I found the bot­tle nes­tled between two feed bags in the back of the ware­house. Pab­st Blue Rib­bon Beer, the big forty ounce size, emp­ty except for a few lit­tle bub­bles on the bot­tom. I was sev­en­teen, work­ing a sum­mer job at the Crozet Fruit Grower’s Co-op. I fig­ured anoth­er work­er, Wal­ter, drank the Pab­st. It was three o’clock and he’d been M.I.A. since lunch time.

I took the bot­tle to Jack, the senior man. In his for­ties, five feet three, built like a fire hydrant with a bowl­ing ball head and bristly buzz-cut red hair, he didn’t have much use for Wal­ter. “Tongue-dick,” he grumped, an epi­thet Jack reserved for the worst among us. I didn’t know what it meant and I was too timid back then to ask. “Best we tell Miz Pugh,” he said.

Mrs. Pugh was the Co-op’s Man­ag­er. I fol­lowed Jack across the ware­house and up the stairs to her office where he set the emp­ty forty ounc­er on her desk.

She stared bale­ful­ly at it, the lens­es of her horned-rim glass­es glint­ing in the light. “Wal­ter?” she said.

Jack nod­ded. “Sumbitch.”

“Please don’t curse, Jack.”

“Sor­ry, Miz Pugh.”

A wid­ow in her fifties with polio, Mrs. Pugh walked on leg braces while lean­ing on hand crutch­es. Know­ing Wal­ter had a his­to­ry of binge drink­ing, she had hired him any­way out of com­pas­sion. He had a wife and three kids and no one else would give him a job. She had every right to be angry at him for let­ting her down, but she betrayed no hint of frus­tra­tion that after­noon. Despite her chal­lenges, or maybe because of them, she was the most patient boss I ever worked for.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “Y’all go on back to work now.”

Mrs. Pugh let Wal­ter go, and Jack and I had to cov­er his work­load. Jack made it easy for me. He was the strongest small man I ever met. He tossed around hun­dred pound feed bags all day long with an unfil­tered Camel Gold con­stant­ly dan­gling from his lips, smoke curl­ing into his squint­ing green eyes, yet I nev­er saw him break a sweat or even breathe hard.

Work­ing shoul­der to shoul­der with Jack wasn’t exact­ly a bar­rel of laughs. Tac­i­turn and qui­et, he didn’t seem to have much of a life. He lived alone, could bare­ly read or write, didn’t have any inter­ests out­side his job at the Co-op, and didn’t have any friends oth­er than Mrs. Pugh, whose kind, fair treat­ment had earned his devo­tion. My attempts to cheer him up only rarely broke through his stiff-jawed frown to pro­duce his ver­sion of a smile, a short-lived uptick at the cor­ners of his mouth and a sin­gle quiver of the ubiq­ui­tous Camel.

Then one morn­ing near the end of the sum­mer, he walked into the ware­house, grin­ning all over him­self. “My girl­friend said we get mar­ried if I give her a ring,” he crowed.

He’d nev­er men­tioned a girl­friend before, but from there on, Becky was all he could talk about. She was beau­ti­ful with silky brown hair and a just-right curvy fig­ure, and she was kind, sweet, and fun to be with. Jack had been crazy about her for months, but he didn’t think the feel­ing was mutu­al until she said she’d mar­ry him if he gave her a ring.

I was hap­py for him. Then I met Becky.

Jack and I walked down Three Notch’d Road to a store to buy lunch. When we stepped inside, Jack sucked in his breath and rushed over to a woman stand­ing with a man by the drink machine. “Hi, Becky,” he said, his voice trembling.

She was in her thir­ties, Jack’s height, and a good hun­dred eighty pounds. Pim­ples and black­heads cov­ered her chub­by face, and greasy brown hair fell limply to her ample shoul­ders. She rolled her eyes at the mid­dle-aged bean-pole with yel­low teeth stand­ing beside her, and mut­tered, “Shit, Bob­by, here he is again.”

