My Redacted LIfe: Chapter Ten (Cont._2)

As I went about my business in 1971, the country and the world began to change. Some changes affected me. Some didn’t. Some would later.

I approached, but hadn’t quite reached, the average income in the United States of $10,600 per year. By the year 2018, that would equal about $65,700 per year. The “sailor home from the sea” was making progress.

Had I been paying attention, I would have noticed that a young upstart named Fred Smith, with ties to Little Rock, had developed a wild dream of starting a business offering overnight delivery of packages first by air, then by ground. “Crazy,” the leaders of Little Rock said. “Hmm,” the leaders of Memphis said. “That would sure be something,” those of us said who had been using the Greyhound Bus system for that purpose.

Up in Northwest Arkansas, things were quiet. The architect Edward Durrell Stone, a native, had once described, Fayetteville, the key city, as a “hotbed of tranquility.” Aside from occasional rowdy football games, it still was. But not far from Fayetteville, an obscure retailer had gone public with his company in 1970. Its initial stock price was $16.50 per share. Had one purchased 100 shares at that price then, by 2018 stock splits would have created 204,800 shares worth more than $17 million, with annual dividends reaching around $400,000.

The Ozarks would never be the same.

Ah well. Back at the apartment, I was going to work every day in an exciting, vibrant city in a respected, by most, profession and was moving up the ladder of success with amazing speed. I was making new friends in the neo-hippie community called Riverside Drive. An old college classmate named Cooper Burley introduced me around, and I was considered a close-enough neighbor to be deemed socially acceptable, particularly if I provided an occasional jug of wine and abided by the stricture that the street was a closed community and society at large had no reason whatsoever to even know of its existence.

Cooper had eased out from under his legal problems through a combination of luck, confusion, and family connections, mostly those of the young girl he had once quartered and whose parents saved the couple with understanding that she would not cross the Arkansas River Bridge into Little Rock without parental supervision.

The Vietnam war dragged on, even though 60 percent of Americans had turned against it. Returning vets were, as I did, joining a group calling itself “Vietnam Veterans Against the War.” The stage was set for disruption. None of it bothered me, though. I had laid down “my sword and shield,” for a gentler life, a life that would be nothing but a fast ride to success.

Beneath this peaceful surface though, swam a political creature, spawned in 1971 and destined to grow to city-destroying proportions with an insatiable appetite for destruction. In that fateful year, the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States upheld, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education 402 U.S the concept of using school busing to speed up the racial integration of public schools in the United States.

Rarely, in American history, had an event so created the epitome of the earlier mentioned “Miles Law,” or, where you stand depends on where you sit. No attempt will be made herein to broach the social implications or equitable justification of the case. Those discussions still divide Americans.

Suffice it to say that the ruling, and its aftermath, would have one of the greatest impacts on urban development patterns this county has ever seen.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Ten

My first year of work was progressing smoothly. My commute to work was short one, maybe ten minutes once I managed the left turn against the heavy morning traffic on Cantrell. My apartment building stood next to a small white church of indeterminate affiliation. I could wind behind it and sit on the legendary “Big Rock” overlooking the Arkansas River.

When it was holding services, the music emanating from the church featured an electric guitarist who could finger-pick hymns like Chet Atkins. Wednesday service consisted mainly of music, nice music if you liked old hymns played with a bouncy rhythm. On free nights, I would sit on the Big Rock with a bottle of wine, enjoying the music, watching the river flowing “safe to sea,” and musing upon how far I had come in such a short length of time.

Someone fixed me up with a date involving a woman who worked for a rival firm. We hit it off as friends, but not as “potentials.” At least, though, I had someone with whom to attend more formal affairs that arose, though rarely.

Friend Jackie didn’t fit that bill. As far as I knew, she didn’t own, or even wish to own, a dress. In fact, I don’t remember ever having seen her in anything but jeans, ragged jeans at that. What she lacked in wardrobe, she made up for in other talents. Let’s leave it at that. How I met her was sort of interesting.

As I mentioned, making a left turn from our apartment complex was tricky during rush hour traffic. By turning right and proceeding down the short street called Riverside Drive, one could find a more advantageous route. So, I was familiar with the stretch of modest homes though I knew nothing about the people who lived there. I thought very little about them until one morning I glanced at an article in the Arkansas Gazette and saw that I did, indeed, know one of the residents.

His name was Cooper Burley, and he had been arrested, along with an underage girl who was living with him. He hadn’t been arrested for harboring the young girl. They didn’t get so much involved with that sort of thing back then unless it was related to something more serious. No, they had both been arrested because of a small garden they were tending in the flat portion of their back yard, just before it fell away to the river.

Not, tomatoes, not okra, not corn, not anything edible were they growing. If I simply say that the crop was for smoking, one can get the picture. The newspaper account gave the address where the crime had been uncovered. It was less than a city block from where I lived.

I knew Cooper from college. We had been good acquaintances then, not what you would call friends, but I had gotten to know him. He would have fit well into my old neighborhood in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco. I sometimes missed the frantic peacefulness of those times, so that afternoon, assuming that any illegal products had been removed from the premises, I walked to the address.

An old Corvette Sing Ray was parked in the yard. Lights were on in the house, so I figured that the miscreant had posted bail. I knocked on the door, saw the edge of a ratty curtain flicker, and then heard footsteps coming toward the door. It opened, and Cooper stood before me.

I said, “Do you remember me?”

“Hell yes,” he said, welcoming me in. “Did you know they took my pot crop away?” He used the edge of his hand to push his eyeglasses atop his nose, a gesture that I remembered from college. He shook his head, then ran his fingers through long, greasy blond hair. “They took my old lady away, too, man, her goddam parents did. Have a seat. You want a beer? We’ll have to go get some. You got any money?” He exhibited not the slightest indication that he knew it had been nearly six years since he had last seen me.

Thus, I was to become acquainted with Riverside Drive, a quiet spot on earth that housed mysteries untold.

Would it ever
become a legal crop?

My Redacted Live: Chapter Nine (Cont._4)

In 1971, the Great Society Program was drawing to a close. It marked the end of a massive effort to address America’s problems with money. Some would say it was a great failure. Some would say it was a great but errant humanitarian effort to help the “least of those among us.”

A Truman-era bureaucrat named Rufus Miles perhaps stated it best in an observation that would become known as Miles’s Law: “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” The poor are just poor, some would argue, nothing we can do about it. They deserve it. Over the years, though, I would find that it is easy to denounce our poor “from a warm room on a full stomach,” as Alistair Cook described the source of H.L. Mencken’s acerbic writing.

