Sunday Break_September 30, 2018

Dear Friends. It's time for Sunday break. I'll let my bride-to-be-rest and I'll offer a different fare. Here's a piece from a collection of short stories I wrote about my Naval experiences. It is all as accurate as I can remember except that I combined a couple of separate incidences. I do pray you might enjoy this tale taking place December, 1968.

Home

By Jimmie von Tungeln

            Love Field, in Dallas, Texas was a lonely place at four o’clock in the morning but the man didn’t mind. He was home, or at least close to home. The terminal was nearly deserted when he awoke. The ticket counters had closed and only a few passengers, stranded as was he, waited for some flight at some time to take them somewhere to do something. He straightened the white Navy hat on his head and looked around. Most in the area were dozing. A mother held a baby to her chest and rocked softly, humming. A young couple leaned against one another and slept, holding hands. A bearded man studied a paperback book. “Just waiting,” the man thought, “waiting for something.”

            He smiled. He was the lucky one. He reached down pulled his sea bag closer, and then leaned back to continue his wait. The terminal gave forth a soft hum that seemed to sing peace. He was safe and it felt good.

            His wait had begun ten hours sooner. On deplaning from his flight into Dallas, he learned that service to his home state was sporadic, that the next flight with available seats wouldn’t leave for 24 hours. “No,” the agent had said, “you can’t check your bag now.” He’d have to wait, she had told him, until later to see how full the flight would be with regular passengers before they could gauge his chances of flying standby. No problem, he would wait and purchase a ticket later. Waiting was easy. He had made a career of it for the last 12 months. He could wait another day, or more if need be.

            Then, from a pay phone, he had called home with the news. Disappointment sounded in his mother’s voice but only slightly. Nothing could spoil her joy at hearing his voice at a place so nearly home. Then she had devised a plan. “Your brother is off work for a long weekend. What if we drove to Dallas and picked you up? We could have you home before that flight got here, and that’s if you even got a seat.”

            “That’s a lot of driving,” he said.

            “Son,” she said, “don’t you remember that morning you left?”

            “Yes,” he said. “I remember it well.”

            “Well then know that ever day since then, any time I heard the telephone ring I just drawed up in a knot. I thought December of 1968 wouldn’t never get here. It has, and ridin’ that far in a car to get my boy don’t mean shit to me.”

            He laughed. “You haven’t changed,” he said.

            “No,” she said. I ain’t changed and I hope you ain’t either.”

            “I haven’t,” he said. “Just don’t make me stand in line for a meal when I get home. Promise?”

            “I promise. Now you call back in 30 minutes and I’ll tell you if we worked it out and when we might get there. Then all you have to do is wait. Okay?”

            “Okay,” he said, and so he waited. Half an hour later, he made the second call. The deal was on. They discussed directions and estimated times. Then he returned the phone to its holder and returned to his seat.

Night came and the terminal emptied. He read a book had chosen from a bookstore in the California terminal with the odd-sounding title, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, written by a man named Thomas Wolfe. It kept him amused until sleep intervened. He slept until an unpleasant dream awakened him. “No,” he said to himself. “you’re back now.” Awake, he began to read again.

            He had seen the sun rise so many times during the last year that, even with the difference in time zones, he sensed its arrival. With it, the sounds of the terminal increased and the temperature rose as mechanical systems awoke and lumbered into action. He removed his heavy pea coat and laid it lengthwise on his sea bag. The terminal began to fill with people and the ticket counters opened one by one. The man creased the edge of a page and placed his book on his lap, taking a deep breath and exhaling. It had been more than two days now, including the trans-Pacific flight, but he still wasn’t used to a smell that wasn’t Vietnam. He was watching the bustle of the terminal when a voice to his right said, “Mind if I join you?”

            A man past middle age, with graying hair, said, “Name’s Bottoms, Seabees, World War Two. Always enjoy talking to a fellow swabbie.” He extended a hand.

            The other shook it. “Hinson,” he said. “Tim Hinson. Have a seat.”

            Bottoms was wearing a camelhair overcoat, which, when removed, revealed a well-tailored blue suit with vest and school tie. He draped the overcoat over a seat, placed a briefcase on it, and sat beside Hinson. “Trying to get to a meeting in San Antonio,” he said. “They say someday there will be more than one flight a day headed there.”

            Hinson nodded. “I’m trying to get home to Arkansas. Maybe they’ll have more than one flight every two days there by that time.”

            Bottoms laughed. “Maybe,” he said. “I see those ribbons. Guess you’ve been overseas. My neighbor’s son came back from his tour in Vietnam wearing some of the same ones. You have an extra one, though.” He pointed at a fourth ribbon.

            “It’s a unit citation,” he said. “For the Naval Support Activity.”

            “Did you support?”

            “I guarded those who supported,” Hinson said. “Naval security.”

            “What rating is that?”

            “No rating, just something they thought up and made me do for a year.”

            “The Navy can think up stuff,” can’t it?”

            “They can indeed,” Hinson said. “You said Seabees. Were you in construction before the war?”

            “Hell no,” Bottoms said. “I was a newspaper man. But I was too old for the other services. The Seabees took older men so that’s where a bunch of us ended up.”

            “Where did you serve?”

            “In the South Pacific,” Bottoms said. “So many little islands I can’t remember the name of them. How about you?”

            “Da Nang,” Hinson said, “in the I-Corps area.”

            “We never made it that far,” Bottoms said. “We were rebuilding at Okinawa when they dropped the bombs. It wasn’t long after that our outfit started shipping out for home.”

            “Bet those were happy days.”

            “Mostly,” Bottoms said, “except for one awful thing.”

            Hinson didn’t respond. Bottoms, however, wanted to continue. “They used to drink something called “torpedo juice,” he said. “The guys off the submarines made it from stuff they packed torpedoes in. It was the only way to get drunk on those islands sometimes.”

