A Wonderful Thing

Kerry Patterson

When Old Man Hubback pulled up to my grandfather's grocery store it always caused quite a stir. Cars pulled over so people could take a gander. Dogs yelped themselves silly. And kids came running from every corner. The fact that the German immigrant looked like a homeless version of Santa Claus would have been enough to catch some people's attention, but that wasn't his drawing card. When Mr. Hubback traveled from his home a mile away to Noonan's Grocery, he hooked up his horse to a hay wagon and clip-clopped his way down the lane. This took place in the early 50s, and that made him the last person in Bellingham to travel by means of a one-horse-power vehicle. That's what caught everyone's attention.

The boys who came running to catch a glimpse also had something else they wanted to witness. The stoic German would climb down from the wagon, walk through the front door of Granddad's grocery store, walk straight to the counter, and slap down a dime. Without a word Grandpa would march to the back of the cooler and fetch an ice-cold bottle of Coke.

Hubback would grab the icy bottle in his massive hand, take it to the wall that sported the bottle opener, and pop off the lid. Then he'd whip the Coke bottle to his lips, tilt it and his head back, and in an act repeatedly attempted and failed by every boy in the room, Hubback would down the icy, burning liquid in three or four gulps—without so much as a single pause, belch, tear, or gasp for air. Then, to the cheering of little boys, Hubback would smack the empty bottle down on the counter, turn on the heel of his boot, and head back home. Most of the boys would remain behind and speak in reverent tones about the old man's gift.

As the crowd dispersed, for me the encounter was far from over. When the old German climbed on his wagon, I'd often try to sneak onto the back where I would hide in a pile of loose hay. If he didn't spot me, I'd get a free ride home on a horse-drawn wagon.

Hubback had a different plan. He didn't like kids climbing on his wagon and he let them know by twisting on his perch and turning his bull whip on anyone who had the temerity to invade his space.

On this particular day as Hubback pulled away with me perched on the back of his wagon, I quickly slid under a pile of fresh-cut hay. I had made it onto the vehicle undetected. Eventually I ventured out far enough from underneath the hay to dangle my legs off the back and enjoy the slow clip-clopping as we meandered down the dirt road that led toward my home.

I should have known better than to expose myself, because it wasn't long until a stray dog charged up the road, barking at the horse and Mr. Hubback turned to give the mongrel a taste of his whip. Seeing me sitting there on his precious wagon, unharmed and with a stupid grin on my face, Hubback immediately changed targets by re-cocking his arm to give me a sharp smack.

But then fate intervened. Before Mr. Hubback could whip me we both heard a strange shout emanating from somewhere up the road. In unison we turned our attention to the ruckus. It was Maxine, a middle-aged lady who lived nearby. Maxine not only marched to the beat of a different drummer, she marched to the beat of a wildly insane drummer. Whenever she walked up the road, she tilted forward as if struggling against a hurricane-force wind and would peer ahead until she saw another human being coming her way. Then, no matter the distance, Maxine would start shouting a garbled monologue that only she could understand.

Realizing that the chatter was just Maxine, Mr. Hubback smiled at me with a sardonic grin and raised his right arm to give me a thrashing. But I was saved once again. This time it was the sound of "Buggy Baker" bouncing down the bumpy road in her old war-surplus jeep. Ms. Baker had earned the appellation of "Buggy" because she was a high school biology teacher who loved bugs and acted, well, sort of buggy. For one, she drove an open jeep—not common for a woman in her fifties in the fifties. Two, she was always accompanied in her jeep by Billy, who was not only her best friend, but, as his name might suggest, was also a goat. On this day as Buggy bounced down the road in her jeep, so did Billy. The poor creature could hardly stay on his assigned perch on the back bench because Ms. Baker was driving far too fast for a road that was more pot hole than path.

As Mr. Hubback and I paused to watch, it became clear that Buggy's intention was to pass the wagon at a dangerous clip.

