A Geneva Story
Langston Duncan
was presumably his name.
As the story was told, Langston was a very large black man (at the time known as 'Negro') who would walk down the streets of Philadelphia, PA or perhaps Wilmington, DE, or some other location known only to Labovsky, wearing orange suede shoes, waiting for someone to look the 'wrong way' at him, to justify a major ass-kick.
"We loved the story!"
The other part of Langston that we all loved was that he had modified the, at the time, vernacular to "mother bear". In the first half of the decade of the 1960's, while "fuck" or "fucker" was a more common punctuation for a last-half teen-age American than a comma - particularly for a series of displaced Americans in Geneva Switzerland - the concept of not swearing was intriguing.
The initial "we" encompassed 6 lost souls. There was Steve Labovsky, the source of the Langston Duncan story. Steve was in his senior year of High School, displaced from Delaware to relocate with his dad, a chemist with Dupont, taking a position with Dupont International's headquarters in Geneva. Steve on his best day was angry. He was the first current-events freak I'd ever met. He was the smallest of the group (the rest of us were 6 feet tall or more), and had the sharpest tongue and wit. For "some" reason he also seemed to be the one who could initiate a fight with even the most mellow of folks. This was usually initiated by some current event, news-worthy or otherwise. Steve's ability to be rude and insulting was an innate trait, and soon became legend among us. (In retrospect, it is this trait that perhaps has caused us to drift apart as my perception of this social attribute has pejorated.) There were however, 5 other, equally fucked-up, ex-pat Americans, that were more than willing to take grave exception to some perceived insult that Steve had, or had not heard, much less understood, had he heard it.
The second member of the 6-pack, and these are in no particular order, was John Baldwin. Baldwin's dad was a high level exec in Ford Europe. He lived outside of London and John was sent to school at Ecolint (l'Ecole Internationale in Geneva) with the rest of us. It was never clear to me why John could not find suitable schooling in the English-speaking country where his father was plying his trade - maybe they wouldn't have him - but none of us cared. In fact, we were thrilled to have him exert his comical brand of insanity within our social sphere. John could be highly insulting and extremely funny - two attributes that complemented the overall style of the group. In fact, these were key objectives, although unstated - maybe even unrealized - at the time.
There was also Tim Miller. Tim had been in Geneva the year before with me. He, like Baldwin, was "pension"ing with a Swiss family. I recall Tim's dad was in Poland somewhere (I think State Department) and had sent Tim to Switzerland to obtain a high-level of schooling - so much for the State Department's Intelligence gathering ability in the 1960's. Tim liked to laugh and joke and with John made us almost envy their pension status. (Pension status was the middle ground between the Internat, those students who were boarding students and thereby subject to the rules and regulations of Ecolint's Boarding House rules, and the Externs, or those of us that lived in Geneva with one or more parent. The middle ground was in the land of those living with Swiss families who took in boarders for a fee. While the rules and regs governing them were supposed to be similar to those of the Internat, in practice they tended to be somewhat more lax - or at the very least more subject to avoidance.) Collectively, we sought to indoctrinate the hosting Swiss families that housed our 2 buddies with the "brighter" side of American youth. Deception and avoidance of the relative Swiss family's governance was a key objective. Moreover, we were able to test a concept with one family to later refine it with another. In this fashion, we were able to provide our colleagues with many opportunities to avoid many impediments to our "fun".
Van Hull was batting clean-up in this story. Phil was from Pontiac Michigan. He and Baldwin had a link from the auto industry. Phil's dad was with Chrysler, who had recently acquired Simca, a French car manufacturer. In Chrysler's vision, the International headquarters of the combined companies was to domicile in Geneva. In 1958, some 500+ Americans descended to Geneva in a similar fashion to the D-Day landing without the landing craft. (Talk about culture shock. Families left their 3-bedroom ranch or cape in the Midwest of the US and found themselves in Geneva, Switzerland. While Geneva, by definition, was a cosmopolitan international city it was also the largest village in the World at the time. The Yanks - and this applies to all of us - had an income base in US dollars, which at the time equaled 4.3 Swiss Francs. Life was much cheaper and the standard of living for many was greatly increased. This was both good and bad.) Phil was also in senior year, and no one knew, or cared, how many baskets he had scored last season for Pontiac High. In fact, most of us thought Pontiac was a car, not an Indian with a town named after him outside of Detroit. (Ultimately, Phil enjoyed his senior year so much, he decided to repeat it, and with my girl-friend nonetheless, but that's another story.)