            Hinson listened. Bottoms stopped, composed himself, and continued. “We had this guy in our unit named Carl Luchenstein, a husband and father, who never drank nor smoked, just did his job and sent his pay home to his family. On the night after Japan signed the surrender papers, he agreed to take one drink to celebrate the end of the war.” He stopped.

            Hinson said nothing, simply waited for the unfolding. Bottoms continued. “Turns out that toward the end of the war, they changed the ingredients, and the torpedo juice came to be poisonous. Some say they did it on purpose, so it would make the sailors who drank it get sick—so the practice would stop.”

            “So this man got sick?”

            “No,” Bottoms said. “He was a small man and wasn’t used to alcohol in any form. Carl died, some 12 hours after the war ended.”

            Neither man spoke for a time. Then Bottoms brightened. “Hey,” he said, “I didn’t come over to bring you down. Let me tell you about one of the good times.”

            Hinson nodded, and Bottoms said, “We came back on a Cruiser and docked in San Francisco. Know what the folks there did? We all went out on deck coming through The Golden Gate, and over on the hills in Marin County, they had hauled big rocks in and painted them white. They spelled out ‘Welcome Home Boys’ in huge white letters. Sure made us feel good.”

            Bottoms immediately caught himself when Hinson lowered his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “They don’t do that for you guys, do they?”

            “No sir, they don’t,” Hinson said.

            “Was there any welcome home for you?”

            ‘No sir,” Hinson said. “There are war protestors that routinely meet the planes coming in from Vietnam, and the military doesn't want any ruckuses. They briefed us on how to get by them without incident.”

            Bottoms didn’t respond for a moment, the said, “Shitty deal, if you ask me.” The two sat in silence. Finally Bottoms spoke, “It’s a different world now.” He looked at his watch and said, “Hey, got to go. I think they’ve opened my ticket window. Godspeed.” He rose, shook Hinson’s hand again, picked up his overcoat and briefcase, and walked away.

            Hinson stared at his hands for a moment, and picked up his book. He had started to open it when a loud crash and commotion caught his attention. Across the terminal from where Hinson sat, a businessman’s briefcase flew across the terminal floor, scattering pages in all directions. He had collided with a runner who slammed into another man who then stumbled into a companion. People began to jump aside to avoid the runner. Hinson stared.

            The source of the disturbance was a small woman no more than five feet tall and weighing probably less than a hundred pounds. She wore a white blouse with a red scarf flowing behind it. A blue skirt rode up to reveal thin legs that seemed to churn like pistons. A loud shriek pierced the air as all eyes in the terminal turned toward her. Hinson broke into a smile. It was his mother. He stood and faced her.

            When she was three feet away, she leaped. He almost lost his balance as she slammed into him and draped her arms and legs around his body. “Son, son, son,” she cried. For nearly a moment, neither moved. Then she slowly slid from him and stood on solid ground. Tears had smeared makeup and her glasses had fogged. “Oh lord,” was all she said.

At that moment, a slight young man in his early twenties walked up. He looked Hinson over. “Hey brother,” he said. They shook hands.

From far away, in the corner of the terminal, a person began to clap, a sharp and lonely sound in the huge area. It was Bottoms. A person not far away joined, then another, and another. The entire terminal exploded with applause. It lasted several minutes filling the building and spreading beyond its walls into the morning. His mother turned and acknowledged the crowd. Hinson smiled and nodded. His brother studied the floor until the noise subsided and people returned to their own business.

She held his hand with one of hers and wiped away tears with the other. They looked at one another without speaking. He raised an arm and wiped each side of her face with a sleeve of his blouse. “You look great,” he said.

She smiled, raised her eyes to his, and found her voice. “Let’s go home, son,” she said.

No matter how hard I looked,
I couldn't see home.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 31: (Cont._4)

Women appeared more and more in the news as July of 1972 progressed, along with plans for our wedding. The world began learning what I already knew. Women were shedding their bonds. A strong woman, and they could all be strong when it suited them, would become a force with which to reckon in the future. I learned more about that daily. The guys down at the coffee shop didn’t much like it, but that mattered very little.

That month alone saw some news, front-page and not society-section, that should have alerted the most ardent misogynists to this new tectonic shift in our societal substructure. Signs were that, in the future, the feminine half of our species would lay increasing claim to a place at the table so to speak. Had men been paying attention, they might have noticed.

On the first day of the month, for example Gloria Steinem published the first edition of a feminist magazine, "Ms." It featured Wonder Woman on the cover. Message delivered.

Less than a week later, the FBI swore in Susan Lynn Roley & Joanne E Pierce as its first two female members. What would “Jedger” have thought about that? One can only wonder.

The sports world began to take notice. Tennis star Billy Jean King was drawing attention to women’s tennis, making a bunch of male chauvinists nervous. Women golfers such as American Susie Maxwell Berning drew their own share of attention.

In politics, Jean Westwood became the first woman chosen to head the Democratic National Committee. A wag at the downtown men’s health club wondered, “What next, some babe wanting to run for president?”

“Nah,” another said, “We’ll have a [adjective deleted] president before we have a woman one.”

I paid little attention at the time, I was still fixated on “manly-man” things. Yoko Ono broke up the Beatles with her quiet roar. Paul McCartney responded by forming his own band, something called “Wings.” I gave it little chance of success. In Northern Ireland and England, they were murdering the hell out of one another. Sometimes I wondered if Matthew Arnold hadn’t nailed it when he wrote that, “ … peace has left the upper world. And now keeps only in the grave.” After all, we were still shipping full caskets home from South Vietnam.