Just as Buggy began to hurl past us, Maxine (still yammering) drew close enough to stand in the path of the careening jeep, so Buggy was forced to slam on the brakes to avoid a horrible disaster. As she stomped on the brake pedal, the jeep hit a huge pothole and nearly flipped bumper-over-steering-wheel. This convulsive action pitched poor Billy into the front passenger seat, legs splayed forward where he ended up sitting there in the distinctly human pose of someone riding shotgun.

The curiously embarrassed look on the goat's face coupled with the fact that he appeared as if he were pretending to be a human being who was casually cruising the countryside was simply too funny for words. As I looked at Old Man Hubback and he looked at Maxine and Maxine looked at Buggy we all grinned widely. Then, in a moment of truce, Hubback sat down his whip, leaned back his head, and let out a howl that was half laugh, half choke. Buggy tittered, Maxine cackled, and I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks. After a full minute of laughter, Buggy shooed Billy to the back, carefully edged her jeep past the wagon, and pulled away. Maxine leaned precariously into the imaginary wind and strode off at full yammer. And, true to form, Hubback grabbed his whip and menacingly aimed it at me again.

That was the end of that. I leaped from Hubback's wagon and hurried the rest of the way home. Ten minutes later I burst in the front door and excitedly told my mother the story of the shotgun goat and the bull whip. Mom laughed along with me until we were both forced to sit down on the couch to catch our breath.

Then as Mother gathered her composure she exclaimed, "Isn't it wonderful!"

"Isn't what wonderful?" I asked.

"Living in this neighborhood!" mother explained. "We have people from all walks of life and that makes this a perfect place to live."

In my moment of near crisis, Mom chose to focus on the joys of diversity. She loved people of all shapes, looks, beliefs and sizes. She loved to chat with immigrants. When I grew old enough to study biology, Mom took me by Buggy's enchanted home where I discovered a menagerie filled with mysterious creatures and shiny microscopes. Buggy in turn introduced me to the joy of scientifically exploring the swamp in her backyard.

"To each his own." That had been Mom's mantra. Long before the topic of diversity had become popular in HR departments worldwide, Mom knew the joy that came from meeting, associating with, and loving people of every ethnicity, lifestyle, and belief.

No matter the direction of the political winds, mom never broke stride. While it's true I never actually heard Mother use the word "diversity," it was what she cherished. When Mr. Hubback grew feeble, it was she who took him soup and sat with him. And when Mom returned to college at age forty to study speech therapy, it was Maxine she took on as her first benefactor.

Mom never changed. Forty-five years later, on the eve of her death, she gifted a family of Mexican immigrants several dolls that she had made by hand to adorn her Christmas tree. Mom had invited the new neighbors and their five children into her home for hot chocolate one evening, and when the kids had complimented her on the dolls, she gave them away without a second thought.

Later that night as mom settled into her over-stuffed chair for the very last time to knit wool hats for the children of Bosnia (we found a bag of twenty beautiful hats when we went through her things), I'm sure she smiled deeply as she imagined the joy she would bring to a people she had never met, but whom she had been dutifully studying in her encyclopedia.

"Bosnians!" She had said to me as she knitted hats one day the week before—The Encyclopedia Britannica lying open next to her. "Aren't they a fascinating bunch!"

Mom made diversity a wonderful thing.

Kerry Patterson is coauthor of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations.

The wink that changed the world

The wink that changed the world. - By Michael Meyer - Slate Magazine

This is the way the Warsaw Pact folded, not with a bang but a gesture.

By Michael MeyerPosted Monday, July 6, 2009, at 9:26 AM ET

Nicolae Ceaucescu in Bucharest in 1989

On July 7, 1989, the masters of the Eastern empire gathered in Bucharest for a fateful summit. They were a rogue's gallery of the world's dictators, assembled in the capital of the worst among them: Romania's own Nicolae Ceausescu, Europe's last Stalinist, the dark lord of the old Eastern bloc's most repressive Communist regime.

