Kickass beans for binoculars

Kickass, the doorstop dog, passes along the keeper’s memory of his—the keeper’s, beans-for-binoculars deal made 65 years ago while patrolling the no-mans land along Korea’s 38^th parallel.  The orange narcissist and Kim Jong-un might take note of a deal that pleased both sides at the time and obviously stood the test of time.  The keeper’s I and R (Intelligence and Reconnaissance) platoon was checking the “no-mans” condition of rice paddies between the military lines when a cluster of children emerged from behind battered huts.  This called for a serious time-out while the platoon members and the kids used gestures and smiles to get acquainted. During this casual camaraderie, the keeper’s Army-issue binoculars suddenly went missing.  Not anxious to explain missing equipment to an unreasonable supply sergeant, the keeper used gestures—and smiles in offering a small can of C-ration pork and beans for return of the binoculars.  It took a while, but finally one of the kids came around a corner of one of the houses with the keeper’s binoculars in hand.  Obviously if you are hungry, beans make more sense than binoculars.  Somewhere in there is the makings of a foreign policy, But it’s not likely to guide the talk of the dictator and the narcissist in Vietnam, or change any build-a-wall attitudes toward immigrants.