“Attack, always attack.”
My friend, the heroic Israeli tank commander, told me that in the first few days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, both fronts, The Sinai and The Golan, were so weakly defended that had the Egyptian or Syrian high command been strategically bolder, tactically smarter, and their soldiers braver, well, the Arab armies could have achieved massive breakthroughs, and Israel would have found herself facing genocide.
The torture of Reginald Denny.
But small, actually tiny pockets, of brave, determined and very well trained Israeli troops, in some cases, just two or three tanks on the Golan, held their ground and attacked enemy forces sometimes a hundred times their strength.
Screenwriter Escapes DGA Building—Note the Irony
“We had no orders except to hold our ground and whenever possible to attack—always attack.”
All this whips through my mind as I aim our car—I’m already thinking of the Lexus as a tank, a Centurion—towards the exit of the parking garage. A knot of rioters are milling about at the exit. It’s hard to see clearly but, oh boy, it looks like a few of them are brandishing baseball bats.
I’m gonna make a wild guess and assume that they’re not Little League dads.
I haven’t turned on the car’s headlights. We’re still lurking in the shadows, not yet detected by the barbarians.
Good thing the car is fashionably black.
Karen says: “Maybe there’s another exit.”
“Nope.”
“How do you know?”
“DGA building. I’ve been here like a zillion times.”
“What are we going to do?”
We.
The Talmud teaches that when a husband or wife uses the collective we it means there is love in the relationship.
Is there a finer way to enter battle than with the woman I have been in love with since third grade?
Ariel, 11, says: “I have to pee.”
Offspring #2, seven-years old, doubles over with an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. She finds this absolutely hysterical.
“You’re going to have to hold it in for a while, Ariel, do you think you can do that?” Karen says.
“I guess.”
“Good boy.”
Karen and I exchange glances. Karen gives me a pale smile of encouragement.
Robert
“I just have to say it.”
Karen
“What?”
Robert
“Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”
Karen inclines her head, questioning.
Robert
“Bette Davis, All About Eve, 1950, written and directed by the great Joseph L. Mankiewicz.”
Karen sighs, tolerantly but with affection:
Karen
“Robert, Robert.”
In the back seat, the nervous giggles from Offspring #2 increase tenfold.
My Israeli buddy, the tank commander was fond of quoting Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and one of his favorite maxim’s was:
Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.
Okey-dokey.
I inch the car forward, gain speed, 4 mph, 7 mph…
Now: I switch on the headlights using—surprise, Hi-Beams!—drenching the criminals in white light. I lean on the horn and —
WHOOOOOOOOO!
— and the rioters are drenched in the powerful lights, (those Japanese engineers, G-d bless ’em) and the shrieking horn is amplified by the concrete garage walls. The knuckleheads are blinded, frozen as I bear down on them at what seems like Formula One speed, and now they fall back like bowling pins and —
Steve McQueen in Bullitt.
— and we blow right past them, make a sharp left turn—we’re ordered by a street sign to turn right, but that would deliver us to the front of the DGA building and directly into the eye of the mob, and so, tires screeching—hey, just like Steve McQueen in Bullitt—we race away from the theater.
Heaving a great sigh, I realize that I have not taken a breath in, gee willikers, a long, long time.
I zoom down the block, pull over, and gulp oxygen.
“You okay?” Karen asks.
I nod.
But my heart is slamming in my chest like a Ginger Baker solo.
Hey, Los Angeles is Just Like Fatah Land—Only More Fashionable
Karen snaps on her little flashlight, studies the Thomas Guide. Using her index finger, she traces a route home.
“I think we should stick to the main streets, it’ll probably be safer.” Karen says.
“You navigate. I’ll pilot.”
“Let’s get moving.” Karen cautions.
“Check.”
Karen’s like: Huh?
I have seen way too many war movies. Seriously.
Anyhoo:
As we cruise through the chaotic streets we spot fires burning all over the city. A canopy of red and orange spreads through the velvety darkness. It’s kind of beautiful, like a romantic J.M. W. Turner canvas.
