Child of the Sixties Forever: May 2013

James Darren in The Time Tunnel

Skinheads and Hippies, Piccadilly Circus 1969

In 1961, one of the many things that the Chicago mob wanted was a replacement for Cuba, so they looked around for a small, poor country, close to the United States, one that could be easily controlled, preferably run by a corrupt dictator who would allow the outfit to build its casinos on his sandy shores and stockpile its dirty money in phony banks created just for them. Central America had potential. The Outfit and their occasional partners, the CIA, virtually ran the place anyway, but it was hot, and undeveloped and poor, real poor. And if there was one thing gambling tourists in search of a good time didn't want, it was to look at sweaty, poor, undeveloped locals. No, Central America wouldn't do.Then the boys stumbled on the Dominican Republic, just off the Florida coast. It fit the bill exactly. The problem was that, the island's dictator, Raphael Trujillo, was not only losing his mind, he showed signs of warming up to the Soviet block. If that happened, the US would pull its support from the island, and the outfit would have to find another country to corrupt. Trujillo had his own contacts within the mob. For decades, he and Joe Bonanno, out of New York, had been in various businesses together. When the Kennedy administration broke relations with the Republic, Trujillo traded dope for stolen guns. Still, the Republic had real potential for Chicago, who weren't greatly concerned for Joe Bonanno, a man they held in contempt. All the mob needed to do was get the Kennedy administration to commit to its continuing support to the Republic with or without Trujillo in charge. And that's when the boys discovered the legendary Dominican Playboy, Porfirio Rubirosa, El Rubirosa. Rubirosa had spent most of his life in Palm Beach and New York bars trying, and succeeding most of the time, in seducing rich socialites, but he was also a roving ambassador for the Dominican Republic, with two primary duties. One was to make sure companies doing business with his father-in-law's government understood that they were to pad their bills with an extra 15%, which would be kicked back to the dictator's New York based holding companies. His other duty was to keep track of American based dissidents to Trujillo's reign. Using well paid mob contacts, Rubirosa turned information on the dissidents over to Trujillo's feared and brutal secret police, the SIM, which was under the control of Colonel John Abbes Garcia. He ran the secret police, the SIM (Servicio Intelligencia Militar), which dogged Dominicans all over the world. On more then one occasion, the SIM simply turned their murderous chores over to one of New York Mafia families to complete. The SIM and the mob kidnapped Dr. Jesus E. Galindez, a lecturer at Columbia University on March 12, 1956. Galindez had been an outspoken opponent of Trujillo. Two versions were advanced. One was that the SIM kidnapped him and threw him into a ship's furnace. The other is that he was returned to the Dominican Republic and Trujillo himself tortured him. The kidnap murder caused a minor international outrage, and to quell the public, Trujillo hired a New York law firm to investigate the disappearance, but all they could come up with was that Galindez had disappeared. Porfirio Rubirosa didn't seem the type to run an international terrorist squad. A Dominican by birth, Rubirosa's father had been a general in the army and later the chargé d'affaires in Paris where Rubirosa grew up in the best schools and amongst the best people. He returned to the Dominican Republic in 1926 to study law at the age of 17 but left school to start a military career. By age twenty, he was a captain and came to the attention of President Trujillo who one day sent the handsome young captain to the airport to pick up his daughter, the plain looking Flor d'Oro -- Rubirosa took the hint and married the girl. Trujillo eventually rewarded the young Rubirosa's good sense by appointing him the position his father had held in Paris and even when Rubirosa divorced Trujillo's daughter in 1940, he managed to stay in the dictator's good graces and was allowed to retain his diplomatic position as well. After his divorce, Rubirosa married the French film star Danielle Darrieux and then American