Early in my career as an urban planner, I ran afoul of one
of the most mean-spirited people ever to emigrate to our state. His name is
Paul Greenberg and, at the time, he was the editor of the Pine Bluff Commercial, my hometown newspaper. Because of an innocuous
issue, he developed a hatred for our firm, which was doing some work for the city.
To adapt a phrase that J. Edgar Hoover used for Bobby Kennedy, nobody hates
like Paul Greenberg. Just ask Bill Clinton.
As a result of a year-long series of sometimes personal attacks
in his editorials, attacks that tickled my aunts to death and mortified Sainted
Mother, I developed a talent when writing. “What talent?” one might ask. It’s not
a talent as much as a cautionary instinct, which is to think before I write. I imagine
that Paul Greenberg, all full of venom, is watching every word I write. Let’s
just say that it helps me proceed with care aforethought.
Adversities related to sports took awhile longer to teach me.
But after a series of humiliating experiences, experiences that still
contribute to my 3:00 a.m. insomnia attacks, I decided that I would never excel
at anything requiring manual dexterity, speed, strength, visual acuity, good
reflexes, or basic coordination. It took time, but I even found a girl to date
who didn’t regard those traits highly. She was seeing a basketball coach at the
time, and I think that the experience of watching a few games while sitting on
a hard bench, may have convinced hear that a boring sloth whose main dream was
to learn to play the banjo wasn’t the worst deal around.
That brings us to my military service, an issue that I never
expected I would have to face. I had suffered asthma as a child and it was well
known around Pine Bluff High and Maxine’s Tap Room in Fayetteville, that asthma
was the best “no-service” guarantee around. There was this clinic in West Memphis
that still held my records, and when LBJ and General William “The Unsuspecting”
Westmoreland came for my body, all I had to do was present those records. I was
in a nice place, surrounded by friends, and set for the future. “Get your fodder
somewhere else, boys.”
Imagine my surprise when I learned that the clinic had since
suffered a fire that destroyed many of the records and was run by the son of
the original doctor. Imagine my further discomfiture on learning that said son
believed that military service was next to spiritual salvation and that any male
with a body large enough to receive a bullet who desired to avoid such service
deserved to be imprisoned.
No sweat, I’ll join the Navy, avoid combat, see the world,
and spend ample amounts of time in the company of beautiful South Pacific
ladies wearing Bougainville ear-blossoms and mouthing my name like a Trump moans
“money.”
“So long you draftee suckers.”
Well we all know how that turned out. But you know what? I
learned a lot in the Navy, some of it even legal. The greatest thing I ever
learned was that it is very important that one be happy wherever one is. There
is no guarantee that things won’t change, as Baptist preachers like to say, “in
the twinkling of an eye.”
It sure did for me, and, when they saw me in uniform, you
should have seen all my “friends” scatter like cockroaches in the light. Know
what? I’ve been better off without them. It’s just a matter of learning from
adversity.
 |
| Are you coming or not? Yeah, I went. |
No comments:
Post a Comment