They were the hunters: Erich Honecker, the murderous boss of the German Democratic Republic, architect of the wall that separated his East Germany from the West. There was Poland's Wojciech Jaruzelski, the man who declared martial law in 1980 and broke the famed trade union Solidarity. Czechoslovak strongman Milos Jakes was there, as well as Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, whose secret police stooges once tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II.

This day, however, the hunted was one of their own: reformist Hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth, whose determination to bring democracy and free markets to his country threatened them all. And so, in the interests of self-preservation, the satraps of the Warsaw Pact marshaled their forces. The goal: a classically Commie "fraternal intervention" of the sort the world had seen before—Hungary in 1956 and Prague in 1968. Only one man stood between them and their quarry. His name: Mikhail Gorbachev.

For many, the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was a glorious moment, emblematic of the West's victory in the Cold War. It seemed to come out of the blue. But if you watched the Eastern bloc's disintegration from the ground, over the course of that epic year, you know that the process was far longer and more complex than most people realize. Often, it unfolded in melodramatic little chapters, unnoticed by the rest of the world, as on that fine summer day in Bucharest two decades ago.

To grasp the full dimension of that drama, you must remember how Europe was still locked in the old order defined by the Cold War—and glimpse the changes afoot that would, abruptly, transform it. Nemeth arrived on the scene in late November 1988 as a new-generation "reform" Communist in the mold of Gorbachev himself. But if his titular master in Moscow remained a committed socialist, however liberal by contrast to his old-guard predecessors, Nemeth was the real deal.

Moving quickly, he had drafted a new constitution for Hungary—modeled on America's, complete with a Bill of Rights and guarantees of free speech and human rights. Then he allowed new political parties to form and promised free elections. And if the Communist Party should lose, hard-liners asked, what then? Why, said Nemeth, with perfect equanimity, "We step down." Worst, just a few months before, in early May, Nemeth had announced that Hungary would tear down the fence along its frontier with Austria. At the height of the Cold War, he cut a hole in the Iron Curtain.

In the Communist world, this was heresy. It had to be punished. And so it was that the Warsaw Pact's leaders assembled in Bucharest. Seated in a great hall, surrounded by banners and the full pomp of Communist circumstance, they launched their attack. Ceausescu went first, brandishing his fists and shouting an impassioned indictment: "Hungary will destroy socialism." His "dangerous experiments" will destroy the entire Socialist Union! Honecker, Jakes, and Zhivkov followed. Only Jaruzelski of Poland sat quiet, sphinxlike behind his dark sunglasses, betraying no emotion.

Nemeth had been in office for only seven months. This was his first Warsaw Pact summit. He was nervous, but he knew his enemies would act only with Soviet support. The man who could give it sat roughly opposite him, 30 feet away on the other side of a large rectangle of flag-draped conference tables. As Ceausescu and the others ranted on, calling for armed intervention in Hungary, Nemeth glanced across at the Soviet leader. Their eyes met, and Gorbachev … winked.

"This happened at least four or five times," Nemeth later told me. "Strictly speaking, it wasn't really a wink. It was more a look, a bemused twinkle. Each time he smiled at me, with his eyes, it was as if Gorbachev were saying, 'Don't worry. These people are idiots. Pay no attention.' " And so he didn't. As the dogs of the Warsaw Pact brayed for his head, Nemeth went outside to smoke a cigarette.

On this small moment, history turned. Nemeth flew back to Budapest and continued his reforms, dissolving the country's Communist Party and opening Hungary's borders so that tens of thousands of East Germans could famously escape to the West—and causing, four months later, the Berlin Wall to topple. Erich Honecker went home a spent political force who would be ousted in a coup d'état that began taking shape even before he left Bucharest. As for Nicolae Ceausescu, he would die by firing squad during the revolution that convulsed Romania at year's end.