Excerpts From Larry's Pals

“Every man has a few mental hairshirts”

Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
“War, at first, is the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn’t any better off; and finally, the surprise at everyone’s being worse off”.

Karl and I worked together briefly after the Great War. I wrote the theater and restaurant reviews for his magazine, Die Fackel. We had a falling out after I favorably reviewed a bistro near Krog street that he had described as selling schieß sandwiches.

We worked on housing projects together in the sixties, during my architecture days, before AutoCAD weeded out the milksops.
Historians aren’t sure what he was talking about here, but it probably had something to do with civil rights.
It reminds me of a time I was hanging around MLK’s old neighborhood and found myself in front of Ebeneezer Baptist Church- it’s a hit or miss place to find a parking spot. Some guy comes up to me and says, “hey, can I get some change? I’m pretty hungry or something”. And then I said, “aw geez fella, I don’t have any cash on me”. So, then he says to me, he says, “Well do you have a debit card? ‘Cause then we can go to the ATM at that corner store over there with the bars on the windows.” This guy was living what MLK preached- his perseverance was matched only by his audacity.

"War is cruelty and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out."