At any rate, I was learning to write grants. This is a procedure, as best I can describe it, that involves a highly sophisticated and literary begging technique. The trick isn’t to procure funds for a need, but to convince the dispensers of succor that history would judge them wise and proper for the grants they chose to issue.

At any rate, it would send me into some of the poorest and neediest neighborhoods in our state. I would spend many an evening in a small, white frame church building in the middle of an Arkansas Delta summer. There would be no air-conditioning and the mosquitoes would be flying through open windows in formation, like squadrons of the 8^th Air Force over Berlin. From time to time, one would accidentally hit the makeshift podium and knock in over. You had to watch out for them. There is a legend that one once carried off a baby, but I don’t think this is true. I heard it was just a small puppy.

Amway, I would be the only white face in the crowd of earnest folks in desperate need of a source of clean water or some other human need. It would be one of many communities in our state that history was passing over in the new age.

You can’t see those places from the towers of Manhattan or the fancy homes in Georgetown.

I was good at begging, and I was getting better at writing, so I enjoyed some success. I was still hitching rides to planning commission meetings with one or the other of my bosses. On free evenings, I was enjoying myself, mostly reading or picking guitar. Then there was my sometime friend Jackie with her wonderful singing voice and other special benefits.

Oh, and speaking of music, I was becoming a regular at the folk music gathering I mentioned before. This was the group called “The Rackensack Society,” a diverse group of amateur musicians ranging in quality from beginner to near-professional quality. They formed a jolly, welcoming, gracious group. After a few meetings, I even noticed something that struck me as strange.

Some background: There is a large Air Force base in Jacksonville, Arkansas, oddly named “The Little Rock Air Force Base.” There is an enduring legend that the state of Arkansas agreed to adopting modern city planning statutes only as a condition for its location, but that is a story for another day.

What struck me strange back then was that several airmen from that military base were regulars at the Rackensack meetings and that the other members welcomed them and treated them as equals.

Now one may wonder why I thought it strange that a social group of citizens would welcome military personnel into their midst. Just consider my background, particularly the fact that I spent the last portion of my enlistment at Charleston, South Carolina. Had I tried to join a social group there, I would have likely faced the wrath of the local police who hated African-Americans, servicemen, and non-tourist strangers in almost equal portions.

I was living in a new world and I was enjoying it. I had a good job, I felt I was doing some good things, I was making new friends, and Little Rock was a hell of a lot better place to live than Charleston.

I’ll get to the new friends later.  

Cool ... or what?

My Redacted Life: Chapter Nine (Cont._3)

It was funny that they never questioned. I guess centuries of subjugation had prepared them for anything. Even losing their homes. Richard Nixon occupied the White House and the Urban Renewal Program was scheduled for extinction. Pine Bluff was to be one of the last recipients and we were preparing the plans.

Those plans included the demolition of a functioning African-American neighborhood, albeit one with definite signs of blight. Once demolished, the area would be rebuilt along the lines of a modern subdivision. This meant that the functioning system of lots and blocks would disappear. In its place would be an illogical pattern of cul-de-sacs and winding street patterns resembling a handful of spaghetti thrown on the floor , prohibiting any degree of social cohesion and logical traffic flow.

There were two teams of us, most hired as temporary "social cassocks" whose job it was to evaluate each house, and determined its fitness to survive. That was a cruel joke. None would survive. Things just didn't work that way. The old ways were out and new ones in.

The owners didn't complain about the intrusion. What would have been the use? This was 1971 and what were still often called "coloreds" were used to being held harmless from the planning of their lives. If any of them saw what might be coming, they didn't say. But, had they listened, they would have heard the "federal bulldozer" warming its engine.

Richard Nixon, for all his other problems of being on the wrong side of history, saved their neighborhood. He ended the program.

Jean's Addition in Pine Bluff still exists as a neighborhood, quite a beloved one, I was to find out much later. It has new problems now, serious problems, but the federal bulldozer is not one of them.

I was beginning to learn that my profession was one of great complexity. If you wanted to do right, you'd better first make sure you weren't doing wrong.

My Redacted Life: Another Break

A few more words on Don Zimmerman and then I’ll quit. So many tributes will flow this week about his contributions to cities. An act, though, that stands out in my mind was one involving simple humanity toward another person.

On October 18, 1991, one of our country’s most venerable assets, the Arkansas Gazette newspaper ceased to exist, bought out by a rival. The beat reporter for North Little Rock was an old friend and neighbor of mine (we ran the 1980 Arkansas Marathon together, believe it or not), John Woodruff.

For reasons known only to the owners, John fell prey to the axe and wasn’t retained by the new publication, the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette. This must have been a blow to the man who told me once about the “old days” when he would arrive late from a City Council meeting, file his piece, and sit around the old Gazette building to feel it tremble as the presses began to roll. John was a true journalist of the old school, and one who loved his profession.

In addition, he was a rare talent and one hell of a fine person. Don Zimmerman saw this and hired John to head up communications for the Arkansas Municipal League. That proved to be one of the great marriages in the League’s history.

Not long after, I found myself reporting to my old friend who was now editor of the League’s monthly magazine, City and Town.

I’ll never forget my first submittal. John called me over to the League’s office and handed me a proof. It looked as if someone had dipped a handful of worms in red ink and let them crawl over the sheet.

Part of it was due to bad writing. Part of it was John letting me know who was boss, despite our long friendship. The magazine was no "office rag." but a serious work of journalism. Thereafter, he gave me a lot of latitude, a gift that has continued to this day. I still cherish the long talks we had in his old office on the ground floor. John, like Don, was someone who could make you better by just talking to you.

John later contracted what would be a life-ending cancer. Through his ordeal and ultimate end, Don Zimmerman stuck by John’s side more like a parent than an employer. His short speech at John’s memorial service was eloquent, fitting, and moving.

We will never know how much of Don’s decision to hire John was based on careful analysis of needs and talents, and how much was based on the simple human act of helping rescue another human from the depths of rejection.

Let’s just say it all worked out for the best. Now, each year, an Arkansan who has contributed much to Arkansas cities receives the John Woodruff award, initiated in grateful respect by Don Zimmerman.

Don loved the slogan, Great Cities Make a Great State. I’m sure he would love a companion slogan: Great People make a Great Organization.

At least I think so. Don Zimmerman and John Woodruff proved it. In fact, the entire staff of the Arkansas Municipal League stands as a living witness.