All this time, I was an American male, and I had “laid down my sword and shield,” so news slid off me as did concern of any decline in male hegemony. What did I have to fear? I had a good job, and evenings saw me undergoing “groom-training,” taught by Brenda, Vernell, and my neighbor. I had no time for so-called “women’s lib.”

Tonight’s lesson centered on my script. “Three lines is all you have,” Venell said. “How could you blow that? Let’s try again. She took my shoulders, rather roughly I thought, and positioned me next to Brenda, who seemed a bit out of patience. “Now,” said Vernell.

“I will. I do. And I wed you with …”

“Stop, dammit stop,” Venell yelled. “With this ring I do thee wed.”

“Ya’ll are making me nervous,” I said.

My neighbor responded, moving in close to me, “We’re going to make you think ‘nervous,’ Buster.”

I pointed at her blouse and looked at Vernell. She said to her sister, “Button up, dammit, and don’t you own a bra?”

They made adjustments. I turned to Brenda for solace. She looked at me with those sweet eyes that had so captivated me when I met her. “Don’t screw this up,” she said. “My relatives are even coming down from Chicago for it. You’d damn well better be ready, and, … look at me when I’m talking to you, … sober.”

Such soothing balm got me through the evening. Later, I found myself keyed up and not ready for bed, so I flicked on the ten o’clock news. I sat in my most comfortable chair with a beer and waited for some indication that the world was stable and level and I wouldn’t be facing any new challenges to societal norms.

Then, there it was, like an oracle shouting “Get ready for more.”

From war-torn England came another subterranean rumble. That week had seen the international debut of something called a “Gay Pride March.”

"Sweetie, you don't mind if
I call you Sweetie, do you?
You screw this wedding up, and
a ton of bricks will land on you."

My Redacted Life: Chapter 31 (Cont._3)

Marriage loomed a month away. We were stressed by the plans, haunted by doubts, and nervous about the future. Feeling edgy, we went fishing. Lake Conway was nearby and the landings there rented boats and motors. What else could a young couple in love do to settle their nerves?

The bream were biting just enough that day to keep our minds occupied. Still, we made plans for the future. I would become a partner in the firm and gain a reputation for excellence. Maybe I would work on a Master's degree. She would do something someday other than teaching.

Why had she gone into teaching?

“The guidance counselors never told us that girls could do anything else.”

“Oh?”

“Well girls weren’t supposed to go to college in the first place.”

“Oh?”

“Oh no. It was okay to live in a college town, though.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” if you were there to work on your PhT.”

“PhT?”

“Putting hubby through.”

“Oh.”

She yanked her line and pulled in a small bream, wriggling and thrashing as if its life depended upon it, which it did. She unhooked it, examined it, and said, “Go grow a little.” She tossed it into the lake.

I watched her and said, “Where did you learn to fish?”

She shrugged. “Where did you?”

That caught me off guard. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve just always known how.”

“So you think I am any different? Hand me the cricket box. Then turn around and face the other direction.”

I did as I was told and held onto the sides of the boat as a good deal of commotion occurred at the other end.

What was I getting myself into?

After a few moments, calm returned and she said, “You can turn around now.”

She had already baited her hook and tossed the line into the water. Neither of us spoke for a few minutes. Finally, I broke the silence. “Why did you decide to teach the third grade?”

She looked down the boat at me. “Because they wouldn’t let me run the torture ward.”

“Oh.”

She examined her bait and threw it back in. “I’ll bet you were a perfect student, weren’t you?”

“Hardly,” I said. “I was the youngest in the class and easily led astray. How about you?”

“Mostly perfect.”

“Mostly?”

“Except for the time I got sent home in grade school.”

“Sent home? For what?”

“This boy pushed me and called me ‘fatty.’ So I hit him in the face and broke his glasses.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Mama and Daddy had to buy him a new pair.”

“Oh.”

“Know what though?”

“No. What?”

“None of the other kids ever called me ‘fatty’ again.”

“I can imagine.”

We fished in silence as I wondered if rich folks in those big skyscrapers up north ever spent such wonderful times while they were waiting to get married.

Teach a girl to dig her own fish bait
and she'll take care of herself forever.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 31 (Cont._2)

Somewhere in the process of planning this August wedding, I asked Brenda if, maybe she might just want to elope. The look she gave me would have melted Kryptonite.

“Things aren’t just about me, or us,” my future Trophy Wife explained. “They are for other people as well,” adding “stupid” as a form of gentle emphasis.  I got the point but she continued nonetheless.

“My mama and daddy worked hard to raise me and they deserve a nice, but affordable, wedding, not a Las Vegas production nor a beach party extravaganza by any means, but a nice wedding they can remember for their only daughter.”

At that point, I chose to stay out of the whole thing. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Vernell would be her Maid of Honor, my brother best man, and my neighbor in charge of logistics. I knew nothing about church weddings, having never attended one. I felt like the late Jerry Clower who once remarked that in the first football game he ever saw, he was a starting lineman.

The last wedding, of any sort, I had observed was on a Saturday when college friend Leland Bassett called and said he had to get married. That day. Leland always moved a little faster than the curves allowed, but this caper took the cake, so to speak. Somehow, a friend of the bride-to-be's mother located a county employee in Tulsa who agreed to sneak into the courthouse and get a marriage license (this was Oklahoma, mind you). That minor obstacle overcome, we, after some exertion, found a county judge in Nowata, Oklahoma who performed the ceremony around eight o’clock that evening in his bathrobe.

We all assumed that some untoward news had prompted the urgency, but no. Leland was just the sort of person who, having decided to do something, went about it without delay and at full speed. A couple of years or so later, when I was in the Navy, he and his wife had their first child, a beautiful little girl. This adventure, the one-day wedding, occurred in the 1960s and didn’t strike many as too odd at the time. Not much did in those days.

After a couple of beers one night, I told Brenda that story as she was busy sewing dresses for the wedding.

