Robert A. Heinlein In Dialogue with His Century

I had intended to take no real part in this campaign other than donation of money, while Ginny devoted practically full time to it. But I find myself in the situation of the old fire horse downgraded to pulling a milk wagon—a school bell rings … and milk gets scattered all over the street! Last week I found myself, for the first time in a quarter of a century, presiding at a political rally—co-opted without warning at the last minute. I must admit that I rather enjoyed it. And I find myself pulled in on many other political chores and devoting perhaps half as much time to it as Ginny does.1

The Goldwater situation was eerily similar in outline to Upton Sinclair’s EPIC movement—a grassroots campaign not entirely accepted by the local party regulars—but on the Republican side this time. As with EPIC in the 1930s, Heinlein believed it was the right thing to do in the current circumstances. Since his disillusionment over Roosevelt’s involvement in Pearl Harbor, he no longer regarded party affiliation as important: “I usually voted a split ticket. There wasn’t enough difference between the two parties to matter, usually…”2

I really do not think my own political opinion moved very far either to the right or to the left between now and thirty years ago. I have grown far more experienced, far more knowledgeable, and my opinions have sharpened thereby. But I was an individualist and a democratic constitutionalist then and I am now. I thought Jefferson had just about the right ideas then—and I do now.…

From my point of view what has happened is not that I have moved to the right; it seems to me that both parties have moved steadily to the left—until the [moderate] Republicans … occupied a position somewhat left of center whereas the Democratic Party had moved to the far left.3

“Left” does not mean the same thing as “liberal,” though leftists have a vested interest in maintaining and promoting the confusion. Before the twentieth century, in fact, there was no “left” and “right” in American politics. Those terms of European politics could not apply in the United States because monarchism (the “right”) was not a possible position on the U.S. political spectrum. There was a time when Europeans almost could not conduct a political dialogue with Americans, because they did not share the same vocabulary of political ideas.

Liberalism was a political philosophy that had a minor role in European politics, gradually displaced in favor of various strains of Marxist thought after the psychological shock of the failure of the European liberal/democratic revolutions in 1848. The progressive theories of class-collaborationist liberals like Henri de Saint-Simon4 fell out of favor in Europe (though they were and remained well entrenched in America), thanks to the bizarre utopian accounting system of Charles Fourier,5 and Babeuf’s6 “you must liquidate the ruling class” ideas from the French Revolution framed the basis of Karl Marx’s thinking after he fled the failed revolutions in Germany to haunt the British Museum researching and writing Das Kapital. The Soviet Union’s October Revolution, seventy years later, played in the cultural psychology of the twentieth century the same role that the American Revolution played for the political psychology of Western civilization in the nineteenth century.

Heinlein’s training and experience in party politics took place at a time when “traditional” American radical liberals—Upton Sinclair and his EPIC group in California—were in an almost unrecognized struggle with the more left-leaning New Deal for the soul of America’s liberalism. The conflict might ultimately have gone either way—Roosevelt often seemed to have sentiments rather than ideology—but the New Deal programs were often created and guided by hard-core leftists such as Rexford Tugwell.7 By the time the division in the Democratic Party was actually noticed as anything more than the usual and traditional disagreements between the moderate and the radical wings of the party, it was too late.

Heinlein was—and always remained—a traditional American liberal, Jeffersonian—not left and not right. This explains, for example, why he could marry and live with an announced conservative: Ginny’s core values were traditional American liberal, as well, and it is to them that he responded. As leftists took over the Democratic Party, a certain number of traditional American liberals migrated into the moderate wing of the Republican Party, and as the Republican Party itself moved to the left (a very traditional migration, as all political parties in the United States traditionally drew their evolution from the radical wing of the Democratic Party8), they migrated into the “conservative” wing of the party, which is where Ginny’s position was—and Goldwater’s. Although the association of religious fundamentalists with the Republican Party is very traditional in American politics—Abolition was an issue promoted and sustained in America’s churches, after all, and the Republican Party was founded to be the party of Abolition—the rise of the “religious right” is a much more recent phenomenon.

In the years before “libertarianism” became associated with another radical-liberal political movement, itself ultimately fallen down the NeoCon rabbit hole, Heinlein defined his position using a then-standard terminology: “liberal” means “for freedom, above all.”

