Buddies

His name was Troy and he was my cousin on my mother’s side. He died this year and I miss him every day. He went into the Army just at the end of World War Two and I guess we were buddies, as the photo indicates. When I received my military discharge years later, he was recovering from back surgery so we spent a lot of time together, just riding around and talking. Somehow, that never got boring. He introduced me to a man who helped me get my first real job after the Navy. It was the job that launched me into my professional career, but I’m not sure I ever thanked him enough.

He was the kind of person who, if you called him late at night and told him you had a flat tire and didn’t want to get your shirt dirty changing it, would come do it for you. He might tell about it for years, but he would come. Many country folks I’ve known in my life are like that. Goodness is more of a duty and a habit than a choice.

He was more like a son than a nephew to my daddy, who wouldn't ride in a fishing boat with anyone else. I'm not sure what that meant, but I am sure it meant something. He was also a person who would spend part of his "mustering-out" pay to buy a three-year old boy an army outfit during a period of history in which being a soldier was the grandest thing imaginable.

When his wife Charlene came down with Alzheimer’s way too early, he cared for her without complaint. He would dress and feed her then she would sit on the couch and stare into space, not saying a word. It was that way until she died.

I never went to see him enough. What dear friend can we ever name who we honestly think we went to see enough? I did stop to see him anytime I came to town to visit. Toward the end, he would sometimes tell my sister and me the same stories he had told the last time. We didn’t care. Many of them centered on how spoiled I was as a child and how perfect she was. But then, we were Army buddies so he put up with me.

The last time I saw him, he made me promise to be a pallbearer for him when the time came. Of course I said yes. At the time, he was a card-carrying member of the NRA, and I was a card-carrying member of the ACLU, but we never spoke about it. I suppose that’s what true friendship means.

All ready for Inspection.

Haircuts

About this time of year in 1967, I was busy settling in on my new job with the U.S Government. All around me, freedom fighters were getting ready for the Tet Offensive, a little over a month away. They were ready to die by the thousands. I was concentrating on staying alive for another 11 months. Goals are important.

I’d gotten a little shaggy upon arrival at the new assignment, so the gendarmes sent me to the base barber shop for a haircut by one of the “guest workers” there. I think maybe there were three or so barbers therein, all Vietnamese locals. It had to be a real military haircut, complete with shaving around the neck with a straight razor. Appearances are important.

I visited the shop a couple of more times before the end of January. Then all hell broke loose. During the Tet Offensive, the base was closed to local nationals, and no one had time for haircuts anyway. After the Tet Offensive, none of the barbers returned. The story went around that they had all been freedom fighters. For some reason, I think about this every time I shave. Memories are important.

Steady there. Steady. I'm from the
government. Come to help.

Torment

In the rural community in which I grew up, there was a man who suffered from what we would now classify as moderate retardation. An African-American man of indeterminate age, he was known by all as “Happy Bill.” As far as I know, he never harmed a living soul. He tended to roam the neighborhood and was a frequent visitor to my family’s grocery. His pleasant and non-threatening personality made him welcome on most any occasion.

He had a trait, this unfortunate man, that made him a frequent target of torment and frivolity. When jabbed in his ribs, he would yell out whatever thought was lurking in his mind at that second, or so folks thought. The thing I remember is that his outbursts involved neither anger nor retaliatory insult toward his tormentor. Neither did he ever lash out at another individual, the crowd assembled, or a definable group. To have done so, would certainly transformed the act of torment from fun to revenge, or a more dangerous and sinister situation.

I’ve often wondered what miraculous and internal defense mechanism directed his utterances to the ridiculous, and yes … even humorous, instead of the vindictive. It is unthinkable what dangers might emerge if a person were to answer any mental provocation with an unfettered and unfiltered response, with no regard for the possible consequences. I suppose the ability for restrained and analytical reaction to provocation, along with the gift of thoughtful discourse, represent two of the many blessings that evolution has provided humankind, as this most gentle of men demonstrated. Good for us.

"A soft answer turneth away wrath:

 but grievous words stir up anger."
 - Proverbs 15

Christmas

I pretty much worked my way through college, something that is nigh on to impossible to do these days. It was hard then, particularly on the grade-point average, but I “gradjated” debt free and headed out of the state as fast as I could, eventually ending up in the Haight-Ashbury. That’s a story for another day, though.