She didn’t think it was very funny, and told me so.

Before I knew it, she had
told the whole world, via
the old Arkansas Gazette.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 31

As my marriage date of August 17, 1972 approached, I concentrated on work as best I could. I was learning a lot more about urban planning than I was about women, but what the heck? Our firm had gotten an engineering contract for a street project in Pine Bluff. What seemed simple was to get complicated.

The engineer and his staff, in close communication with the city engineer in Pine Bluff, began laying out plans to construct the street according to the standards outlined in the existing master street plan of the city. It had been adopted years earlier and, of course, our firm had nothing to do with the standards it proposed. To ignore or violate those standards would have invited censure.

The editor of the local newspaper, Paul Greenberg saw a chance to make print, using an out-of-town firm as an invading army, hovering over the city and drooling with monstrous intent. Instead of a needed project, he constructed it, journalistically, as the intrusion of a white power structure into a minority community that was simply minding its own business. He phrased it as a classic case of pleasing the rich at the expense of the poor.

Day after day, he pounded upon the unjustness of improving a street serving this peaceful neighborhood. He found an audience with a local business owner who would have profited from the improvements but who had political hopes that outweighed advantages to his business. The contrived controversy eventually placed him on the city council.

The city agreed to reduce the scope of improvements. Then the project became one designed to destroy the existing neighborhood by encouraging suburban sprawl. It got real ugly.

The odd thing was that the city had received money for street improvements that could have been used for any number of projects in any number of neighborhoods. The mayor and council had chosen this street specifically because it would have benefited a minority community, at least the elected officials saw it that way.

It didn’t concern me much, this affair. The engineering staff suffered by not being paid for all the redesign and receiving much personal vilification. I used it as a learning experience, to wit:

No good deed ever goes unpunished.

Keep an eye on journalists. I found, over the years, that most were decent folks. They weren’t your friend, simply fellow professionals out to do their job. You didn’t lie to them and you didn’t try to use them for your own purposes. They live on information, whether it benefits you or not. Learn to live with it. Failure to do so will make you look silly and guilty. Finally, most journalists are ethical. Greenberg was an exception.

Projects must be vetted through the neighborhood in which the project is to exist. Many neighborhoods in our country have suffered and died, and will continue to do so, because of projects designed not for the people who live there but for people who are just passing through.

Plans aren’t always perfect and life is not always fair.

And, as the Vietnamese say, a bad strategy and good tactics means defeat. It just may take longer than will a combination of bad strategy and bad tactics.

I tried telling my bride-to-be about these things and more. She feigned interest, but I could tell her mind was in August.

"That which does not kill us makes
 us stronger." - Friedrich Nietzsche 

My Redacted Life: Chapter 30 (Cont._3)

So, we go to see the preacher at the Methodist Church in Lonoke to plan our wedding scheduled for August 17, 1972. He was underwhelmed. I can’t say as how I blame him. He had been pastor there a couple of years, and had never met Brenda. She had been in college, she explained.

The last time I had been in church was while in college and that’s because I was trying to impress one of the sorority girls at the house where I served as janitor. I explained that I had been in the Navy and left the sorority girl part out.

Didn’t they have churches in Conway, Arkansas? She admitted only that she supposed so.

Didn’t they have services on Navy ships and installations? I didn’t know for sure. It was the new, modern Navy and all. They didn’t even call the female sailors “Waves” anymore and the most famous enlisted man serving then was a highly impressive African-American named Carl Brashear, a man truly worth worshiping in his own right.

The preacher showed no interest in either my Navy career or our excuses. After some obligatory wrangling, he agreed to perform the service, albeit somewhat enthusiastically. He was particularly fixated upon my former residency in San Francisco. I clammed up and we continued.

The only hiccup occurred when he got to the service itself.

“Were we interested in writing our own?”

“No, and the shorter the better.”

He had started to go over the service when Brenda interrupted. “In the woman’s part, does it have that ‘love, honor, and obey’ stuff?”

He blinked and said, “In the traditional service it does.”

“We want that ‘obey’ part left out.”

He actually looked at me for confirmation, not a smart move on his part. I just shrugged. He made a note.

The ordeal finally ended. He promised to marry us, and we promised to come to church with Brenda’s parents when we happened to be in Lonoke of a Sunday morning. There would be no stricture concerning the need to obey anyone, no matter what The Apostle had to say about the matter.

We were soon in the Green Angel with the top off, her red hair billowing, and breathing, once more, the “air of the heathen.”

Actually, I was to find the Methodists a warm, progressive lot. I’ve never heard a bona-fide Methodist minister preach a hint of hatred. They concentrate a lot on the concept of “grace” and struggle with, rather than worship, riches. I’ve never heard one tell a terrified five-year old about a place where their precious little body might burn forever. It’s the new, modern church, I suppose.

Oh, and speaking of Master Chief Boatswain's Mate (and Master Diver) Carl Brashear. I served with him on the old USS Hunley, a singular honor in my life. They later made a film, starring Cuba Gooding, of his life. I don’t think he suffered from bone spurs. Had he, it would have affected only one heel, the other having been lost, along with part of his leg, years before I served with him, in a diving mission for our Navy.

Me, obey a man?
Yeah right.

My Redacted Life: Sunday Break

Sunday deserves a quick note to bring you up to date on our recent betrothment. As I reported earlier, Brenda planned a church wedding, a modest one out of respect for her hard-working parents. We had, well, she and Vernell had—I wasn't actually consulted—picked the date of August 19th, a Saturday. That would leave enough time for a brief honeymoon and to have the records changed at the school where she taught. She would begin the new school year as "Mrs. von Tungeln" although she had considered using the old-fashioned style like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans had, where she would just keep her original name. But, she decided to go modern and "Mrs." it would be.