Jack danced around in front of Becky like a pup­py dog des­per­ate for a pat on the head while she ignored him and flirt­ed with Bob­by. There was noth­ing sub­tle about the sig­nals she sent them. She had no inter­est in Jack, and she want­ed to get it on with Bobby.

She was lean­ing against Bob­by and he had just slipped his hand inside her blouse when Jack blurt­ed out that he planned to give her a ring next week. Becky and Bob­by exchanged sly looks. She went up on tip­toes and whis­pered some­thing in his ear. They laughed. She winked at Jack, took Bobby’s arm, and pulled him toward the door. “Bet­ter be a nice ring, Jack,” she said over her shoul­der as they left the store. Jack waved to her with a lit­tle-boy grin on his flushed face.

On the way back to the Co-op, Jack was elat­ed. “I seen a ring in the drug store. It’s real nice.”

The fol­low­ing week was my last at the Co-op. Thursday

morn­ing, Jack showed me a ring he’d bought at the Crozet Drug Store. “Give it to Becky tonight,” he said, his eyes shin­ing. “Then we get married.”

I want­ed to warn him, but Jack was more than twice my age and I didn’t think it was my place to give him advice. I told him the ring was nice and kept my mouth shut about Becky.

Jack didn’t show up for work the next day, Fri­day. At quit­ting time, Mrs. Pugh called me into her office and hand­ed me my last check. After we said our good­byes, she men­tioned Jack. “I’m wor­ried about him. He didn’t call in. It’s not like him.”

I told her about Becky and the ring. I real­ized only then that Mrs. Pugh was the one per­son in the world who might have been able to get through to Jack about Becky. “I wish I’d told you ear­li­er,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be. Jack’s a grown man, respon­si­ble for his own actions.”

True, I thought, but I still wished I’d told her.

After I went back to school, I heard that Mrs. Pugh con­vinced Jack to return to work, and I thought he’d be okay.

Time passed. I con­cen­trat­ed on my senior year in high school and didn’t think much about the Co-op.

Then one cold Decem­ber morn­ing I was stand­ing by the wood­stove in the Pied­mont Store in White Hall when Wal­ter walked in. He got in my face, told me it was my fault he got fired by the Co-op, and threat­ened to kick my ass.

My tem­per flared, but as he rant­ed at me, the look in his rheumy eyes gave me pause. He was drunk again. By then he had to know drink­ing was killing him, but he couldn’t stop. He was help­less and hope­less. My anger drained off. I backed down and walked away. I nev­er saw Wal­ter again and don’t know what became of him.

I know what became of Jack. He stopped com­ing to work. They found him at home, dead by his own hand, a gun­shot wound to the head. I don’t recall who told me or when it hap­pened. All I remem­ber is the heart-wrench­ing shock. Fifty years lat­er I can still feel it.

As I wrote this, I thought about Becky. I won­der how she felt when she heard about Jack. Did she know he loved her? Did she care?

Ten years ago, I wrote a nov­el, The Killing Tree, inspired by Jack and Wal­ter. I haven’t tried to pub­lish it. I don’t like it. It fes­ters like a thorn in my hand. I tin­ker with it from time to time, but noth­ing makes it bet­ter. I can’t find a way to rewrite their lives to deliv­er a hope­ful out­come. But I keep trying.

In the spring of 1967, near the end of my sopho­more year in UVA’s Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences I was required to declare a major. My pas­sion was Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, but the class­es were dif­fi­cult and I was strug­gling to main­tain a C aver­age. I decid­ed to declare Edu­ca­tion, which was eas­i­er. To major in teach­ing I applied to UVA’s Cur­ry School of Edu­ca­tion. Although Cur­ry usu­al­ly admit­ted stu­dents in good stand­ing from the Col­lege, I was prompt­ly rejected. 

