My Redacted Life: Chapter 14 (Cont._3)

It was a few months into 1972 and the Riverside Drive crowd was beginning to wear a little thin with me. I think the bug of ambition initiated it. My friend Jackie, despite the benefits she brought, was starting to suffocate. I needed make a choice between the old ways and new ones.

I liked to read of an evening when work didn’t send me off on a trip somewhere. I had gotten interested in the so-called “Holy Grail” literature and that led me to Eliot and Frazer. Jackie cared nothing for that and could prove aggravating at times.

Cooper Burley had lost his job drafting and was increasingly seeking loans that would never be paid back. As for others on Riverside Drive, one night, I was to learn days later, someone had introduced what they then called “Horse” to a party down the street. A few tried it and said it was nice.

That all did it for me. I was ready for a change. Baseball legend Yogi Berra receives credit for “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

I did. Casting off the old social ways became easier when I learned that Cooper had been making runs to Louisiana for some reason or other in his old Chevy Stingray. Coming back one night, he crashed into a car parked on a highway and died before his 30^th birthday. It dawned on me that I had been lucky. Life can get you one way or another.

Don’t think it was easy saying goodbye to the 1960s. They had proved to be strange and sometimes interesting times. It would later be said that if you remembered them you really weren’t there.

I remembered most of them. Some I chose to forget. Some were still jogged by the daily news. Then President Nixon had just authorized a massive bombing campaign targeting all NVA troops invading South Vietnam along with B-52 air strikes against North Vietnam, declaring to a confidant, "The bastards have never been bombed like they're going to be bombed this time."

It was becoming clear that, though I might change, some things never would.

Opportunity knocked. I would initiate my change by upgrading my living quarters. Through an acquaintance I learned that an unfurnished apartment would be available in the more upscale building next door. Smitty, the manager, was delighted that I would take it. I was white, after all. It would certainly improve my status as a rising star in the Arkansas professional class.

It would have the additional benefit in that the crowd on Riverside Drive wouldn’t know, at least for a spell, where I had gone. Goodbye drugs, sex, and rock and roll.

I toured the ground floor apartment, a nice one-bedroom affair with central heat and air, carpets, and small patio and back yard offering a breathtaking view of the Arkansas River.

It was a major step up for me, or at least it would be as soon as I could lay hands on some furniture.

Little could I imagine who might be the weekend roommate of the woman living in one of the apartments above me.

So long. It's been
good to know you.