tobacco heiress Doris Duke, in 1947. When told that he would have to sign a pre-nuptial agreement minutes before the marriage took place, Rubirosa was so infuriated he smoked a cigarette throughout the entire ceremony. Afterwards, in an effort to soothe him over, Duke presented Rubirosa with a check for $500,000.00, several very expensive sports cars and a converted B-25 airplane, since he was also a pilot, and a string of polo ponies. The marriage lasted for thirteen months. Next, in 1953, Rubirosa married Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, his fourth wife, while carrying on an affair with the much married Zsa Zsa Gabor. He would later be named in her divorce petition. His marriage to Hutton lasted only 53 days during which time Hutton gave him, or spent on him, no less then $3.5 million in cash and gifts. Rubirosa was the ultimate pleasure seeker who loved the elegant life. Most nights would be spent dining on exotic foods and then drinking and dancing the rest of the evening away to the Latin rhythms that were then so popular with the international set then. "He also suffered," said a friend, "from a rare disease called priapism which kept him in an almost constant state of sexual arousal and left him unable to be sexually satisfied. He rarely achieved orgasms during sex and then only after hours of struggle. He knew that thing of his was his potential meal ticket and he actually trained to keep it in peak condition. He did exercises for it. He would drink each day a potion called pago-palo which he said came from the bark of a certain tree in the Dominican Republic, he believed that it guaranteed performance ... I once saw him balance a chair with a telephone book on it atop his erection. He said to me, "It's a muscle like any other, it can be strengthened." In the spring of 1961, Frank Sinatra, Sam Giancana and John Kennedy's new best friend, tumbled into Rubirosa's life when he, Peter Lawford and Dean Martin rented a luxury yacht in Germany and met with Rubirosa and his wife Odile off the French coast. Sinatra may have acted as the conduit between the mob, Rubirosa and the elite within the Dominican Republic which was plotting to overthrow Trujillo. With a verbal commitment, by way of Rubirosa, from the Dominican Republic's elite that the mob would be free to operate there once Trujillo was gone, all that Rubirosa had to do was to assure the Kennedy's that if it assisted in the Dominican military in replacing Trujillo in a coup, that the new government would be pro-United States. It's also not known if Sinatra set up the meeting, but after his cruise with Sinatra off the French coast, Rubirosa was invited to meet President Kennedy at his summer house on Cape Cod in late September. Rubirosa would be in the States anyway. The Manhattan District Attorney had summoned him to New York to question him about his role in the mob related kidnap-torture of several Dominican exiles. The day before Rubirosa, Sinatra and the president met in Cape Cod, Sinatra had spent the afternoon at the White House with performers Danny Kay and Judy Garland, teaching the staff how to make Bloody Mary's and then sipping them out on the rear balcony that overlooks the Washington monument. The next day, Sinatra took the president's private plane to the Kennedy's summer home on Cape Cod with Peter and Pat Lawford, Ted Kennedy and Porfirio Rubirosa and his wife Odile. The party went sailing on the president's boat, The Honey Fitz, for three and a half hours, during which Sinatra told everyone about his trip to Italy and his meeting with the Pope. When he was finished, a drunken Peter Lawford said, "All your friends in Chicago are Italian too, huh Frank?" It will probably never be known what Kennedy, Sinatra and Rubirosa discussed out on the Cape, but less than a month after the meeting, John Kennedy gave CIA Director Alan Dulles the okay to assassinate Trujillo and Sam Giancana began his plans to rebuild the Dominican Republic into another pre-Castro Cuba. Everything was moving along smoothly, until one of Bobby Kennedy's bugs picked up on Giancana's plans to turn the Dominican Republic into another Cuba, with the White House as an unwitting co-conspirator. As for Rubirosa, in 1968 he ran his sports car, at an estimated 97 miles per hour, into a tree along the French coast and was killed instantly.