I sched­uled a meet­ing with Curry’s Dean of Admis­sions to ask him why they turned me down. A tall, pot­bel­lied man with a big nose and a mel­on-sized bald head, dressed in a frumpy black suit and a wide red tie, the dean remind­ed me of Wimpy from the Pop­eye car­toons, but Wimpy was always in a good mood and the dean seemed aggra­vat­ed when I sat down in a chair across his desk from him.

“The rea­son we reject­ed your appli­ca­tion should be no mys­tery to you,” he said. “Your record is atro­cious. Aca­d­e­m­ic pro­ba­tion. Cut pro­ba­tion. Drink­ing probation.”

I stared at him in shock. “I’m not on probation.”

He smirked. “Lying will do you no good, Mr. Oder.” 

“I’m not lying,” I said, still stunned. “I’m not on pro­ba­tion for anything.”

He nar­rowed his eyes, opened a file, and read from it. “Ken­neth J. Oder. Aca­d­e­m­ic pro-”

“Wait!” I said. “That’s wrong. I’m Ken­neth W. Oder.”

Still smirk­ing, he paused and read aloud a birth date. It was the right year but the wrong day and month. Frown­ing, he rat­tled off a stu­dent I.D. num­ber. It didn’t match my number. 

The dean fum­bled with the file. “There may be some sort of mis­take,” he said. “I’ll con­tact the Col­lege and get back to you.” 

Not trust­ing Wimpy to get it right, I made a bee line from his office to Cabell Hall where the College’s files were archived.

The Cabell Hall clerk con­firmed there was anoth­er sopho­more in the Col­lege named Ken Oder. I was amazed. Oder isn’t exact­ly a com­mon sur­name. The odds against anoth­er Ken Oder in UVA’s class of 1969 seemed astro­nom­i­cal. I want­ed to meet this guy.

I went to the dor­mi­to­ry where the Cabell Hall clerk said the oth­er Ken Oder lived. A stu­dent I didn’t know sat on a sofa in the lounge. When I crossed the room, he greet­ed me. “Hey, Ken.” 

I stopped. “Excuse me. Do I know you?”

He squint­ed at me. “I’m sor­ry. I thought you were some­one else.”

“Are you Ken Oder?” I asked.

“No. Fact is I thought you were Ken Oder. You’re almost a dead ringer for him.”

“Yeah, well, I am Ken Oder, but not the one who lives here.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. I explained. He said Ken Oder wasn’t there and he didn’t know where he was or when he’d be back. I left my con­tact information. 

One night the fol­low­ing week when I was sit­ting in the back of a greasy-spoon din­er, a friend walked by my table and did a dou­ble-take. “What the hell?” he said. “I just spoke to you on your way out the door.” He said he’d greet­ed me by name and I had looked at him with a puz­zled expres­sion, mum­bled hi back to him, and kept going. 

I thought I knew who he’d seen. I ran out­side, look­ing for Ken Oder, but he was gone.

Col­lege sopho­mores were required to meet with a Col­lege fac­ul­ty mem­ber about declar­ing their major. My meet­ing was sched­uled a few days after I nar­row­ly missed the elu­sive Ken Oder at the din­er. I was assigned to John Gra­ham, Assis­tant Dean of the Col­lege. When I arrived at Cabell Hall for my appoint­ment, stu­dents stand­ing in line out­side his office said he was run­ning an hour behind.

In his for­ties, tall and thin with a pleas­ant smile, Dean Gra­ham final­ly ush­ered me into his office two hours late. It was a mess. Files, man­u­scripts, and books were strewn all over the place, and strange­ly, an old machine gun was mount­ed on a cre­den­za by the win­dow. I eyed it uneasi­ly as I took a seat at his desk.

He reviewed my file (the right one this time). “I see you intend to declare Edu­ca­tion,” he said. “Why not Eng­lish Lit?”

“It’s a dif­fi­cult major, and I’m not a good student.”