My Redacted life: A break

Sometimes the present invades the past. Sometimes the two merge. I must take the day to mourn the passing of a friend, a good friend. It’s what unmanned me so yesterday.

Don Zimmerman was more than a friend to me. He could be a mentor, story-teller, historian, confidant, and fine boss. Some people pass through your life. He altered mine, for the better, though some would say he didn’t have far to go.

He directed the Arkansas Municipal League for more than 40 years. I guess I first saw him around 1971, and each year thereafter. About 20 years ago, he became my boss. He wasn’t a full-time boss but hired me as a planning consultant for the Municipal League. I would be available to visit cities and help with planning and zoning issues. We also sat through many legislative committee hearings together. And for those 20 years, I’ve written a monthly column on planning issues for the League magazine: City and Town.

It ranks as the most precious part of my long career.

I’ve been free to do additional work for cities wanting to go beyond the one day provided by the League. That made me very successful. I own a huge debt to Don Zimmerman for the friendship and assistance provided over the years.

Don died yesterday, from complications caused by a stroke. He was only a year older than I. Arkansas will never be the same. Arkansas cities have suffered an irretrievable loss. Our cities will suffer the impact of his passing for years.

Don’s achievements transcend my meager abilities of description. One stands out, though. I’m brash enough to think it was among his very favorites, for a number of reasons.

When Ronald Reagan abruptly cut states and cities off from what was known as “General Revenue Sharing” with no plan or policy to soften the blow, our cities faced bankruptcy. They were choosing which police officers and firefighters to cut from the payroll first. Some faced shutting down entirely.

Don, in his typical “let’s fix the problem” frame of mind, helped assemble a bi-partisan (yes, “bi-partisan”—I know it sounds strange these days) coalition that convinced our state legislature to enact a law allowing what was known as the “local option sales tax.”

Many consider the sales tax as regressive, but that isn’t the issue. The issue was that the law saved Arkansas cities and Don Zimmerman left this earth laying justifiable claim to the results.

He left this earth with countless more claims to glory, ones that I’m sure his friends will recount. One obscure accomplishment that won’t make the news is his lifting an obscure urban planning consultant from the depths of obscurity into a position of some minor respect.

For those friends and supporters who believe in a heaven for good people, be assured that Don is there, and already preparing plans to annex the underworld, incorporate it as a city, and straighten it out.

Thanks for everything,
old friend You did well.

.

Break

Woke up with a hangover from just thinking about the little community down the street from where I lived, in 1971. Back Monday.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Nine (Cont._2)

As 1971progressed at the consulting firms, life became somewhat normal. I recall some interesting vignettes, but the telling of them wouldn’t past the Political Correctness Police today.

For example, the assistant drafter was a quite attractive woman with a knockout figure and a bit of a strange sense of humor. She was the kind of woman who, when she walked past a man on the sidewalk, would cause him to seem to remember something he had forgotten, swivel about, and stare at her until she moved out of sight, just imagining things. She knew it too, and wasn’t above adding a little extra “sway and strut” at such times to spice up the torment.

Pantsuits were then a popular attire for women in the marketplace, having only recently been approved by a hegemonic male power structure. The drafter had a beautiful black one suitable for both the workplace and a funeral parlor visitation. She wore it periodically and looked sharp in it.

Sometimes, though, the head drafter would take an opportunity to give her a hard time over some detail or other. You could then set your watch.

Next day, the assistant would waltz into the drafting room wearing the top of the pantsuit as a mini-skirt. That day would not be one suitable for precise work demanding a steady hand at the drafting pen, or whatever. The head drafter would spend the day babbling and trying to stop his hand from shaking. And the outfit lost its appropriateness for the funeral parlor. One look and the deceased, if male, would surely arise from the dead.

As I say, she had a strange sense of humor. Other times, she appeared on the verge of tears. When I asked her one such day if something was the matter, her eyes filled and she informed me that her husband had left the day before for his two-week summer outing with the state’s national guard.

When I, apparently, failed to show the proper degree of commiseration, she informed me that I had no idea what it was like to have a loved one away in the military.

I nodded understanding and we never broached the subject again. In fact, we got on very well. Once, she even accompanied me to a “Happy Hour” movie: McCabe and Mrs. Miller. It turned out that Warren Beatty, even though just on screen, had the power to give her a real case of the vapors. Since Julie Christie caused a concomitant male effect on me, we were well-suited for the outing.

As the movie progressed, and some horrific scenes (by the standards of that time) began to flash, she would grab my hand and hold it.

As Sainted Mother would have put it, that just scared the “pure-dee” hell out of me. We both forgot it, I suppose, as the ending credits began to roll, but I never invited her to the movies again.

When I related the experience to my friend Jackie, from down the street, she snorted, laughed, and winked. Then she said, “You’re a goddam naïve fool, but I’ll be your friend anyway.” Then she began to sing in her wonderfully melodic voice, “I feel the earth move under my feet.”

I was beginning to discover that life was more complicated out in the free world. 

             

My Redacted Life: Chapter Nine

Things settled down for my planning career as 1971 moved along. Warm weather and the scheduled demolition of my apartment building had necessitated a move to another apartment, this one on Carpetbagger Hill, overlooking the Arkansas river. It was an old place, but it suited my purposes. It was furnished, clean, and large enough for my possessions and me. Best of all, it had an air conditioner.

On its east was another apartment building owned and managed by the same company. It was newer, unfurnished, and more expensive. I wasn’t quite there yet, financially, and far from one of the fancy places with a swimming pool.

I was happy, but I did have to drive to work. It was close enough to Downtown that I could walk on a nice crisp fall day, but I had to find a to place to park on most of the time. I chose a lot on East Sixth Street where a person could park for 25 cents a day. It was six or seven blocks from the office, but I didn’t mind. I procured a couple of rolls of quarters and was in business.

Actually, I enjoyed the walk. On morning, as I stood at the traffic light at Main and Fifth Streets, a man taking the morning air joined me, both of us waiting for the light to change. I looked over at him and my breath caught.

It was Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. He was one of the few senators who had expressed concern about escalating the war in Vietnam. He also enjoyed the reputation of a true statesman, having initiated the Fulbright scholarship program that awarded thousands of scholarships to American and International students each year, designed to promote international relations. He was the longest serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

And he was standing alongside me, just another benefit of walking the streets of a great city. I mumbled a hello. He nodded toward the two new high-rise office buildings and said, “This is a becoming a nice city, isn’t it?”