My next to the last year of college, I think it was, I worked as janitor at the Chi Omega house on the Fayetteville campus of the University of Arkansas. My princely emolument was ten dollars a week plus meals. That sufficed to live on and in addition to the pay, I was privileged, each day, to greet some of the most beautiful girls on campus. A few of them even returned my greeting. All in all, I was a fairly lucky guy.

Lucky yes, wealthy no, those were years in which discretionary income was a distant dream. I got by. That was all.

Then, that year, the mid-term break came and we all prepared to leave for the holidays. I gave the sorority house a final dusting, emptied the trash, swept up, and reported to the house mother. I seem to remember her name was “Mother Mann,” a nice lady but strict. I suppose she had to be. Anyway, she handed me my wages in a white envelope and we prepared to say our goodbyes. “You might check what’s in the envelope,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to think we had made a mistake.

I did, and my mouth must have dropped, for she smiled. “Yes,” she said, “thirty dollars. We pay you each week whether school is in session or not.”

And there they were: three crisp new ten-dollar bills, a fortune those days. It was the first time in my life, at nearly 21-years of age, that I was able to buy Christmas presents for my family with my own money, a privilege I’ve never forgotten and a Christmas I’ll always remember. It was just one of the miracles that the holiday season can generate.

The next year, I held a more respectable job, albeit sans the bonus of attendant female pulchritude. I did drafting for the campus Editorial Service and wound up, at $1.50 an hour, the highest paid student help on campus. I did it in the afternoons and tended a local bar at night, living “pretty high on the hog,” as they say. I’ve always had Christmas money for the years since.

During those years, I dined atop one of the World Trade Center towers when they still stood, and during a long-ago scuba dive, I floated out over the Grand Cayman wall and stared at where it dropped for three miles before hitting the ocean floor. I remember the awe of walking to the crest of Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg and looking across the field to where, as William Faulkner said, “For every Southern boy … there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863.”

Yep, I’ve been blessed to see many wonderful things over the years, but nothing ever filled me with more amazement and pride as a long-ago Christmas when Mother Mann handed me that little white envelope.

Doesn't take much sometimes.

To Serve

Near the Cleveland County, Arkansas community of Woodlawn, a small isolated cemetery contains two graves whose tombstones stand scarcely 50 feet apart. Both are military markers, erected sometime during the 20^th Century, identifying veterans of the American Civil War.

One identifies George W. Harris of the First Indiana Cavalry. A unit that occupied and defended my hometown of Pine Bluff from Confederate forces in 1863, and participated in the Battle of Helena, Arkansas on July 4 of that year.

The other tombstone identifies William M. Coats of the 26^th Arkansas Infantry. That unit was present but not used at the Battle of Prairie Grove, AR, and took part in the Battle of Jenkins Ferry and other actions of the ill-fated Camden Expedition by federal forces under General Steele.

These men were my maternal great-grandfathers. Neither owned slaves. Both farmed and raised families in the rolling land of that part of the state. I'm sure that provided only a minimal existence at the time.

Tombstone of
George Harris

Little is known of George Harris except that he served in the war, his first wife died young, and he re-married. It is said that his son, my maternal grandfather, didn’t get on well with the second wife.

 

William Coats

Of William Coats, a bit more information exists. My grandmother related to me once that her he had told her of the danger he faced, from roving bands of brigands he called “gray legs,” who preyed on former soldiers returning home. He termed it a particularly dangerous part of his experience as a soldier.

What made these men, from the same neighborhood and similar backgrounds, choose whom to serve? I asked my grandmother this once. Her answer? “Well,” she said, seeming to be surprised that I would ask, “Poppa was a Democrat, and Mr. Harris was a Republican." One can only hope that the differences never again become so extreme in our country.

His obituary stated that Great-Grandpa Coats died suddenly of a heart attack. It also stated that his dream was to be a minister, but the demands of raising a family confined that to a part-time endeavor. It stated that he was a well-respected man, and, in an odd bit of phrasing, “… never took part in any of the neighborhood brawls.”

Good for him, whatever that meant.

Old Souls

I'm ashamed to say I'd never gotten around to reading "Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol. So ... I'm listening to it on audio as I drive. Today, I'm travelling overland from Lonoke, AR to Pine Bluff, my home town, so I'll be listening. I'll travel mostly through flat, desolate land farmed by absentee owners. I’ll also pass near a maximum-security prison where we have always housed "death-row" inmates, or those for whom we deemed "social-death" was not sufficient. Farm-land, waste-land, or dead-land, take your pick. Its identity disappeared long ago.