We [he and Ginny] are libertarians—i.e., we believe in freedom and individualism to the utter maximum attainable at all times and under all circumstances. To some people “libertarian” spells “socialist,” “anarchist,” “crackpot” or “black reactionary”9—to us it simply means personal freedom in any and every possible way at all times—with meticulous respect for the other person’s equal freedom. (And that, incidentally, is the only sort of “equality” I believe in; all other definitions of “equality” turn out to be fake—in my opinion.)

Freedom—This is how I feel about things—and all the too-serious critics who have tried to analyze my stories would find a continuing inner consistency if they spotted that one point. (But for Goddsake don’t tell anybody! Let em guess. I try to write clearly; if I fail to make my point to the reader, I won’t engage in long-winded apologia …10)

This is why they favored Goldwater. This is the quality he and Ginny had seen in his Conscience of a Conservative book (and why they dedicated so much of their own fund-raising to buying and distributing this and the other campaign literature and books Goldwater had authored). The concluding paragraph of the first chapter of The Conscience of a Conservative narrows to focus on this single, overriding issue:

The delicate balance that ideally exists between freedom and order has long since tipped against freedom practically everywhere on earth. In some countries, freedom is altogether down and order holds absolute sway. In our country the trend is less far advanced, but it is well along and gathering momentum every day. Thus, for the American Conservative, there is no difficulty in identifying the day’s overriding political challenge: it is to preserve and extend freedom. As he surveys the various attitudes and institutions and laws that currently prevail in America, many questions will occur to him, but the Conservative’s first concern will always be: Are we maximizing freedom?

To an even greater extent than Upton Sinclair’s gubernatorial campaign in 1934, this was a “campaign of books,” and Goldwater seemed to favor freedom in all its forms more than any other candidate. “For me,” Heinlein wrote,

being free is much more important than being well-fed—and I speak as one who has been miserably poor and painfully in debt and very hungry far from home, friends, or acquaintances, and no one to turn to—I still vote for freedom, and will wangle the maximum of it for myself no matter how strongly the majority may be against me—breaking any laws I can get away with breaking in order to achieve the highest personal degree of freedom I can arrange.11

Certainly Goldwater’s voting record helped Heinlein to support him. It showed he had his heart in the right place—he had voted for the New Deal when it counted and very visibly had put his pocketbook on the line when he ordered his family’s department store to begin hiring Negroes. When he was a city councilman in Phoenix, Arizona, Goldwater had also spearheaded the movement to desegregate Sky Harbor airport. “The key to racial intolerance,” he had said, “lies not in laws alone but in the hearts of men.”12

Heinlein had met the man outside the political context and years before the current campaign, while Goldwater was on a hunting trip in Colorado. “I like Goldwater as a person, too—but met him long after I had decided [in 1959] that he would make a good President.”13 Heinlein had no doubt that Barry M. Goldwater was the real deal. In fact, Goldwater’s biggest political liability as a candidate came directly from the fact that he was the real deal: He said what he thought about an issue the moment the subject came up, colorfully and vividly, without weighing what might be the politically expedient thing to say. His political opponents said that Goldwater “shoots from the hip”—and he did occasionally come out with the kind of thing that might be floated in a think tank but was political death for a national candidate (using low-yield nuclear weapons to exfoliate the jungles in Vietnam, for instance). This mattered less to Heinlein than that the opinions were sound and he always zinged his target.14

This somewhat countered Heinlein’s natural suspicions of a man who won’t drink coffee. In a Republican field that included Richard Nixon (who had declined to run this year), Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Governor Scranton, and Nelson Rockefeller, Barry Goldwater stood out. Heinlein wrote to his brother Larry:

I don’t know whether Goldwater can be elected or not—or whether he can change things if elected. But I would like to see the United States make a radical change away from its present course. I’m sick of bailing out Kremlin murderers with wheat sold to them on credit and at tax-subsidized prices, I’m sick of giving F-86’s and Sherman tanks and money to communists, I’m sick of undeclared wars rigged out not to be won—I’m sick of conscripting American boys to die in such wars—I’m sick of having American service men rotting in communist prisons for eleven long years and of presidents (including that slimy faker Eisenhower!) who smilingly ignore the fact and do nothing, I’m sick of confiscatory taxes for the benefit of socialist countries and of inflation that makes saving a mockery, I’m sick of signing treaties with scoundrels who boast of their own dishonesty and who have never been known to keep a treaty, I’m sick of laws that make loafing more attractive than honest work.

