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.