As Far As My Mind Will Carry Me

By Bruce Rout

Bruce, I was overwhelmed by the quality of your book. Could hardly put it down, as they say. Often books by friends don’t hold up to the standards of a fully publishable work, but this one went waaaaaay beyond that. Your passion for Roman and Greek history is infectious, and the interspersing of your experiences with theirs cunning. The th

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Vine Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781949574234

Bruce Rout

Born in a taxicab. Wrote poetry in the sixties. Was a journalist in the seventies, scientist in the eighties, teacher in the nineties, student in Y2K and wrote this book in Y2teen. Married with children.

Book preview

Book One

Beginnings

Chapter 1

The Sun Rises on Rome

The sun rises in the East. This morning the sun sent its warming rays across the land of Turkey, across the Adriatic, and pried mists from the defeated soil of Greece before piercing through mountain passes which ran along the centre of Italy. The light on the western shore of the Italian Peninsula had grown just enough to effect the transition of human perception from the black and white of night vision into the dark green, blue, and brown daylight of colour accented by the bright yellow circle of the rising sun. The light of day flooded over the city buildings of a newly dominant Rome and into the harbour. From the west, stirring their tresses, morning breezes awoke and sped from Gibraltar to meet youthful sunbeams at the mouth of the Tiber and fill russet sails that were set for voyages south.

On the aft deck of a Roman galley powered by slaves straining at their oars, stood Cicero, only thirty-one years old, watching his beloved Rome drift away. The wind strengthened, alleviating somewhat the efforts of straining slaves, as the galley picked up speed for the journey to Syracuse. This was Cicero’s first elected assignment by the Senate. While standing on the elevated aft deck, Cicero, the most brilliant lawyer of the Roman Empire, had some time to think. He was thinking of destiny, the future, of his beloved Rome, and his place in it.

Rome was in the midst of cleaning up after another revolution and civil war, two things that were becoming more and more common. Not like the old days, thought Cicero. The city named after the woman who had burned her army’s ships to force them to stay and build the greatest city in the world, was going through some very rough growing pains. Cicero, as a young man, had vowed to be her saviour. In spite of recent history and the expectation of his parents, he was not a military man. As a matter of fact, he was repulsed by the killing, the mud, the blood, and indeed the military life. Although he had huge respect for the men who put their lives on the line in the defence of this savage and demanding maiden, he knew his talents lay elsewhere. They lay in his heart, in his passion, and most of it lay in his incredible mind.

Chapter 2

The Screw Turns

A blindingly bright morning sun beat on the docks on the Mediterranean near the mouth of the Nile. Bustle, pandemonium, and panic abounded as peasants, businessmen and labourers scrambled to save a merchant fleet from sinking where it lay unloading at the Alexandrian docks. An overnight storm had swamped the fleet. There was water up to the gunnels of nearly all the ships. Crews were bailing as only desperate men can, especially when saving their financial lives,.

The harbour was a beautiful flooded brown under a cloudless, shockingly blue, morning sky. Dark-skinned black-haired men in rags, britches, and loose cloaks threw themselves at the bailing efforts.

Archimedes surveyed the mayhem from the door of his tent and knew that this was a day to make money … and history.

Hedi the Persian was screaming at the Egyptian workers and directing scaffolding onto various wharves. Outlandishly large tubes, each three feet in diameter, hung from within each scaffold on the docks. Inside each tube was a long screw fashioned out of wood, which traversed from the top of the tube to the bottom of it. The screw was turned at the top by foot pedals attached directly to the screw itself. And sitting atop the tube, on a precarious seat, hanging onto completely inadequate support bars with his feet on the pedals, was an Egyptian in trepidation and fear for his life as he waited for his signal. As each towering scaffold came aside each craft, one end was gently but quickly and efficiently lowered into the brine in the hold of each ship by two coordinated workers on the wharf. The moment the lower end was in place a yell went up. Atop this vertical tube a courageous Egyptian rider leaned back in his seat, hung on for dear life, and began to pedal like mad. In a second, water erupted from atop the tube, in turn sucking it out of the bilge and lowering the level of water on the deck of the ship. The crew, his cohorts, the captain, and onlookers cheered in triumph, while the racing peddler atop the scaffold grinned with joy and peddled even harder.

There were eight such scaffolds and tubes at work and three more were being brought into play. Even though Hedi the Persian was directing traffic in a desperate bid to save as many boats as could possibly promise payment, the entire machinery of men, equipment, and teamwork was working with an efficiency that it could easily, and probably did, do without him.