All was set. She reserved the date at the family's church, the Methodist one in Lonoke.

Then things got screwy.

The pastor called to inform her that he had reneged on the date because a young couple wanted it. He didn't mention family wealth, prestige, or untoward time constraints, just that this young couple was "really in love." That seemed to settle it.

A mild, but not debilitating panic set in. To postpone our wedding for a week wouldn't allow time for the name-change paperwork. Moving it up a week would create furor over an already cramped schedule. What to do?

Hell, why not get married on, say a Thursday evening? That fit the schedule of all concerned.

"So let it be written, so let it be done," Brenda announced in her most Pharaoh-like manner. My only thought was that I was glad we hadn't bothered to have the date of our marriage engraved on our wedding rings, now safely ensconced in the lay-away at Cave's Jewelry. I just wanted the thing over with. I wasn't comfortable being up in front of people.

So, we accommodated both  a young couple and our own plans without further complication. I've always wanted to check on the marriage that claimed the Saturday night slot. I never have. The percentages, though, for the long-term success of marriages of young couples who were "really in love" at that time, were no better than 40 percent, probably a little lower for rich kids in that part of the world. I've always figured 18 months, tops.

Next, we would meet the preacher.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 30 (Cont._2)

Somewhere around the summer of 1972, I decided to take correspondence course in public administration from Berkeley. The company paid for it and I learned a few things. The last assignment was to interview some public official and write a report on the outcome.

I decided upon the city manager of Little Rock, the state’s largest city. At that time, John T. “Jack” Meriwether occupied the office. I got through to him on the phone, and he graciously granted me the interview.

Jack Meriwether had been the city manger of Texarkana previously and would subsequently devote his life to higher education, the newspaper business, and banking. The Meriwether name would become synonymous with public service in our state.

The interview went well. Toward the end, I asked what would always be a key question in interviews of public officials. “What would you say is the most challenging part of your job?”

I expected some timeworn answer directed at the difficulties in dealing with the disparate and conflicting demands of public policy, or the constant struggle with balancing the need for municipal services against a lack of resources.

Instead, he gave me a gem that would stick with me for my entire career. He said his most challenging task was dealing with the “uh-huh …oh" syndrome.

“Say what?”

He smiled at my confusion and explained. “When politicians are campaigning for election, they always run around pointing at things and saying “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”

I waited.

He leaned back in his chair and said, “Then when they are elected, and begin to see what the situation really is, they say, ‘Oh,’ and expect me to work it out.”

My instructor out in California thought that was a good story and gave me and “A” in the course.

Over the years, I’ve thought about that comment countless times. Some things never change, do they?

I chose my subject well.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 30

One thing stood out in my work with cities back 1972. I noticed that, at meetings of the city council or board, people showed up. It wasn’t only a special issue that brought them there, although sometimes it did, as we shall see. Often, they came just to watch their city government in action.

Of course, there weren’t as many alternative entertainment choices in those days. Time would dampen the public’s enthusiasm for observing Democracy, unless it jarred with, or supported, strongly held beliefs.

Council meetings could be educational though, so once, while we were waiting for our marriage date to arrive, I took my finance to a city council meeting in the small town of Kensett, Arkansas, known primarily as being the hometown of famed legislator Wilbur D. Mills.

It promised to be a short meeting. I came to have the council approve a grant application for a planning study. I explained to Brenda on the way up that I was familiar with the city, it being the site of the two wildest city council meetings I had ever attended. I explained that the first was when a rowdy group of citizens attended in order to raise hell about the proliferation of stray dogs that had “taken over” the town. Amidst tales of garbage can contents being strewed over a city block and untoward impregnations, the group demanded that council hire an animal control officer.

The second boisterous meeting there, which I also attended, occurred after the mayor had hired a “dog-catcher” and said dog-catcher had begun catching dogs.

He was catching the wrong dogs, it seemed. He was, according to the crowd of speakers, many of whom I recognized from the first meeting, supposed to catch “those dogs” and not “our dogs.” Why, one yelled in anger, “Tags” only followed Johnny to the school bus stop each day to protect him and had been incarcerated for his effort. Would the city be responsible for his, the dog's, therapy?

“Fire the [expletive deleted] dog-catcher,” one lady yelled, with resounding applause from the others.

Brenda thought about my story and said, “Why do people run for public office?” I had no answer, just an admission that I was glad there were those that did.

Seated in the back of the audience later, we were surprised to hear the first speaker, a well-dressed lady in her mid-forties rise, approach the podium, and with an air of great solemnity, ask, of the mayor and council, “What do you plan to do about the Buffalo?”

“The Buffalo?” Brenda whispered, “I thought the Buffalo River was over about Marshall.”

It was. The Little Red River is the one that runs just north of Kensett. We listened.

“He’s moved the beast next to our back yards and the flies are killing us.”

Ahh. The truth emerged like a tyke playing hide-and-seek. From what we later gathered, a man had bought, for reasons known only to himself, a wild buffalo as a pet. He kept the creature in an over-sized yard that backed up to a row of houses. When the residents of those houses had complained about the odor and flies that seemed to accompany the pet, the owner responded by dragging the feeding trough against his back fence so that the offending and noxious impact lay concentrated against the back yards of the complainers. The pet was happy, the owner of the pet was happy, everyone else living nearby … not so much.

An hour and a half later, the council got to my business, having managed somehow to piss off all in attendance, save Brenda and me. The council members fairly snarled as they questioned my proposal. Then one had an idea. “This planning study,” he said, “can it address the keeping of animals in town?”

“Sure it can,” another member said.

“Move for approval,” another member said.

“Second the motion,” another member said.

“All approved ‘Aye’ the ayes have it,” the Mayor said. “Congratulations young man.”

