The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission had decided to move
its staff operations from the Capitol grounds to site adjacent to the new I-430
bypass in West Little Rock. It was to be part of a large campus to be called
the Natural Resources Complex or something like that. Since it would also house
state agencies like the Plant Board and Crime Laboratory, the architect for the
Game and Fish boys thought some advanced site planning would help. Jack Castin
was the perfect choice for the assignment.
There was another reason that site planning from an outside
source would come in handy. Jack would find out about that later.
Everyone was in a hurry, a big hurry. Jack needed an
accurate topographical map and a professional surveyor would need time to
prepare one. Nope. We had to get started. The U.S. Geological maps had general
topo lines, but their accuracy was unknown and the scale was unusable.
Ron McConnell and I put our heads together. Through an
elaborate scheme that involved putting an accurate and measured line on the small
drawing, and having our old friend Bob Wilson photograph and enlarge it to
another semi-precise length, we produced a fair representation of a topo map at
a workable scale. It would serve until the surveyor had prepared a more
accurate version. We prided ourselves. The boss smiled. The architect okayed
it. Jack went to work.
Then he learned the news.
Not being from Little Rock, he didn’t know that the plot of
land they handed him contained the bodies of inmates who had died, with neither
resources nor family, while housed in the state mental hospital. In those days,
the government cared for the mentally disabled in public institutions rather
than medicating them and turning them out alone to fend for themselves. That’s a
topic for another day.
What we faced now was a site irreverently known to generations
of Little Rock natives as “Crazy Graveyard.” It lay right in the middle of the
property. It served, in addition to incarcerating the indigent, as a favorite “parking”
spot for teenagers, young boys hoping that fear of the “undead” might serve as
an aphrodisiac, and young girls willing to go along for one ride too many. Adding
extra spice to the experience was a long-standing legend that the bodies therein
were buried in a vertical position to conserve space. That allowed their ghosts
quicker access to the real world.
Old timers say it worked as a love nest, Crazy Graveyard did. Who
knows how many successful citizens of today might trace their origins to the site?
Anyway, the situation led to a great deal of consternation.
What to do with the location of so many unclaimed and unknown bodies? The boys
at Game and Fish didn’t care much one way or another. Truth be known, the architects
didn’t either. Jack, being Catholic, wanted a resolution. Questions only
produced a great deal of embarrassment and cover-up from state officials. Turns
out that there had never been a state employee who had been the least bit
involved in disposing of those bodies.
“What bodies?” they explained.
Eventually, some portion of the site remained a memorial.
Jack did a masterful job of planning the site, as always. The architects were
happy. The boys at Game and Fish were relieved, and the world continued to rotate
on its axis.
Oh, and what about the makeshift topo map Ron and I came up
with? It proved incredibly accurate as it turned out. Our technique came in handy,
although later what took us three days would only take a few strokes of a keyboard.
I don’t know what they do with the bodies of mentally deficient
paupers these days. They don’t keep many of them in public institutions, I am told,
long enough to expire. They die on the streets and become somebody else’s
problem.
No comments:
Post a Comment