Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  It was a morbid puppet show, a dark kabuki play, starring a witless victim and a micro-kraken—was it a sign, a metaphor for our dilemma? One living thing being eaten by another? This was nature, wet in tooth and claw, and I couldn’t help wondering if it was also to be the story of Blue Ribbon and the Marlboro Man. We spent the rest of the evening sitting at Johnson’s kitchen table and going over the letter from his Long Island informant. He read it aloud, and then I read it silently, and then we debated what to do. “Get thee to Japan,” Johnson said. “What?” “You gotta go,” he said. “Tell them about the work we’ve done. Demand your rights. Kill this Marlboro Man once and for all. Once he starts selling running shoes, once he really gets going, there will be no stopping him. Either we draw a line in the sand, right now, or it’s over.” I’d just come back from Japan, I said, and I didn’t have the money to go again. I’d poured all my savings into Blue Ribbon, and I couldn’t possibly ask Wallace for another loan. The thought nauseated me. Also, I didn’t have time. Price Waterhouse allowed two weeks’ vacation a year—unless you needed that two weeks for the Reserves, which I did. Then they gave you one extra week. Which I’d already used. Above all, I told Johnson, “It’s no use. The Marlboro Man’s relationship with Onitsuka predates mine.” Undaunted, Johnson pulled out his typewriter, the one he’d been using to torture me, and began drafting notes, ideas, lists, which we could then turn into a manifesto for me to deliver to the executives at Onitsuka. While Stretch finished off the crab, we munched our pizza and guzzled beer and plotted late into the night. BACK IN OREGON the next afternoon, I went straight in to see the office manager at Price Waterhouse. “I’ve got to have two weeks off,” I said, “right now.” He looked up from the papers on his desk and glared at me, and for one hellishly long moment I thought I was going to be fired. Instead, he cleared his throat and mumbled something… odd. I couldn’t make out every word but he seemed to think… from my intensity, my vagueness… I’d gotten someone pregnant . I took a step back and started to protest, then shut my mouth. Let the man think what he wants. So long as he gives me the time. Running a hand through his thinning hair, he finally sighed and said: “Go. Good luck. Hope it all works out.” I PUT THE airfare on my credit card. Twelve months to pay. And unlike my last visit to Japan, this time I wired ahead. I told the executives at Onitsuka that I was coming, and that I wanted a meeting. They wired back: Come ahead. But their wire went on to say that I wouldn’t be meeting with Morimoto.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Somehow, in meeting after meeting, I held my tongue. Everything my banker said, I ultimately accepted. Then I’d do exactly as I pleased. I’d place another order with Onitsuka, double the size of the previous order, and show up at the bank all wide-eyed innocence, asking for a letter of credit to cover it. My banker would always be shocked. You want HOW much? And I’d always pretend to be shocked that he was shocked. I thought you’d see the wisdom... I’d wheedle, grovel, negotiate, and eventually he’d approve my loan. After I’d sold out the shoes, and repaid the borrowing in full, I’d do it all over again. Place a mega order with Onitsuka, double the size of the previous order, then go to the bank in my best suit, an angelic look on my face. My banker’s name was Harry White. Fiftyish, avuncular, with a voice like a handful of gravel in a blender, he didn’t seem to want to be a banker, and he particularly didn’t want to be my banker. He inherited me by default. My first banker had been Ken Curry, but when my father refused to be my guarantor, Curry phoned him straightaway. “Between us, Bill, if the kid’s company goes under—you’ll still back him, right?” “Hell no,” my father said. So Curry decided he wanted no part of this father-son internecine war, and turned me over to White. White was a vice president at First National, but this title was misleading. He didn’t have much power. The bosses were always looking over his shoulder, second- guessing him, and the bossiest of bosses was a man named Bob Wallace. It was Wallace who made life difficult for White, and thereby for me. It was Wallace who fetishized equity and pooh-poohed growth. Squarely built, with a thuggish face and Nixonian five o’clock shadow, Wallace was ten years my senior, but somehow thought himself the bank’s boy wonder. He was also determined to become the bank’s next president, and he viewed all bad credit risks as the main roadblock between him and that goal. He didn’t like giving credit to anyone, for anything, but with my balance hovering always around zero, he saw me as a disaster waiting to happen. One slow season, one downturn in sales, I’d be out of business, the lobby of Wallace’s bank would be filled with my unsold shoes, and the holy grail of bank president would slip from his grasp. Like Sarah atop Mount Fuji, Wallace saw me as a rebel, but he didn’t think of this as a compliment. Nor, in the end, come to think of it, had she. Of course, Wallace didn’t always say all this directly to me. It was often conveyed by his middleman, White. White believed in me, and in Blue Ribbon, but he’d tell me all the time, with a sad head shake, that Wallace made the decisions, Wallace signed the checks, and Wallace was no fan of Phil Knight.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Our cash flow “situation,” we’d say, is merely temporary. We knew, of course, that living on the float wasn’t the way to do things. But we’d always tell ourselves: It’s temporary. Besides, everyone did it. Some of the biggest companies in America lived on the float. Banks themselves lived on the float. Holland acknowledged as much. “Sure, boys, I get it,” he’d say with a nod. As long as we were up-front with him, as long as we were transparent, he could work with us. And then came that fateful rainy day. A Wednesday afternoon. The spring of 1975. Hayes and I found ourselves staring into the abyss. We owed Nissho $1 million, our first-ever million-dollar payment, and, hello, we didn’t have $1 million lying around. We were about $75,000 short. I recall that we were sitting in my office, watching raindrops race down the windowpane. Occasionally we’d look through the books, curse the numbers, then look back at the raindrops. “We have to pay Nissho,” I said quietly. “Yes, yes, yes,” Hayes said. “But to cover a check this large? We’ll have to drain all our other bank accounts dry. All. Dry.” “Yes.” We had retail stores in Berkeley, Los Angeles, Portland, New England, each with its own bank account. We’d have to empty them all, divert all that money to the home office account for a day or two—or three. Along with every cent from Johnson’s factory in Exeter. We’d have to hold our breath, like walking past a graveyard, until we could replenish those accounts. And still we might not be able to cover that massive check to Nissho. We’d still need a little luck, a payment or two to land from one of the many retailers who owed us money. “Circular funding,” Hayes said. “Magical banking,” I said.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  THE 1964 OLYMPICS were about to be held in Japan, so I had my pick of brand-new, reasonably priced lodgings in Kobe. I got a room right downtown, at the Newport, which featured a revolving restaurant on the top. Just like the one atop the Space Needle—a touch of the Great Northwest to settle my nerves. Before unpacking, I phoned Onitsuka and left a message. I’m here and I request a meeting. Then I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the phone. At last it rang. A prim-sounding secretary informed me that my contact at Onitsuka, Mr. Miyazaki, no longer worked there. Bad sign. His replacement, Mr. Morimoto, did not wish me to come to the company’s headquarters. Very bad sign. Instead, she said, Mr. Morimoto would meet me for tea in my hotel’s revolving restaurant. Tomorrow morning. I went to bed early, slept fitfully. Dreams of car chases, prison, duels—the same dreams that always plagued me the night before a big meet, or date, or exam. I rose at dawn, ate a breakfast of raw egg poured over hot rice, and some grilled fish, and washed it down with a pot of green tea. Then, reciting memorized passages from How to Do Business with the Japanese , I shaved my pale jaws. I cut myself once or twice, and had trouble stopping the bleeding. I must have been a sight. Finally I put on my suit and shambled onto the elevator. As I pressed the button for the top floor I noticed that my hand was white as bone. Morimoto arrived on time. He was about my age, but far more mature, more self-assured. He wore a rumpled sport coat and had a kind of rumpled face. We sat at a table by the window. Immediately, before the waiter came to take our order, I launched into my pitch, saying everything I’d vowed not to say. I told Morimoto how distressed I was by this Marlboro Man encroaching on my turf. I said I’d been under the impression that I’d made a personal connection with the executives I’d met the previous year, and the impression was underscored by a letter from Mr. Miyazaki saying the thirteen western states were exclusively mine. I was therefore at a loss to explain this treatment. I appealed to Morimoto’s sense of fairness, to his sense of honor. He looked uncomfortable, so I took a breath, paused. I raised it from the personal to the professional. I cited my robust sales. I dropped the name of my partner, the legendary coach whose reputation had cachet even on the other side of the Pacific. I emphasized all that I might do for Onitsuka in the future, if given a chance. Morimoto took a sip of tea. When it was clear that I’d talked myself out, he set down his cup and looked out the window. Slowly we rotated above Kobe. “I will get back to you.” ANOTHER FITFUL NIGHT.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  I had no backup, no plan B, no exit strategy. If I was going to save Blue Ribbon, I needed to do it slowly, on my own schedule, so as not to spook customers and retailers. I needed time, and therefore I needed Onitsuka to keep sending me shoes for as long as possible. “Well,” I said, fighting to control my voice, “I have a partner, of course. Coach Bowerman. I’ll have to discuss your offer with him.” I was certain Kitami would see through this amateurish stall. But he rose, hitched his pants, and smiled. “Talk it over with Dr. Bowerman. Get back to me.” I wanted to hit him. Instead I shook his hand. He and Iwano walked out. In the suddenly Kitami-less conference room, Woodell and I stared into the grain of the conference table and let the stillness settle over us. I SENT MY budget and forecast for the coming year to First National, with my standard credit request. I wanted to send a note of apology, begging forgiveness for the Kitami debacle, but I knew White would roll with it. And besides, Wallace hadn’t been there. Days after White got my budget and forecast he told me to come on down, he was ready to talk things over. I wasn’t in the hard little chair across from his desk more than two seconds before he delivered the news. “Phil, I’m afraid First National will not be able to do business any longer with Blue Ribbon. We will issue no more letters of credit on your behalf. We will pay off your last remaining shipments as they come in with what remains in your account—but when that last bill is paid, our relationship will be terminated.” I could see by White’s waxy pallor that he was stricken. He’d had no part in this. This was coming from on high. Thus there was no point in arguing. I spread my arms. “What do I do, Harry?” “Find another bank.” “And if I can’t? I’m out of business, right?” He looked down at his papers, stacked them, fastened them with a paper clip. He told me that the question of Blue Ribbon had deeply divided the bank officers. Some were for us, some were against. Ultimately it was Wallace who’d cast the deciding vote. “I’m sick about this,” White said. “So sick that I’m taking a sick day.” I didn’t have that option. I staggered out of First National and drove straight to U.S. Bank. I pleaded with them to take me in. Sorry, they said. They had no desire to buy First National’s secondhand problems. THREE WEEKS PASSED. The company, my company, born from nothing, and now finishing 1971 with sales of $1.3 million, was on life support. I talked with Hayes. I talked with my father. I talked with every other accountant I knew, one of whom mentioned that Bank of California had a charter allowing it to do business in three western states, including Oregon.

• From Educated (2018)

  To my mind if the stench was bearable, the house was clean, and I extended this philosophy to my person. I never used soap except when I showered, usually once or twice a week, and sometimes I didn’t use it even then. When I left the bathroom in the morning, I marched right past the hallway sink where Shannon and Mary always—always —washed their hands. I saw their raised eyebrows and thought of Grandma-over-in-town. Frivolous, I told myself. I don’t pee on my hands . The atmosphere in the apartment was tense. Shannon looked at me like I was a rabid dog, and I did nothing to reassure her. —MY BANK ACCOUNT DECREASED steadily. I had been worried that I might not pass my classes, but a month into the semester, after I’d paid tuition and rent and bought food and books, I began to think that even if I did pass I wouldn’t be coming back to school for one obvious reason: I couldn’t afford it. I looked up the requirements for a scholarship online. A full-tuition waiver would require a near-perfect GPA. I was only a month into the semester, but even so I knew a scholarship was comically out of reach. American history was getting easier, but only in that I was no longer failing the quizzes outright. I was doing well in music theory, but I struggled in English. My teacher said I had a knack for writing but that my language was oddly formal and stilted. I didn’t tell her that I’d learned to read and write by reading only the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and speeches by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. The real trouble, however, was Western Civ. To me, the lectures were gibberish, probably because for most of January, I thought Europe was a country, not a continent, so very little of what the professor said made sense. And after the Holocaust incident, I wasn’t about to ask for clarification. Even so, it was my favorite class, because of Vanessa. We sat together for every lecture. I liked her because she seemed like the same kind of Mormon I was: she wore high-necked, loose-fitting clothing, and she’d told me that she never drank Coke or did homework on Sunday. She was the only person I’d met at the university who didn’t seem like a gentile. In February, the professor announced that instead of a single midterm he would be giving monthly exams, the first of which would be the following week. I didn’t know how to prepare. There wasn’t a textbook for the class, just the picture book of paintings and a few CDs of classical compositions. I listened to the music while flipping through the paintings. I made a vague effort to remember who had painted or composed what, but I didn’t memorize spelling. The ACT was the only exam I’d ever taken, and it had been multiple choice, so I assumed all exams were multiple choice.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  There was only one person on the planet rootless enough, energetic enough, gung-ho enough, crazy enough, to pick up and move to the East Coast, on a moment’s notice, and get there before the shoes did. I wondered how Stretch was going to like the Atlantic Ocean.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Of course, the tougher challenge was to get any factory we chose to upgrade its quality. And then there was the constant threat of political instability. President Chiang Kai-shek had just died, I told Gorman, and after twenty-five years in command he was leaving a nasty power vacuum. For good measure, you always needed to account for Taiwan’s ancient tensions with China. On and on I talked as we sailed over the Pacific. While taking copious notes, Gorman also came up with new, fresh ideas, which gave me new insights, things to think about. Stepping off the plane in Taichung, our first stop, I was delighted. This guy was intense, energetic, eager to get started. I was proud to be his mentor. Good choice, I told myself. By the time we reached the hotel, however, Gorman was wilting. Taichung looked and smelled like the far end of the galaxy. A vast megalopolis of smoking factories, and thousands of people per square foot, it was unlike anything I’d ever seen, and I’d been all over Asia, so of course it overwhelmed poor Gorman. I saw in his eyes that typical first-timer’s reaction to Asia, that look of alienation and circuit overload. He looked exactly like Penny when she met me in Japan. Steady, I told him. Take it one day, one factory, at a time. Follow your mentor’s lead. Over the next week we visited and toured about two dozen factories. Most were bad. Dark, dirty, with workers going through the motions, heads bowed, vacant looks in their eyes. Just outside Taichung, however, in the small town of Douliou, we found a factory that showed promise. It was called Feng Tay, and it was managed by a young man named C. H. Wong. Small, but clean, it had a positive vibe, as did Wong, a shoe dog who lived for his workplace. And in it. When we noticed that one small room off the factory floor was off-limits, I asked what was in there. Home, he said. “That is where my wife and I and our three kids live.” I was reminded of Johnson. I decided to make Feng Tay the cornerstone of our Taiwan effort. When we weren’t touring factories, Gorman and I were being feted by factory owners. They stuffed us with local delicacies, some of which were actually cooked, and plied us with something called a Mao tai, which was a mai tai, but apparently with shoe cream instead of rum. Jet-lagged, Gorman and I both had lost our tolerance. After two Mao tais we were potted. We tried to slow down, but our hosts kept raising their glasses. To Nike! To America! At the final dinner of our Taichung visit Gorman repeatedly excused himself and ran to the men’s room, to splash cold water on his face. Every time he left the table I got rid of my Mao tai by pouring it into his water glass.

• From Educated (2018)

  As Mother recounted these details, the blood drained from her face until she sat, pale as an egg, her arms wrapped around herself. Audrey made chamomile tea and we put our mother to bed. When Dad came home that night, Mother told him the same story. “I can’t do it,” she said. “Judy can, but I can’t.” Dad put an arm on her shoulder. “This is a calling from the Lord,” he said. “And sometimes the Lord asks for hard things.” Mother didn’t want to be a midwife. Midwifery had been Dad’s idea, one of his schemes for self-reliance. There was nothing he hated more than our being dependent on the Government. Dad said one day we would be completely off the grid. As soon as he could get the money together, he planned to build a pipeline to bring water down from the mountain, and after that he’d install solar panels all over the farm. That way we’d have water and electricity in the End of Days, when everyone else was drinking from puddles and living in darkness. Mother was an herbalist so she could tend our health, and if she learned to midwife she would be able to deliver the grandchildren when they came along. The midwife came to visit Mother a few days after the first birth. She brought Maria, who again followed me to my room. “It’s too bad your mother got a bad one her first time,” she said, smiling. “The next one will be easier.” A few weeks later, this prediction was tested. It was midnight. Because we didn’t have a phone, the midwife called Grandma-down-the-hill, who walked up the hill, tired and ornery, and barked that it was time for Mother to go “play doctor.” She stayed only minutes but woke the whole house. “Why you people can’t just go to a hospital like everyone else is beyond me,” she shouted, slamming the door on her way out. Mother retrieved her overnight bag and the tackle box she’d filled with dark bottles of tincture, then she walked slowly out the door. I was anxious and slept badly, but when Mother came home the next morning, hair deranged and dark circles under her eyes, her lips were parted in a wide smile. “It was a girl,” she said. Then she went to bed and slept all day. Months passed in this way, Mother leaving the house at all hours and coming home, trembling, relieved to her core that it was over. By the time the leaves started to fall she’d helped with a dozen births. By the end of winter, several dozen. In the spring she told my father she’d had enough, that she could deliver a baby if she had to, if it was the End of the World. Now she could stop. Dad’s face sank when she said this. He reminded her that this was God’s will, that it would bless our family. “You need to be a midwife,” he said.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  WOODELL AND I eventually found a promising office, in Tigard, south of downtown Portland. It wasn’t a whole office building—we couldn’t afford that—but a corner of one floor. The rest was occupied by the Horace Mann Insurance Company. Inviting, almost plush, it was a dramatic step up, and yet I hesitated. There had been a curious logic in our being next door to a honky-tonk. But an insurance company? With carpeted halls and water coolers and men in tailored suits? The atmosphere was so button-down, so corporate. Our surroundings, I felt, had much to do with our spirit, and our spirit was a big part of our success, and I worried how our spirit might change if we were suddenly sharing space with a bunch of Organization Men and automatons. I took to my recliner, gave it some thought, and decided a corporate vibe might be asymmetrical, contrary to our core beliefs, but it might also be just the thing with our bank. Maybe when Wallace saw our boring, sterile new office space, he’d treat us with respect. Also, the office was in Tigard. Selling Tigers out of Tigard—maybe it was meant to be. Then I thought about Woodell. He said he was happy at Blue Ribbon, but he’d mentioned the irony. Maybe it was more than ironic, sending him out to high schools and colleges to sell Tigers out of his car. Maybe it was torture. And maybe it was a poor use of his talents. What suited Woodell best was bringing order to chaos, problem-solving. One small task. After he and I went together to sign the Tigard lease, I asked him if he’d like to change jobs, become operations manager for Blue Ribbon. No more sales calls. No more schools. Instead he’d be in charge of dealing with all the things for which I didn’t have the time and patience. Like talking to Bork in L.A. Or corresponding with Johnson in Wellesley. Or opening a new office in Miami. Or hiring someone to coordinate all the new sales reps and organize their reports. Or approving expense accounts. Best of all, Woodell would have to oversee the person who monitored company bank accounts. Now, if he didn’t cash his own paychecks, he’d have to explain the overage to his boss: himself. Beaming, Woodell said he liked the sound of that very much. He reached out his hand. Deal, he said. Still had the grip of an athlete. PENNY WENT TO the doctor in September 1969. A checkup. The doctor said everything looked fine, but the baby was taking its time. Probably another week, he said. The rest of that afternoon Penny spent at Blue Ribbon, helping customers. We went home together, ate an early dinner, turned in early. About 4:00 a.m. she jostled me. “I don’t feel so good,” she said. I phoned the doctor and told him to meet us at Emanuel Hospital.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Besides being Bowerman’s lawyer and best friend, Jaqua was his next-door neighbor. He owned fifteen hundred acres at the base of Bowerman’s mountain, prime bottomland right on the McKenzie. Driving there, I couldn’t imagine how this was going to be good for me. I got along fine with Bowerman, sure, and we had ourselves a deal, but lawyers always messed things up. Lawyers specialized in messing things up. And best friend–lawyers…? Bowerman, meanwhile, was doing nothing to put my mind at ease. He sat ramrod straight and watched the scenery. Amid the booming silence I kept my eyes on the road and mulled over Bowerman’s eccentric personality, which carried over to everything he did. He always went against the grain. Always. For example, he was the first college coach in America to emphasize rest, to place as much value on recovery as on work. But when he worked you, brother, he worked you. Bowerman’s strategy for running the mile was simple. Set a fast pace for the first two laps, run the third as hard as you can, then triple your speed on the fourth. There was a Zen-like quality to this strategy, because it was impossible. And yet it worked. Bowerman coached more sub-four-minute milers than anybody, ever. I wasn’t one of them, however, and this day I wondered if I was going to fall short once again in that crucial final lap. We found Jaqua standing out on his porch. I’d met him before, at a track meet or two, but I’d never gotten a really good look at him. Though bespectacled, and sneaking up on middle age, he didn’t square with my idea of a lawyer. He was too sturdy, too well made. I learned later that he’d been a star tailback in high school, and one of the best hundred-meter men ever at Pomona College. He still had that telltale athletic power. It came right through his handshake. “Buckaroo,” he said, grabbing me by the arm and guiding me into his living room, “I was going to wear your shoes today but I got cow shit all over ’em!” The day was typical for Oregon in January. Along with the spitting rain, a deep, wet cold permeated everything. We arranged ourselves on chairs around Jaqua’s fireplace, the biggest fireplace I ever saw, big enough to roast an elk. Roaring flames were spinning around several logs the size of hydrants. From a side door came Jaqua’s wife carrying a tray. Mugs of hot chocolate. She asked if I’d like whipped cream or marshmallows. Neither, thank you, ma’am. My voice was two octaves higher than normal. She tilted her head and gave me a pitying look. Boy, they’re going to skin you alive. Jaqua took a sip, wiped the cream from his lips, and began. He talked a bit about Oregon track, and about Bowerman. He was wearing dirty blue jeans and a wrinkled flannel shirt, and I couldn’t stop thinking how unlawyerly he looked.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  But as we talked about it in greater detail, the math just didn’t pencil out. Neither Bowerman nor I wanted to surrender any portion of our stake, so Johnson’s ultimatum, even if I’d wanted to accept it, was a nonstarter. I flew to Palo Alto, where Johnson was visiting his parents, and asked for a sit-down. Johnson said he wanted his father, Owen, to join us. The meeting took place at Owen’s office, and I was immediately stunned by the similarities between father and son. They looked alike, sounded alike, even had many of the same mannerisms. The similarities ended there, however. From the start Owen was loud, aggressive, and I could see that he’d been the instigator behind this mutiny. By trade Owen was a salesman. He sold voice recording equipment, like Dictaphones, and he was darned good at it. For him, as with most salesmen, life was one long negotiation, which he relished. In other words, he was my complete opposite. Here we go, I thought. Yet another shootout with a consummate negotiator. When will it end? Before getting down to brass tacks, Owen first wanted to tell me a story. Salesmen always do. Since I was an accountant, he said, he was reminded of an accountant he’d met recently who had a topless dancer for a client. The story, I believe, revolved around whether the dancer’s silicone implants were deductible. At the punch line I laughed, to be polite, then gripped the arms of my chair and waited for Owen to stop laughing and make his opening move. He began by citing all the things his son had done for Blue Ribbon. He insisted that his son was the main reason Blue Ribbon still existed. I nodded, let him talk himself out, and resisted the urge to make eye contact with Johnson, who sat off to the side. I wondered if they’d rehearsed all this, the way Johnson and I rehearsed my pitch before my last trip to Japan. When Owen finished, when he said that, given the facts, his son obviously should be a full partner in Blue Ribbon, I cleared my throat and conceded that Johnson was a dynamo, that his work had been vital and invaluable. But then I dropped the hammer. “The truth of the matter is, we have forty thousand dollars in sales, and more than that in debt, so there’s simply nothing to divvy up here, fellas. We’re fighting over slices of a pie that doesn’t exist.” Moreover, I told Owen that Bowerman was unwilling to sell any of his stake in Blue Ribbon, and therefore I couldn’t sell any of mine. If I did I’d be surrendering majority control of the thing I’d created. That wasn’t feasible. I made my counteroffer. I would give Johnson a fifty-dollar raise. Owen stared. It was a fierce, tough stare, honed during many intense negotiations. A lot of Dictaphones had moved out the door after that stare.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  Everything about the hawk is tuned and turned to hunt and kill. Yesterday I discovered that when I suck air through my teeth and make a squeaking noise like an injured rabbit, all the tendons in her toes instantaneously contract, driving her talons into the glove with terrible, crushing force. This killing grip is an old, deep pattern in her brain, an innate response that hasn’t yet found the stimulus meant to release it. Because other sounds provoke it: door hinges, squealing brakes, bicycles with unoiled wheels – and on the second afternoon, Joan Sutherland singing an aria on the radio. Ow. I laughed out loud at that. Stimulus: opera. Response: kill. But later these misapplied instincts stop being funny. At just past six o’clock a small, unhappy wail came from a pram outside the window. Straight away the hawk drove her talons into my glove, ratcheting up the pressure in savage, stabbing spasms. Kill. The baby cries. Kill kill kill. Two days pass. I sit and walk, and sit and sleep, the hawk almost constantly on my fist. My arm aches and a damp tiredness grips my heart. A farming programme on the radio. Wheat, borage, rapeseed. Polytunnels and cherries. The hawk is alternately a hunchback toad, a nervous child or a dragon. The house is a tip. Scraps of raw meat decorate the bin. I’ve run out of coffee. I have forgotten how to speak. My mouth makes small, mumbled assurances to the hawk that all is well. She meets them with silence, with thready, nervous cheeps through her nose. As I walk she follows my feet with her eyes as if they were two small animals moving about the house with us. She is interested in flies, in specks of floating dust, in the way light falls on certain surfaces. What is she looking at? What is she thinking? I hear the click of the nictitating membrane that crosses her eyes as she blinks, and now I see them closely her eyes begin to disturb me. They look like discs of pale paper stuck to the side of her head, each with a hole-punched black pupil housed under a transparent dome like a bubble of water. The hawk is stranger than I’d thought. And calmer than I’d believed possible.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The humanists were convinced they were on the side of progress, and they were right. “Everything that surrounds us is our own work, the work of man,” said the fifteenth-century biblical scholar Gionozo Manetti, “and when we see these marvels, we realise that we are able to make better things, more beautiful things, better adorned, more perfect than those we have made until now.” 21 It did not follow, however, that the medieval approach to art, literature, or religion had been entirely misguided; it had just reflected a different world. In religious matters, the modern tendency to wipe the slate clean to begin again, while understandable, would ultimately be detrimental. The three great Protestant reformers, Martin Luther (1483–1546), Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), and John Calvin (1509–64), all exemplified this vehement rejection of the immediate past. Like the Renaissance humanists, they had no time for the natural theology of the late scholastics and wanted a more personal and immediate faith. Zwingli and Calvin, indeed, remained humanists throughout their lives, their religious reform largely inspired by the Renaissance zeitgeist. At this time of massive change, there was a good deal of religious uncertainty. People were not able to be religious in the same way as the medievals. But where could they hear the authentic voice of Christianity? 22 The reformers were trying to articulate a religious mood that was strongly felt but had not yet been adequately conceptualized. Their Reformation was just one expression of the Great Western Transformation. 23 Instead of being regarded as the instigator of change, Luther should rather be seen as the spokesman of a current trend. Historians used to think that the Reformation was primarily a reaction to the corruption of the Church, but there seems to have been a spiritual revival in Europe at this time, especially among the laity, who now felt empowered to criticize abuses that had previously passed without comment. As society changed, ideas and rituals that had been religiously viable before the advent of modernity became suddenly abhorrent. 24 Instead of giving people a sense of life’s transcendent possibilities, they caused only anxiety. Luther memorably expressed this alienation from older practices. Although I lived a blameless life as a monk, I felt that I was a sinner with an uneasy conscience before God. I also could not believe that I had pleased him with my works. … I was a good monk, and kept my order so strictly that if ever a monk could get to heaven by monastic discipline, I was that monk. All my companions in the monastery would confirm this. … And yet my conscience did not give me certainty, but I always doubted and said, “You didn’t do that right. You weren’t contrite enough.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  White, trying to cool things off, said a few nominal things in support of Blue Ribbon. I watched his words have no effect whatsoever on Wallace. I took a breath, started to speak, then stopped. I didn’t trust my voice. I just sat up straighter and hugged myself. This was my new nervous tic, my new habit. Rubber bands were no longer cutting it. Whenever I felt stressed, whenever I wanted to choke someone, I’d wrap my arms good and tight around my torso. That day the habit was more pronounced. I must have looked as if I was practicing some exotic yoga pose I’d learned in Thailand. At issue was more than the old philosophical disagreement about growth. Blue Ribbon was approaching six hundred thousand dollars in sales, and that day I’d gone in to ask for a loan of $1.2 million, a number that had symbolic meaning for Wallace. It was the first time I’d broken the million-dollar barrier. In his mind this was like the four-minute mile. Very few people were meant to break it. He was weary of this whole thing, he said, weary of me. For the umpteenth time he explained that he lived on cash balances, and for the umpteenth time I suggested ever so politely that if my sales and earnings were going up, up, up, Wallace should be happy to have my business. Wallace rapped his pen on the table. My credit was maxed out, he said. Officially, irrevocably, immediately. He wasn’t authorizing one more cent until I put some cash in my account and left it there. Meanwhile, henceforth, he’d be imposing strict sales quotas for me to meet. Miss one quota, he said, by even one day, and, well… He didn’t finish the sentence. His voice trailed off, and I was left to fill the silence with worst-case scenarios. I turned to White, who gave me a look. What can I do, pal? DAYS LATER WOODELL showed me a telex from Onitsuka. The big spring shipment was ready to hit the water and they wanted twenty thousand dollars. Great, we said. For once they’re shipping the shoes on time. Just one hitch. We didn’t have twenty thousand dollars. And it was clear I couldn’t go to Wallace. I couldn’t ask Wallace for change of a five. So I telexed Onitsuka and asked them to hold the shoes, please, until we brought in some more revenue from our sales force. “Please don’t think we are in financial difficulty,” I wrote. It wasn’t a lie, per se. As I told Bowerman, we weren’t broke, we just had no money. Lots of assets, no cash. We simply needed more time. Now it was my turn to say: Little more days. While awaiting Onitsuka’s response, I realized that there was only one way to solve this cash flow problem once and for all. A small public offering.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  It’s just not for us, I said, and we said. No way. Never. Meeting adjourned. So we set about casting for other ways to raise money. One way found us. First State Bank asked us to apply for a million-dollar loan, which the U.S. Small Business Administration would then guarantee. It was a loophole, a way for a small bank to gently expand its credit line, because their guaranteed-loan limits were greater than their direct-loan limits. So we did it, mainly to make their life easier. As is always the case, the process turned out to be more complicated than it first appeared. First State Bank and the Small Business Administration required that Bowerman and I, as majority shareholders, both personally guarantee the loan. We’d done that at First National and at Bank of California, so I didn’t see a problem. I was in hock up to my neck, what was one more guarantee? Bowerman, however, balked. Retired, living on a fixed income, dispirited after the traumas of the last few years, and greatly weakened by the death of Pre, he didn’t want any more risk. He feared losing his mountain. Rather than give his personal guarantee, he offered to give me two-thirds of his stake in Blue Ribbon, at a discounted price. He was bowing out. I didn’t want this. Never mind that I didn’t have the money to buy his stake, I didn’t want to lose the cornerstone of my company, the anchor of my psyche. But Bowerman was adamant, and I knew better than to argue. So we both went to Jaqua and asked him to help broker the deal. Jaqua was still Bowerman’s best friend, but I’d come to think of him as a close friend, too. I still trusted him completely. Let’s not fully dissolve the partnership, I said to him. Though I reluctantly agreed to buy Bowerman’s stake (low payments, spread over five years), I begged him to retain a percentage, stay on as a vice president and member of our small board. Deal, he said. We all shook hands. WHILE WE WERE busy moving around stakes and dollars, the dollar itself was hemorrhaging value. It was all at once in a death spiral against the Japanese yen. Coupled with rising Japanese labor rates, this was now the most imminent threat to our existence. We’d increased and diversified sources of production, we’d added new factories in New England and Puerto Rico, but we were still doing nearly all our manufacturing in volatile Japan, mostly at Nippon Rubber. A sudden, crippling shortage of supply was a real possibility. Especially given the spike in demand for Bowerman’s waffle trainer. With its unique outer sole, and its pillowy midsole cushion, and its below-market price ($24.95), the waffle trainer was continuing to capture the popular imagination like no previous shoe. It didn’t just feel different, or fit different—it looked different. Radically so. Bright red upper, fat white swoosh—it was a revolution in aesthetics.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  He was either fired or dead. There was a new export manager, the wire said. His name was Kitami. KISHIKAN . Japanese for déjà vu. Again I found myself boarding a flight for Japan. Again I found myself underlining and memorizing my copy of How to Do Business with the Japanese. Again I found myself taking the train to Kobe, checking into the Newport, pacing in my room. At zero hour I took a cab over to Onitsuka. I expected that we’d go into the old conference room, but no, they’d done some remodeling since my last visit. New conference room, they said. Sleeker, bigger, it had leather chairs instead of the old cloth ones, and a much longer table. More impressive, but less familiar. I felt disoriented, intimidated. It was like prepping for a meet at Oregon State and learning at the last minute that it had been moved to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. A man walked into the conference room and extended his hand. Kitami. His black shoes were brightly polished, his hair equally polished. Jet black, swept straight back, not a strand out of place. He was a great contrast to Morimoto, who always looked as if he’d dressed blindfolded. I was put off by Kitami’s veneer, but suddenly he gave me a warm, ready smile, and encouraged me to sit, relax, tell him why I’d come, and now I got the distinct sense that, despite his slick appearance, he wasn’t altogether sure of himself. He was in a brand-new job, after all. He didn’t yet have much—equity. The word sprang to mind. It occurred to me also that I had high value for Kitami. I wasn’t a big client, but I wasn’t small, either. Location is everything. I was selling shoes in America , a market vital to the future of Onitsuka. Maybe, just maybe, Kitami didn’t want to lose me just yet. Maybe he wanted to hold on to me until they’d transitioned to the Marlboro Man. I was an asset, I was a credit, for the moment, which meant I might be holding better cards than I thought. Kitami spoke more English than his predecessors, but with a thicker accent. My ear needed a few minutes to adjust as we chatted about my flight, the weather, sales. All the while other executives were filing in, joining us at the conference table. At last Kitami leaned back. “Hai … ” He waited. “Mr. Onitsuka?” I asked. “Mr. Onitsuka will not be able to join us today,” he said. Damn. I was hoping to draw upon Mr. Onitsuka’s fondness for me, not to mention his bond with Bowerman. But no. Alone, without allies, trapped in the unfamiliar conference room, I plunged ahead. I told Kitami and the other executives that Blue Ribbon had done a remarkable job thus far. We’d sold out every order, while developing a robust customer base, and we expected this solid growth to continue.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  The shoe market just then was flooded with knockoff Adidas, and it was Senter who’d unleashed the flood. He was the knockoff king, apparently. He also knew everything worth knowing about Asia’s legitimate shoe trade—factories, importing, exporting. He’d helped set up a shoe division for Mitsubishi, Japan’s largest trading company. Nissho couldn’t hire Senter himself, for various reasons, so they’d hired Senter’s protégé, a man named Sole. “Really?” I said. “A shoe guy named Sole?” Before meeting Sole, before going any further with Nissho, I considered if I was walking into another trap. If I partnered with Nissho, I’d soon be into them for a lot of money. If they also became the source of all our footwear, I would then be even more vulnerable to them than I had been to Onitsuka. And if they turned out to be as aggressive as Onitsuka, it would be lights out. At Bowerman’s suggestion I talked it over with Jaqua, and he saw the conundrum. Quite a pickle, he said. He didn’t know what to advise. But he knew someone who would. His brother-in-law, Chuck Robinson, was CEO of Marcona Mining, which had joint ventures all over the world. Each of the big eight Japanese trading companies was a partner in at least one of Marcona’s mines, so Chuck was arguably the West’s leading expert on doing business with these guys. I finagled a meeting with Chuck at his office in San Francisco and found myself wildly intimidated from the moment I walked in the door. I was agog at his office’s size—bigger than my house. And at its view—windows overlooking all of San Francisco Bay, with enormous tankers gliding slowly to and from the world’s great ports. And lining the walls were scale models of Marcona’s tanker fleet, which supplied coal and other minerals to every corner of the globe. Only a man of enormous power, and brains, could command such a redoubt. I stammered through my presentation, but Chuck still managed to quickly get the drift. He boiled my complicated situation down to a compelling précis. “If the Japanese trading company understands the rules from the first day,” he said, “they will be the best partners you’ll ever have.” Reassured, emboldened, I went back to Sumeragi and told him the rules. “No equity in my company. Ever.” He went away and consulted with a few people in his office. Upon returning he said, “No problem. But here’s our deal. We take four percent off the top, as a markup on product. And market interest rates on top of that.” I nodded.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  The price was thirty-four thousand dollars, and I popped my shirt buttons to discover that I had 20 percent of that in savings. On the other hand, I’d pledged those savings against my many loans at First National. So I went down to talk to Harry White. I need the savings for a down payment on a house, I said—but I’ll pledge the house. “Okay,” he said. “On this one we don’t have to consult Wallace.” That night I told Penny that if Blue Ribbon failed we’d lose the house. She put a hand on her stomach and sat down. This was the kind of insecurity she’d always vowed to avoid. Okay, she kept saying, okaaaay. With so much at stake, she felt compelled to keep working for Blue Ribbon, right through her pregnancy. She would sacrifice everything to Blue Ribbon, even her deeply held goal of graduating from college. And when she wasn’t physically in the office, she would run a mail order business out of the new house. In 1969 alone, despite morning sickness, swollen ankles, weight gain, and constant fatigue, Penny got out fifteen hundred orders. Some of the orders were nothing more than crude tracings of a human foot, sent in by customers in far-flung places, but Penny didn’t care. She dutifully matched the tracing to the correct shoe and filled the order. Every sale counted. AT THE SAME time that my family outgrew its home, so did my business. One room beside the Pink Bucket could no longer contain us. Also, Woodell and I were tired of shouting to be heard above that jukebox. So each night after work we’d go out for cheeseburgers, then drive around looking at office space. Logistically, it was a nightmare. Woodell had to drive, because his wheelchair wouldn’t fit in my Cougar, and I always felt guilty and uncomfortable, being chauffeured by a man with so many limitations. I also felt crazed with nerves, because many of the offices we looked at were up a flight of stairs. Or several flights. This meant I’d have to wheel Woodell up and down. At such moments I was reminded, painfully, of his reality. During a typical workday, Woodell was so positive, so energetic, it was easy to forget. But wheeling him, maneuvering him, upstairs, downstairs, I was repeatedly struck by how delicate, how helpless he could be. I’d pray under my breath. Please don’t let me drop him. Please don’t let me drop him. Woodell, hearing me, would tense up, and his tension would make me more nervous. “Relax,” I’d say, “I haven’t lost a patient yet—haha!” No matter what happened, he’d never lose his composure. Even at his most vulnerable, with me balancing him precariously at the top of some dark flight of stairs, he’d never lose touch with his essential philosophy: Don’t you dare feel sorry for me. I’m here to kill you.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  But I couldn’t. I kept going over my meeting at Onitsuka. The executives had shown me such kei. They’d bowed to me, and vice versa. I’d been straightforward with them, honest—for the most part. Sure, I hadn’t “technically” owned a “business” called “Blue Ribbon.” But that was splitting hairs. I owned one now, and it had single-handedly brought Tigers to the West Coast, and it could sell Tigers ten times faster if Onitsuka gave me half a chance. Instead the company was going to cut me out? Throw me over for the fricking Marlboro Man? Come to where the flavor is. TOWARD SUMMER’S END I still hadn’t heard from Onitsuka, and I’d all but given up on the idea of selling shoes. Labor Day, however, I had a change of heart. I couldn’t give up. Not yet. And not giving up meant flying back to Japan. I needed to force a showdown with Onitsuka. I ran the idea by my father. He still didn’t like me jackassing around with shoes. But what he really didn’t like was someone mistreating his son. He furrowed his brow. “You should probably go,” he said. I talked it over with my mother. “No probablys about it,” she said. In fact, she’d drive me to the airport. FIFTY YEARS LATER I can see us in that car. I can recall every detail. It was a bright, clear day, no humidity, temperature in the low eighties. Both of us, quietly watching the sunlight play across the windshield, said nothing. The silence between us was like the silence on the many days she drove me to meets. I was too busy fighting my nerves to talk, and she, better than anyone, understood. She respected the lines we draw around ourselves in crisis. Then, as we neared the airport, she broke the silence. “Just be yourself,” she said. I looked out the window. Be myself. Really? Is that my best option? To study the self is to forget the self. I looked down. I certainly wasn’t dressed like myself. I was wearing a new suit, a proper charcoal gray, and toting a small suitcase. In the side pocket was a new book: How to Do Business with the Japanese. Heaven only knows how or where I’d heard about it. And now I grimace to remember this last detail: I was also wearing a black bowler hat. I’d bought it expressly for this trip, thinking it made me look older. In fact it made me look mad. Stark, staring mad. As if I’d escaped from a Victorian insane asylum inside a painting by Magritte.