nebraska. Thursday, September, 29 at 6:30 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, and  The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition. His book The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder: And Other True Stories from the Nebraska-Pine Ridge Border Towns was the 2009 Nebraska nonfiction book of the year and was recently named as one of the state's 150 most important literary works. Both are available online or at The Bookworm at 90th and Center Streets in Omaha.