Back in the car, Brenda looked at me and said, “How do they get people to do your job?”

A new element in the
annals of urban planning. 

My Redacted LIfe: Chapter 29 (Cont._4)

The next week passed. We were a betrothed couple so the world looked a little rounder and 1972 seemed like an even more memorable year. The girls, Brenda, Vernell, and her sister, began plans for the wedding. The few times I was around them, I heard lots of giggles and snickers.

They left me out completely.

I didn’t mind. I had work to do. Tom was getting antsy that we finish the Hope plan so the engineering could begin. Business was falling off Downtown there as in most cities. Later, pundits delighted in blaming downtown malls for the death of retail in the central business, and those misadventures certainly didn’t help. But the end had settled on downtown retail much earlier with the proliferation of family automobiles, the death of public transit, and the construction of alluring shopping centers that offered excitement along with spending. Centrifugal force spun retail away from the city core and into the low-density suburbs, to be chased by swarms of shoppers in individual vehicles.

Since ancient humankind first danced in order to make the rains come, we have believed we could cause the unlikely or impossible to happen by human interference. So modern sapiens envisioned the downtown mall as a way to counterattack reality. Reality is an impervious foe, however. Urban planners no more knew this at the time than did the American military or the government that directed it.

I knew nothing about all this in 1972. I danced along merrily with the rest. It would take years of heartbreaking reality before the truth revealed itself. I was still a believer in urban planning’s prowess in imitative magic. Besides, I had me a girl, or she had me. I didn’t know which. That made me untouchable.

On Wednesday, she met me downtown for lunch at Land’s Cafeteria on Markham. Then we walked all the way over to Cave’s Jewelry on Main. There we picked out and bought an engagement ring for her and put some wedding rings on the layaway for the two of us. This thing was getting serious.

It was Daylight Savings Time by now. I took off work a little early so we could drive out and tell her folks. They didn’t throw a fit. In fact, they took it in good humor. I didn’t have my hair greased back and didn’t carry a pack of Lucky Strikes wound into an arm of my T-shirt. Nor did I ask her father if he might hire me as a farm hand after the wedding. She assured her mother that I was, indeed, some years older than she, so her daughter wasn’t “robbing the cradle.” They were pleased, I felt.

Hazel did inquire where and when the wedding might be. “We’ll have it in the Methodist church in town so all the relatives can make it,” Brenda said. “I’m sure Grandma will want to come, and she can’t travel far.”

“That’s good,” Hazel said. “I can’t imagine a girl wanting to get married someplace her grandmother couldn’t get to.”

With that, we were set. Hazel would help get the news out. That wouldn’t be hard for her. The office of Dr. B.E. Holmes, where she worked, was the official news center for most of Lonoke County. Walter Cronkite would have marveled at the speed with which information vital to everyday life in the polis and surrounding area spread.

My name, the last one at least, quickly became a household one, though challenging in pronunciation. Who was this mysterious man who had stolen the heart of the Belle of Lonoke County? Some decided I must secretly be a physician, a member of the only profession good enough for her.

The next Saturday, we drove to Pine Bluff and broke the news to my folks. Their response proved predictable. Any man that Brenda would marry couldn’t be all bad. That even included me.

Thus, we set the stage for a great adventure. Our ship was rigged, the crew was ready, the lines were taught, the anchor ready to be hauled, and the shoals well marked.

Most of them were anyway.

When is my life going
to get simple again?

My Redacted Life: Chapter 29 (Cont._3)

Here I was, in the summer of 1972. I had asked the most beautiful woman I had ever been out with to marry me. She had said yes. What do you think about that? More importantly, what was I to do next? I think maybe I kissed her or something. I can’t remember. My head was about to rotate, a funny feeling shot around in my head like a pinball bouncing off bumpers.

We were way out on the edge of west Little Rock overlooking the sun as it set over the river valley. I put my arm around her and we leaned against my car. She rested her head on my shoulder and we watched the last rays of the sun settle behind Pinnacle Mountain. I remember thinking that my life was about to change.

We rode back the apartment complex without saying much. I parked the Green Angel and we started, hand in hand, toward my apartment. “Don’t look now,” she said, “but someone is watching us from above.” She leaned into me.

I couldn’t help peeking. Vernell was standing on the second-floor balcony, her hands on the railing and a smile on her face. What was that all about?

When we neared my door, we heard a loud “Ahem.” We looked to see my neighbor standing in her doorway, allowing the light to shine through her sheer peignoir and looking like a marble statute. She grinned but said nothing more.

Do women enjoy mental telepathy?  I’ve harbored a suspicion since that night.

We went inside and I poured us two glasses of wine. I sat beside her and we toasted to whatever it was that was happening. We sat close together and didn’t speak for long minutes. Then she sipped her wine and moved away far enough that she could turn toward me. She broke the silence.

“I want to set a date as soon as we can,” she said.

This girl was anxious. She must really be in love. If she was in a hurry, how could I deny her? I considered myself a generous and empathetic fellow, especially for this poor lonely girl. My ego swelled.

“I won’t keep you waiting,” I said with raised eyebrows.

“Good,” she said.

“You’re not afraid I’ll change my mind, are you?” I can’t imagine what possessed me to say something so stupid. Maybe my mind was more befuddled than usual.

“No,” she said. She drank wine and set the glass aside. “I just want to get it over with before school starts so I don’t have to go through a change of my name with a bunch of third-graders.” With that, she reached for her purse and a package of cigarettes.

It wouldn’t be the last time she put me in my place, wherever that was.

Would she ever
come into focus?

My Redacted Life: Chapter 29 (Cont._2)

I woke early Sunday morning and brewed a pot of coffee. It was early June of 1972 and I had enjoyed quite a cruise the last 18 months or so. I’d come a long way from a lonely sailor sentenced to over two years in the East Coast Navy after a nervous year in Vietnam. I had come home to Arkansas with a few dollars in savings, no prospects, and a 1967 Chevy Impala that held my entire belongings. I had intended fully to move on back out to the City By The Bay.