I agreed as the light changed. “It’s an honor to see you, sir,” I mumbled, so much for making a great impression. He took off in a slow “fast-walk” and faded into the urban fabric, a giant among Americans. We mourn the increasing dearth of his type.

On a more entertaining scale, I was walking on another day when an old, beat-up car painted in the historic fashion of an Arkansas State Trooper vehicle pulled up to a traffic signal. As its hood bounced on long-dead springs, I looked inside. There, to my amazement, were actors Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty, along with Dinah Shore, who was the then-girlfriend of Reynolds.

Odd? Not really. I knew they were in town for the filming of the movie, White Lightening. Still, it made a morning walk more interesting.

Time passed. As I continued to learn my craft, a young, newly-graduated young woman with long red hair and a royal smile was undertaking her first year as a teacher in her hometown of Lonoke, Arkansas, about 20 miles from where I lived.

As for me, as the year rolled by, I was keeping the sometime company of an odd-featured woman who could sing like Carol King, drink beer like a sailor, and wasn’t above providing additional benefits to special friends if and when she chose. She lived nearby, on a small and notorious strip of neglected street that led west from our apartment past a small white church, then past a row of modest but charming rental houses, eventually curving back to where Lincoln Boulevard transitioned into Cantrell Road.

Riverside Drive I think they called it, a strange place out of the view of prying eyes, maybe four or five hundred feet in total length, and strangely populated. It would play a minor, but nostalgia-producing part in my life.

J. William Fulbright
We won't see his likes
again anytime soon.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Eight: (Cont._4)

Life wasn’t turning out like I had expected. How could I have known that I would be the chief target of the editorial page of the Pine Bluff Commercial for weeks shortly after the birthing of my career? I was a mere lad in 1971 and Paul Greenberg was making literary mincemeat of me.

It went like this. A young reporter named James something or other would report on something. He wasn’t a bad fellow, but desirous, I suppose, of keeping his boss happy. The next day, Greenberg would take a line or two from the news piece, twist it, or completely fabricate something about it, and light in on me.

That’s something to look forward to every day. And it was all because I didn’t think the city of Pine Bluff should render a person’s entire property useless in order to satisfy a public desire to preserve a greenbelt adjacent to the city.

Greenberg’s MIT source said it didn’t matter. What he thought was proper came first. The editor was also in a liberal state of mind back then. The individual could just give way to the public. He would change positions like a call-girl on a “role-play” assignment later, when he signed on with a conservative newspaper. But that was in the future. Now was now, back then, and it was dreadful.

I’ll wind the tale up here. We stood our ground, and the company would serve as a favorite Greenberg target for years. Herbert Hoover once said that “nobody hates like Bobby Kennedy,” but all I can say is that Herbert Hoover may have never met Paul Greenberg.

We finished the plan. The city adopted it. Much later the city repealed the greenbelt ordinance. I don’t think they ever replaced it and I’ve always thought they would have when we worked on the plan, had such controversy not erupted. Be the time of repeal, Greenberg was off on another kick, pissing and moaning because the government didn’t declare a “VV-Day,” complete with parades, when we finally pulled our troops out of Vietnam.

I tried to turn the experience into an educational “lemonade.” I learned to make friends with journalists and to always tell them the truth, maybe not all at once, but as time passed, and at the critical points. I learned not to charge up a hill with a big sword in my hand unless my client was ahead of me leading the assault.

For everything I’ve written or produced since that time, I have put myself in the mindset that Paul Greenberg and the ghost of his MIT man would read it, analyze it for weaknesses, and use their collective brilliance to editorialize against it. That has helped a great deal in my career.

Finally, I learned that it isn’t enough just to be brilliant in this world, or even a genius. One must temper that intelligence with a consideration of what impact its efforts will have on the public at large.

In short, I lived through the ordeal, albeit with some degree of resentment that I’ve been unable to shed, as the reader may have noticed.

Oh, and here’s a tidbit. The Supreme Court of the United States, by 1992, had fully established that ordinances such as the hallowed greenbelt ordinance of Pine Bluff violated Amendment Five of the United States Constitution. You just can’t regulate away the complete use of a person’s property without just compensation.

To paraphrase a law school article, regulations that eliminate all economically beneficial uses of a property are considered a “regulatory taking.” In Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, the Supreme Court held that when property is rendered worthless by a regulation, such a taking has occurred, regardless of the fact that a legitimate governmental objective led to the regulation.

Odd … I was right and Mr. Pulitzer Prize and Mr. MIT grad were wrong, all along, and I a pitiful product of Arkansas public schools. Go figure. Actually, I’m pretty smart myself.           

To this day, Paul Greenberg has never apologized to me.

Still waiting.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Eight (Cont._3)

1971 wore on and I continued my work at the consulting firm, preparing a park plan for my hometown. Trouble was brewing. Boy, was it.

We had followed the city’s direction and had studied the issues surrounding an existing “greenbelt ordinance” that denied certain property owners any use of property that touched Bayou Bartholomew, a sluggish stream that bordered the city on the south of its urban area. Somehow, it seemed to me, it was excessive to frame the restrictions along property lines. That prevented productive use of portions of a person's property that was to hell and gone from any public need or purpose.

In a public setting, we suggested that the boundaries of the restrictive ordinance be reshaped along an elevation line, assuring both a uniform boundary and a regulatory restriction that only affected unusable parts of a person’s property.

It seemed like a reasonable revision to me. The city got its greenbelt and the property owners got the use of portions of their property that weren’t needed for that greenbelt.

Reasonable it may have been, but all hell was about to break loose nontheless.

As I have mentioned, the editor of the Pine Bluff Commercial, a vicious and talented scribe named Paul Greenberg lay in wait for an opportunity to harass, humiliate, and torment the existing mayor, Offie Lites.

I was to be the vessel for pouring on the fiery rhetoric, a naïve, optimistic young man, totally inexperienced in the intricacies of local politics. I doubt, as well, if my name helped.

The first indication that I was headed for trouble was when a local genius from the city sought me out. Arthur Stern was a brilliant man who had graduated a couple of years after me from the all-white high school in our city. He was an architectural graduate of MIT and attended, I was led to understand, the same synagogue as Mr. Greenberg.

Arthur stormed into our Little Rock office one morning, snarling and frightening the receptionist, and demanding to see, under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, all our notes related to the city’s park plan. The law was fairly new and, rather than argue as to whether a private firm had to follow its mandates on a moment’s notice, we offered up the material. Arthur and the toady he had brought with him began to pour over the material like dogs searching in the grass for a piece of dropped beefsteak. The toady was a former classmate named Tom, whom I had always considered a friend .... until that moment. Life is strange.