But most of all I am sick of going abroad and finding that any citizen of any two-bit, county-sized country in the world doesn’t hesitate to insult the United States loudly and publicly while demanding still more “aid” and of course “with no strings attached” from the pockets of you and me. I don’t give a hoot whether the United States is “loved” and I care nothing for “World Opinion” as represented by the yaps of “uncommitted nations” made up of illiterate savages—but I would like to see the United States respected once again (or even feared!) … [sic] and I think and hope that the Senator from Arizona is the sort of tough hombre who can bring it about.

But it’s a forlorn hope at best! I’m much afraid that this country has gone too far down the road of bread and circuses to change its domestic course (who ‘shoots Santa Claus’?) and is too far committed to peace-at-any-price to reverse its foreign policy.15

Although Heinlein (mildly) preferred Lyndon Johnson over Alan Cranston among the Democrats, this year he went to work for the Colorado Goldwater campaign.

Heinlein’s political experience had been gained in a Democratic Party that had recently tripled its size and was wide open, young, and vigorous. Moreover, his basic training was in an impoverished organization, not at first supported by the party establishment. Beating the bushes for money and exposure was second nature to him. His sudden emergence into the staid, long-established Republican organization in El Paseo County was not so much a fresh breeze as a hurricane. “His activities were a revelation,” Ginny later remarked, giving as one example, “Instead of simply charging the price for a book, he set up a goldfish bowl, and asked for contributions, getting more out of each customer.”16

He was effective, no doubt, but his style was an affront to the party hierarchy.

On June 20, he was invited to a strategy and planning meeting at the home of the county chairman, Robert M. Laura, Esq. Laura casually suggested something that got Heinlein’s hackles up: He was going to retain a portion of the monies raised locally to fund the local office—not unreasonable in itself, but their fund-raising literature promised explicitly that anything they collected would be sent directly to the national campaign headquarters.

Just like Sinclair’s EPICs in 1934, Goldwater Republicans in 1964 were viewed with suspicion by traditional Republicans, and many of the usual party fund-raising doors often remained closed to the candidate: The national campaign needed every cent it could raise. What Laura proposed was foul betrayal of the party hierarchy—a local organization usurping the goals of the party. But, Robert was the new man in this particular group, and no one else objected. He kept his misgivings to himself.

Instead, he turned to their immediate problem with the state organization, writing directly to Governor Love. The Scranton groundswell of support had never materialized, he pointed out: All Love could do now was to divide the party, on the eve of the nominating convention.

Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights Act of 1964 had come to a vote just before the nominating conventions, and Goldwater had voted against it. Heinlein understood Goldwater was not voting against civil rights: He was voting against federal enforcement of civil rights.17 In Senator Goldwater’s opinion, it was a matter for each state to do, individually, for itself, and, even more importantly, it was, at heart, a matter of the attitude of individuals, which could not be legislated by state or federal government.

Goldwater’s opinion was Constitutionally “correct.” The U.S. Constitution had not specifically delegated this kind of power to Congress or the Executive, and it did reserve to the states any powers not specifically delegated. Lyndon Johnson, following the Kennedy brothers’ lead, used federal forces for the pragmatic reason that some states—George Wallace’s Alabama, for example—would not cede the rights of U.S. citizens unless coerced.

“States rights” is a conservative issue in American politics, going all the way back to the Federalist Papers. Goldwater was where he belonged, after all—and perhaps also where he could do the most good on net. Heinlein’s notions on this issue probably remained more typical of a Democrat: How realistic could it really be to pretend that the United States was still a federation of sovereign states? And in any case, enforcement of a citizen’s civil rights under the Constitution most assuredly was the business of the federal government. But it was an honorable disagreement over tactics, not over basic goals, and it meant that racism would become an issue in the campaign.

The Republican National Convention nominated Barry Goldwater on July 15, 1964. His acceptance speech articulated a position that was to become iconic: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” But it was another campaign liability: The extremism charge had been raised earlier in the campaign by fellow Republican Nelson Rockefeller, who was standing up for the reactionaries in the party—but it allowed Lyndon Johnson, as activist a president as existed in American politics since Lincoln (and “the phoniest individual that ever came around,” according to Goldwater, since Johnson had been lukewarm to civil rights prior to this), to position himself as a moderate and Goldwater as a lunatic extremist. Over a dirty-tricks television ad of a girl picking daisies over a countdown to an atomic bomb that goes off in the background, Johnson supporters turned Goldwater’s campaign slogan—“In your heart you know he’s right”—against him: “In your guts, you know he’s nuts.”