Now, I had a job here and prospects, including a new little sports car I called The Green Angel. And, speaking of angels, I had a steady girlfriend who seemed, when the planets were all aligned, to like me. San Francisco seemed far, far away. There was this safe harbor, though, that I couldn’t seem to reach, no matter which way I tacked.

In short, I wanted to drop anchor, but the shoals were rocky, the distant ports were many, and the lure of Bougainville blossoms on the ears of South Sea maidens still haunted my dreams. Male insecurities generate a lot of indecisiveness in life.

There wasn’t anything I could do about it that morning, so I filled a thermos with coffee, grabbed an empty cup, and wandered down by the little white church that backed upon the Arkansas River. As I eased around the building, the Sunday morning music started. The mysterious guitar player kicked off a version of “I’ll Fly Away.” I stopped and listened.

In a moment, I eased down the trail and found my seat on the “Big Rock” overlooking the river. Several more hymns filled the air, then voices. My mind drifted away with the river and I lost myself in wondering why life was never as simple as I had thought it might be.

I finished the thermos of coffee there, as confused with the last of it as I had been with the first. I rose, nodded to the river, and started back to my apartment. As I walked along the church, I heard the faint but familiar sounds of a sermon being finished. With “every head bowed and every eye closed,” I heard that old exhortation that had been such a part of my youth.

Then the strangest thing happened. The guitar player began his thing. I couldn’t believe it but a familiar tune eased through the walls of that little building and out to where I stood. I knew it immediately, even before the congregation started in with “Oh, Why Not Tonight?”

Crap. I hastened on, thermos and cup in hand and confusion in mind.

Later, I drove to the office and pretended to work. Deciding I needed to straighten out my life, I drove home and spent the afternoon cleaning my apartment. I would clean awhile and look out the window.

No Brenda.

Then I took a leisurely walk to the dumpster.

No Brenda.

As I walked by my neighbor’s apartment, she walked to the screen door, fastening her bra, and looked through at me. She just made a “Harrumph,” sound and turned away.

I finished cleaning and took a nap. Sometime late in the afternoon, I heard the familiar scratch on my window screen. I jumped up.

Brenda.

She stood at my door in fading daylight, her long hair shining brighter than I had ever seen it. She had applied makeup. Unusual … she was a person who was as beautiful without makeup as she was with it, I thought. She wore her favorite yellow shirt, the one that matched her hair so well. She had on loose fitting jeans and tennis shoes with white socks.

“I’m bored,” she said. “Been cleaning all day and straightening up things. Take me for a ride.”

I thought, “You just walk up, after ignoring me all day, and start making demands? Just who the hell do you think you are?”

I said, “Okay.”

We started out Cantrell and I didn’t say a lot. Neither did she. I broke first. “Talk to your folks today?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“They are fine. Went to church. You talk to yours?”

“Yeah.”

“How are they?”

“They asked about you.”

“Oh? Asked what?”

“How you were.”

“And?”

“I told them you were fine.”

“And?”

“That I would tell you they said ‘hello.’”

This line of sparkling conversation occupied us until we reached the entrance to Walton Heights subdivision. I turned and followed the twisting path to Rivercrest Drive. There, I turned left and followed it to where it ended with a magnificent view of the sun beginning to set over the Arkansas River Valley and Pinnacle Mountain. I parked my car and we got out.

The view was particularly enchanting that evening. The darkness enclosed us as if making a safe and special spot. We leaned against the car and watched. She took my hand. That emboldened me.

“Brenda,” I said.

“What?” she said. For a second or two, I feared I had spoiled this precious moment for her by intruding upon the silence.

I thought, “What the hell?”

I said, “I know we haven’t known one another that long, and I know I might not be the best catch in the world, and I know you could do better, but I was just wondering if you might marry me?

It just doesn’t get any more romantic than that, does it?

She turned her face away from the view and looked at me. The setting sun made it glow. I would have jumped over the drop-off into the sunset had she asked me to. Instead, she said, “I don’t even have to think about it.”

“I don’t even have to think about it?” That wasn’t an answer. I looked her in the eyes for a clue.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes, I will.”

“Yes.”

Marry a farmer's daughter?
Why not?

My Redacted Life: Chapter 29

We had enjoyed a trip to St. Louis, Brenda and I, and we had delivered the drawing of the proposed development to the firm there without incident. The development never happened, though. Unfortunately, it proposed a small element of affordable housing and the St. Louis County suburb for which it was proposed didn’t hold affordable housing in high esteem. There were slums in “The City” for that purpose.

But I had done my job. It was nearly noon Friday before we had returned, I had swapped cars, and had debriefed Tom and Jack on my visit with the clients. I say “clients,” despite the fact that our work on this project was another “on the come” deal. I found, as time went by, that doing free work was an extremely easy thing to do in the consulting business, perhaps the greatest single cause of bankruptcy. The danger was that it could make one feel like a master salesperson, but going broke while selling air for free.

Real results, I would decide later, required commitments, in many areas of life. Right now, I was thinking of other things.

We had stopped, Brenda and I, in southern Missouri, at a roadside market. There, we had purchased an entire bushel of peas, probably trucked in from Texas but we didn’t care. Friday evening, after unpacking and enjoying a burgers and fries from Burger Chef, we sat on my patio and shelled peas like an old farm couple.

What? Oh dear. We were drifting out of the 1970s, back past the 1960s, into an age I thought would never exist again, at least for me. I took a sip of red wine and felt the delicious sharp taste caress my tongue. Life was good, after all.

