My Redacted Life: Chapter 24 (Cont._2)

Well, I had me a girlfriend. The thought kind of sobered me. What to do next? Ah, I had it. Road Trip!

So Brenda and I planned a trip to Fayetteville next weekend. I would introduce her to my friend Mike Dunkum and some of the crowd he ran with. That would put our relationship to the test.

I think I’ve mentioned Mike before. He’s the one who dropped out of college because, as he put it, “Inertia overtook me.” A recruiting sergeant named “Sergeant Goforth” (I’m serious) talked him into signing up for a tour in the United States Army with a path toward becoming a Green Beret officer.

He did. With his training and all, he arrived in Vietnam after I did, survived, then finished his four-year tour at Fort Hood while I was stationed aboard the USS Hunley. He returned to Fayetteville to finish his homage to higher education.

He was rooming with Wayland L Godshall, who was a real ladies man, one of those guys who just had something unexplained that made him attractive to the opposite sex. It wasn’t unusual for him, while standing and talking to friends in a public place, to have young girls, total strangers, walk up and ask for his autograph.

The thought did pass through my mind that I might better not introduce him to Brenda, but I figured that would prove a test of our relationship as well.

I went back to work. The days seemed a bit longer. Charles Witsell and I were working on the design report for the Hope project. That proved a major learning experience for me, watching him work and learning from him. I was writing most of the time, learning to pare down my words to simple declarative sentences and, like my pal Ernest, to distrust adverbs.

Friday finally came. I had the Green Angel all filled with gas and checked out. I managed to leave work early and we were soon easing our way to the home of the “Mother of Mothers,” my Alma Mater, the University of Arkansas, where sports teams were trained with ultimate precision, to break the hearts of their fans. I didn’t worry about that, though. I, as Bob Dylan said, “ ... [had] my little lady right by my side.” I even think she was glad to get out of town for a spell, even if it was with me.

Rush hour traffic wasn’t too bad in those days. The “white-flight panic” hadn’t hit yet, though it was on the way like a devouring demon. We talked. There wasn’t much else to do the except listen to the radio, which neither of us cared for very much.

I learned that she had considered teaching on an Indian reservation upon getting her teacher’s certification. She had also considered moving to St. Louis where her uncle lived and where teachers got a little better pay than the measly $400 per month that our state, to its eternal shame, paid those who taught its children.

The freeway ended at the Morgan interchange and we moved onto Highway 65. To the West, they were planning an entire new city on land previously owned by the U.S. Army. It would be called “Maumelle,” after a nearby waterway and would be one of only two cities built under the “New Town” program set up by the federal government. No one ever divulged the need or reason for a new city there. It was just one of those things that seemed like a good idea back when our country still dreamed big dreams.

I told Brenda about the project. Charles Witsell’s parent firm was working on it with an internationally renown urban planner named Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis, a man with ideas as big as his name. She appeared to be interested. I never knew for sure. I would find that she was a master at keeping her true thoughts to herself.

Somewhere in America, 
the traffic engineer's
greatest nightmare.

We passed the time in talk, reaching the City of Russellville before dark. There we enjoyed another of those wonderful streets scenes of past life. Gorgeous mansions lined the highway amidst magnificent oaks that spread overhead, creating a long, leafy tunnel similar to the one in Hope. This view would also fall to the highway department’s wrath years later, but only after the police had to remove a group of ladies who chained themselves to the trees in protest against their being sacrificed to the automobile.

It never occurred to me back then to sacrifice for urban beauty. I had all the beauty I needed sitting next to me.