The Storms of Life

Just what we needed: more rain. It happens I suppose. It sure happened in 1927. I’ve heard old-timers say that flooding was what made the Arkansas Delta so fertile, all those nutrients being deposited, as the floodwaters receded. Does that mean something positive may come from all this? I don’t know.

What I hope may come from it is the awaking of an understanding that we need adults in charge of government. A slow dismantling of state government, for example, hardly prepares us for facing a catastrophe like we are experiencing.

I can remember as a lad when a bad storm would hit. My Sainted Mother tended to go into hysterics, one of the few signs of weaknesses I ever observed in her … well, that and snakes. She wasn’t, I will admit through the fog of time, above elevating the histrionics a bit for the pure delight of garnering attention.

Anyway, it scared the hell out of my sister, my brother, and me.

Know what though? We made it through those violent electrical storms (and they did seem more violent back then) because of one thing. Our daddy was there. There was an adult of legendary proportions who wasn’t about to let a puny little thunderstorm threaten his family. Why he would walk outside and seem to taunt it. We knew we were safe.

It used to be like that in our politics. When disaster hit, we knew we had adults there to protect us. We, as a country, might stumble, but we couldn’t fall. We feared no evil when we had the likes of James Lee Witt in charge of FEMA.

Then it started, this dismantling of government, this cancerous belief that public service had no meaningful role to play in our lives. We fist elected those who denounced government. Then we elected those who distrusted government. It's finally led to electing those who hate government. Somewhere, in a lonely place, we left the adults. It’s like if our little group of pirates that made my childhood so memorable suddenly quit listening to our adult, Boogie Shannon, and made Nicky Bohannon quit picking his nose and take over as our leader.

It’s like if the crew of the USS Hunley, (AS 31), on which I served, were to decide that we would vote our beloved Captain Anders out of office before we reached that storm down in “the Devil’s Triangle” and put SA Dewayne Puttephat in the Captain’s seat.

It’s like if some insidious force had, one day, put me in charge of our household.

I make light of it now, but it’s painful, very painful, to watch people who don’t believe in government try and tell us what we, as a state and nation, are going to do to face our current crisis. So far, they've mumbled platitudes, as the floodwaters devour home after home. Very painful. Very sad. Maybe the more fertile seeds of understanding will enrich us if the floodwaters ever recede. We may even find the adults waiting for us there.

Some think better times are ahead.