My Redacted Life: Chapter Four

An air of tension existed in the workplace of the company I had joined, and I didn’t create all of it. It was there when I arrived. It did seem to worsen after I came, although I had little contact with the production staff. After a couple of weeks, it dawned on me. The company, and thus the staff, was “snowed under” with work. In fact, the staff faced what seemed like an impossible mission.

Here is a bit of background. The job facing the staff was the production of 17 reports having to do with planning projects of several Arkansas cities. Some were small background reports such as an analysis of various neighborhoods or a documentation of housing conditions. Then there were the much larger plans themselves. Most of the documents contained folded maps.

A local “blueprint” company printed the individual pages of reports. The staff collated the reports, punched the pages, and bound them into final products. The federal government was paying for the documents, so a strict format ruled, with no exceptions.

How did such a young company wind up with such a work load? Simple, the country and the state were serious about planning in those days. Arkansas even had an office of planning. Actually, I think it still funds one, those funds having long ago been removed from anything pertaining to planning or collective strategies, to a highly obfuscated line in the budget of the governor’s office.

Arkansas even produced a comprehensive state plan in the 1930s. That was the last one of its kind and faced universal disregard, a fact that would not surprise anyone familiar with our state’s current standing on any grand scale of progress.

Anyway, the office of planning had a requirement in those days that one authoring a planning document funded by the government had to bear the title, “Planner in Charge.” This generally required membership in the American Institute of Planning, a title most easily obtained by the acquisition of a master’s degree in urban and regional planning.

Tom Hodges and Jim Vines carried this designation. Our company was now completing, as a subcontractor, a number of projects for a firm that had no Planner-In-Charge.

Now, one can begin to see why such a newly formed company suddenly had such a workload. Further, it had a staff facing a task for which it had neither the experience nor resources to accomplish. As my Sainted Mother would have said, “Their asses were working button holes.”

Tom and Jim were on them daily for progress. Any mistake lessened the chance for success. Any lessening of the chances for success created more stress. Any stress increased the chances for a mistake. And so it went.

There was no surprise, therefore, when Tom and Jim called me into Tom’s office and asked if I would agree to help complete this massive assignment. I had been working with the receptionist/typist in proofing and working with the planners in assembling data. Now, if I would agree, I could help in the actual assembling of final documents.

I agreed, with both alacrity and sincerity, to help in anyway I could. Little did I know that the seeds of a strange future had just sprouted.

A new future takes flight.