More large tubes, newly assembled and strapped to more scaffolding with more courageous Egyptians riding atop, were placed vertically, hanging into swamped boats with enthusiastic peddlers eager to work more magic.

And no one was more astounded at the ridiculous scene and the outlandish contraptions, gymnastic contortions, heavy labour, eagerness, and fountains of water erupting from ships achieving salvation, than Archimedes.

The damn thing worked. The entire thing worked. And men, with brains in their heads, as soon as they figured out that it worked, why it worked, and just simply saw that the stupid thing actually worked, did not require encouragement. On the contrary, it took considerable effort to hold them back and to have some semblance of organization. It was like riding a horse that had found an open gate. You just hung on and let the horse run. Thousands of livelihoods were being saved by one simple idea. Archimedes was always in awe at what happened whenever free men were given free reign with an idea that worked.

Chapter 3

Washington, D.C., August, 1963.

History is how we record it, how we remember it. We remember the news, such as Walter Cronkite and the 20th Century in black and white. Colour hit the airwaves when the entire planet united and gazed as one, unified in grief, at the funeral of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, choreographed by Jackie. My God, looking back I still wonder how she kept it together and was still able to present America at its best in its darkest hour.

Today, I am an old man trying to recall and play back my memories as a 14 year old child. Tears well in my eyes. How was I to know that 50 years would be so long? Fifty years is a lifetime. Those I knew are now gone. Their lives have passed and here I remain, after the storm. Fifty years ago in Washington, D.C., sometime in August, on a bus …

Washington, D.C., was a beautiful city filled with parks and marble, white under the summer sun. It was a hot, green-leaf, tree-lined street city that could only happen once in a planet’s lifetime, in the early sixties, when Camelot had sprung with flowers into a perfect world. The president and his wife were seen as an Arthurian king and faithful queen, with the perfect way of life, in a perfect world, embellishing America with everything right and good, sitting on the celestial throne of America’s most exalted fantasy. This was the centre of the most sacred. My collection of young visitors and hosts had traversed through the halls of the Smithsonian Institute taking in the planes, telegraphs, and lizards marking the achievements of the greatest nation that had ever existed up to that point. The Jefferson Memorial guarded propriety on the edge of the Potomac, a truly majestic spectacle. But the greatest blessing came with the silence and awe-inspiring gaze of the statue of Abraham Lincoln staring down at us with a love and sadness so deep that it was beyond words.

We were a group of about 24 kids on an exchange tour between two churches. Ours was the Anglican Church of Canada in Etobicoke, Ontario, and theirs was an Episcopalian Church in Arlington, Virginia. The exchange lasted ten days and the following year it would be their turn to tour fabulous Toronto. It was pretty obvious who was getting the best out of this deal.

This was a couple of years after my mum died in a car accident. My brother John, who has Down’s Syndrome, was almost immediately institutionalized and my old man went nuts, turning into a violent drunk. I was also fighting off a new step-mother. I’ve always believed that the community church where I lived had some idea of what I was going through and put me into the exchange group to take a tour of Washington, just to get me away from my old man and to have something to cherish in life.

Let me explain. You see, my mum and I got along quite well and we had discussions about life, the universe, and everything from about the time I was four. These talks consisted of sitting around the kitchen table and drinking tea. She was a Saskatchewan farm girl, had given birth to my older brother in a very far-off land and when I came along, she thanked the Almighty rather profusely that I was normal. She had thought I was something special and I’ve carried with me thoughts of some fulfillment of her expectations. I feel that in some way there is some destiny for me and for each of us. It’s why I never cared that much for authority. My old man positively adored authority, especially his own. We never got along. After Mum died, all I ever wanted was to be free, really free.