Ginny stepped up her work for the campaign. Heinlein stepped up his work, too, but he was still conflicted—and at another meeting at Bob Laura’s house on August 1, he finally had more than he could take. Laura was temporizing over an offer of help Ginny had taken by telephone from a woman who identified herself as a Negro. He would take the matter up with his State Central Committee contact, Laura said, but his own reaction was: “Oh, they are free to go ahead and form their own committee.”18 Heinlein lost his temper for the first time in many years. He told Laura,

They offered to stick their necks out; we should have shown instant gratitude and warmest welcome.… I can’t see anything in this behavior but Jim-Crowism.… you were suggesting a Jim-Crow section in the Goldwater organization.

Negroes are citizens, Bob.… It is particularly offensive, this year and this campaign, to suggest that Negro Goldwater supporters form their own committee.…

—these faults can easily lose the county … [sic] and with it the state … [sic] and, conceivably, if the race is close, the Presidency itself.

.… So I’ll try to refrain hereafter from offering you advice. But I think it’s time for you either to behave like a manager, or resign.19

Ginny went into field work full time, and Heinlein agreed to handle an expansion of the county office now that the nominating convention was over and the campaign was ramping up in earnest. As Laura temporized on the Jim-Crow question, he gave Heinlein a personal criticism, not the first time he had heard it: “I know you don’t believe that anyone could consider you a ‘yes’ man. I wonder, however, if you can conceive of another’s opinion, differing though it may be, possessing any merit.”20

On this issue, no: The opinion that a Negro volunteer should be treated differently from a white volunteer possessed no merit whatsoever—and if that was “intolerant” in Bob Laura’s book, so be it. “I’m one of the most intolerant men I’ve ever met,” Heinlein noted to himself. “I had thought that, simply because I had uncustomary responses as to what I liked and what I hated that I was ‘tolerant.’ I’m not. I’m not even mildly tolerant of what I despise.”21

There were things more important than party unity in the Republican Party of Colorado.

Late in August, the political situation became very black-and-white for Heinlein: President Johnson made a broadcast address to the nation, timed to catch the evening news. Early in the month (August 2 and again on August 4), the U.S. destroyer Maddox was fired on by North Vietnamese forces in the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 7, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, essentially putting war powers in the president’s hands without a declaration of war. In his August 18 news conference22 President Johnson told of an attack in progress—actually launched but not yet engaging the enemy.

This was an extraordinary—indeed, almost treasonable—violation of national security: giving away intelligence about an offensive before it happened. As the results came in—one naval aviator dead and one captured—Heinlein’s shock turned to raw, uncontainable fury.

It was that hour and thirty-nine minutes of warning to the enemy—simply to catch the late evening east coast newscast!—that disgusts me. In civilian life we call this sort of thing “murder.” Since we can’t hang him for it, I intend to make every possible effort to see to it that he is retired to Texas where he can do no further harm … [sic] or at least will not be in command of men—and betray them.23

Politicians bungle and military commanders are often stupid—but this is a depth of cold-blooded villainy almost unique.… But I do not drink my brother’s blood—nor stand idly by while another does so—and any man who is defending my life with his is my brother and his safety is as much my personal concern as is that of our nephew. The least I owe him is to get rid of a commander who does not value his life and replace him with one who understands the responsibility of a commander toward his men.…

Heinlein cancelled his planned trip to Annapolis for his thirty-fifth class reunion and got a second car so both he and Ginny could be mobile.25 He began working full time at the county offices, setting up an expansion into a satellite office to handle the closing months of stepped-up campaign activity.