Small businesses are deliberately torched.
Orange streaks of fire inscribe themselves against the velvety sky. It takes me a moment to recognize the distinctive signature of Molotov cocktails.
Los Angeles has turned into Fatah Land.
“Where’s the Fire Department?” Karen asks.
Looters help themselves to everything from television sets and stereos to diapers and liquor.
Every so often we hear the distinctive flat crack of gun fire.
Nowhere do we see any police.
Trying to avoid a massive traffic jam, I turn down a side-street, Karen leans forward, spots something and cries:
“No!”
Thirty yards separate us from a group of thugs who are chilling in the street. They watch us with flinty eyes. All wicked and street savvy, they shuffle in our direction.
They’re all: yo, yo, yo.
And I’m all: oy, oy, oy.
Call me crazy, but I have a sneaking suspicion they’re not looking to discuss the cinema of Oscar Micheaux.
“Let’s get out of here,” Karen says.
Who am I to disagree with the love of my life?
I shift into reverse. Back up a few feet, shift into drive, angling for a sharp U turn, but the thugs are coming up awfully fast in my rear-view mirror.
I’m pretty sure one of the locals is toting a Tec 9. Or maybe it’s just a chunk of lumber.
And I’ve got a Swiss Army Knife.
Talk ab
out being out-gunned.
Do not mess with Gloria Grahame.
“Robert…” says Karen says through clenched teeth.
No time for a neat, Driver’s Ed. three-point turn.
I blast forward, squeak through a gap between two parked cars, hurtle right up on the sidewalk, and then, ca-runch! yet another bone rattling move down the high curb, back into the street and:
Away.
We.
Go.
“Some move,” says Karen.
She touches my shoulder. And to this very day I still feel the cool imprint of her hand.
It’s Karen’s way of saying, “My hero.”
Or at least that’s what I tell myself.
Entry in Robert’s Official Screenwriting Notebook: write this extremely scary, axle-cracking maneuver into your next script—no matter what the subject matter.
“I really, really, really have to pee,” Ariel reminds us.
I hand him an empty styrofoam coffee cup.
Twenty Minutes to Get Anywhere in Los Angeles—Except During, Ahem, Civil Unrest
It takes us over an hour-and-a-half to get home. Normally, this drive would take maybe twenty minutes.
But we have to circle round and double-back countless times in order to avoid choked arteries, major intersections where madness reigns—traffic lights are ignored—and then there are unknown side streets that cause Karen to observe:
“We’ll never get out of there alive.”
Listening to the radio we hear about the Rodney King verdict. So that’s the grievance du jour.
The Fire Department, we learn, is not being deployed because their men have come under intense gun fire.
We hear—and I have trouble believing this report—that the Los Angeles Police Department has been,”Pulled back for their own safety.”
Huh?
I thought that was part of the job description.
Dopey me.
Casa Avrech: I carry Offspring # 2 to her bed where she recites the Sh’ma and then promptly falls asleep. We tell Ariel how proud of him we are. He shrugs. No big deal. Five minutes later he’s fast asleep.
Karen, crisp and efficient, pins a bed sheet over the large picture window in the living room. We cannot be too careful. I search the house for a weapon, settle on an old ice ax from my mountain climbing days. It’s an elegant tool with wicked potential in hand to hand combat, but obviously useless against firearms or a hail of Molotov cocktails.
Abruptly, I feel a burning pain—a white hot spike—shooting through both my arms. Did I get hit by a stray bullet?
I examine my hands and gosh, my fingers are curled into claws; it takes me a moment to realize that it’s caused by gripping the steering wheel so hard. Painful muscle cramps travel from my knuckles into my shoulders. It takes at least an hour for my fingers to relax, for the pain to subside.
On the TV, Karen and I watch as Reginald Denny gets his brains bashed in; we gaze in horror and disbelief as the barbarians dance over his broken body. Tears in our eyes, we see, G-d bless them, pious citizens step in and halt this atrocity, rescuing the tragic truck driver.