1960 introduces the short lived life of whiskey tooth paste

Brits choose the 1960s decade as one they'd most like to have lived in

72% of Brits liked living in the 1960s most due to the economic conditions
84% of Brits liked the 1960s thanks to the music
56% loved the decade because of the fashion, 23% because of sport

1962 A crow light’s Tippi Hedren’s cigarette

New York in the sixties

Star Trek

Cycle path traces former Iron Curtain, revealing forgotten history and unspoiled nature

The frightening and desolate border separating western Europe from the Communist countries for some 40 years is now being made into a new 10,000-kilometer long cycling path, full of unique natural and historical landmarks, going from northern Finland to southern Bulgaria. Part of the Iron Curtain Trail in the Czech Republic began to be marked out a couple of weeks ago. Radio Prague spoke to Daniel Mourek from the Partnerství Foundation who is the coordinator for the Central European part of the route and asked him about the background of the Iron Curtain Trail project.
“It’s part of European Heritage. There are two roots of this kind –St. James’ way and the Iron Curtain Trail EuroVelo 13 – that have been recognized by the European Council as this kind of heritage routes.
“So, we started with the project in 2011. I was responsible for the middle part, which includes countries like Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. We first analyzed the route and came up with the cross-border trail, which means it has to be 50% on each side of the border. So, in the case of the Czech Republic, it means that 50% is on the Czech side, then 50% in Austria, and the same in Germany.
“So, it really has to be a trans-border trail. Normally the EuroVelo routes are on one side of the border, but since the Iron Curtain Trail is a border trail, we want to make sure that people get experience from both sides of the border.”
So, does the whole trail run along what used to be no man’s land, or does is go outside of that space as well?
“The principle is that is five kilometers maximum from the border. There are some sections, especially in the National Parks like Podyje, Thayatal, where we have to stick to existing routes, because it’s impossible to build new routes.
“On the Czech side, we have these old military roads that were built all along the border, which was the same in East Germany and other countries in the Communist Block. In the Czech Republic they were made of asphalt, so many of these military roads are now used as bicycle trails. It has been 25 years and the surface has to be improved.
“In South Moravia, which is the first region in the Czech Republic that signposted the trail with the special Iron Curtain logo, they invested a lot of money into infrastructure, not only the surfacing, but also amenities, like resting points – there are about 12 or 15 new resting points at the border crossings with information on cycling on both sides.
“It is also important to have the logo on the signposts, because in each country you have different signs; In Austria they are white and green, in the Czech Republic they are yellow with black, in Germany it’s another color. So the symbol of the Iron Curtain Trail and the EuroVelo 13 is a unifying element.
“We started with signposting, because the route has to be identified. And we also published the first guidebook on the Iron Curtain Trail for South Moravia and Lower Austria, which is a section of all together about 200 kilometers.”
We obviously understand the historical significance of the Iron Curtain as a political line that divided Europe. Is there other significance to this line? Is there something else that is special about this area?
“Yes, there is. The Iron Curtain Trail is almost identical with the Green Belt, which is a similar initiative that is more focused on nature protection. The corridor is wider, it’s about 50 kilometers. But basically the Green Belt is a result of the Iron Curtain, because there was no man’s land there, as you said, where the nature is quite pristine. And we want to also promote this natural side of the Iron Curtain Trail, so not only the historical monuments. Though you do need some landmarks along the way. People want to see some remnants of the Iron Curtain, like inČížov, at the National Park in Podyje. In several places there are new museums. Of course, in combination with nature this is an ideal asset for any cycling path.”
In addition to separating the then east and west, the Iron Curtain was also a place of a lot of suffering. People risked their lives to cross over from communist countries to the West. What will tell people riding along this cycle route what had occurred in these places?
“The guidebook that we published is mostly about stories of people who tried to escape. And there is a Freedom Trail close to Mikulov. It is a 2.3-kilometer long trail that has several stops where you can read the stories of people how they tried to escape in each place – whether they were trying to swim across a river or fly in a balloon, or they dug tunnels. So, there are these kinds of information panels, plus you have several museums now. Some of them are private, some of them are run by the municipalities, but it is also part of understanding the history, to go to the museum, read the documents, listen to radio tapes and so on.” A large part of the Czech border is famous for its concrete bunkers, most of which were there even before the Iron Curtain went up. Will they be somehow used by the cyclists?