As I say, Arthur was a true genius and he was to die young. Following the dictum of De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, I shall refrain from describing the arrogant, insulting, demeaning, and humiliating way that he treated me and my colleagues that morning. In simple terms, the city’s greenbelt ordinance was a modern manifestation of the noblest works of humankind and we were all idiots educated in low-class public colleges if we suggested any alteration. Compromises were for sissies.

To his credit, he never cursed me. In fact, I don’t remember his ever actually calling me by my name. He just took notes, grimaced, and pointed from time to time for something that elicited particular disdain. After what seemed like an hour of agony, he rose and pushed the pile of papers toward me.

“Just wait,” he said, “until the paper gets hold of this.”

And so it began.

It wasn’t my particular dream to have the first appearance of my name in the newspaper as one describing me as a low-class idiot threatening to destroy a city with no more concern than a cow flicking away a horsefly. It left my Sainted Mother in tears, and her sisters in giggles, their having found proof at last of my long-suspected worthlessness.

After all, there it was in the newspaper, and newspapers wouldn’t lie. It got worse when the editor discovered a typo in an early draft of the plan. I had misspelled the work “athlete,” and that offered the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor a chance to spend half of an editorial exalting in a description of me as an untalented Yogi Berra without the good looks.

I, believing in truth, justice, and the American way, stood my ground. It didn’t matter, I was doomed by simple association, but I saw no reason at the time to back down. I looked around for help. Local politicians and the affected property owners were steadfast in support of my recommendations, but nowhere to be seen when the rhetoric ripened.

I saw myself as Will Kane. Greenberg presented me as Norman Bates.

It was about this time that I began having trouble falling to sleep. It would only get worse.

Maybe I should have
stayed in the Navy.

Redacted Life: Chapter Eight (Cont._2)

Here I was, a young planner in 1971, on my first solo assignment and about to incur the wrath of a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial writer. Further, it was an assignment in my own hometown. I think the conflict to come drew its strength from enmity between Paul Greenberg, the journalist, and the Mayor, a man named Offie Lites.

As the African proverb goes, “When the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”

The assignment, as I have mentioned, was to prepare a stand-alone park plan for the city. The city council had previously adopted, as part of its planning, a so-called “Greenbelt Ordinance” designed to perpetuate a band of natural area between the existing urban area and any expansion of the city in coming years.

This concept fell in line with the so-called “garden city movement” a method initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by "greenbelts", containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and agriculture.

It was a sound theory, and the undevelopable nature of the Bayou Bartholomew floodplain lent itself well to the idea. The ordinance that the city council had passed was well-intentioned and supported by precedent.

There was one major flaw in its design, one that would cause me many sleepless nights, and a lifetime of resentment. The limits of the greenbelt weren’t based on elevations, distances from the bayou, or floodplain contours. This would have reserved basically undevelopable land for the greenbelt, placing only minimal restrictions on the use of private property.

That wasn’t the way the ordinance was drawn, though. Instead of reserving land below a certain elevation, the ordinance drew up the greenbelt boundary according to property lines. If a person’s property touched the bayou, the entire property fell within the greenbelt and its use restrictions.

Why was this a problem? Two reasons bear pointing out. First, the use restrictions on land within the greenbelt were severe. The land could only be used for … a greenbelt. That is to say the land couldn’t be used at all, only maintained in its natural state, to be enjoyed by the general public at no expense to themselves.

The second problem created more contention. Why would anyone want to develop a densely vegetated, snake and varmint invested, floodway in the first place? As it turned out, some of the property that bordered the bayou continued past the floodway, then beyond the floodplain boundary, rose up a hill created by eons of erosion, crossed an area of flat, developable land, and terminated at the boundary of the Pine Bluff Country Club golf course.

What might have been the choicest property in the city, property that was in some places far beyond any reasonable outline of a greenbelt, could now only be left in a natural state.

Needless so say, some property owners were pissed. It is needless also to add that some of those property owners were people of means.

After some deliberation, we expressed the opinion that the ordinance intended a sound planning principle, was flawed in design, and would present few problems in a redesign that would maintain the integrity of the greenbelt concept and provide relief to the property owner.

Mayor Lites agreed that the repair job was in order and nodded for us to proceed as we worked on the park plan. The parks director agreed as well.

Paul Greenberg decided that this presented an opportunity to create a crisis from nothing in order to harass the mayor, and perhaps to irritate those associated with the Pine Bluff Country Club, an institution historically closed to members of his faith. He therefore re-invented the Pine Bluff Greenbelt Ordinance, in its original form, as the greatest example of urban planning since Pierre Charles L'Enfant had presented the layout for Washington, D.C.

He immediately established it as a document only slightly less sacred than the nation’s Declaration of Independence.

That set the stage for a confrontation, a confrontation that would, on occasion, make me long for the relative peace of a war zone.

Greenbelts: Nice if you have
the money to pay for them.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Eight

It started with good news. It would end months later with my having learned a great deal about human nature, newspapers, and urban planning. I would learn that there are vicious people in the world who would hate me just for expressing an opinion contrary to theirs. I would learn not to charge up any hill protected by institutions that publish whatever they choose daily, buy ink by the barrel, and paper by the ton.

I would, years later, learn that I had been legally prescient in the course I followed. I would learn that it didn’t make a hell of a lot of difference by then. In short, I would survive the ordeal, but I still carry the scars.

As I say, it started out with good news, double good news. First, my company had learned that my hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas had hired it to prepare a parks plan for the city. Second, my bosses had decided that it was time for me to take the lead on a planning project. A parks plan was ideal for such an intro, for they were pretty straightforward. Or at least they should be. This one proved otherwise.

To prepare such a plan, one first analyzes a city’s population and gauges public sentiment. Next, one analyzes the existing parks system. One then compares the existing system with national standards for acreage allocated to parks, recommended facilities per population, and spatial allocations. One then prepares a draft for consideration by the public and the city government

One needed to be aware of taboos and social restrictions, some racial, some not, some a little of both. For example, some baseball fields, though city-owned, were reserved for the exclusive use of white boys between the ages of 9 and 12. No exceptions. There would be no footfall profaning this sacred soil with the exception of coaches, umpires, and maintenance personnel. Empty fields, unused school grounds, and vacant lots served the other kids.

Armed with this background, I set about my business. Then I learned of an additional angle. I learned what Vaughn Black, the parks director, had meant when he said that he had a problem that involved city government, rich people, and a newspaper editor. He claimed that he faced a real problem.

