TRICKY DICK'S COFFEE HOUSE: 8) GARNISHED WITH INTRIGUE
A Throwback Thursday Serial About Living in London in the 1970s
As we grew deeper into the new year (1975), Bob Miller needed more work and said if I wanted to keep him we'd have to open Tricky Dick’s six days a week instead of four.
By this time, Bob could handle the place on his own, which meant I could hang out at the pubs till past ten so I agreed.
I had signed up for two evening courses at the University of Maryland, a military annex; classes were held at a US Air Force base in West Ruislip, a 30-minute drive from London.
The other students were military or dependents, and the philosophy professor was a dead horse. My stomach was often less patient than my mind and it would protest loudly about being bored for three hours straight.
So I dropped Philosophy, stuck with Business Law. I'd race home every Thursday night, driving so fast on the motorway that, if the wind was right, my lightweight Austin minivan sometimes took flight.
First stop was the Portland Arms, a St. John's Wood pub, a nightly party of American friends. Bruce S, Dickie W (the three of us played barroom billiards) and a whole new slew of gals from the American School in London (ASL), including Cathe H, Kathy W (Dick's sister), Mary Ann S.
The bunch of us spent afternoons in a park, throwing Frisbees or boating on Regent's Park Canal. Come spring, we organized softball games and picnics. Then I heard I’d been accepted at American University in Washington D.C. and I moseyed through spring then summer, keeping the serious world at bay, believing September would never arrive.
Meantime, an ASL acquaintance named Mark S gave me a book that changed my course.
None Dare Call it Conspiracy breathlessly revealed the conspiracy theory of history, linking a late 18th century fraternal order called the Illuminati to today's Council on Foreign Relations. It painted a strong argument for the manipulation of foreign policy and economics, and though it was easy to recognize the political slant as rabid right wing, it aroused in me a thirst for answers about such things as the Bilderberg Group, said to be a secret international organization of bankers and tycoons and politicians who quietly meet once a year and secretly plot the world's future.
Late at night, I sat in my makeshift office on the mezzanine above Tricky Dick's, reading and re-reading this booklet, trying to separate political interpretation (or misinterpretation) from fact, trying to discern whatever nuggets or at least grains of truth might exist in the text.
Most intriguing was a reference to Dr. Carroll Quigley, a professor of International Relations at Georgetown University. Quigley was labeled an “insider” who exposed the existence of the conspiracy in Tragedy and Hope, his 1,300-page history book.
My brother Michael returned from California in June. He'd spent a semester at Pierce College and returned home purged of California and full of new insights from studying psychology ("man is insane because he is the only animal that knows he is going to die"). He planned to dig in.
Tricky Dick's couldn't support us both so he took a job with Kaysen's, the parent cake company, and we partied on through summer, mixing it up with characters: Bronco, Larry Viner, Roger Okin et al, and our American friends. Tricky’s Dick’s was our hub.
Come July, Bob Miller cashed in his chips, finally put a blues band together and the last I saw him for decades was a gig he played at the King's Head pub on Edgware Road. His family moved from London soon after that and for years I had a recurring dream about bumping into him, always some different venue, until we finally met 20 years later at an ASL reunion and I was able to put that dream to rest.
Mike tried to talk me into staying in London. He had big plans for Tricky Dick's and he got excited about them over a couple of Scorpions at Trader Vic's beneath the London Hilton on Park Lane.
He intended to spruce up the old kitchen, make it operational, bring hamburgers and pizza to the menu; the thrill of it flickered in his eyes.
Mike asked why I had to go to Washington D.C. when it would be so much more fun to stay and help him run the new improved Tricky Dick's.
But I had a second appointment with destiny. I tried, clumsily, to tell him this. Washington is where I had to be, pure and simple, that's what the impulse dictated.
Mike shook his head, couldn't understand it.
I remember telling Roger Okin the same thing one night after a jam. He thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world to run a whacky coffee house and conduct jam sessions. Why would I leave to do anything else? I told him I wanted to be a government bureaucrat. He must have thought I was joking. Or as crazy as my customers. He just shook his head, same as Mike.