“Yeah, there are some associations of local people trying to preserve these bunkers. There is one in Šatov, for example, which is a monument. You can go with a group, or individually with a guided tour, get to know about the history. It is not exactly a part of the Iron Curtain Trail, but since there are thousands of bunkers all along the former Iron Curtain, we are trying to use this heritage as well. In Slavonice, for example, there is a big complex of bunkers where you can learn about the history from 1935 to 1938, when these bunkers were built. So, you can’t escape it. When you cycle along the Iron Curtain Trail, you will see lots of them. Some of them are used, some of them are vacant.”
How did you deal with the northern part of the trail, because if I understand it correctly, there the Iron Curtain went along the sea or the seafront.
“Last October I was in Latvia, where we also have a partner organization. The Iron Curtain there was at the seaside, and the trail there mostly follows the coast. There is really solid sand there, so you can cycle along the coast. It was the most wonderful experience I have ever had on a bycicle, because the coastline is really endless. If you cycle south of Riga, you have places like Jūrmala, some of the wonderful beach resorts.
“And I think in Latvia, or in the Baltics in general, they are doing a good job with the heritage interpretation. In Riga there is a museum with the peace treaty signed by Ribbentrop and Molotov. There is a museum of the resistance. They are also trying to link the history of the communist regime, of how people were sent to the gulags in Russia, so there are a lot of still living history. There are lots of places where you can get to know about it. I think they have the best interpretation of the recent history– of Nazism and Communism – that I’ve seen recently.”
Obviously, everyone is different, but when the whole trail is finished, how long do you think it would take an average cyclists to do the whole route from north to south? What are some of the most interesting parts?
“Well, it’s 10,400 or 10,500 kilometers, so it depends. The northern part, in Finaland, we wanted it to go cross-border with Russia, but because of the formality problems with visas it’s impossible, so in Finland it actually goes on the Finnish territory. I think the middle section of the Iron Curtain Trail is the most interesting one, because you have flatlands of Hungary and Slovakia along the Morava river, and then you have rolling hills in South Moravia and South Bohemia, then you have more challenging hills in the Bohemian or Bavarian forest.
“It is interesting in the northern section of the Czech Republic, you can see how many villages where destroyed when they tried to remove people from this military zone. And there is an exhibit on display about these villages, with the signs with their names. So you have places where you would be cycling on your own for several days. In northern Finland the trail is approximately 1700 kilometers long, and every day you have to cycle for at least 100 kilometers to reach any kind of services.
“Our section is pretty well equipped with services and you have towns like Mikulov, Znojmo, just larger municipalities. The only capital on the iron Curtain Trail is actually Bratislava, and it is well connected by train.
“I think that as with any other longer trail, you do it in sections. You usually don’t have that much time as you would wish to to go along the whole of the Iron Curtain Trail. So, we expect people to go in shorter sections and there is already a website Eurovelo.com, where people can get the basic information about the trails. And we are building a Czech website– Eurovelo.cz – which will have more detailed information about our section, which is about 500 kilometers long.”
So, at least as far as the central section goes, what is left to be done? When are you expecting at least this part of the trail to be finished?
“As I said, the signposting is finished in south Moravia. I think this month the signposting will be finished in the Plzeň region. And definitely this year South Bohemia will signpost their part. So 90% of the trail in the Czech Republic will be signposted. The trails are signposted now, but without the logos, so you need to read the maps and get oriented. It will be much easier with the logos of the EuroVelo to follow the trail and in most of the cases you can cycle on it. I have done two trips.
“There are sections that I would not recommend for families with kids. The adventure cyclists they can go, they will get along and they’ll love it, because they can be on their own, but for less experienced cyclists I would definitely recommend only parts of the Iron Curtain Trail in the Czech Republic.”