Did he ever.

His problem also involved the muddy, smelly, wandering floodway known as Bayou Bartholomew. It had been a favorite area of exploration in my youth. Kids could build hideouts there, sneak around within its dense vegetation to smoke pilfered cigarettes, and hunt for snakes until their mischievous hearts were content. Fishing was allowed, but most folks considered consumption of those fish chancy, for the stream was contaminated both by municipal sewage and agricultural pesticides. The poorest of families partook from necessity. Others didn’t.

What was the problem? Its tentacles spread in a number of directions. First, there was an existing municipal ordinance that sought to establish the bayou and its environs as a “greenbelt” marking the end of urban development to the south of the city, at least in the current phase of its development.

Next, there were rich landowners who objected to parts of said ordinance. Then there was mayor, who like any successful mayor who has ever lived, tended to listen when rich folks spoke. Then there was a citizenry that didn’t much care one way or the other.

Finally, there was a newspaper editor named Paul Greenberg. It turned out that he hated Mayor Offie Lites with a long-simmering passion that pre-dated the present storm that was approaching.

In the account that I will relate, the central fact wasn’t that Greenberg detested the mayor. Nor did it center on the apparent belief that controversies, whether real or concocted, could increase, by the fanning and reporting of those controversies, newspaper readership.

It really wasn’t confined to the fact that Greenberg was a mean-spirited soul, governed by situational principles, who never hesitated for a second to use his position as editor to demean, damage, diminish, or destroy a person’s reputation in order to promote his own ends through his editorials.

No.

The real problem was that he was so damned good at it.

Chapter Seven: (Cont._6)

As the weather warmed in late spring of 1971, planners in central Arkansas hosted a conference tor the professional association. I suffered through the daytime events, not understanding much of the deeper topics they covered. Tom and Jim introduced me around to resounding indifference and I just nodded as if I knew everything and everyone.

That evening proved different. There was a paddlewheeler docked on the North Little Rock side of the river and the planning chapter had leased it for the evening. Members brought their spouses for an excursion up the river to the new lock and dam, and back. It was a casual affair, a with drinks and food. Of course I came alone.

The crowd wasn’t rude, just preoccupied as we began our trek. I was, having been a naval coxswain, somewhat interested in the handling of the craft, but that interest had faded before we had passed the “big rock,” a stone outcropping on the river side of Carpetbagger Hill. The crowd gathered into groups and couples, recalling school days, past events, and missing acquaintances.

I leaned on a rail, watched the city glide by, and calculated how long it would be before this lonely, miserable, ordeal ended. Little did I know that I was about to meet one of the planet’s true saints.

A female voice broke the silence. “How are you liking your new job?”

I turned. There stood a diminutive woman in her late twenties with a soft drink in her hand. I knew that we had been introduced, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember who she was. She caught my confusion straight away.

“I’m Linda Vines,” she said, “Jim’s wife. You’re the new planner, aren’t you?”

I confessed my guilt. She said, “It must be a little odd, not to know anyone that is.”

What could I say? She was the boss’s wife. I concurred.

“You’re just out of the service?”

“Yes ma’am, the Navy.”

“Jim tells me you were in Vietnam.”

“Yes ma’am.” To my relief, she didn't give me "the look" that I had come to expect. She just smiled and nodded. “Now cut out that ‘ma’am’ stuff," she said, "I’m just Linda.”

My gosh, someone was talking to me. She asked about my family, my military experience, college, and hobbies. It turned out that we both had an interest in literature. We delved straight away into that, and soon discovered we had a mutual affection for F. Scott Fitzgerald.

 It was turning into a magical trip. It seemed no time at all before the craft was swinging in its long semi-circle to begin the journey back. I found myself expounding on my take that Fitzgerald used the exchange of water that powered the funicular railroad in Tender is the Night as a metaphor for the Pygmalion-like transfer of strength to the character Nicole from Dick, her lover and psychiatrist. I couldn’t believe that I was telling this tiny stranger all this and she wasn’t laughing.

Off in the distance I could hear Jim “holding court” with some story. He wasn’t missing her, so we continued to talk until the lights of Downtown Little Rock came into view. What a pleasant trip it had been.

I’ve thought of that night countless times and about how a small kindness to a lonely stranger can make such a difference in one’s life. I could never be as fine a person as Linda Vines, but I have tried to make strangers feel welcome whenever I thought they might need to see a welcoming face. Maybe, just maybe, I have affected someone along the way. I certainly hope so.

The years were not kind to the Vines family. They weighed heavily on Linda. The last time I saw her, she had shrunk to an even smaller size, but her face demonstrated the steel within her that kept her going through it all.

Long before that, I sat down one day and wrote her a long note recalling that night and the excursion up the river. I had become successful in my own right by then, but I recounted to her how miserably lonely I had been at that long-ago time and how her show of empathy had comforted and taught. I mailed the note to her, and I’m glad I did. She was facing Job-like trials at the time.

Jim called me a few days later. He said the note made her cry, and he thanked me for it.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Seven (Cont._5)

As 1971 wore on, I began to learn lessons about urban planning that weren’t in the books I was reading. In fact, I learned a big lesson late that spring. It has stayed with me until this day, although a unified solution still evades.

It concerned a city in the northwest area of the state, a city that I have mentioned earlier it this venture, so there is no use in further identification. Suffice it to say that the firm was still receiving a small retainer to attend monthly planning commission meetings. Whenever possible, I would accompany Jim Vines to the meetings and take the opportunity to watch democracy in action, or so I thought.

Understand, although they were my bosses, we were all close to the same age, our late twenties. Despite a surfeit of education and enthusiasm, we were just a bunch of kids in a world dominated by alpha-males who had fought their way to the top of the heap and had no intention of either sharing or relinquishing control

I was perhaps more starry-eyed than the rest, having just played a major part, I had been assured, in saving the world from godless Communism and my country’s domination by the evil empire headed by Russia. Whew.

Jim Vines had his moments of naivete as well. He dutifully prepared reports on the cases coming before the planning commission, including recommendations as to appropriate action. On this particular trip, he had examined one outlandish request coming before the commission and rightfully recommended disapproval.

The reasons included a possibility of spot zoning (a small zoning that violates the land use plan and affords benefit to one property owner that wouldn’t be allowed for others). Also, the approval would allow a destabilizing effect on the neighborhood and set a questionable precedent leading to further destabilization. Finally, the city’s street system wasn’t designed for the recommended use.

