Synchronicity in Little Italy
Something to Value

April 19, 2011

             This all played out at a  lunch at Craft & Commerce in downtown San Diego on the corner of Beech and Indio Streets with Richard Page and Mike Weaver.  It’s a new gastro pub in Little Italy in a very old building with an English pub-African safari theme.  The furnishings were sparse—but I suppose that’s redundant with “English.”  It was my first time there.  As I walked past the place on the other side of the street, Richard came out of the pub and called my name.   We hugged and went inside. He had a table in the corner.  Mike was already there. 

As I walked past the bar someone called out, “Casey?”   It was Evan Campbell, one of our son Jimmy’s oldest friends since childhood.  He was having a beer.  We hugged and he told me Adam Rubin, another one of Jimmy’s good friends, was coming to meet him. 

As I made my way to Richard and Mike, in walked Adam.  We hugged, chatted with Evan, and made plans to get together for lunch or a beer in the next week or so.   Finally, I shook hands with Mike and sat down.  Mike is senior litigation partner at Latham & Watkins, and we hadn’t seen each other for years.   As we were catching up someone walked up to the table on my left.

 “Casey?”   I looked up at this tall, blond woman.  It was Jill—Jill Kirby—just back from her honeymoon in Tahiti with her new husband, Jason Kirby.  Jason is the oldest brother of our son-in-law, Ryan.  Jason, Ryan and Jill are lawyers with Kirby & Noonan, a boutique civil litigation firm founded by Ryan and Jason’s father, another Mike.   I stood up and we hugged—lots of hugging.  Jill already knew Mike Weaver, and I introduced her to Richard.  I talked with Jill about their trip.  She left and I finally sat down.  This all happened within the first five minutes. 

Mike Weaver asked me, “You come here often do you?  You seem to know just about everybody who walks in the door.”   “First time.  Yeah, pretty unusual.”  I briefly explained who those folks were.  I also mentioned Ryan was working with his dad on a major fraud lawsuit their firm had brought against Chicago Title Insurance Company.   I knew Mike Weaver was leading the defense team.  Weaver had nothing but good things to say about Mike Kirby whom he’d known for many years. 

 Richard set up the lunch to talk about Ernest Hemingway.   And we did so for a few minutes until Mike picked up a book from the table and handed it to Richard.  “Here’s that book I was telling you about.” I looked at the title of the book Richard was now holding.  “Something of Value,”  by Robert Ruark.  I almost shouted, “Fuck me!” 

I explained the shocked look on my face. Six months ago, Hilary and I went on a safari to Kenya and Tanzania with my sister and brother-in-law who live in Switzerland.  Before we took off, I read Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa. There was another book I wanted to read before the safari.   It was something I read in high school and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the title. There was a Dutch sounding name—one of the characters or maybe the author.

“I’m pretty sure this is the book I’d been looking for.”   Oh, I knew it was.  I didn’t reveal to them the extent to which I had searched for that book.  I looked through all the bookshelves in our house, searched Google and Amazon, inquired at Barnes & Noble, and asked my sister and some friends. Borderline desperate. No luck. How bizarre that Mike Weaver would bring that particular book with him to the lunch.  It had nothing to do with Hemingway.  Mike said ” It’s about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the early 1950s.  Lots of Dutch colonials were slaughtered.”  That’s what I remembered the most about the book— the intense, raw fear of the Dutch families and their children.

Mike said, “I have several copies.  I’ll send you one.”

Several copies?

Richard made a point of telling Mike that I’d gone to 60%-time practicing law and was writing a lot.   Mike said he too was going to go on a reduced schedule—he’d recently turned 65—and wanted to know how that was working out.  “So, what are you writing about?”

 I said it’s like memoir, but a little different.  Richard made a few comments and it dawned on me, ‘Mike doesn’t know.’  I told him Jimmy, 24, was accidentally struck and killed by a car in the summer of 2008 and, as I grabbed Richard’s arm, that Richard and I had this horrible thing in common.   Mike knew Richard’s 18-year-old son Alex had been killed in an automobile accident in 2001.

I told Mike I’d been writing about some amazing and very hard to explain things that had been happening since Jimmy’s death—such as my father, who died by suicide in 1970, paying me a visit a few months after Jimmy died.  Mike’s eyes got big, and I said, “I’ll send you some of the stories if you’re interested.”  He mumbled something that took for a “yes.”

Since we were there to discuss Hemingway, I was going to mention that in Green Hills of Africa, Ernest wrote about his regret of not being able to write in the fifth dimension.   Maybe some other time.

Postscript

I have these blind spots with my long-term memory. I suspect most people do. For example–“Madras” shirts and the singer, “Van Morrison”—I reach for the names and they remain elusive.  Like dreams.   Even the dreams I write down in my journal—my dream-catcher—so I won’t forget them.  When I go back and re-read the dreams, I have no recollection of ever having them.   Add Something of Value to that list.

Van Morrison

Fast forward to June 2025.  I wanted to recommend that book to a friend of mine, Paul, who was born in Holland in 1946 and whose parents both bravely served in the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation of their country during World War II. But for the life of me I couldn’t remember the title or the author.  Fortunately, I did remember adding the story of the lunch with Mike and Richard in the journal I keep in a Word document.  I searched for “Evan Campbell,” and it took me to the story, and the details about the book.  

Mike Weaver never did send me one of his “several copies,” so I recently bought the book on Amazon.   I can’t wait to give Paul …..wait… what’s the name of that book?

This is the book Paul’s mother wrote in 1986 about the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation.