4
A Quiet American
NOVEMBER 5, 1985
PORTLAND, Ore.—At exactly 6 A.M., Joe materialized in the lobby of the hotel. The night before, when he said he would drive me to the airport to catch the 6:50 A.M. flight, I demurred—too early in the morning, I said. No no no, no sweat; he even handed me his business card, writing out his home telephone number on the back of it. Shortly after the alarm woke me, at 5:40, I couldn’t resist the temptation to dial the number. Just in case ... Joe answered the phone. Told me he was on the way out the door; I mustn’t worry.
He was driving a white Mercedes sports car, so I needed to put several of my bags into his back seat. In a matter of seconds we were off, his headlights illuminating the way. He drove with the natural skill of the American who learns to drive when he is about thirteen. And Joe drove according to protocol: speed limit, plus 10 percent.
I repeated I was sorry he had had to rise so early. No problem, no problem, he said. “I always get up early. Five o’clock, as a rule.” Of course I asked why, and he replied that he jogged. “Every morning?” “Pretty much every morning.” He paused, and then said that he was going to try out for the Hawaiian marathon next summer. I said I had heard that it was awfully tough, awfully competitive ; didn’t it go for twenty-five miles or something like that? Yes, he said-twenty-six miles, actually. “But I figure at forty-two I’d better try now, or else I’m not going to do it ever.”
He went on: “I came back from the Army in 1967. Vietnam. I was a platoon leader in the infantry there. When I got back here to Portland, I took a job as a carpenter.”
Had he known the trade—carpentry—before the war?
No. He was sort of handy at fixing things, he said, because he had grown up on a farm, with his twelve brothers and sisters. “I figured it this way, when I got out of the Army, that I was worth twenty dollars an hour. But all they paid me at the construction company where I went to work was two-fifty per hour. So I figured I would have to earn the equivalent of seventeen-fifty per hour more by picking things up. I got to work early, left late, studied the blueprints, figured out how blueprints corresponded with the work done, and after about a year I started my own construction company. It was tough, but after Vietnam, where I got shot at just about every day, everything was ...”
“Absorbable?”
“Yes. Absorbable.”
After a few years, he said, he was doing well. Very, very well. But, he said, he thought he saw it coming. High interest rates discouraged house builders. “So I figured I’d sell my business, and I did, that was in 1978. Sold it just about in time.”
Well, what did he do then? “I figured I had a lot to learn about America, so I took a year or so and drove around the country. Learned a lot. A whole lot. And then one day somebody asked me to play volleyball, and I swear, I just fell in love with the game.”
Volleyball courts, he explained, require the right kind of insulation, so that the balls will bounce as they should. He pondered existing procedures for building those walls and figured they were pretty old-fashioned. So he sat down and figured out a way to piece together little squares or diamonds or whatever that, at far lower cost, bring about the desired effect. “It’s great. So now I manufacture the insides of volleyball courts. As a matter of fact, most of my work is in some way exercise-oriented these days. I guess that’s where I got the idea of jogging, and keeping fit.”
“You must feel wonderful, doing all that physical work. How many hours a day do you run?” Two hours. Did he use a Walkman? He smiled, true pleasure on his face brightened by the headlights coming the other way. “I certainly do. It keeps my mind occupied.”
I asked if the airport was as frequently socked in by early morning fog as I had heard, and he said yes, but if it was that bad that morning, he would simply drive me on to Seattle for my connection. “Nothing to it, a hundred and fifty miles, that’s all. What are your favorite books?” he asked me. I told him I liked this and that.
“You know who I like to read?” he said. “I like to read Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson. I read him every six months.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson would be pleased if he knew Joe Hollman was reading him. We arrived at the airport, and I felt like Antaeus. I had just touched earth, and it’s a fine feeling.