It was clear to any observer that the request had no merit. Oh, wait. There was one factor in favor of granting the request.

The applicant was a close personal friend and supporter of the mayor.

There was quite a little set-to about the case before unanimous approval in the disapproving faces of a crowd of concerned citizens. The mayor sat stone-faced to one side and never said a word. His eyes spoke with exquisite eloquence, however.

We drove back to Little Rock in silence. Somehow, it seemed that we were overtaken and passed along the way by a letter formally stating that the firm’s service would no longer be needed in that city.

The incident provided, as I say some valuable lessons. Urban planning is as much, maybe more, about politics as it is about purity of intent. Also, one should make every effort to learn the territory. It is not unusual in our state to see enmity between two powerful groups, the cause of which may date back generations. Sadly, a city may be damaged more by its own citizens than by strangers or external forces. Somehow, they feel they have that right.

And finally, we can always learn from our friends who fight our wars for us when they tell us that one had best carefully consider what hill is worth dying upon before committing our all. In ensuing years, I’ve practiced that warning assiduously and managed to bumble my way through life.

As a consultant you learn, sometimes the hard way, that it is their city and they may or may not listen to you. Your best efforts may offend and alienate.  I would also learn that your own city might regard you with even less respect.

Well I'll swan.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Seven: (Cont._4)

As the spring of 1971 drew to a close, I enjoyed my first great triumph in the professional world. We met our deadlines—all of them. I spent the week before the “due date” delivering big boxes of planning reports while the staff furiously completed the mapping and assembling the remainder. Soon, smiles seasoned with relief showed all around the office from our success.

True to our pact, the two Bobs at the printing shop and I had become true friends. They taught me much about the techniques of printing and I gave them due credit. In addition to learning about printing, I also learned a lesson that is indispensable in the professional world. Great projects, most often, require a team effort, and you had better know and respect your teammates.

That’s all I have to say about that.

We each received a hundred-dollar bonus for getting the jobs out on time. Since I had never received a bonus of any sort in my life, I hadn’t known what to expect. I didn’t think it was a lot for all the extra hours we had pulled. I also thought maybe I deserved a little extra for saving my bosses butts, so to speak. But, I figured it was their money and they could dole it out as they pleased. It was best that I accept the fact. I think I had read that somewhere.

Besides, I had also read somewhere that I should not be anxious about anything, but let my requests be known elsewhere. It was good advice that has gotten me through many a jam. I’m sure there are many throughout history who have performed greater things and received less gratitude. Further, too much focused concentration on ingratitude can burn one’s soul like the sun’s rays focused through a magnifying glass burns an ant. Ask any Vietnam War veteran.

Anyway, I took my bonus with a smile and went on my way. I repaid some small debts to my father with part of it. Then I bought a good bottle of Scotch whisky and drove to Fayetteville the next weekend to party with my friend, Mike Dunkum. The rest I spent on silly stuff.

May came, and we tenants learned that we best be looking for new quarters, as the grand old structure in which we lived faced imminent demolition. That was my first encounter with the strangely American custom of demolishing the elegant and grand to make way for the cheap and gaudy. There’s a shabby parking lot now where that handsome building stood. Ironically, Americans spend billions each year traveling to see cities where they don’t demolish old structures, except for purposes of waging war.

Some would say that we are fortunate in not having our cities destroyed by bombs but by peaceful neglect, avarice, and worship of the automobile. Who can say?

Knowing the city better now, I could search for a new place to live with more confidence than before. I knew that the Capitol Hotel was a whorehouse and was no option despite continued jokes that I check it out. (It is beyond interesting to know that it was one fine old building they never demolished and that it is now one of the city’s brightest treasures.) I knew it didn’t make any sense whatsoever to live any great distance from where one worked. I knew I still couldn’t afford much. I knew that I was beginning to like Little Rock. And I knew that I’d best find something soon.

Something drew my attention to Carptebagger Hill. Stretched along the north side of that portion of Cantrell Road known as Lincoln Boulevard was a large house converted to apartments, along with three separate apartment buildings. The easternmost proved the most expensive. The westernmost was the oldest and cheapest. Moreover, it offered furnished units with air conditioning.

Not far from Downtown, the apartment building stood on land previously occupied by a Methodist school, so perhaps there was a bit of holiness remaining. I thought maybe I would take a look. Maybe there was a future awaiting me atop that hill.

Little did I know.

What the hell are
you thinking about?

 

My Redacted Life: Chapter 7 (Cont. _3)

There wasn’t much for me to do with the assignments due in April, 1971, except help with final assembly. I actually spent time in planning work while in the office. I continued to hitch rides to planning commission meetings with the two bosses.

Once a month, we made the longest one, Tom Hodges and I. That would be to Blytheville, Arkansas, only a few miles south of the Missouri border and a mile or two west of the epicenter of where the next New Madrid earthquake is predicted to occur.

Our trips were calm, though, and we generally returned a little after midnight. I learned much about both planning as a career and Tom as a person. I would always make it a point to be the first at work the next day. I was young then, and hungry.

I was beginning to see some humor in the field. One had to look hard, but it was there. One morning, Jim Vines and I called on the parks director in Pine Bluff to discuss working on an updated park plan for the city. His office was in a complex once used as a maintenance facility for the state highway department. The office building was spacious and had rooms available for public activities.

We entered and met the director, Vaughn Black, a gracious man with remarkable red hair. I found out later that my cousin, Troy Harden, had nicknamed him “Booger Red.” This was a compliment, for it referred to one of Pine Bluff’s most iconic characters, flying-ace Edward “Booger Red” Vencill. He was honored as a hero for helping save the county courthouse from washing away during the flooding of 1927.

Among his daring exploits was the claim that he had flown his plane under the span of the “Free Bridge” (while it was lowered), some expanding the exploit in later years to include having done it upside down.

That day, we found the director to be a bit flummoxed. A fit and muscular man was leaving the building as we arrived and we found that he accounted for half of a problem vexing our new acquaintance.

“He teaches ju-jitsu, the director said. Has fairly large class that meets each Thursday. He wants to reserve our best meeting room for that day.”

We nodded and said nothing. “There’s another fellow that teaches karate,” the director continued. The two groups hate one another. The karate teacher wants the room on Thursday evenings too. I don’t have any idea how to solve the problem if neither will change to another night.

Jim and I looked at one another

“I know what you’re thinking,” the director said, “but I don’t think the Mayor would approve of me putting the two in a room and letting them work it out.”

