Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

An American, I was born in the historic old city of Charleston, South Carolina. We only lived there a few years, before moving to Jacksonville, Florida. From here, we again moved further down the Florida peninsula to the Miami vicinity, and to numerous domiciles there. The frequent moves did not leave many opportunities to fully develop contemporary relationships. However, I was then able to fill this deficit by evolving a vibrant imagination, in which so many things were possible for a young, adolescent mind. Here, I was the untethered artist, whose varying thoughts painted innumerable works, on an ethereal canvas, by way of an infinite universe.I returned to the Charleston area, during my elementary school years and ended up graduating, as a cadet, from an instate, military high school. Given my circumstances, escaping into the outside world at the age of seventeen and going into the United States Air Force, was the only viable option, presented. For a young man whose limited sophistication and naivety were apparent, boot camp, was akin to being emmeshed into a modern Tower of Babel. We were from different backgrounds, different demographics, different parts of the country, and with the accommodating, regional accented English speech patterns. One year later, I would be voluntarily inserted into Vietnam, a foreign land, at war. In writing this book "The Tales of a Tiger", I have painted the pictures of these extraordinary experiences, with my words and this is my story.

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The Skinny on Sarah

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Introduction........................................................ixMom and Dad (Pandemonium and Chaos).................................1Bon Voyage..........................................................6Deliverance.........................................................11A Whole New World...................................................15It's Arrived........................................................17Interlude...........................................................28Pheneous Stephanopoulos and Brother Will Devine.....................30Blanch Kart.........................................................44Me People and the French Cousins....................................48Tobias Longstreet Culpepper.........................................65The Master Plan Comes Together......................................70Reunion and Retribution.............................................81Epilogue............................................................88

Chapter One

The torrential rain and booming thunder claps on a cold February evening were foreboding. The earlier calm had bid adieu to blue skies, only to be supplanted by darkness and discontinuous lightning strikes. A Greek couple from Athens was expecting a package from that ubiquitous stork of legend. Little did they know that the ill wind that blew it in was an ominous harbinger of things to come. They were the thunder and lightning of this portentous endowment.

Not quite a year earlier, their lives had been in complete turmoil. Apparently, Dad, or Chaos (the first created being in Greek mythology), had been the obviously "domicile-challenged" village idiot. Citizens tired of his benign but recurrent naughtiness had tied him to and ridden him out of town on a donkey that they had appropriated. In much of the Western world, this would have been considered cruelty to animals, the four-legged one, anyway. Mom, or Pandemonium (a demon in Greek mythology), single and unappealing, nevertheless was imbued with a finely tuned business acumen. She learned how to pinch drachmas at an early age. She ran a thriving, although illegal, "chop shop" out of her own kitchen. Securing the proper sanitation credentials and a business license would have been an incommodious waste of time. Furthermore, it was not cost effective. Regrettably for her, she lived in the Jewish part of Athens. She had purposely moved there to get away from her strict Greek Orthodox family. Jewish congregants had made numerous complaints to their local rabbi. She was selling untaxed and discounted pork chops to wayward and voracious members of their faith. Not only was this cutting into their own pious businesses, it was not kosher.

This was not tolerable in the faith they engendered and the mandated dietary restrictions they at least overtly professed.

Seething at the loss of income to an irreverent outsider, an impromptu crowd was easily worked into a wild frenzy. Torches were lit and a mindless mob meandered through the winding back streets. Preceding the horde was the Doppler effect of doors and windows being shuttered. Sensing imminent danger and bodily harm, Pandemonium barely had time enough to dress, grab some cash on hand, and flee. As she escaped through a back door, members of the mob kicked in the front door. Save the kitchen, the whole house was ransacked. The accompanying rabbi walked into the kitchen, closed the door, and began chanting a purification prayer against the blasphemer. After a few minutes, all went silent. The crowd waited anxiously but reverently. After an hour, the rabbi told those present to open the kitchen door and come in. To their astonishment, he was holding a basting brush in one hand and a pork chop in the other. His salt-and-pepper beard and cooking apron were smeared with various sauces. He then looked at the bewildered throng and nonchalantly asked, "Have you tried the baby backs?"

As fate would have it, the admonished woman ran into the exiled idiot at the famous Alexander's Well in the foothills outside Athens. Legend has it that Alexander the Great would come there and rest on hot summer nights. Local businesses that catered to tourists validated the legend by posting a plaque on the well, proclaiming, "Alexander the Great ate, drank, and reveled here." Surely, this would whet any ignorant tourist's appetite. A lingering tourist was a paying tourist. The local economy depended on it. Fudging historical facts never hurt anyone. Besides, it could have happened!

The future mother of destiny's child, who had fled from the hostile crowd, caught a glimpse of the poor dimwit in the moonlight. She had been startled by his sporadic outbursts of near maniacal laughter. She put the obvious questions to the babbling man: "What are you laughing about, and why are you tied to that unfortunate animal?"

Nearly breathless and almost beside himself in ebullient bliss, he replied, "Those stupid neighbors of mine gave me a nice little donkey, a new rope, and a free ride out of town. The best part is it didn't cost me a single drachma!"

Pandemonium followed up with another question, to satisfy her curiosity: "Weren't you humiliated?"

Chaos chuckled, in glorious condescension. "Oh no; the last time, they made me catch it myself and pay for the rope too!"

Pandemonium tried to collect her thoughts about the events that had recently transpired. What to do? What to do? Perhaps this moron was an opportunity that the Fates had provided her to facilitate extraction from this present quandary. As she thought of her plight, she couldn't help but notice the sight of torches in the distance. It was akin to a spiraling, elongated snake, and it was headed in their direction. From the top of the hill, the port of Piraeus could easily be seen. This bustling harbor was the largest port in Greece. It was where foreign goods were imported and Greek products were shipped out. Perhaps she and this foolish man could team up, out of necessity, and make a run for one of the ships. Without giving it another thought, she whirled around, untied Chaos, and helped him down off the beast of burden. She then told him, "We're going on an expense-paid cruise and see the world!"

Someone down below in the angry mob yelled, "She's gone up to Alexander's Well!" He was downwind and had apparently caught the acrid scent of Pandemonium. Although she had acquired fame and fortune for her business shrewdness and delectable chops, there was a negative aspect. No man would court her due to an unfortunate and rare medical condition. Apparently, she was gifted with the propensity to be intermittently flatulent. The ensuing aroma was overpowering enough to make grown men wince. As a child, she learned to use this gift as a tool of retribution and extortion against her parents. Her concerned mother had always told her that one day, she would have to ensnare a suitable man for marriage. To do this, she would need to learn how to make Greek coffee. She eventually followed her mother's advice. But alas, her gift was too much power to relinquish. Up until she encountered the unfortunate man, the possibility of nuptials in her future seemed implausible.

The expeditious flight down the hill to a seeming refuge was fraught with anxiety for Chaos and Pandemonium. It was like something out of an abstruse novel. The streets of Piraeus were dimly...