Saturday Sermon

One of the worst memories of my youth is that of being forced, in grade school, to watch films of children my age locked into what they called “iron lungs.” Those were machines that allowed children with polio to breath. Yes, to perform the simple act that allows us to breath. Invariably, after seeing such a film, my Sainted Mother would decide, after school, to subject us kids to a homemade test for polio. You had to lie on your back on the kitchen table and hang your head over the edge. You lowered it, waited, and then had to lift it. If you couldn’t, you might be headed for one of those machines that allowed you to breath.

Know what allows us to breathe without an iron lung? Green plants do the trick. Trees do the trick. Science-based physical transformation does the trick. I know of no peer-reviewed double-blind study that supports a thesis that “thoughts and prayers” will do the trick.

In the news, I read recently that a sizable section of our population is composed of Americans who “don’t believe in the scientific facts of global climate change.” Believe? Science is not something in which someone believes or doesn’t believe. Goodness gracious. Jump from a tall building and see if the Law of Gravity cares whether you believe in it or not.

When the last tree on earth is cut, as the last tree on Easter Island was, nature won’t care if we don’t believe in the scientific fact of photosynthesis, not even if we declare loudly that we believe in individual property rights more than we believed in survival.

When we start bringing back the iron lungs for children with polio, the disease won’t care that we claimed a right not to believe in the healing power of scientific facts.

Reading the news today, I can’t help believing that the major policy determinant emerging from the current American presidency is the desire to eradicate the memory of President Barack Obama in the manner of Egyptian kings defacing the statues of their predecessors. No matter how sound, or popular the existing policy may be, the goal will be, not to amend it, not to replace it with a sounder tool, not to ignore it, not to admit, however grudgingly, the efficacy of a rival’s work, but simply to end it. “I’ll show him,” sounds better as comic book dialogue than as political policy.

Back in olden days, national policy often changed as a result of thought, dialogue, compromise, and a public administration concept called “satisficing,” or finding a solution, perhaps not the best, but one that got the job done. Yes, sadly, national policy was once settled by means of a bloody civil war. We should all behave in such a rational manner that it is never again solved that way. The signs are not encouraging.

Nowadays, national policy is changed or established by an executive order by one man. Another man has ended dialogue between the two legislative bodies of government. One man in a foreign country controls a broad swath of our foreign policy. Another man in a foreign country controls parts of our free-election processes. One man leading a secret organization led, for many years before his death, our national government’s direction regarding our First Amendment right to exercise religious belief or non-belief as we choose. His successors still do.

I’m sure that there is a name for all of this, but I can’t put my thumb on it right now.

As another hurricane prepares to slam into our east coast, public systems based on science will determine the amount and extent of damage to our native soil. Whether one believes in science or not, transportation and communication systems based on science will be the sole determinant of life and death for many Americans.

Don’t bother asking Hurricane Dorian if it believes in science.

When Trump Tower is under water up to its second floor, the Atlantic Ocean won’t care that an American president didn’t believe in climate change. The National Geographic Society, owned by a Rupert Murdoch-controlled company that owns the 20th Century Fox movie studio, the Fox television network and Fox News Channel, made a prediction. The following photograph suggests, based on our current path, how America will look after the ravages of global warming take control.

A bit of irony that will comfort me until my last hours appears here. As you will notice, the little homesite near Pine Bluff, Arkansas, once purchased by my sharecropping parents will be more valuable than Mar-A-Lago.

“Fear and Loathing …” is a catchy phrase for a book title, but no way to run a country. As author Hunter S. Thompson said, though, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” We bought the ticket, and now we are riding into oblivion in a country ruled by fear and loathing. What a shame.

           

“Buy the ticket, take the ride.” Tomorrow's children won't travel far in an iron lung.

Science eliminated these.
Disbelief in Science
will bring them back.

Fiction Friday: We've heard two voices describe a strange farm worker, living in the Depression-era Arkansas Delta. Here is the third and final.

The Last Cotton Boll

III

My official report on Ferd Starling has been public record for years now so the basic facts are known. I neither hid anything nor added to it, not a thing. Perhaps the information seems cold and dry but that’s what a Sheriff’s report is for, to report the facts and never to praise or condemn. Any other information I can add has faded with time, but I will state, and it may come as a surprise, that I knew him before it happened. Why, you might ask, do I remember him? I would answer that because he could be a hard-headed fool when he wanted to be.

The report is dated the 21st of October, 1940, just before the year that the war started and it hardly rained all summer. But the two years before had been good ones, cotton as tall as a man’s shoulder and everyone had made some money. The depression was over and people were standing up straight again for the first time in years. We even dared to hope that we might make it through after all. I still say thank the Lord for Franklin Roosevelt, and I don’t care who hears me say it.

