Karl Gude

About an hour after teaching my last class I left the small school building and headed home. It was a hot night in the tropics and I was looking forward to my vino rojo.

It was after 10 p.m., which meant that the new military curfew was in effect. Worse, it meant that my grandparents were going to be pissed that I wasn't home yet.

Almost instantly I was spotted by six soldiers strolling toward me about 50 yards up the street as I walked the five blocks to my grandparent’s apartment along the broad Carrera 7. Solid rows of bright street lamps made an about-face escape impossible. Two soldiers were on my side of the highway, two were coming up the median strip and two were on the opposite side. They were carrying their old-style, bolt-action, single-shot, Army-issue rifles casually. I was the only guy around not wearing a helmet.

Damn, and double damnation! Knowing I’d be stopped, I reached into my suit jacket pocket for my omnipresent cedula, the government issued papers that proved Colombian residency. They also proved that I was no criminal.

The papers weren’t there! Triple-double damnation. In my mind I could see them stupidly resting on my bedside table. My Spanish was pretty good, having spent my childhood years in Colombia, but I knew it would be useless to try and talk my way out of this one.

I was about to be arrested.

Earlier that evening I had been picking on an Army officer in my English class at the International Center for Language Studies in Bogotá. “Colonel, keep your eyes on your own paper!” His pretend frown didn’t intimidate me, 20 years his junior, and I smiled. So did he. He was a good guy, even though he had no problem peeking at the quiz paper on the girl’s desk next to him.

In the early days of my first classes at the school the colonel had had difficulty pronouncing the “V” sound, as most latinos do. When responding to my question of “How are you today?” he would always say “Bery, bery guuuude.” (No relation to me) So, one day, as he was about to utter his reply I thrust my index finger lightning fast onto his mustached top lip and shoved it up toward his nose. This alienated it from his lower lip and crippled any possibility of the “B” while simultaneously forcing the “V.” Checkmate. Through his surprise and embarrassment he pronounced a textbook “V” and the whole class applauded. He was delighted, and I felt like a brilliant teacher. From that day on, every time I asked him how he was, he would proudly punctuate each “V” sound with two quick finger thrusts to his upper lip: “Vvvery, Vvvery guuuuude.”

But El Colonel was no help to me in the street that night. More dangerous than the approaching soldiers was the fact that my 19-year-old brain was making the decisions here, a male brain that believed that bad things happen to other people, not me, which explains my next move. I calculated that, if I broke at the exact right instant, I could cut a diagonal path between the guys in front of me and the ones in the middle and come out behind the guys across the street just steps from the small entrance to my grandparent’s apartment building. Then, bam, I’m in, and home free.

And that’s just what I did.

A year before this night my grandmother had, out of desperation, introduced me to Greg Gregory in her building’s cramped elevator. I had moved in with my mom’s parents shortly after graduating from high school in Los Angeles (after attending two other high schools in Denver and Boston) so that I could get to know them better and also to plan my next move. My grandmother was Parisian, but she had married a Colombian diplomat who had brought her back to his country years before. Her Spanish was heavily accented, using the French guttural “ehrrr” instead of the engine-like spanish “rrrrr.”

She had insisted that I get a job but I hadn’t had much luck, or initiative. Greg owned the ICLS and he offered me a job teaching at the school right then and there as we moved between the 7th and 8th floors. I spoke English, and that was good enough for him. Six weeks of training later, I was rewarded with a full load of classes, teaching several hours a day. (A few years later I heard that Greg was badly injured in a machete robbery while walking in a local park with his elderly mother who was visiting from the states.)

Arrest was not an option.

I couldn’t imagine my grandparents trying to figure out where I was and who knows how long I might have been lost in the Colombian system of justice. So, with my eye on the prize, I took off running, an unexpected move that startled both me and the soldiers. Here was this big, tall, blonde foreigner dressed in a suit, running toward and then through them, his tie fluttering over his shoulder like a tongue taunting “nyah, nyah, nyah.” I felt fearless. I knew I could do this. I was fast. I was the Flash.