Canada, actually southern Ontario, is filled with Maple trees, deciduous, broad-leafed, beautiful trees. Washington, D.C. is filled with oak trees. The streets, with beautiful houses built before the Depression, shaded in a pre-suburban small town America, created a living environment of which we all dream. I was billeted in a red brick two-story house with a mom and pop, a young devoted and idealistic kid my own age and, I believe, a younger sister. I remember the young, devoted and idealistic kid as being 14 years old, the same age as me, and wearing a black circular campaign button, with a white equal sign on it, pinned to his shirt. It was just a few days after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had held a little meeting with a few million black Americans at the Washington Monument and told the world that he had a dream. This kid was there. I wasn’t. He was inspired by King and determined to promote equality. His other friends, on the American side of the group, thought he was nuts and laughed at him behind his back. Personally, I was more curious than anything. To me, being Canadian, there was no difference between black and white. We didn’t have a discrimination problem. Of course, we didn’t have that many blacks either. We had Indians. And yeah, there was a hell of a discrimination problem between First Nations and Whites, known as the Indian problem. But hey, blacks and whites were all equal as far as us Canadians were concerned and the discrimination in America between black and white was just a wonderful opportunity for us to feel superior. I happened to like the guy. We had some moments together with a close friend of his who tried to play guitar and sing. He was terrible, but also a really nice guy. These were American kids who wanted to do right. This was 1963. Today, as I write this, is now over 50 years later. I can’t remember their names.

I always had trouble fitting in. I was a loner as a kid, of course, and now that I was in D.C. I was very excited. Yes, there were all the wonderful exhibits at the Smithsonian, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, the night life of D.C., and the historic statues and art of a city that was at the heart of the universe. This was America. I was excited as hell, but not for any of that stuff. It didn’t really turn my crank. What I wanted to see more than anything was the FBI museum. The FBI museum was really important to me. You see, I helped my parents build a cottage just north of Muskoka on a lake for my brother John, who as I’ve mentioned has Down’s Syndrome, although my parents were always in denial and my mother was always looking for a cure. John was, still is, my older brother. I keep slipping into saying was since we ended up being separated for 45 years after Mum died. Nevertheless, I was four when we started building that cottage and we went there year after year. We were coming home from the cottage at Christmas when we were in a head-on collision in a blizzard and we lost Mum. John was a hero by climbing out of the wreckage, flagging down cars and getting us to the hospital. He rode for a couple of hours along with the body of his mum in the back of an ambulance. Then he was institutionalized.

At times, while building the cottage, when I could get away I’d wander to a neighbour’s cabin where I could hide in a back room, in a loft actually, and read through boxes and boxes of comic books, lying on a top bunk on a green sleeping bag. These weren’t just any comic books. They were the original editions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. They were the first episodes of the Flash and Spider-man. The entire series of Superman, Superboy, Supergirl, and Green Lantern were there just for me. I was lost for hours, days, and weeks at a time. And in those comic books, where I found some solace, there were advertisements in the form of articles about the FBI Museum in Washington, D.C. They delved into all the heinous and impossible-to-solve crimes, which were now solved and exhibited in the FBI Museum located at FBI Headquarters. You should come down and visit the FBI exhibits in the museum and see where they fingerprinted and used amazing technology to catch criminals and solve these incredible crimes, the articles said. I read and dreamed of the FBI Museum from the time I was four until Mum was killed when I was 12. The cottage wasn’t the same after the accident so I never went back to the hallowed cardboard boxes of comics afterwards. But the images portrayed by those FBI Museum articles never left me. They were embedded into my childhood memories and my formative years. And now I was here. I was in Washington, D.C., on a tour bus, and as a guest of America at that.

We had just come from the Capitol. That was quite amazing. We toured the Rotunda and found all sorts of secret echo places where you could stand and overhear conversations, supposedly in secret, that had changed the course of American history since they could be surreptitiously overheard. We went to the House of Representatives, which happened to be in session. At the time I thought that this was pretty out in the open. Here I was, someone from another country, admittedly a friendly one, standing on a balcony overlooking political representatives in the flesh as they were debating legislation. It really struck me how open to the public this was and also that this was one of the foundations of the democratic process. Americans really prided themselves as belonging to a democratic nation. It seemed important to them. Then the same thing occurred looking over the Senate chambers where senators were speaking under the direct gaze of the public. How remarkably democratic. And courageous.

We were coming from the Capitol, me in my seat by myself with an almost packed bus of Canadian and American kids, travelling down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the White House. I overheard that this was almost the end of the tour and that we were going home the next day. I was in a bit of a panic. Where the hell was the FBI Museum?

Hey! I called out, Aren’t we going to the FBI Museum?

Well, that brought a hush to the crowd. The American kids, all very carefully, and very slowly, turned from their conversations and looked at me.

What FBI Museum? one of them asked, That’s all top secret. We’re not allowed to tell you anything about the FBI.

The interior of the bus was silent, with the Canadians wondering what was up and the Americans visibly frightened.