A wonderful fund-raising opportunity fell into their laps at the start of September when a wealthy party regular, Al G. Hill, volunteered to underwrite a fifty-dollar-a-plate dinner and open-bar cocktail party at the Garden of the Gods Park—an elegant, high-profile tourist destination, with spectacular towering red rock formations. The local party organization already had a similar fund-raiser scheduled in a more “traditional” venue,26 but Heinlein saw this as an opportunity not to be missed: It could be marketed to the sort of people the party usually had a hard time getting contributions from—socialites and the resort crowd who normally contributed, if at all, in their home districts. This would be a social event—a gala—rather than a stuffy party function.27 Heinlein got the preparations under way for September 26—a Saturday evening far enough in advance of the elections for the new money to do some good.28 This new money was not tied to the county organization’s campaign literature or the phony promise to send everything to the national headquarters: Heinlein got the proceeds earmarked to spend on uncommitted voters in El Paseo County.29

At an Executive Committee meeting on September 9, Laura tried to impeach him (Heinlein’s notes are not clear on the issue involved) and eject him as a troublemaker. “I declined to be ‘tried,’” he remarked dryly in his office journal, but made his regular report instead. Two days later, Weldon Tarter, Laura’s contact with the state party organization, conducted what Heinlein’s office notes call a “Drum Head Court Martial” of Heinlein, accusing him of rudeness, excessive brusqueness to the headquarters staff, and even a kind of personal violence, saying he had been observed throwing someone out of the office literally by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his pants (this latter was contradicted on the spot by an eyewitness).

Heinlein had tried to effect a change, get more out of the organization they had—and you can’t change unless you actually, you know, change …

Heinlein demanded to be confronted by his accusers—or at least to know the details of these accusations, but Tarter ignored him. He would not even discuss any details.

“I said that I could not continue in Hq under such conditions,” he noted in his office journal. Ginny and he withdrew completely from the formal party organization in the county until Tarter should give them a written statement of what their duties were. They never heard further from Laura or Tarter. Heinlein turned over all his outstanding files to Laura and put all the contracts he had been generating on hold until Tarter and Laura should make up their minds what to do with the new assets.

But Heinlein did keep one file: The Garden of the Gods dinner was less than two weeks off.

This fund-raiser had a lot of support even inside the county organization, where not everyone had taken the ugadat, ugodit, utselet vow (“pay attention, ingratiate yourself, survive”—the motto of the old Soviet bureaucracy). In addition to the $500 they had already donated, Heinlein was covering the minor overhead expenses out of pocket, so they could market it as any money raised being 100 percent donation to the cause; they had the enthusiastic and intelligent cooperation of the manager at the Garden of the Gods, and donations of labor and kind supplemented the underwritten cost of the dinner and the open bar.30 Nearly every penny raised could be donated to the campaign. They were limited to a seating of sixty, so Robert felt it best to deflect any potential conflict with the traditional fund-raiser being organized by the local party by urging people to subscribe to the party dinner instead.31

The Garden of the Gods dinner was soon fully subscribed. Heinlein had sought out subscribed tickets for each local Republican candidate and wife and was able to secure the appearance of two-thirds of them. A special political guest, William Miller, the vice presidential candidate and Goldwater’s running mate, was flying in for the affair. Heinlein told his sponsor, Al Hill:

But there were still some candidates for whom I did not have subscribed plates. When Mr. Miller’s advance man, Jack Cole, told me that Mr. Miller could be expected to attend the cocktail party, I phoned the remaining candidates and the officers of the County Central Committee and invited them to the cocktail party. You had not authorized me to invite any extras to the cocktail party but with the tough situation which does exist between the old-line Republicans and the Goldwater organizations, I felt that this was necessary.32

They raised $3,625—on a theoretical maximum of $3,000—all earmarked for local campaigning and not controlled by the county organization. A large part of it went to purchase campaign literature for precinct workers. Some of the money went to underwrite Senator Goldwater’s television appearances, and for these Robert wrote three thirty-second spots:

When Goldwater was nominated, Radio Moscow said, “The Republican Party has been taken over by some pirates led by a sworn enemy of the Communist camp.” But after the Democrat Convention, PRAVDA, official Soviet newspaper, praised the Democrat platform. Why?

THE WORKER, official organ of the American Communist Party, says: “STOP BARRY!”

Why does every socialist, every Communist, every person intent on overthrowing our free government, scream for us to “Stop Goldwater!” Think it over.

“Shooting from the hip” 30-sec spot.

Heinlein 6 Oct 64

THEME SOUNDER

SOUND EFFECT—three rapid gun shots.

1ST VOICE (male or female, surprised and frightened):

He shoots from the hip!

2nd VOICE (male, confident, hearty approval): And he hits the mark—every time!