I'll pass through land where long-dead souls toiled under the lash in brutal weather and inhumane conditions as what conservatives now want to call "guest workers." Later, they were called "sharecroppers," a term that bespoke a partnership that hardly existed in the harsh economy of the Arkansas Delta. The main things they shared were poverty and indignity. Today, those workers are gone, replaced by behemoth machines with multiple tires and implements as wide as a hobby-farm barn. The inhabitants are gone and the land won't even support the skeletal remains of what years ago were towns of value.

When I get to Gethsemane, once a community with two small groceries but now just an empty gash in the land—pronounced locally as "Gessymane,” I'll turn off the Bluetooth, slow, listen, and see if any souls will speak to me.

She left years ago. We can only
hope it was for a better place.

Recently, I mentioned the country grocery store my parents owned. Started me thinking. What was it like, back in the day, to run or depend on such a business? Here are some things I remember.

- Daddy cutting perfect slices of bologna and “lunch-meat” with a butcher knife. Later in life, he purchased a used slicing machine. It was faster, but no more accurate.

- People purchased one roll of toilet tissue at time. No worries about running out. Last year’s Sear’s Catalog was always on standby.

- The old folks untying their money from a pocket handkerchief.

- Nothing was priced. The customers who shopped there bought so little that they knew the cost of everything.

- When someone purchased a box of sanitary napkins, Daddy would immediately place it in a separate grocery sack while they continued to shop, a quiet display of modesty lost in the fog of history.

- Families stopping by on their way to town on Saturday morning. The girls wore their second-best skirts and the boys’ hair would be oiled and roached. Faces would be scrubbed until they shone like glass.

- The store stayed open until nearly midnight on Saturdays as people did their shopping for the week or maybe the month. We would fall asleep listening to the sounds of “The Grand Ole Opry” drifting in from the store radio. Groups would gather outside, and once a woman sliced another’s arm with a razor over a “man-squabble.”

In mid-afternoon, there was no business. Daddy would curl up on the store’s counter and nap, If a customer came in, they would wake him and make their purchase. Then he’d curl up again.

- In mid-morning, selected salesman and tradesmen on break would gather in the store, around an old pot-bellied stove in winter, and enjoy themselves. They would swap lies, stories, and rumors. When their voices dropped, my mother, back in the house, would know they were telling jokes and threaten to “take a broom after them.” She never did, though.

- An old woman lived at the end of the road that ran by the store. My sister and I carried groceries and old newspapers to her. She gave us roses, in season, for my mother. She was the oldest person I could imagine, really ancient. I imagined later in life that she might have even been born into slavery. Then I found her on a census role. She was about 70 when we were kids … like I say, really ancient.

- In the summer and fall, the whole family would turn out for “cotton-picker” or “cotton-chopper” trucks. That, though, is a story for another day.

Bet my sister could add to this under “comments” if someone encouraged her.

Our store and home in later years.

Simple Gifts

My folks owned and ran a country grocery store just south of Pine Bluff, Arkansas for 40 years. There wasn’t much separation of life and work for us. You walked through a door in our kitchen into the back of the grocery. We knew all the customers, save for the occasional stranger stopping for gas. The regulars consisted mostly of the elderly and working poor. They ran monthly credit accounts and settled on payday or “old-age pension day," as it was known back then. My sister and I perfected our skills in driving by transporting many of them to and from our little store.

Each year about this time, my daddy would order Christmas presents for our customers. One year it might be a bag of assorted nuts, another a box of chocolate covered cherries. When the customers came to the store in December, they would hang around waiting for their present. Sometimes Daddy would pretend to forget and keep them waiting. I thought that was a bit uncalled for, even as a young child. My mother would often chide him for it. He always came through with a smile, though.

Don’t get me wrong, Daddy wasn’t a mean person, just a tad mischievous at times, probably as a result of boredom more than any trace of unkindness. No, he was a generous man. Many is the  time I’ve seen him load a sack with groceries for a family stopping in dire need of food but with no money. When a tornado ravaged our community in 1947, killing 32 people, he gave away the contents of our store to the surviving victims and went bankrupt for a spell.