“No” Jim said. “I don’t suppose he would.”

"Besides," he said, "That's not my biggest problem right now."

“Oh?” We both listened.

“My biggest problem involves a bunch of rich folks and a cantankerous newspaper editor.”

“Oh” I leaned forward, not knowing that what came next would later affect both my subsequent career and the rest of my life in a most profound way.

It had to do with a muddy old bayou, reportedly the longest in the world, seeping from Pine Bluff to Monroe, Louisiana and impressing few people along the way. The section in question lay less than a mile from where I grew up and was a nasty dormant body that that received more than its share of human refuse and poisoned agricultural runoff. I can still recall the smell from a hot summer’s evening.

To some folks, though, the Blue Danube was never so cloaked in beauty as this simple stream bordering a simple town.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Seven (Cont._2)

On Mondays, I would arrive at the office ready to kick some serious ass, as they say. We were doing quite a bit of work for my home town, so I began taking trips there, first with Tom Hodges, then with Jim Vines. It wasn’t long, during one of those trips, that I learned an interesting fact.

The two of them had labored under the mistaken assumption that I was related to Charles Rush, the director of the city’s Urban Renewal Agency and for whom we were working. Yes, he’s the one who gave me their names and who recommended that I go to Little Rock and visit with them. I was actually related to another department head in the city, a cousin named Troy Harden, who had introduced me to Mr. Rush.

I never ascertained how much the mistaken idea of kinship contributed to my hiring. I often think about it though, when I hear people say—particularly of African-Americans—that “they should rely on hard work and initiative to get ahead, just like I did.”

Pine Bluff was scheduled for an urban renewal project. Urban renewal is another phenomenon that has gained a solid seat of honor in the Planning Hall of Infamy. As with many misguided efforts, it was conceived with the best of intentions. Government would cleanse blighted portions of a city and replace the blight with shining examples of commercial enterprise and affordable housing.

The evil serpent known as “The Law of Unintended Consequences” slithered on the scene like a vulture during a battle, and soon took over. The definition of “blighted neighborhood” soon became “any neighborhood occupied by the powerless and non-white.” Tenants who had lived in a functioning neighborhood for decades came home from work one day to find a note on their door giving them only days to vacate their building which was slated for demolition as a part of the revival of the area.

There were some productive results of the program. Mostly though, the results were best described in the 1964 book The Federal Bulldozer by Martin Anderson, and the later classic The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, by Robert Caro. Urban renewal gained the sobriquet,which lingers still, of "Urban Removal."

By 1971, most of the most destructive elements of the program had disappeared. The emphasis turned from demolition to rehabilitation and residents were compensated for relocation expenses which, unfortunately did not reflect the cost of leaving the neighborhood in which one’s grandparents had lived.

The saddest part, as I contemplate the history, is that, in many instances, these were the only neighborhoods in which the affected families had been allow to live.

I didn’t think of such things back then. Don’t ask me why. Systemic indoctrination is a powerful tool when applied at an early age.

The area of Pine Bluff scheduled for “renewal” comprised a portion of an area known as “Jean’s Addition.” It was, as I was to learn over the years, a beloved African-American neighborhood arrayed around the state’s only black college. Though neglected, it had persevered. It still does, having been saved from benign intrusion by the unlikeliest person, Richard Nixon. He ended the Urban Renewal Program, which was known as a “categorical grant,” and replaced it, and others, with “block grants,” which allowed cities to apply help to neighborhood on a case by case basis.

We were also performing some city-wide planning work for the city. This would lead to the most traumatic experience in my planning career. I shall attempt to summon the courage to recount it later, perhaps in the next chapter.

For the time being, though, I was, as they say, “On a roll.”

My beloved cousin Troy Harden,
to whom I owe my career.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Seven

The deadlines of April 1971 were approaching and I was in tall cotton, as they say down South. I was now making enough money to do. I still felt that I was four years behind classmates who had avoided the draft. I didn’t know it then, but I was approaching fast and would soon catch and surpass those who weren’t attorneys or physicians. I had stumbled into a career that paid well. But that would be a little later.

Right now, I was beginning to think about women. I mean thinking about women in a righteous and meaningful way.  Oh hell, who am I trying to kid? Any admirable thoughts were soon tainted by impure ones. I was just a man, after all.

A couple of factors kept me from acting upon these nefarious impulses. First, I wasn’t what you would call handsome. Second, whatever pleasantry there was about my looks was offset by the fact that I had gained 30 pounds when I quit smoking nearly three years earlier. The typical look I elicited from pretty women translated into, “Don’t even think about it, Jocko.”

So I went to work, went to movies, read, practiced the guitar and touch-typing with similar degrees of success, and drank beer with my buddies occasionally. Life was good, enhanced further by fact that no Bosun’s Mate Chief was taking his hangover out on me, and no oriental man, whom I would have otherwise liked better than most Americans I knew, was plotting to shoot me between my pretty green eyes.

I did manage to rake up enough courage to ask a woman in the office building for a date. She was physically quite attractive but, and this is probably the reason she proved available, a little on the thin side of the bookmark on the personality side.

I took her to a Mexican Restaurant for dinner, and she ordered an expensive “chef’s platter,” from which she proceed to take a couple of nibbles before laying her fork aside. When I asked if she didn’t like it, her response was, “Oh, I had already eaten something before you come (yes ‘come’) but my Momma always told me if a man took you out, to order the most expensive thing on the menu and that way you could tell how intersted (yes, ‘intersted’) he was in you.”

Needless to say, I wasn’t that “intersted,” so it was back to my books, guitar, and touch typing.

At work, I was working on my technical writing and encouraging the staff to hustle. We were all expecting a bit of a bonus if we met the deadlines and we responded accordingly. After all, greed is just a gussied-up bull whip.

At my home place, Sainted Mother was getting more and more displeased with the fact that I wasn’t driving down to see her every weekend. She simply couldn’t imagine what allure Little Rock had that could keep me away from her. I don’t think she had ever considered concepts such as sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.

Of course I had no access to most of those, but Barkis "was willing, if unsteady”, as the man said when he first stepped ashore from a long sea voyage.

Two facts faced me, and they would combine to form my personal destiny. One, my apartment would have no air-conditioning when summer (just around the corner) came. Two, they were planning to demolish the building soon, so purchasing my own AC unit, as some tenants had done, wasn’t the soundest investment in the village.

I contemplated these things in the solitude of the evening while, 30 miles away, that cute little redhead kissed her boyfriend goodnight and went home to study.

Still befuddled