![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/100922.jpg\")
\nMorning, Gang! It is a pleasant morning following a brilliant Piedmont dawn. Our version of your wakening ritual featured a reprise of yesterday’s events in the “Downsizing” process, and a quick visit to a souvenir acquired 32 years ago. As you can read, complete with an ancient typo in black china-marker, it was on the 13th of March, 1990 that it came into our possession. It is a chunk of the ancient city wall of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
It had been hurled with some determination through the passenger-side window of the car driven by the Israeli guide we hired to show us the Christian sites of the holy land in three days or less. Based on the process of life, this old rock will no longer travel. It will rest quietly with other, larger rocks out in front of the new porch at Refuge Farm. There is a story with it, though. It is a small part of the new book we are working on: “Last Cruise of the Cold War.”<\/p>\n
Here is what somebody wrote a couple days after the rock transitioned from masonry to political protest device to souvenir. It is about to transition back to masonry, a half-world from where it rested. Everything has a story, you know? Here is this one:<\/p>\n
“13 March 1990”<\/p>\n
“We rise early and start to clear the cobwebs. I treat Doc Feeks
\nto a prophylactic Alka-Seltzer and read the Jerusalem Post. The
\nleadership crisis is percolating nicely; there may be a
\nGovernment here later in the day and there may not. The issue is
\nnegotiations with the PLO over the fate of the West Bank. This is
\nof some interest, as we are bound for the Knesset- the Capital- that morning.<\/p>\n
Our guide is Svi Ginzberg, a Polish-German-Sabra of 67 seasons.
\nHe is a veteran of the anti-British Jewish underground during
\nWWII; a commissioned officer in the fighting in Jerusalem during
\nthe \u201847-48 conflict. He wears a 9MM semi-auto pistol unobtrusively in his belt and drives a Mercedes Cab.<\/p>\n
He whisks us out of the Hilton Parking Lot at precisely 1030.<\/p>\n
We hit the four-lane Route One to Jerusalem and speed along as he
\nregales us of tales of the country to which he came in 1934. Every
\ntree was planted, he says, and the Jews have remade much of this
\nplace in their own blood. We pass scenes of heavy fighting in ’47,
\nand he points them out with the authority that only a veteran can give.
\nWe pass one of the British Police Forts which were turned over to the
\nArab Legion and he describes the action around the place with precision.<\/p>\n
As we roll up the hills toward the City we pass the burned-out
\nhulks of Jewish convoys shelled by the Arab Legion. The twisted
\nmetal has been painted with Rustoleum and stones raised to
\ncommemorate the dates of the destruction. We cross areas where
\nthe old border ran and he speaks of the desperation of ’47 and
\nthe triumph of ’67 when they were eliminated.<\/p>\n
Fog at the Knesset Building; we can’t see a thing. When we get to
\nthe walls of the Old City the fog has lifted. We are dropped at
\nthe Jaffa Gate while he parks the car and we wander down through
\nthe Arab quarter and the bazaar. Then into the Jewish Quarter.<\/p>\n
The Intifada is on. That is the PLO edict that all shops must close
\nat 1300 to spite the Israelis. They are, of course, cutting their own noses
\nto spite their conquerors. Some shop owners hiss to us from behind
\nclosed doors. Toad and I buy camel whips from a turbaned Arab.<\/p>\n
We pass the excavations in the Jewish quarter and on to the West Wall
\nof the Temple Precinct. Into the newly excavated section of the
\nWest Wall, where Svi is reprimanded by a young man for explaining
\nwhile Hasidim are swaying in prayer. As we leave, hands clapped
\nover the cardboard Yarmulkes, he says that normally Jewish prayer
\nis so loud that nobody would notice, except for the particular
\nprayer used by these strangely clad devotees. He discusses the
\npeculiar laws that govern the life of what he calls the Religious
\nmen. A good Jew, he says, cannot walk into the Temple Grounds on
\nthe Mount above us because they are prohibited from walking on
\nthe Holy Soil of the Temple. Since no stone has been left
\nstanding on another from the Second Temple, no man may know where
\nthe sacred soil begins.<\/p>\n
The past here has an immediacy that lives tangible around us. We peer
\ninto the Dome of the Rock. Svi ushers us quickly past, although we
\ncould have removed our shoes and gone in to see what may be the altar
\nupon which Abraham had laid his son for sacrifice.<\/p>\n
I find out later why Svi, so even handed in his treatment of the
\nreligions, has little interest in the places of the Muslim faith.
\nI ask him how many children he has, since he has spoken of his
\ngranddaughter who is serving in the IDF now for her National
\nService.<\/p>\n
“I have a daughter who is 42” he says. “My son was killed at
\neight o’clock in the evening of the sixth of June 1983 in a tank
\nengagement with the Syrians. He lived for ten hours but never
\nroused from his coma.”<\/p>\n
Like I say, everyone here has a story.”
\n———-<\/p>\n
The “Last Cruise” has stuff like this, based on a determination that we would ever see or experience anything like that again. And we defeated global Communism, or so we thought at the time. We will explain it better when we tell a longer version of the story.<\/p>\n
– Vic<\/p>\n
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Morning, Gang! It is a pleasant morning following a brilliant Piedmont dawn. Our version of your wakening ritual featured a reprise of yesterday’s events in the “Downsizing” process, and a quick visit to a souvenir acquired 32 years ago. As you can read, complete with an ancient typo in black china-marker, it was on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24628"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24631,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24628\/revisions\/24631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}