Now, I think back on it and wonder for how many of those customers, it was the only Christmas present they received. I wonder if they kept it displayed with pride until the 25^th arrived. I wonder how many rationed the contents well into the new year, how many may have passed them on to families poorer, even, than they.

Those were different times back then, times when the simplest of gifts might seem a miracle to some family ... times when businesses existed for more than just profits and power.

Trifle, treasure, or
 just the thought?

Holiday Giving

Looking back at my grade-school years, I remember that Christmas was probably a happier time for some than for others. The school I attended was what we might call today “socially bi-polar.” Kids from the wealthiest neighborhood in the city attended, as did so-called “bus-kids” who were the country kids of whom some (not all, for I was one) represented families ranging from the poor to the destitute. Of course, we mingled with no African-American kids. That’s not what they called them in those days, and besides, they had their own school, separate but equal. After all, they had excellent teaching materials, the best … forwarded to them after our schools had finished with them, having received new and updated ones.

Anyway. Christmas could be cruel in ways. In class each year, we drew names and exchanged presents. The maximum amount to be spent was fifty cents. It doesn’t sound like much now but back then one could buy a nifty little present at the five-and-dime for that amount. I seem to remember that a loaf of bread cost around fifteen cents then and a pound of baloney ten, so the four-bit max was a struggle for some families. One year, a close friend of mine’s name was drawn by the poorest girl in class. On the “exchange day,” she proudly presented to my friend a five-cent card of bobby pins, wrapped up in colored paper.

After Christmas, there was the “present report.” The richest kids reported receiving expensive toys. My group reported normal toys. The next down the social ladder reported receiving everyday clothes. Next came apples, nuts, and/or candy. The poorest just stared at their hands and prayed to whatever god would listen that they wouldn’t be called on.

The memories stuck with me and fortune gave me a wife who shared my thoughts on holiday gift-giving. Shortly after we were married, she was teaching elementary school for $4,800 a year, and chose, that year, to spend part of her salary to buy one of her students, who had been the recipient of ridicule about her ragged shoes, a new pair quietly delivered during a recess. She said the look on the girl’s face was better than any Christmas present she had ever received.

That’s why, this year, we’ll continue to give to charity instead of to ourselves.

Bless us all.
Remember,
the value is in
the thought.

Morning Thoughts: War

My thoughts this morning begin with Pearl Harbor and shift to the Battle of the Bulge, particularly to a sad unit from Camp Robinson, AR, near where I live. Two memories stand out. The first is from a stranger whose statement appears in “The American Experience”:

“Our Infantry training regiment at Camp Robinson, Arkansas, was about halfway through its 17-week training cycle in late December, 1944, when we fell out for roll call one morning and half the men weren't there. We found out later that members of Companies A and B had been shipped to what became known as the Battle of the Bulge (presumably during the night). I was in D Company and we and C Company remained. We finished training and, because the European war was winding down by then, we all were sent to the Pacific theater, where I stayed for another 18 months, but fortunately missed combat.”

M.H.

Highland Park, IL

The second I heard many times from my father-in-law, the Late Robert Julius Cole, a rifleman in the 313^th Regiment of the 79^th Infantry Division. He told how his unit was pulled from the front lines a short time before the Germans launched their attack on December 16, 1944 during one of the coldest winters ever recorded in eastern France. His unit was replaced, he said, by “some boys from Camp Robinson,” who were ill-trained and had never seen battle. The unit was virtually destroyed on the first day of the offensive. “They never knew what hit them and what was left of the unit was sent back home.” He always maintained that the Germans knew, somehow, that a green unit had replaced a seasoned one at that precise spot.

This was a little over four years from the day Pearl Harbor suffered the surprise attack. Who knew on December 7, 1941 how many young men would be thrown into the meat grinder of war before it all ended?

"I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve," – is a line by the character playing Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto in the American film Tora! Tora! Tora!, based on the Pearl Harbor attack. There is no evidence that the admiral ever said it, but it was a great bit of screenplay. What Yamamoto did write, however, was, "This war will give us much trouble in the future. The fact that we have had a small success at Pearl Harbor is nothing. The fact that we have succeeded so easily has pleased people. I do not think it is a good thing to whip up propaganda to encourage the nation. People should think things over and realize how serious the situation is."

We should all, perhaps, memorize that line.

Awakening a giant?