You mean, I asked, breaking the silence, you don’t have a police museum where you display all the evidences of solved crimes and showcase your national police force?

Hell, no, came the response from somewhere at the back of the bus.

You mean there is no FBI Museum? I asked, incredulous.

Oh, geez, some other American kid said, don’t tell him about the CIA!

Oh, shit, erupted the American half of the bus all at once. You’re not supposed to say that! That’s top secret. No one’s supposed to know where the FBI headquarters even is.

Someone near the front of the bus called out, We’re passing by it right now. Don’t look. You forget about the CIA. No one’s even supposed to know it exists.

Okay. I went silent, but my mind was aloud with questions. Who the hell is running this secret enclave of fear? And you guys are pretty screwed up about your national police force. Man, was I angry. No FBI Museum. And if the FBI is supposed to be so top secret, how come you guys just told me where their headquarters is? Again, who the hell are these CIA creeps? I’ve just been a stone’s throw from your legislators and could actually test that out if I wanted to, and you’re telling me there are these top secret organizations that, as American kids, you’re too petrified to even talk about? What the hell is going on? I remained silent, brooded, and hunkered down, alone in my bus seat. We were headed for the White House.

The bus pulled through the security gates to the back of the building. It was a sunny afternoon. We exited from the bus and went through the entrance to the East Wing. Gathered in the foyer just inside, we were told to stay together and that this was the president’s home and we were his guests.

Don’t be surprised, we were told, if the president or any of the first family pass through. Just let them be. This is their home.

The others were impressed, anxious that they might see the president of the United States caught wandering through his living room in his underwear. I knew better. The security gates were a sham. We wouldn’t be seeing any of the Kennedys. This was for show. There was no FBI Museum. Harrumph.

However, to be fair, the White House had been a serious mess and a national embarrassment. It had fallen into disrepair and been neglected as a national monument. And it is a national monument. Jackie had gone to work early during her term to show off the place in the best light. She’d refurbished all the rooms, properly displaying national treasures, furniture, and art, within the White House so it could be used to welcome foreign dignitaries and visitors. She’d done a great job. I was still angry but I was warming up to the place. I walked through the Blue Room and recognized the name. It was painted in sky blue and white. It was very pretty and classic in a French, new Empire, sort of way. I was noticing that America was more tied to the French than the British, even though both of our countries had common ties in our histories. The difference was that Canada was conquered by the British defeating the French and America broke from Britain with the help of the French. So the interior architecture of the White House was based mostly on a French foundation rather than a British one.

As we went from room to room, the group of young tourists from both America and Canada kept an eye out for Kennedy or Jackie and the kids. I, on the other hand, kind of held back looking at the newly painted walls, porcelain heirlooms, the amazingly refreshed and refurbished art, the new but incredibly expensive carpets, and antique furniture that now took its place in the heart of American diplomatic hospitality. People used to steal the silverware as souvenirs. Now silverware was offered freely to house guests who had been invited to dinner. Jackie had done a hell of a job. And here I was, walking through the home of the most powerful man on Earth as some nondescript kid from Canada. And yet there were dark secrets that even the kids were afraid of, like some boogie monster. Here was a country where the head of state and his family played touch football on the lawn and was watched by the entire nation in the flesh. Face to face.

So I’m trying to figure this out. There’s a tie to France, a republic. And it began to hit me, near the end of the tour of the White House. I realized that this wasn’t a country, but an empire and I was standing in the middle of it. That stopped me cold. Furthermore, America was not a monarchy like Canada, it was a republic. I was so entrenched with being a Canadian and growing up in the Canadian education system that the Queen just went without saying. By that I mean that I was indoctrinated, that she was omnipresent. She is head of state, yes that’s true, and even though she lives overseas and no one really sees her and she’s just a figurehead or icon, I lived my life almost without thinking of her consciously. Nevertheless, she is an unconscious presence in our way of thinking. If ever there comes a time when all turns to crap, when all collapses, when there is a point of no return, I trust that there’s an entity, albeit a rather powerless institution in everyday life, known as the Crown, which is the last defence against the barbaric horde. And there was comfort, at a deep and subconscious level, in that concept. But America didn’t have that concept. America had no nobility, not even the president of the United States. He was just another American when it came down to it. There was no last defence … oh shit.

