Out of the Box: The Mostly True Story of a Mysterious Man

Out of the Box

The Mostly True Story of a Mysterious Man

Julie C. Morse

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Out of the Box

The Mostly True Story of a Mysterious Man

Copyright © 2012 by Julie C. Morse

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ISBN: 978-1-4697-5983-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4697-5984-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4697-5985-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012901378

iUniverse rev. date: 05/16/2012

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One

The Sahara

Chapter Two

Sky-High Beginnings

Chapter Three

Street Smarts

Chapter Four

Beyond the Sahara

Chapter Five

Hooligans and Shenanigans

Chapter Six

Pyramids and Puzzles

Chapter Seven

Stepping Stones

Chapter Eight

Boy Wonder Meets Goliath

Chapter Nine

The Big Freeze

Chapter Ten

Opportunities Knock

Chapter Eleven

Government Man

Chapter Twelve

Done Deals and Donco

Chapter Thirteen

The Royal Flush

Chapter Fourteen

Bottom Lines

Chapter Fifteen

Rock Star

Chapter Sixteen

Puzzles and Pieces

Afterword

The Places Bob Harris Has Visited …

One of Bob Harris’s Favorite Poems …

To Jeff … for writing back and changing the world.

To Greg and Kristin … for believing, always.

And to Bob … for Living Life, capitals very much intended.

Introduction

I think every arthritic all-American girl should have a marvelous mystery man in her corner. Actually, forget the arthritic part, and the American part too—every damn woman on the planet should be so lucky.

Uncle Bob—Bob Harris. Standing all of five foot seven on a good morning, my bigger-than-life uncle has rocked my world ever since I could walk. And perhaps more importantly, he rocked me when I didn’t want to walk another step. Early on he helped me harness the power of my mind and spirit over the pain of my bizarre arthritis—and most of the time, it worked. Together, he and I have adventure-traveled the world, and he helped me tackle mountains you won’t find on any map. To say he’s my hero would be an understatement. It would also be only a small part of his big story.

Uncle Bob has been both an inspiration and a mystery to countless people over the course of his nearly eighty extraordinary years. But long before I understood all that, I knew him as Superman. When I was a little gimped-up girl, he was the amazing hero who was always swooping in from parts unknown to save the day when I needed him most.

I can still see my dark-haired and boyishly handsome uncle come bounding into my sickroom with enough electrifying energy for both of us. He’d help Mom nurse me through my bad days with amazing, and often funny, stories of his crazy adventures around the world, backed up with snapshots and gifts from his trips. To me, Uncle Bob was like a walking, talking version of National Geographic and Mad Magazine combined. He made me laugh, and he taught me to visualize my wellness in a calming shade of blue. Best of all, he gave me his never-gonna-let-you-go hugs, which strengthened me long after he left. Superheroes have amazing gifts, you know.

Looking back now, I can tell you that the man never once missed a really important event or emergency in my life. He appeared whenever I truly needed him, just like Superman. But beyond those times, I’ve got to admit that he wasn’t actually around all that much— just like Superman. My mother told me he was out helping other damsels in distress. And he was, kind of. I don’t hold that against him.

But even when Uncle Bob wasn’t around me, he was nevertheless present. He was constantly sending me postcards from faraway places, and my bedroom was filled with bizarre souvenirs he gave me as presents. My tame little Barbies and Pound Puppies were forced to share my pink room’s spotlight with some pretty wild things, truth be told.

Just for starters, there was the painted wolf skull from Siberia, a jagged, blood-stained rock from Mt. Everest, a faceless voodoo-like doll from Africa, and some really far-out native costumes and masks that made dress-up games at my house a highly creative, and sometimes frightening, experience. Once my two-year-old cousin, Greg, came running into my room, only to find me standing there wearing a horribly gruesome, two-foot-high Maori mask. It scared him shitless. Every bit of color drained from the poor little kid’s face, and he blacked out cold. I honestly thought I’d killed him. Fortunately, he woke up, bawling his head off. Sorry about that, Greg.

In my teens, I finally stopped thinking of Uncle Bob as Superman. That had been silly little girl stuff, of course. As I embraced my age of reason, it became increasingly obvious to me that my uncle was more like James Bond than Superman. Laugh if you want to, but I wasn’t far off, I’ll have you know. Not far off at all.

For now, let’s just say that for a very long time, and for very good reasons, I knew in my heart that Uncle Bob was my very own James Bond. Simply put, he was my spy who loved me.

My first clue to his true identity was the coming-of-age realization that waitresses, salesladies, and even my friends’ mothers liked to flirt shamelessly with my dashing, dark-haired, and ultra-fit uncle—and he certainly didn’t mind the attention. In time, I also joined them in wondering just how my dear uncle managed to live such an incredible, jet-setting lifestyle on a Chicago salesman’s salary. My mother, when I asked, refused to comment on the subject, saying I was rude to even ask such things. But I was undeterred. After all, his good looks and money were just the start of the story. What really made me start to think twice about Uncle Bob were the actual places he traveled.