3RD VOICE (female, confident): In this supersonic age, fast, accurate decisions are a must! Goldwater knows where he stands and doesn’t have to waste precious minutes looking it up. He flies supersonic fighter planes where a man must have split-second correct judgment to stay alive. He has more than four thousand hours as a military pilot. Today … [sic] for us all to stay alive … [sic] the man on that hot-line telephone must have fast and accurate judgment. Vote for Goldwater! In your heart you know he’s right!

END SOUNDER

“Civil rights” 30-second spot.

Heinlein - 6 Oct 64

SOUNDER

MALE VOICE: (Rising intonation, indignant unbelief) Goldwater against Civil Rights? NONSENSE! Here’s the truth: as a Phoenix City Councilman, Goldwater voted to desegregate the city airport restaurant. As chief of staff of the Arizona Air National Guard, Goldwater ordered desegregation. GOLDWATER’s department store was the first major employer in Arizona to hire Negroes on a regular basis. Goldwater says: “The key to racial intolerance lies not in laws alone but in the hearts of men.” In your heart you know he’s right! Vote for Goldwater!

END SOUNDER

There is no evidence these spots were ever used. A week later, Heinlein sketched out a campaign speech.33 But by mid-October it was already clear that Goldwater’s chances were slim.

The last few weeks of the campaign were personally depressing for the Heinleins. On September 24, Sarge Smith died of advanced lung cancer in a Cleveland hospital. And on October 2 their cat Shamrock died delivering kittens: Ginny took time off from the campaign every few hours to feed them formula.34

Robert and Ginny arranged to go directly from the voting booth to the airport on November 2, 1964, flying out to Houston for an AIAA/NASA Manned Spaceflight Conference. When that was over, they would board a Danish freighter, Hanne Skou, at Mobile and travel in the Antilles and South America. “A rest from politics will be welcome.”35

After the Spaceflight conference, they went from Houston to New Orleans instead of directly to Mobile (freighters do not keep tight schedules, and they were delayed) and spent a few days relaxing as Hermann Deutsch’s houseguests. Goldwater carried only six states and 36 percent of the popular vote. Goldwater said he would not have voted for himself if he believed everything that journalists had written about him.

They toured the Boeing plant in Louisiana, guests of the chief engineer and chief counsel—“and I beg to report that the Saturn is the most monstrous big brute imaginable,” Heinlein wrote to Blassingame, “and I do not believe that the Russians can do things on the scale of our APOLLO project. I do believe we will have a man on the moon this decade; progress looks good.”36

Ginny did not show her usual enthusiasm for shopping on this trip, but she did find one unusual item in New Orleans: A saluting gun—a brass cannon, about twenty inches long and four inches in diameter—from an eighteenth-century sailing vessel. It reminded her, she said, of that old joke about the man who retired and went into business for himself, polishing a brass cannon. They had their own brass cannon shipped to Colorado, where they could deal with it after they got back home.

They had only begun to unwind when Hanne Skou embarked from Mobile on November 9 for Jamaica, Aruba, Maracaibo, Porto Cabello, La Guaira, and Trinidad before heading back to Mobile on about December 5.

The Danish captain thought he would have a little amusement at their expense, assuming they would be conventionally racist: He invited them to his cabin one night while they were in Kingston, Jamaica, and they found the captain and his first officer with a couple of local girls, both quite dark. Robert and Ginny had drinks, and then it was suggested they go nightclubbing on the island. Ginny recognized the invitation as a challenge, and so did Robert. Naturally they accepted the gauntlet.

The first nightclub was a beautiful location high on a hillside, but nightclub entertainment is sparse, even in Jamaica, on a Monday night. They visited two more nightclubs. After this time, even at only one drink per place, the party was a little the worse for wear. Ginny recalled what happened next:

After the third club, one of the girls took the bit in her teeth, and gave the taxi driver an address … We arrived there and I immediately noted that there was a red light at the side of the building, but Robert did not see it, and we went inside the house. (I was, well, delighted—I’d always been curious about those places.) Inside there were a number of girls in various stages of undress lying and sitting around the living room. We went through and into a place that served as a bar, ordered drinks, and the Madame joined us there. She was furious at the fact that I was along, and talking it over later, we decided that was caused by the fact that my presence was losing business for her.37

The girls seemed ominously well acquainted at their next destinations, a succession of dives on the waterfront. Eventually the Heinleins turned in for the night, leaving the captain and FO—and their dates—to their own devices. Robert complimented Ginny on her excellent comportment in trying circumstances.

Back at home was back to the grind.