There’s video of Fidel Lopez, a Guatemalan immigrant, he, like Denny is pulled from his truck and robbed. But theft is almost beside the point. The rioters slash torturers smash open his head then slice off an ear. The mob graffiti his chest, torso and genitals.
Take my word for it, graffiti is not an art form.
Between fifty and fifty-six citizens are murdered in the riots; two-thousand are seriously injured.
At last, the LAPD are deployed and approximately 10,000 arrests are made.
Estimates of between 800 million and a billion dollars of property damage have been reported. Approximately 3,600 fires were deliberately set, destroying 1,100 buildings.
Korean shopkeepers were specifically targeted by black rioters. But the Koreans owned guns and heroically defended their property and lives through force of arms.
It was a lesson that should have reverberated nationally, but some commentators labeled the Koreans, vigilantes. Just another case of the mainstream media getting it wrong.
Liberal totalitarians demand increased gun control, if not the outright banning of gun sales to citizens.
Second Amendment, what’s that?
And then, of course, the race hustlers, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Maxine Waters, the usual vulgar demagogues, parade across TV screens informing the good citizens of Los Angeles that the riots were really “an uprising.”
Oh, really?
As in: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising?
My Hollywood Gun
Gazing from our bedroom window, we watch orange flames lick at the darkness, pillars of black smoke climbing into the sky. We can actually smell the acrid odor of burning rubber.
“Look how close they are,” says Karen.
“Just past La Cienega. Maybe eight blocks away.”
Karen gives me a long penetrating gaze:
“What do we do if they come here?”
“After this is all over,” I vow, “I’m going to buy a pistol.”
Karen says: “How about a shotgun?”
Springfield .45 ASP. My Hollywood gun.
If the Los Angeles riots taught us anything it’s that you’re a fool if you count on the authorities to protect you in times of civil chaos — in fact, at any time. In the end, only I can protect my family.
I’m never, ever going to allow myself to be outgunned by the bad guys. All the gun laws that are on the books—and there are thousands of them—just make it that much easier for the barbarians to amass weapons, and for law-abiding people like you and me to be at their mercy.
If you outlaw weapons, as so many squishy liberals yearn to do, well then, only the state and the outlaws will be armed. Which leaves ordinary citizens at the mercy of an all powerful government and a variety of merciless criminal sub cultures.
When Hitler and Stalin snatched power, one of their first moves was to outlaw private gun ownership. They understood that armed citizens are a mortal threat to totalitarian rule.
Imagine: several million Jews owning firearms between 1938 and 1945.
Is the mind capable of such a leap of faith or is it too painful?
One week after the riots I legally purchased a pistol: A 1911 Springfield .45. It’s the pistol I trained with in Israel. Yes, it’s heavy, and yes, the recoil kicks like a Rockette; but this is the weapon I know best and on good days I can shoot the wings off a fly at twenty-five yards. I cordially invite any mugger, rioter, criminal, and gun-hating “progressive” to get on the wrong side of my Hollywood gun.
FADE TO BLACK
For this is
The End
Note: I’m frequently asked how I’m able to remember incidents in such detail, including dialogue, from so many years ago? It’s simple. I do not rely on my memory. I have been keeping a detailed diary for over 20 years. This post, as so many others, is based on my diaries. If there are gaps in my entries, I check with Karen. She was also keeping a diary, plus Karen has a phenomenal memory.
Cindi:
“I am my militia.”
How true and wise.
The Katrina gun-confiscationa: we noticed that too and were duly alarmed by what it portends.
Thanks so much for writing.
“I am my militia.”
And I am mine. WE ARE THE MILITIA.
My husband and I wised up after 9/11, got gun-smart, then watched the Katrina gun-confiscation with knowing eyes.
Molon Labe
PDWalker:
Don’t I know it!
To this day I say to Karen: “Why weren’t you scared that night?”
Karen just looks at me, shrugs and says, “I just wasn’t.”