He stud­ied my tran­script. “Your weak­ness­es are math and sci­ence. A major in Eng­lish would play to your strengths.”

“Edu­ca­tion is an eas­i­er cur­ricu­lum. Besides, I want to be a teacher.”

“An Edu­ca­tion degree will restrict you to teach­ing. An Eng­lish major with a minor in Edu­ca­tion would qual­i­fy you to teach and give you oppor­tu­ni­ties in oth­er fields if you change your mind and want to do some­thing else.”

“I’d rather just go with Education.”

The Dean stared at me weari­ly, then went to his door, told the stu­dents wait­ing out­side to come back in an hour, took off his suit jack­et, propped his feet on his desk, and lit a cig­a­rette. “Let’s talk about this, Mr. Oder.”

We talked. Long and hard. This very busy, over­worked admin­is­tra­tor, who dou­bled as a pro­fes­sor of eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, argued with me about my future like his life depend­ed on it, instead of mine. Short of turn­ing that machine gun on me, he did every­thing he could to con­vince me I could excel in Eng­lish Lit cours­es. At the end of the hour, I with­drew my appli­ca­tion from the School of Edu­ca­tion and declared Eng­lish as my major.

I made the mis­take of not track­ing down the oth­er Ken Oder before the school year end­ed, and he didn’t return to UVA the

fol­low­ing year. I for­got about him until ten years ago when I dis­cov­ered records on geneal­o­gy sites of a Ken Oder born in Vir­ginia in 1947, who was a descen­dant of my great grandfather’s broth­er, but his trail went cold after he left Vir­ginia fifty years ago. In prepar­ing this post, I searched for him again. I could find only two Ken Oders and nei­ther is my age or looks like me.

I had nev­er met Dean Gra­ham before my dec­la­ra­tion of my major, and I encoun­tered him only once after­wards. I passed him on a walk­way near the law school when I was a first year law stu­dent. I stopped and stared after him, think­ing about how much his good coun­sel had meant to me. As he’d pre­dict­ed, I’d changed my mind about teach­ing, and my Eng­lish major had giv­en me the option of going to law school. 

I ran after him and stopped him. He didn’t remem­ber me, but he seemed pleased and slight­ly amused by my enthu­si­as­tic appre­ci­a­tion for his pre­cious time and sage advice. We spoke for only a few min­utes. He walked on, and I nev­er saw him again.

Dean Gra­ham died in 2007 at the age of 81. In his obit­u­ary, UVA Pres­i­dent Cas­teen char­ac­ter­ized him as a favorite of stu­dents, “sym­pa­thet­ic, clever and often fun­ny, respect­ful and opti­mistic about stu­dents’ futures.” I would add car­ing, ded­i­cat­ed, and spec­tac­u­lar­ly persuasive.

In the spring of 1967, I made a deci­sion to take the easy path. Two men blocked my way. Anoth­er Ken Oder unin­ten­tion­al­ly caused a delay. In the inter­im, Dean Gra­ham, who believed in me even though he didn’t know me, con­vinced me to believe in myself and changed the course of my life. 

Post Script: Accord­ing to a news arti­cle pub­lished after Dean Graham’s death, the machine gun was a present from his broth­er, who cap­tured it from Japan­ese sol­diers in World War II.

Riots erupt­ed in South Cen­tral Los Ange­les Wednes­day after­noon, April 29, 1992, when a jury found four LAPD offi­cers not guilty of assault­ing Rod­ney King. Vio­lence ruled the night and con­tin­ued into Thurs­day morn­ing when I arrived at my office at Lath­am & Watkins on the 43^rdfloor of a down­town sky­scraper. My office win­dow offered an unob­struct­ed view of LA’s south side. I count­ed sev­en­teen spires of smoke curl­ing into the sky from burn­ing build­ings. The con­flict was five miles away, so I thought it posed no risk to our loca­tion. I was wrong.

