Rediscovering Mrs. Murphy

Cooper Charles Smith was from Wisconsin, which, unfortunately, made him a big Green Bay Packer fan. In fact, just recalling Bart Starr’s one-yard touchdown run behind the big butt of Jerry Kramer a few years back at Dallas (versus Dandy Don) still practically gave him an erection. His hometown, Madison, was probably most famous for being the final destination of Otis Redding and various members of the Bar-Kays, their chartered plane crashing in nearby Lake Monoma in 1967.

A brief history lesson followed: He had spent two years in the Army and somehow, rather mysteriously, managed to avoid combat duty in Vietnam. A clerical error turned out to be responsible for him being stationed in the Philippines for two years.

Just thinking about that sweet, tight-ass flipper pussy still made him smile.

After his two-year stint in the Philippines, he landed eventually in Oakland. His best friend in the Army---Jonesy, he called him---was from East Oakland. He stayed with Arthur C. Jones and his family for a period of three weeks. They smoked a lot of pot and partied, until he felt it was time to leave the twenty-four-hour festivities and begin his search for employment on the mean streets of Oakland.

He checked into a room at a local hotel (The Will Rogers), still surviving on his savings, barely, and proceeded to interview for job after job, before finally settling on Hotchkis, truthfully, as the lesser of twenty or so evils. His Matt Farber interview seemed to go well, although, in a land of free form naturals (Trish and Josie), Cooper Smith was somewhat of a curious oddity.

Even though his closely cropped hairstyle seemed to go against the grain of the Oakland counterculture, Isaac Stern had laid down the law royally to Matt Farber. He needed one male schwartzer to work at the Oakland Hotchkis. The bigger, the blacker, the better.

The equal opportunity nuts had been applying the screws to him lately.

Those were Cooper’s qualifications, simple as that. Black is beautiful, all that jazz. After the introductions (complete with a calculated soul brother handshake) Farber, in the holy name of Hotchkis Enterprises, went after the five-foot-ten, solidly built Cooper Smith as if he were recruiting and planning on starting a Hotchkis football team.

Matt "Bear" Farber went about the act of selling Cooper on the entire Hotchkis family like a man stranded in the middle of the Pacific clinging to a piece of ebony driftwood. Desperately, he tried to tempt Cooper, connecting all the retail dots, explaining that the opportunity for a quick promotion was available if he was made of the right stuff. Something was also casually thrown into the conversational mix regarding newer Hotchkis stores joining their rapidly growing company chain.

With these openings came other higher positioned job opportunities. Matt said this almost with a conspiratorial brother to soul brother wink. The possibilities for advancement were endlessly mind-boggling.

He would have to remember to buy a copy of that Soul On Ice book for his desk, should this type of interview ever occur again. Cooper bought the aggressive sales pitch and joined the Hotchkis family in May of 1970. Curiously, he was trained in only one phase of the Hotchkis enterprise (the behind the scenes stockroom and receiving department), where he served his duty in a rather confused fashion, and under a constant stream of gutter Spanish from Larry Asciento. About four weeks into his Hotchkis employment, Larry invited him to lunch. Chuck, as an example, had received his own La Mex invitation during his fourth day at Hotchkis. The Mexican