And that’s why I fell in love with Karen when I was 10-years old. Even then I knew.
Thanks so much for reading and commenting.
Dude, you have an awesome wife.
(I’m now reading your “How I Married Karen — Chapter 1” – That’s the stuff of fairy tales.)
Sharin:
Mindboggling, indeed. And good for you for keeping a shot gun on had for self-defense. It’s a perfect weapon for a woman. Let’s hope you never have to use it.
I had not read this portion of your site before. With about 12-20 sites that I read daily to try and keep up what’s happening, I missed these. But I read them and they remind me of the original riots when my babies were small long before Rodney King. Most of our friends had weapons, and I could see flames not too far away. Today, I keep a shotgun on hand because I know that is the best weapon for a woman. My daughter and I will protect the children and each other, to the death, if necessary. This society has gone so far downhill and no one, particularly in California, listens or understands. Mind boggling!!
Kent:
The police do what they feel like doing. I learned that during the riots. I don’t kvetch about it, that’s just the way it is. As I wrote, I don’t count on the police for protection. I take responsibility for me and my family. I am my militia.
Many people do not realize that the police have no enforceable legal obligation to render assistance. So the courts have consistently ruled, and (in my opinion) sensibly given that the police can’t be everywhere at once.
However, the corrolary is that the private citizen has a right to defend himself in the absence of the police.
I really wish we had a meaningful citizen militia. It’s the first thing that should have happened after 9/11. No, I’m not stupid enough to think there was ever any chance it would.
Betsy:
It will happen again. It’s only a matter of when and under what circumstances.
In New Orleans, the police confiscated weapons from lawful citizens. Do you think the criminals gave up their weapons?
Have a lovely and meaningful Shabbos.
That story is…rough. I feel drained just reading it.
You brought something very important back to my attention. Though I always thought that the police would protect, your story PROVES otherwise.
When I left Israel (and the west bank) I gladly gave up my handgun and my husband his M16. Now, I’m thinking, perhaps it isn’t a bad idea to rearm; the kids aren’t babies and we’re only one natural, or unnatural, disaster away from complete disintegration of order.
Something to discuss over the Shabbat table perhaps?
Shabbat Shalom
“As a post-Holocaust Yid, I’ve thought I’d like to have access to a gun but I don’t want all of THEM (i.e., all non-law-enforcment-people-not-personally-vetted-by-me) to have guns.” (rutheday)
Well, rutheday, we’re very glad that you didn’t get your way. The 2nd Amendment is for EVERYONE.
Sorry to nitpick, but this is one of my favorite rights.
-Chris
I just re-read Karen’s comment about how her worst and most vivid memory was actually how bad the movie was.
That got me thinking:
REPORTER: So, other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
MRS. LINCOLN: Oy, by the third act I was really hoping someone would shoot ME. But then Booth jumps out and blew away my husband… which was tragic, but at least it stopped the show.
Daryl Gates wanted to make a point and he did, to the detriment of the city and its residents.
KB:
You write: Good on the Koreans.
They were in the eye of the storm.
A Korean female grocer Soon Da Ju, 49, shot and killed a black girl Latasha Harlins on March 16. Du thought that Harlins was shoplifting a bottle of soda. Harlins, it seems, was fully intending to pay for it. There was an angry verbal exchange, then a physical scuffle that quickly escalated, and then Du shot the 15-year old Harlins in the back, killing her. Du was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 400 hours of community service.
Tension between the black and Korean communities had been building for years. This incident was explosive, just the kind of tragic episode race hustlers, parading as community leaders, seek to set off riots that they use to front their criminal enterprises.
Thus, the entire Korean community was abandoned by the authorities. Soon the entire Los Angeles Korean community found themselves under a state of siege by black gangs who took advantage of the anarchy to perpetrate some old fashioned violent crime.
Little did they realize but that the Koreans are not like the Jewish community — a bunch of unarmed whiny liberals. On the contrary, the Koreans are well armed, well trained–many are ex-Marines and ex-Army. They fought off the mob quite succesfully, and it will be a long time before they are attacked in such a manner ever again.
For the LAPD, it was to their everlasting shame that they could not and would not protect honest citizens from marauding criminals.
Rutheday:
You are correct, I got the quote wrong, but I decided not to fix it in the telling. I was, ahem, scared out of my mind and forcing the humor as it was.
Jake:
You ask: what happened to the other guests at the premiere after we escaped?
I spoke to a few people who were there; they told me that they waited a while for the police to arrive, and when it became clear that they were a no-show, not going to ride to the rescue, everyone did as we did–got into their cars, and sped away. There were no injuries, thank G-d. Apparently the flood of cars was too much for the rioters and they moved on to easier pickings.
Fern:
I too wish this narrative were not based on real live events. Another fact that people may not recall is that school was cancelled on Thursday–including all the Yeshivas.
I too was shocked to learn about how many people were killed and maimed in the riots. Good on you and your wife in keeping calm and doing what needed to be done to protect your family. Good on the Koreans.
West Bank Mama:
You write: I am shocked that so many people died in these riots.
Tragically, the dead, the maimed, the wounded, and the countless traumatized children, were almost immediately forgotten under the aggressive, willfull and false ideological narrative that was imposed on the riots by the usual Liberal suspects such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, etc. who proclaimed the riots an “uprising.”
As in The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
As in the 1956 Hungarian Uprising against the Soviet Communist Dictatorship.
And so on.
Typical moral equivalence from people whose moral compass is not just broken, but completely shattered.
More Facts About The LA Riots:
The Korean community realized that they had been completely abandoned by the authorities, thus, they organized a defense team mainly composed of ex-Marines and other young volunteers.
Forgotten was 18-year old Edward Lee, a Korean volunteer of tyhis defense force, who died in a gunfight protecting his community.
The Rodney King Jurors fled their homes in the dead of night because of death threats.
Police Chief Daryl Gates attended a fund raiser on the second night of the riots.
No one bothered to publicize the fact that the Rodney King jury saw tape of Rodney King attacking the police officers before the infamous beating. In fact, it was the reason for the beating. The networks never bothered to air that footage.
Shots were fired at a police helicopter, thus the flights of incoming jets to LAX were rerouted.
Bill Cosby urged people to stay inside their homes and watch the series finale of The Cosby Show — instead of rioting.
Far too many segments of black culture celebrated the riots, for instance Dr. Dre had a hit song: :The Night The Niggaz Took Over.
My wife made me sell the rifle when we had kids. I hope she doesn’t have reason to regret that someday.
I did keep the black powder rifle and pistol, but they’re pretty much useless.
Pearl:
We all become warriors when our children are threatened. I believe that any man with a family would have done what Karen and I did: go to any lengths to protect them.
Hmmm:
Thanks for the compliment. The Hollywood ending is buying My Hollywood Gun. Believe me, I felt like dancing in the street as in one of the old MGM musicals.
Ari:
A new series about my mountain climbing days.
Part I: I climbed.
Part II: I kvetched.
Part III: I survived.
I had children and gave it up. Fade to Black. The End.
Good story. As a post-Holocaust Yid, I’ve thought I’D like to have access to a gun but I don’t want all of THEM (i.e., all non-law-enforcment-people-not-personally-vetted-by-me) to have guns.
Sorry to nitpik but this is one of my favorite quotes and I think it’s “bumpy night” not “ride”.
Robert:
Were any of the kids and adults back at the theater injured? What happed to them?
Tamara:
I do not own a gun, but have used guns many times and I don’t consider myself anti-gun, (I just want the cops to do a better job enforcing the existing laws). That said, you should look into the fascinating studies done by anti-gun groups who found that when a group of kids were left alone in a room with a real gun, (unloaded, but the kids didn’t know that), it was the kids with the fanatical anti-gun parents who immediately grabbed the gun and started playing with it while the kids with gun-owner parents shouted at them to leave it alone, etc. As with all things, (at the proper time), it’s better to educate your kids about dangerous things than let the “schoolyard” do the educating for them. Again, it’s up to the parent to figure out the proper time, but I think this is true for drugs and sex ed too.