Phil was large by US standards, and enormous - INTIMIDATING - by European sizes. Phil also had a deep booming voice that by declaring something as "bullshit" served as its own rallying call. Equally impressive however was that Phil almost always had a car. This was a very large deal in a country where driving was not permitted until 18, and most of us were not. Neither was Phil at the time, but since he'd been driving for years in the States, the Van Hulls seemed to neglect the Swiss rules (not a great model for their son). Thus, with a big Chrysler product - part of the perks of the dad's job - we were mobile. (Labovsky was the only legal driver and would periodically obtain his family's "black flame", a small Renault, which could just about hold 2 of us. It frequentlyheld 5.) This gave Phil significant influence on the events of our group - a not necessarily positive from standards that might have been maintained outside our circle.
DeLapp was not at Ecolint. His dad was with the World Council of Churches - The Reverend Mr. DeLapp. Ted was on a sabbatical. He had graduated High School and his younger brother was in our class. It was never clear to me how Ted spent his days when the rest of us were pretending to be in school. In the evenings, primarily Wednesday (we had only a half-day on Thursday), Fridays, and most Saturdays, it was obligatory for the 6-pack (we never referred to ourselves this way) to merge into a coagulative group of fun-loving, out-of-control, red-blooded American boys. Ted was slightly troubled in his post-high-school status and brought a different perspective into our midst. He found humor as well as anger in most situations and usually the laughter would win, but not always... "Destruct" was a rallying cry that Ted coined and I'm, now, ashamed to say that many of us followed with vigor.
I guess I've left myself for last. I, of course was at least an equally influential - possibly more - member of the team. My story was somewhat different and would merit more elaboration than appropriate here. By the time I was in my senior year of High School I had changed schools 12 times, and I had been in Ecolint for two and a half years. I had lived in Switzerland for 5 years. I spoke enough French to insult anyone I came in touch with. I knew the "lay of the land", and most importantly, at the ripe old age of 16, I had my own studio apartment. This again, is a separate topic, which cannot be appropriately addressed briefly, or perhaps ever with any level of rational logic, however it provided location. Thus, not only were we mobile, we had a center of operations. A place to start, end or make an evening. Oh, and did I neglect to mention that in Geneva in 1964 there did not seem to be a minimum drinking age? A half a liter of the local beer cost in the area of 50 US cents. Buying it in bulk - by the keg - it was cheaper than gas for the cars, soft drinks and just about anything else except milk. Its consumption was obligatory, and highly recommended in vast quantities.
In case it hasn't been clear up to this point, we were lost! We were outside of anything familiar! We were insecure! And, the hormones and testosterone (although I don't believe we called it that at the time) were galloping amuck in our bodies. Any environmental securities that might have been able to be developed by 16/17 year-old males had been exploded or evaporated. The environment was foreign. Most of us didn't understand the language, and we sure as hell didn't sympathize with the culture.
We were foreigners in a foreign land. Parental influence, if available, was going through its own crisis. Most were happy to believe that we had found "boys" like ourselves to bond with. Right! We joined like a roving band of thugs to RAISE HELL. Our anger and frustration - and we had at least as much as any other red-blooded American boys displaced and insecure - was venom, to be directed at someone else. And it was! "Here come the Jets like a bat out of Hell. Someone gets in our way, someone don't feel so well." We were however totally fair and impartial. We directed this at random and fully without prejudice.
The Landolt was a cafe-restaurant in Geneva, near the University. It had gained acclaim in the post WW I period when Lenin drank and philosophized there. By 1964, his influence was more story than fact, however, many of the University of Geneva students still went there to drink cannettes of beer. The six of us barely needed any encouragement, but "philosophizing" in the "birth place" of communism was a perfect rationale to consume in excess of 3 liters of beer per person on a given evening.
Of course, the philosophical leanings and more importantly, the academic discipline within our group left something to be desired. Drinking games helped us justify the consumption of two or three additional one-half liter mugs of Biere Cardinale. Drinking songs were de rigure. In our enlightened state, Langston's idiom "mother bear" became The Philosophy. Needless to say, during the subsequent days, upon return to the Quad at Ecolint, there were 5 "Mother Bears" (6 when Ted showed up at near-school hang-outs), who were ready to punctuate all phases and sentences - complete or other wise - with "mother bear"
I'm not sure when it happened, but soon we were referred to as the "Mother Bears". We didn't mind. In fact, I believe that we each discovered ways to include the phase into everything we said. "Mother Bear" served as every one of the 8 parts of speech, although in retrospect, I believe its use as the predicate of a sentence was taking more than a little literary license.