So, I thought, in the middle of this beautiful large room with gorgeous antique furniture and priceless art, standing on an exquisite carpet, I’m in the middle of the American Empire. Of course I am. American influence, economic and military, as well as cultural, extended throughout the globe. This was an empire and it was all very open and run by just ordinary people called Americans. And if you fail to remember your history, you are doomed to repeat it. When the hell did the world previously have an empire based on a republic? England was a monarchy. The French? Nah … Louis the 14th. The rest of Europe during the Middle Ages was run by monarchies. Empires throughout Asia and the Middle East, often established through some barbaric conqueror, were monarchies none the less. No, this was a true republic and a world empire established by a republic hadn’t existed since the goddamned Romans. I was in the middle of Rome. And who the hell is Kennedy? He wasn’t a Nero or a Caligula. America was at the early days of its establishment as a world power. I’d just stocked our basement a few months earlier with food and provisions as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now that crisis was over and America had come out on top. There is no way in hell anyone in their right mind was going to let this empire, the greatest that had ever existed, be run by a bunch of hokums known as ordinary Americans. Let’s not be really stupid here. At the early days of the Roman Empire, from the end of the Punic wars until Augustus, Rome was not run by a bunch of drunken Roman politicians, but by a series of triumvirates. That is until Caesar crossed the Rubicon and entered the city of Rome itself and overthrew a corrupt oligarchy with the military, took control, and freed Rome from their grasp. But not for long. And a lot of people were killed. So who the hell is Kennedy? And who the hell is running America? Kennedy was open and promoted freedom of access to the public. This guy played touch football with his family on the front lawn of the White House on Sunday afternoons. But America was really run in secret. Kennedy wasn’t supposed to be president. Somehow, a mistake had been made at a crucial time in history. Kennedy had crossed the Rubicon. Kennedy was going to be assassinated. And he was going to be assassinated by the triumvirate, those who were in secret and hidden from the view of the American public. And I had a pretty good idea who they were, those FBI bastards who lied to me about their museum, the CIA obviously, and some other group I had no idea about and I don’t want to know about.

By this time the last of the tourists, except myself, had left the room. I was alone and woke up from my thoughts to find myself standing on a carpet at the far end of the room from the exit, which led to a corridor exiting the White House. I noticed off to my left, standing there politely, was a 50-ish year old man dressed in a sports jacket and slacks, waiting for me to leave. He was obviously Secret Service. He was part of a special organization protecting the president and was his last line of defence. There were just the two of us in the room separated by a considerable distance, about 20 feet from each other. Not a word passed for a few moments between us, as we each attempted to read each other’s thoughts. He was probably thinking that it was time for me to leave and I could take my time to amble out and then focus on another group of tourists. I was thinking something along quite another line. I was thinking that this was a moment in history. And I was also thinking of the worst consequences to what I felt I had to do. This was not a game. Dear God, why the hell did you put me here? If my suspicions are correct, I might well be killed. And my mind asked whether I’d take this moment or would I let it pass by? Was I willing to lay down my life to stop the assassination of the president of the United States? This chance would not come again. And I asked back if I was some mad and crazy person, some unbalanced kid with one hell of imagination who was going to base his actions on mere supposition? Or should I just get the hell out of here?

Let me stop for a second. Let me talk to you. I have to ask a question in all seriousness. Anyone today would have to ask themselves that if they thought that Kennedy was going to be killed, would they do anything about it? Times were different then. No one in their right mind would have thought that Kennedy would be assassinated. That was literally unthinkable. Today it’s a different scene. Everyone today is very aware that political assassinations of world leaders is a very real possibility. No political leader is an exception to that. But back then, such an idea was just not a part of reality nor of fantasy either. Today people look back and wonder. It was obvious, didn’t anyone see that? Someone must have been able to figure that out. And someone did. And he was in the White House alone with a secret service agent. Let’s weigh the risks here. I figured if I were right, then I’d have saved the life of Kennedy. If I was wrong, then I’d be considered an idiot and Kennedy would be safe anyway. The only risk was to my own prestige. Let’s not be crazy. I was fourteen years old. Who cares about the prestige of a fourteen year old kid from Canada? And yes, as a fourteen year old kid alone in the White House with a secret service agent, I damn well had the goods to figure that out. Let me continue:

The Secret Service agent was trying not to look at me and was getting a little uncomfortable, perhaps thinking that he may actually have to do something. And I was looking at him and trying to make up my mind. In my thoughts I was remembering the words of Julius Caesar as he crossed the Rubicon: ‘the die is