The river was particularly beautiful that evening, the moonlight bouncing off remnants of large cumulus clouds and creating a sensual glimmer. I looked over at Brenda, shelling peas and smiling as if life had designed her for this moment. The sound of peas hitting a bowl mixed with a soft summer breeze, blowing in just a faint smell of honeysuckle from somewhere. From far away, a siren sounded, reminding one that the city was still alive. Magic? You decide.

Just before dark, my neighbor heard us and came around the partition to say hello. I gawked, and Brenda said, “Didn’t you forget something?” My neighbor looked, gasped, darted back around the partition. We didn’t see her again that evening.

The next day, we took some shelled peas to her grandmother, who lived a small distance from her parents. I made another friend for life. They piled up these days, without much effort.

We had enjoyed ourselves lately. I mostly behaved, mostly I say. I suffered from occasional “weak moment flashbacks,” the product of being a child of the 1960s, a veteran of four years of minimal adult supervision, and a plethora of character flaws. She cured these with a sharp rebuke and the stomping of a tiny foot. In this respect, she was like my Sainted Mother, a woman of slight stature and delicate features but bolstered by a strength like tensioned steel.

In short, we became accustomed to one another. I learned that she possessed the inscrutability of an oriental Zen master, and she learned that I was malleable, if neither perfect nor predictable.

I suppose it might have gone on like this for some time had I not taken her for ride just before sundown that Sunday evening.

What was I supposed to do?

Chapter 28: (Cont._3)

The first week in June went along without incident for a couple of days. Everyone was busy and the weather was still just bearable. Work had begun on converting downtown Little Rock into a “mall.” Nobody’s perfect, not even urban planners.

On Tuesday, I received a fine offer for a short, all-expense-paid trip to St. Louis, Missouri. Remember the project that Jack Castin was working on for a company there? He had prepared a nice rendering of the plan. They had it printed and mounted only to find that it was too large to be transported by airline. Oops.

The miscalculation proved to be my good luck, though. Tom called me in and asked how I would like to transport the drawing to Missouri in the back seat of one of the company cars, a Ford, “Crown Vic.”

“Sure,” I said, immediately thinking of being away from Brenda.

Tom must have read my mind, for he said, “That girlfriend of yours still out of school for the summer?”

“Yeah.”

“Take her with you,” if she wants to go,” he said. “You ever been to St. Louis?”

“Just to change planes at the airport.”

“Never seen the Arch?”

 “Nope.”

“There’s a Louis Sullivan Building downtown.”

“The Wainwright Building.”

“I think that’s it, he said. Near Busch Stadium. I seem to remember that he designed some famous tomb or other there too.”

“The Wainwright Tomb,” I said, “In the Bellfountaine Cemetery.” How could I remember that? I couldn’t even had recalled my name at that moment without thinking first.

“You do know your architecture,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“Jack will show you where to deliver the drawing. Christie has a check for your expenses.”

“Yes sir.”

He tossed me a set of car keys. “Have fun,” he said.

We did.

The Wainwright Tomb: St. Louis

My Redacted Life Chapter 28 (Cont._2)

Spring turned into summer as Brenda had turned from a date into a steady girlfriend. To repay the trip to her parents, we visited mine. In early June, we drove to Pine Bluff one Saturday and I introduced her around. The family and friends all fell in love with her as did anyone who ever met her. That was no surprise.

The family Matriarch, Aunt Hallie Harden, whom we all called “Auntie” and my mother and other aunt called “Sister,” didn’t seemed too pleased that this nice young lady admitted to being a Methodist. She had heard that they let the kids dance in the fellowship hall. The horror! The horror!

After I pointed out that, at least, she wasn’t a “Roman Catholic,” Auntie relented and joined the fan club. Her seal of approval anchored our ship at my family’s spot in the harbor. We were secure from the storms of life, it seemed.

Back at the office, things were busy. We were excited about the progress toward the dandy subdivision the firm was about to develop. Somehow, we made contact with a developer in the St. Louis area, and Jack Castin designed a magnificent plan for a development they planned. We were making a name for ourselves in our little spot of Arkansas. Things would just get better.

At the opposite end of the hall from our offices in the Hall Building was a Snelling and Snelling employment agency. A crew of nice women, using fake names for some reason, worked there. We were all “elevator conversation” friends and they were familiar with our operations. One day, a young man wandered into their office looking for a job as a drafter and carrying samples of his work.

“There’s a firm we know of that employs such workers,” one said. “Sign here, and we’ll get you an appointment.” He signed the agreement promising to pay part of his wages to the employment firm for several months if hired. “Wait one,” she said.

She called me. It turned out that the original head drafter of our firm had given notice a day or two before, leaving us for the state’s largest engineering firm. She described the prospect. “Send him down,” I said.

Steve Rogers was a man of infinite capabilities. He would later enjoy several successes in the professional world. At this point in his life, he was just what we needed. We looked over the samples of his work and hired him on the spot.

Later, he would confess, “I saw the sign on your office door and started to skip the employment agency, walk down, and make a cold call,” he said. “I wish I had. It would have saved me money.”

Such are the turns that control a person’s life. What was important to us then, and in the future, was that he and Ron McConnell formed one of the best team of technicians ever to grace a firm like ours. Such are the turns that control an organization’s success.

Speaking of turns and twists, I was wondering if life wasn’t getting ready to ask me the rhetorical question, “Will that be cash or credit?” And I didn’t even know if the object of the question was on the market.

She might be willing, if “Barkis” was. Barkis wasn’t sure. And anyone on earth who thought they knew what that woman was thinking was nothing more than a self-deluded fool. Here was I, born a “little on the lite side of the cornbread,” and living in a constant state of befuddlement. The stage was set for something. I had no idea what, but I was so stricken I didn’t care.”

Just pick one, and tell
me what she's thinking.