The event that led to the riots occurred a year ear­li­er, on the night of March 3, 1991. Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol offi­cers attempt­ed to stop Rod­ney King for speed­ing. He tried to out­run them. The CHP gave chase and LAPD patrol cars joined the pursuit.

Most of the offi­cers were white. King was black.

The police forced King off the road in the Lake View Ter­race dis­trict. He resist­ed arrest. The LAPD offi­cers tasered him and knocked him to the ground.

At that point a local res­i­dent, George Hol­l­i­day, began film­ing the action with a Sony Handy­cam from his apart­ment bal­cony. The tape begins with King on the ground. He gets up and tries to run. The offi­cers knock him down, cir­cle him, and club him with batons, land­ing 40 to 50 hard blows.

Hol­l­i­day sent the tape to a tele­vi­sion sta­tion. Media out­lets all over the world picked it up and played it repeat­ed­ly. Pho­tos of King’s injuries also went viral.

The dis­trict attor­ney charged four LAPD offi­cers with assault and use of exces­sive force. In response to a change of venue motion, the court moved the case to Simi Val­ley. The jury pool in LA would have includ­ed a large minor­i­ty pop­u­la­tion. Simi Val­ley was a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white community.

The tri­al began in March, 1992, with a jury of nine whites and three minori­ties, no blacks. The pros­e­cu­tion relied heav­i­ly on the tape. Sur­pris­ing­ly, the defense relied on it, too, play­ing it in slow motion, frame-by frame, as an expert wit­ness tes­ti­fied that King’s move­ments jus­ti­fied each baton blow.

Court TV broad­cast the tri­al live.

Racial ten­sion in LA was at the break­ing point when the court announced the not guilty ver­dicts on Wednes­day, April 29, at 3:15 p.m.

One of my friends at Lath­am was try­ing a case in Ingle­wood that after­noon. Wor­ried about a vio­lent reac­tion to the King ver­dict, the judge in his case adjourned the pro­ceed­ings ear­ly. On my friend’s way to the free­way, he drove through the inter­sec­tion of Flo­rence and Nor­mandie in South Cen­tral about 4:30 p.m. He may have been one of the last motorists to pass through unharmed.

A few min­utes lat­er, LAPD offi­cers attempt­ed to arrest a man who had thrown rocks at their car near there. They were quick­ly sur­round­ed by an angry crowd. Oth­er offi­cers arrived at the scene. The crowd threw rocks and bot­tles at them and they retreat­ed to a bus sta­tion twen­ty blocks away.

Sev­er­al men then robbed Tom’s Liquor Store at that inter­sec­tion, shout­ing, “This is for Rod­ney King.” They passed out liquor bot­tles to oth­ers on the street, and they began pulling peo­ple out of cars and beat­ing them.

News heli­copters flew to the inter­sec­tion and filmed the may­hem. Of the many vio­lent inci­dents, the most graph­ic was a live broad­cast of riot­ers drag­ging a truck dri­ver, Regi­nald Den­ny, from his rig, knock­ing him to the ground, stomp­ing him, beat­ing him with a claw ham­mer, and smash­ing his head in with a con­crete block.

Some of Latham’s staff mem­bers lived in South Cen­tral. They were afraid to go home Wednes­day evening, so we set them up to spend the night in the offices.

The riots con­tin­ued through the night. The vio­lence remained focused in South Cen­tral, so most every­one at Lath­am came to work Thurs­day morn­ing, wor­ried but not yet alarmed about our per­son­al safety.

By mid-morn­ing I was alarmed. The smoke plumes out­side my win­dow had mul­ti­plied, and they were creep­ing toward downtown.

Lath­am employed more than 200 attor­neys and hun­dreds of staff employ­ees in LA. I was the Man­ag­ing Part­ner of that office. It was my respon­si­bil­i­ty to decide whether to shut down and send every­one home. I hes­i­tat­ed, wor­ried about turn­ing off the bill­able-hours spig­ot on 200 big-time attor­neys when I didn’t know for sure the riots would reach our build­ing, but when the fires came with­in a mile of us, I pulled the trig­ger and announced a closure.