But through the fog of teenage bravado the words “Alto! Alto!” being screamed by the angry soldiers jolted the idiocy right out of me and I realized that this was SERIOUS, and that I wasn’t all that fast, not as fast as bullets! My brain and skin suddenly tingled with a terrified and panicky anticipation of lead slamming into my backside and I began mouthing “oh no, oh no, oh no…” mantra-style. I contemplated running a movie-inspired zigzag pattern but felt that it might provoke them into thinking that shooting me would be good, sporting fun. And in the vein of “ain’t it funny what the mind conjures up” I even felt a silly concern over how ridiculous such maneuvering might look to the soldiers and that they might have a good laugh at my expense.

Finally, I slammed into the glass door at the entrance to the building and fumbled frantically with my keys. A glance over my shoulder told me that I had about five seconds to get inside and out of sight. The door opened to a crescendo of six men yelling “ALTO!” and then clicked protectively closed behind me. I was bounding up the stairs as they reached the door and the sound of fists pounding on glass diminished with each floor.

Why they didn't break the door down, or shoot me, I'll never know.

My panting exuberance felt out of place in my grandparents elegant, staid and disapproving apartment as I recounted to them, with huge doses of enthusiasm and a self-congratulatory emphasis, my story of beating the odds. But, to my dismay, they said nothing.

Then, my stately grandmother walked over to me and slapped me hard across the face.

“You stoopeed shild! What were you SINKING?”

“What?” I answered. “What’d I do?” But I knew. Embarrassed now, my cheek smarting from the slap, I shook my head apologetically. I felt six years old. My story had terrified her and, in her mind and now mine, I had almost been lost, and under her watch.

Reality check.

She didn’t speak to me for a week. Had my grandfather been less senile, I believe he would have secretly appreciated my feat. But maybe not…probably not, actually.

The following day at the school I read in the city newspaper, El Tiempo, (a paper that I would return to 20 years later to deliver a lecture on information graphics) that over a thousand people had been rounded up on the streets the night before and were being held in a crowded, fenced-in parking lot near the main police station to be claimed by relatives.

And no one had been shot.

"Excuse me. I was told to ask you where I should take these?" I displayed my new-employee forms to Larry DeSantis, the portly, cigar-chomping deputy photo editor of the late great wire service United Press International.*

"Who da f--k are you?" he asked through clenched teeth with a thick New York accent.

"I'm…your new art director, " I answered, scared of him.

"Glad they tell me things around here” Larry growled. And then he pulled out a pair of scissors and chopped my new tie in half.

Shortly after my mother's death I had ditched our dairy farm in Vermont and arrived in New York City ready to invade the art world with a frightening portfolio of okay drawings (one was on a bar napkin), a new suit bought in Montpelier with money I had obtained from selling my pickup truck and a name and number scribbled on a slip of brown shopping-bag paper. The number belonged to Frank Taggart (related to Dagny?), the art director of the children’s book illustrator, Jim Arnosky, who lived on the farm next to mine. Jim raised goats, children and my crazy hopes. That phone number was my courage, my best friend, my weapon, my most precious possession and mostly, my greatest fear.

“Mr. Taggart?” (heart pounding) “You don’t know me, but…Tomorrow? 3 o’clock? I’ll be there, sir. Thank you”

If Santa Claus had an alter-ego and lived in Manhattan, he would be Frank. He shook my wet palm and, a short time later, out of pure, sweet charity, asked gently “Can you do paste-ups and mechanicals?” “Of course! For sure.” I claimed with confidence. “Okay, then, I have a few weeks’ work for you, but that’s all I can do.” I ran home kicking up my heels. Along the way I stopped and bought a book called “How To Do Paste-Ups and Mechanicals.”