Uncle Bob’s unusual business trips were a keen source for gossip and speculation among my friends. While other businessman were traveling to more recognizable business hotspots—like Cleveland—Uncle Bob was taking decidedly out-of-the-box work trips to far-out, far-flung places. During my freshman year in high school, he helped me do a social studies presentation on places he had recently traveled, including Iran, India, Tibet, Columbia, Turkey, Fiji, Iceland, Jordan, Vietnam, Somalia, Yugoslavia, and South Africa, among others. I remember my teacher, Miss Ferguson, being mightily impressed. I got an A+ in that class … and looking back on things now, I wouldn’t be surprised if Uncle Bob got a date.

Clearly, though, things got really interesting when I turned sixteen and Uncle Bob invited me to start traveling with him.

Our first trip together started with a business meeting in Algiers. What would take him there, of all places, you ask? Well, believe it or not (and some don’t), my very dashing, daring uncle journeys the world on the pretext of selling boxes and boxboard. Yep, that’s right. Uncle Bob was, and still is, a box salesman. It’s his job to sell, trade, and provide the materials for manufacturing boxes in every part of the world imaginable. It’s what he really and truly does—when he’s not doing something else.

In fact, that is exactly what he told the passport officials who tried to figure out whether to let a handsome, well-coiffed older man and his sure-looks-like-your-underage-mistress niece into their country. He explained we were starting out in Algiers on business and then traveling onward into the Sahara Desert for my sweet-sixteen trip. At the time, I thought the passport officers’ just-audible backroom comments about us were the funny part of the story I would tell my mother. I didn’t really think, until much later, why not one but three way-too-serious passport guys would come to question Uncle Bob ad nauseum about the dozens of not-so-trendy countries he’d been in and out of that year. I mean, truly, who goes to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan? Really? The officers had a point.

Up until that day, I hadn’t really taken the spy idea all that seriously. I just knew my uncle was a cool guy with a surprising amount of money and an amazing network of friends. And I loved bragging about him to my friends. But once I was in Algiers with him, I started thinking I might have missed something. He became more and more of a mystery to me every day—one that I naively vowed to solve on that one trip alone. In fact, a few days later, when we were sitting in a tent in the Sahara Desert, dining with a Bedouin sheik and his entire native entourage, I thought I had the puzzle of my Uncle Bob solved for sure.

But I didn’t. Not then, at least. And maybe, just maybe, I don’t have it all figured out even now, ten years and many trips later. In some ways, I have to admit that my Uncle Bob is still a complete mystery to me—and quite frankly, I love that about him. I think you will too.

Before we begin, I can tell you one thing right here, right now, with complete certainty and no mystery whatsoever. I can tell you that the story of my bodacious box man is actually living testimony to the fact that no one can box you in but yourself. Born in Chicago to parents of big dreams and small means, my uncle, Bob Harris, is the little guy on the street who ended up living large in the eyes of some pretty amazing world players. Now that he’s approaching eighty, he’s allowing me to tell his story—with a few creative changes to protect the innocent and a few not-so-innocents too. Other than that, it’s all intriguingly true.

As Uncle Bob so aptly put it, Most everybody who matters is dead anyway, kiddo.

Chapter One

The Sahara

Can you believe that, kiddo? I counted one hundred and twelve of them! One hundred and twelve goddamn camels!

I couldn’t believe it, actually. Not that I thought the camels were a mirage or anything. They were clearly real, as anyone with eyes and an olfactory organ could attest. No, the truly unbelievable part was that my sixteen-year-old preppy self was sitting cross-legged on a Bedouin rug in a huge open-sided tent in the universe-sized vastness of the Sahara Desert with my Uncle Bob, a drunken New York priest, a retired Texas oil rig worker, and a remarkably pretty kindergarten teacher from Cleveland named Candy.

I actually think it was Candy who inspired my septuagenarian uncle to count out loud with such schoolboy enthusiasm, as one hundred and twelve camels passed by our little odd-duck camp. Driven by Bedouins clothed head-to-toe in bedsheet fashions, the camels were laden with salt slabs from Timbuktu and going to market. (And yes, there really is a place called Timbuktu.)

An awe-inspiring, hot as hell, seventeen-day camping trip to the center of the Sahara was Uncle Bob’s sixteenth birthday present to me—complete with two guides who carried automatic weapons, just for the fun of it. I personally believe the trip also provided Uncle Bob with some good cover—but for what I’m still not sure to this day. According to him, it was all about boxes. In any case, it was