Hell, talk about bonding! Identity? We had it. We were brothers. We were still fucked-up, but no one had to know. We were members of a fraternity, and we didn't even have to rush. Two very distinct events occurred. One was evident to all of us immediately. WE WERE COOL - OUTWARDLY. We were Team, without sport (although there was a disastrous touch football game against the juniors). We didn't need general acceptance. We had it in one another. NO chick could put us down. In fact, many of the female species of our class were more than slightly intimidated by us. We could - and did - strut! The second event was subtle. We felt secure within our group. In small clusters, usually one-on-one as the last 2 standing or slurring their speech quietly as the case might be, we began to share some of our fears and insecurities. It was a sharing that it took me years to realize had happened or how much value it had contributed.
In fairly short order the group began to expand. This was the result of a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that even with girl friends, it was tough for the 6 of us to finish off a 35-liter keg of beer (about the minimum size). Really however, we did not have a monopoly on the "cool" people. While all Mother Bears were cool, not all cool people were Mother Bears. (See, the Logic Course did have its merits.) Well we increased our ranks.
It was basically because we discovered that we were not alone. There were others that, while not identical, were experiencing the same levels of disassociation and disorientation. As if by centrifugal force or some other form of crude social magnetism we wound up together. Of course these new "members" required an initiation. The senior members of the "motherhood" (the initial 6) after long and arduous study and pensive thought devised an appropriate initiation process.
If someone had been hanging out with us for a suitable period of time and we all enjoyed them, one night when they were sufficiently intoxicated that they had no business having any more liquid of any sort, much less an additional half liter of beer, they we obliged to chug this last cannette and not puke their guts out. (Puking one's guts out was totally acceptable if one were able and ready to attempt to refill said guts with similar substitute - undigested beer, wine etc. - as close to immediately as might be possible.)
In this elaborate and delicate fashion the ranks expanded. First was a Brit, Andy Corbet. Then we added an Indian (Jal), an Arab (Raad), a Turk (Cengiz), a Swiss-Canadian (Alec - who also had a killer party house overlooking Lake Geneva and the Ski Nautique rafts, but again another story), a Polish-Brit (another Steve, Berent) and even more Americans (another Miller, Barry - who, after having his filled garbage cans thrown down his driveway for a suitable period of time asked to join in the fun, since he had to clean it up anyway) - we were ethnically blind. We were not elitest. We just wanted to belong, and the major criterion was FUN! This crossed all ethnic and social boundaries.
While much joking was ever-present of backgrounds, State or ethnic origin (usually most critical by those from a given State of ethnic background), it was without prejudice. In fact, we were remarkably free of bias. We were against everyone, particularly authority and conformity. (We could also curse in several different languages to complement our insults.) However, the cross-cultural nature of the group also led to recognition that we were all the same in so many of the important ways - inside, that it provided a valuable learning experience.
Ultimately the formality of the process gave way to a less formal association and the "initiation" ultimately ceased to hold as much value, both for the initiated and the initiators. The label passed into history as the group migrated, people leaving for college, staying, returning, flunking-out, or whatever. The constant was the insecurity within our selves that craved belonging. (We even had a flag made from a stolen Mercedes Benz banner that used just the "m" and "b" with the great work of some Swiss seamstress, couturier, who provided the necessary labor. This flag was raised on one of the poles at the outside viewing terrace at the Aeroport de Geneve whenever someone departed. I cried until well after take-off the day I left.)
However, we still knew each other from the earlier days before our classmates had chosen to label us. We found solace in each other, yet basically knew, within ourselves that Langston's idiom was inadequate to overcome the anxieties that we were all living though. I don't believe that any of us recognized this latter issue until much, much later. Maybe that is why these friendships formed so far back still hold such predominance in our minds.
Some of us still see one another - and many still count each other as the closest friends. Some have drifted away as our lives have taken different turns. Some vanished immediately, following Graduation. Some died prematurely. But, I'm sure none of us forgets the strength gained by numbers of equally anxious, lost and insecure young men. And I doubt that any of us that hear the ubiquitous phase; "Mother-Fucker", don't stop for a split second and think; "Mother Bear"!