I survived my weeks at Frank’s without so much as a “Fraud! Fraud!” and just before being cast into the street a designer there, Barbara Berasi, set me on a path that would change my life forever. (I wouldn’t see Barbara again for 18 years, when I started working for Newsweek and, coincidentally, she was there.) She handed me a slip of paper with the phone number (courage, friend, weapon) of a man from a company whose name I knew from my newspaper, UPI. I didn’t know it then, but this man would become one of the most powerful human forces I had ever experienced. If Frank was the sweetest person on the planet, Ted Majeski, UPI’s notorious picture editor, was by far the fiercest.

If Captain Bligh had an alter ego and lived in Manhattan…

In his 60s with a 1940s Brylcreem haircut, Ted’s eyes were hard, his manner gruff, his body massive, and I mean huge. He spoke to me through his cigar during the interview as he snapped, “You’ve got no art schooling, your last job was dairy farming?” “Yessir,” I replied, agreeing that it was nuts. I began to gather my things. “Okay, look,” he said, “you’ve got three months to screw up, then you’re out.”

Huh?

Incredibly, at 23, I was hired as the graphics director of a major wire service overseeing a staff of three and serving hundreds of newspapers, and I had no idea what that meant.

And so, Monday morning, my first day, I wore a tie. “What the hell did you do that for?” I screamed at Larry after he put the scissors down. He howled back “Let me ask you sumpthin, Mr. Art Director. What makes you think you can wear that tie with that shirt?” His finger jabbed at both of them. I stared at the discarded foreskin of my tie in the waste paper basket and felt castrated. As welcome-wagon Larry walked away I hated him and I was too scared of Ted to go see him about it. UPI was not looking so good.

Ted was the boss from hell. He never backed down, was not one to praise others or to thank them. During our years together I felt that I had kicked some serious Associated Press butt with some great graphics on major stories, but I never heard boo from Ted. My struggle for his approval was epic and I worked hard, hard enough that it made me a better news artist than I would have been otherwise.

My frustration was colossal. One morning after pulling an all-nighter I picked up my whole drawing table and threw it at a guy. I hadn’t intended to, it just happened as I was standing up to walk away. The table, my rapidographs, phone, lamp and T-square all cleared the cubicle wall. My little tantrum got me sent to Ted’s office. Coolly, he said, “Don’t take it out on someone else when you’re mad at me. Now get back to work.”

But, something else happened during my eight years at UPI. Through all this hardship, I grew as an artist and I matured as a person, and I learned some things about human nature. I couldn’t hate Larry for long. It turned out that behind the cigar and the gruffness this native of Queens had a heart as big as the globe in the lobby of the Daily News building on 42nd St. where UPI was based.

Larry cut off my tie, I later realized as I got to know him, because he liked me, though he’d never admit it. He once said. “If I don’t pick on ya, THEN you better start worryin!” He was a hell of a picture editor, too.

Mercifully, I lost my fear of Ted. Once I watched him standing his ground with an editor, who was getting pretty hot under the collar, and Ted winked at me, as though I knew it was just a ruse, our little secret. News to me. He was married to Marie, someone nice, who confided to me that Ted had a strong paternal side and, incredibly, he viewed me as a son, someone he felt comfortable being himself around, someone who didn’t threaten him, someone he could ask (order?) to move his furniture. “But he’ll never admit it, and don’t tell him I told you.” she said. Again, news to me.

Sometimes, he exposed his gentler side, a bit. When I’d help him out with a project at his home he’d talk to me from his crushed barcalounger about things like his past and his daughter. He fed me and gave me free theater tickets and invited me to his beach house. He even hooked me up with his niece (not my type). And I liked it.

Years later, when I heard that Ted had died, I was surprised by my sadness. I think an unearned gift from a Santa is always appreciated, but the hard-earned gifts wrenched from a Bligh can ultimately have a greater value.

* http://www.downhold.org/lowry/worldbook.html