The staff bolt­ed for the doors. Most of the attor­neys packed up and got out, too, but some of them want­ed to stay and work. I went door to door, urg­ing them to leave, cit­ing Regi­nald Den­ny as Exhib­it A. Every­one even­tu­al­ly vacat­ed the office.

When I drove out of down­town at 2:00 p.m., the streets were clear. Two hours lat­er, the riot­ers over­ran our loca­tion. I sent a mes­sage to all LA per­son­nel clos­ing the office Fri­day and through the weekend.

That night, the riots spread to Hol­ly­wood and the west side. Fri­day, the vio­lence remained unchecked and out of control.

I was scared. In most of the tele­vised cov­er­age, the police were nowhere to be seen. I didn’t know how to pro­tect my family.

A Lath­am attor­ney, who lived in my neigh­bor­hood, drove his fam­i­ly 50 miles north and checked into a motel. My wife and I didn’t want to aban­don our home unless we had no oth­er choice. They’re attack­ing busi­ness­es, not res­i­dences, I told myself. At least so far.

In Korea Town, news cam­eras filmed shop own­ers tak­ing mat­ters into their own hands, stand­ing on rooftops with rifles, fir­ing down on the street. From my hunt­ing days in Vir­ginia, I had a shot­gun and a rifle in the attic. I cleaned them up, propped them by the front door, then sat on the steps star­ing at them, won­der­ing if I’d gone as crazy as the rioters.

The LAPD tried to regain con­trol Fri­day, mak­ing over a thou­sand arrests, but the riots raged on with­out skip­ping a beat.

Gov­er­nor Wil­son sent in the Nation­al Guard and Pres­i­dent Bush deployed Marines. Com­bat troops in mil­i­tary vehi­cles rolled down the street a half-block from our house.

The sol­diers restored order and brought the riots to a close on Monday.

The cost was stag­ger­ing: 63 peo­ple dead, 2383 injured, over one bil­lion dol­lars in prop­er­ty damage.

Legions of com­mis­sions and ana­lysts have stud­ied the riots since 1992, but the caus­es were clear from the out­set. Too many LAPD offi­cers used exces­sive force with impuni­ty back then. The bil­ly-club­bing of Rod­ney King was a prod­uct of that cul­ture. It went beyond the point of overkill. The jury ver­dict denied the unde­ni­able and lit a pow­der keg of pent-up anger foment­ed by decades of racism and relent­less pover­ty in South Central.

A cold hol­low place opened in the pit of my stom­ach as I wrote this post. It took me back to that help­less feel­ing of 25 years ago. I’d heard of the thin blue line before 1992, but the riots taught me what it means. The bar­ri­er between anar­chy and civ­i­lized soci­ety is thin. Law enforce­ment guards that line. With­out the police, order breaks down and all hell breaks loose. You can try to run from the chaos or you can try to fight it from the rooftops with rifles, but noth­ing real­ly works.

Bad cops must be removed, but the good ones, who are the vast major­i­ty, deserve our respect and sup­port. With­out them, no one is safe.

Post Script: LA paid Rod­ney King 3.8 mil­lion dol­lars in dam­ages. Hav­ing strug­gled with drug and alco­hol addic­tion all his life, he drowned in his swim­ming pool while intox­i­cat­ed in 2012. He was 47.

Regi­nald Denny’s skull was frac­tured in 91 places. He didn’t receive a dime for his injuries. The men who attacked him didn’t have any mon­ey and he lost a law­suit against LA. Despite years of ther­a­py, at the age of 63 his speech and motor skills remain impaired.

The U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment pros­e­cut­ed LAPD Offi­cers Stacey Koon and Lau­rence Pow­ell for vio­lat­ing King’s civ­il rights. They were con­vict­ed in 1993 and sen­tenced to 30 months in prison.