The American Spectator

TAS Live

Swimming to Arkansas

By Ben Stein on 9.21.04 @ 12:04AM

Wednesday
Here I am swimming lazily back and forth, east to west, then west to east, in my wonderful swimming pool. The weather is perfect here in Beverly Hills, as it has been for weeks on end. Blue skies, temperature in the low eighties or high seventies, no humidity, slight breeze. It is marvelous. As I swim east to west, I look up at our house, which (to me) looks perfect. It's a 1929 Spanish style home with a balcony running along the second floor as it faces the pool. The roof is reddish tile and the palms tower above the roof.

In the other direction, as I am swimming west to east, there are the jacarandas in our garden. For some reason, they do not have the gorgeous blue blossoms other people's jacarandas have, but they are leafy and a rich, lustrous green. Glorious. It is always a thrill to think this is my life. I could have died in a concentration camp. I could have been mass marched to death in the snows of Poland. I could have died in a beating by Romanian thugs instigated by the Nazis. Instead, I get to swim lazily back and forth in my pool on a glorious summer day.

Would you like to know what the rhythm of my stroke is? You can guess. It's "Thank you, God, thank you God, thank you God." There is nothing I ever did to merit such a life. People always say to me, "Oh, Benjy, you worked so hard," or "Oh, Benjy, your parents left you money." But many people have worked hard in Czechoslovakia or Lithuania only to die in pogroms or gas chambers. My parents didn't leave me a ton of money, and they were incredibly lucky to be alive and working in America, too.

The whole refrain of my life is that I get to live like this for two reasons: One, unearned grace of God, and two, the fact that I live in America, a nation on which God shed His grace.

So, as I swim back and forth, I pray my prayers of thanks.

The pool, by the way, is heated to a sinfully high temperature. This is my wife's doing. She cannot really tolerate the cold much, and so she has the pool at bathtub temperature. I am not complaining. If it makes her happy, God bless her and it. But in all of my life, I have never been in such a warm pool.

I guess there is a metaphor there. I just don't know what the metaphor is.

Anyway, I got out of my pool and into my robe and headed to the shower. In the shower, I listened to the Beatles singing a great favorite, "In My Life." It has been close to 35 years since I first heard that tune and it still brings tears to my eyes.

"There are places I remember,
All my life,
Though some have changed,
Some forever, not for better,
Some have gone,
And some still remain..."

It all makes me think of Garth Wood, and Peter Feierabend, and above all, my mother and father, and the glorious dogs, Trixie, Mary, Martha, Ginger, Susan, Puppy-Wuppy. Great human beings like Mr. and Mrs. Scull. Too many people gone. Too many dogs gone. Well, enough reverie for this moment....

I got out of the shower and got into my bed. I put on my headphones and listened to what has become by far my favorite song this year: "Wooden Ships," originally written, I think, by Jefferson Airplane, but covered perfectly by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. I first heard that song when I was a teacher at University of California, Santa Cruz, back before the state ruined it with excess construction. Those were palmy days.

"Wooden ships on the water,
Very free,
Easy the way you know it's supposed to be,
Tell the people on the shorelines,
Let us be,
It must be free and easy…"

It all makes me think of the days of drugs and love under the redwoods back at UCSC, but those were a really, really long time ago.… I cannot even remember who I was then except I know I was very thin and had long hair. And women loved me.

Back to "Wooden Ships": It's actually a song about a post-nuclear war world, and I saw a movie about a post-nuclear war world where it was on the sound track. I have long forgotten the name of the movie, but it starred a little actress who had made her name in Hair. Does anyone have any idea what movie I am talking about?

So much to remember. So much time gone by. So, so, so much time gone by....

Well, wooden ships. Time to be thankful that there has not been a nuclear war. Time to be thankful that those Cold War fears did not come true.

I took off my headphones and picked up my book about the Battle of Berlin. I think it's called The Fall of Berlin 1945, by Antony Beevor. It is pretty damned depressing. Horrifying cruelty and violence on both sides, Germans and Soviets. Insane cruelty towards women in particular. Mass rapes by the Russians against their German women "enemies" and lots of mass rapes by the Russians against their own women, Russian slave laborers and against Poles and other captured women.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Law, Russia, Africa