Great story Robert. I am shocked that so many people died in these riots.
Melissa:
That’s right, Marines from the 1st Marine Division in Camp Pendleton were deployed to LA to help restore law and order to our blighted city.
Don’t worry about reading material here in Seraphic Secret that you shouldn’t be “privy to.” Karen cuts that stuff way before it ever gets to you.
Tamara:
I’m with Maj. Hilts. Better to educate your children in guns and marksmanship, and gun safety than hiding the guns. There’s no reason why responsible kids should not be versed in firearms.
Regarding those who doubt whether George Bush Sr.’s anemic response to the LA Riot caused him to lose the election; the comments above are of course not incorrect, they are just a little “too ‘on'”. Causation – true causation – is often subtle. The Talmud says that when King Solomon misbehaved the angel Gavriel threw down a reed which created a sandbar (seraton = The First Sheraton) which created Rome. Nonwithstanding that the “read my lips” flip flop occurred before the riot appeasement, I would still call the latter a “root cause”.
GHWB lost b/c Clinton completely outclassed him as a speaker and a campaigner. Love him or hate him, he has (or had) the popular touch on the stump. He also can do “the vision thing”; Bush could not articulate to the public (and perhaps not to himself either) why he wanted to be president.
(Not that I care for Clinton, but them’s the facts.)
Wow! What a story!
Robert, you present yourself well. Beneath that mild-mannered, reserved demeanor we are familiar with lies a warrior, who will do whatever is necessary to protect his own.
BTW, I hope you never have to make use of that gun of yours…
Great story, I wish it weren’t ‘based on actual events’ though. My dad is a teacher and at the time he was working at Edison Junior High in South Central, not too far from where Reginald Denny was attacked. His school was shut down for a week and when classes resumed, there were national guardsmen positioned on the roof. I was only 10 years old when the riots broke out, I didn’t really understand what was going on, I mostly remember being worried when my dad went back to work.
“Settle on an old ice ax from my mountain climbing days.”
The subject of a new series perhaps?
“If the Los Angeles riots taught us anything it’s that you’re a fool if you count on the authorities to protect you, in times of civil unrest — in fact, anytime.”
So true.
A lesson learned again in New Orleans.
Real Name:
I always thought it was: “Read my lips, no new taxes.”
Wow, wow and wow. The story itself is astounding, I could almost forget to compliment your excellent writing. Thank you for bringing another episode of hooliganism to the screen.
I am sure the Hollywood ending would have been of you dancing the hora with reformed looters, all of you battle-bloodied and looking equally mean and violent.
And remember, John Kerry voted for Rodney King, before he voted against him.
You had me on the edge of my seat (again). Well, written. I was an active duty Marine in Okinawa at the time, I know of Marines that were sent from Camp Pendleton to patrol the streets during this time. All they could call it was “surreal.”
Thank you once again for sharing your thoughts with us once again. Sometimes, reading your words, I feel I get a glimpse of something private that I should not be privy to.
For what it’s worth, I take my kids out shooting too, underlining why it is important for them to respect firearms. I find it safer than trying to hide the weapons.
Amazing. I was actually holding my breath while reading this post (and not realizing it). Your observations about gov’t not protecting people in times of unrest is correct. Thank goodness for the second amendment.
I have considered purchasing a gun from time to time, but have hesitated because I have young children. This post is making me rethink the whole ideal.
Great narrative Robert.
In my opinion, Geo. Bush Sr. lost the election that Friday late afternoon when he went on national TV and basically took the side of the looters.
Kishke:
No, turns out that a few minutes later everybody did what we did, got in their cars and fled.
What happened at the theater? Did the mutants (Bob Grant’s word) indeed break in?
Kishke:
G-d knows I did my best.
Hey, great story. Too bad you didn’t run over a couple of them.