Things looked so good that I decided we could add that section on to the jail that we had needed so long. Saturday nights got pretty wild in the juke joints around Armistead County back then and some of the boys always ended up spending Sunday with us, sometimes longer depending on how much the devil had begun to move in their lives. I never was one of those Sheriffs who derived a lot of pleasure from mistreating those boys. If they hadn’t stolen anything and had only cut one another up, why I would release them to their farms on Monday morning.

I had to be there early because right after sunup you would see the wagons pulling into town to pick up the misbehavers, each heading back to his own place of employment. We called it “Emancipation Day” and would even have a little fun with it if the weekend hadn’t been too bloody. There was always a simple-minded one or two in the crowd and sometimes we would tell them their boss didn’t want them anymore so they would just stay in jail. They would generally fail to see the benefits of a free room and meals without chopping or picking cotton and begin to wail pitiful-like until we would tell them that we would try to intercede on their behalf if they would take the pledge to re-dedicate their lives to Jesus, which they would always do with many tears and supplications. It usually lasted a couple of weeks but one time it took and the fellow ended up preaching all over the county for years until he died a highly respected man, among white and black alike. They say he saved enough souls to populate a black Armistead County in Heaven. You just never know.

It was during these times that I knew Ferd, not that he ever stayed over as a guest. No, not Ferd, but he would bring a wagon in to fetch a hand or two that belonged to Mr. Thomas Easter if he heard we had them. I would always ask about Mr. Easter’s health and make sure that Ferd knew to tell him I asked. A vote is a vote but the good will of the richest man in the county is worth a whole lot more.

So, we needed some extra room and Charlie Baswell had started framing it up. We just needed one great big holding cell which amounted to a long, narrow room and a place to load and unload prisoners. One Emancipation Day, Ferd had been leaning against the wagon waiting for his boys and watching the work on the roof when I brought Mr. Easter’s hands out to the wagon. He was watching the work with more than a passing amount of interest. He had a match in his hand, working it up and down against his teeth. He wore some ancient hat that had lost its shape years ago. I noticed he had a pencil in his shirt pocket and thought that was odd. Otherwise, he was dressed like any other field hand you would have seen in those days. Except for one thing: I would swear someone had pressed his pants. There wasn’t a wrinkle in them.

I said to him: “Here you go Ferd, two boys with a sorrowful tale but not the worse for wear.”

He didn’t even look at us. He just kept working that match stick up and down and watched Charlie framing that new cell. “Hit ain’t gonna hold,” he said. “She’ll sag for sure.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked. I motioned the boys to get in the wagon and turned around. I didn’t see anything wrong.

“The span is too long,” he said. “Those timbers won’t hold it.”

“Are you a carpenter?” I asked.

“Don’t know for sure,” he said. “But I do know that span is too long for that much wood.”

I called Charlie over. “Ferd here said that section may sag.” I pointed to the long, center section.

Charlie looked at me. Then he looked at Ferd. Then he looked at the section.

“Bullshit.”

“Nawsir,” Ferd said. “That beam ain’t deep enough to go that far.”

“How the hell would you know?” Charlie asked. He wasn’t a man to be questioned about his judgment on building.

“Just do, sir. That ain’t enough wood.”

“Hell, it’s eight inches acrost,” Charlie said. “That would hold up a fat lady and her two sisters.”

“Nawsir,” Ferd said. “Hit ain’t the width. Hit’s the depth give it the strength to span. That one sure ain’t deep enough.

“I’ll tell you what,” Charlie said. “You haul them winos and I’ll do carpentry.” I saw his neck turning red under the collar.

“Yes sir.” Ferd said. Then he turned toward the wagon.

“Goddamn it Sheriff,” Charlie said. “Am I gonna have to put up with shit like this from ever field hand comes by?”

“Go on back to work, Charlie,” I said. He did and I stood there watching for a spell. It was a long span but hell, Charlie was a white man. I couldn’t get into this. Not with election coming up. I had asked him to leave an opening in the section so I could have a place to unload prisoners out of sight and out of the rain. That’s why we needed such a long span. I figured Charlie knew what he was doing.

It turns out I might should have listened. We could have corrected it fairly easily then. It was two weeks before I saw Ferd again. The Easter boys were quiet for a weekend and by that time the walls and roof were framed and guess what? The sagging was noticeable and getting worse all the time.

I called Ferd over and had him look at it. “You obviously know something about carpentry,” I said. “Do you have any idea what we can do about it?”

“Will he allow me?” He nodded at Charlie who had just joined us.

I looked at Charlie. He wasn’t as cocky as before. “I’m open to idears,” he said.

“Get in the wagon and stay there,” Ferd said to two young hands that had found themselves engaged to the same woman Saturday night. They climbed into the wagon with a great deal of politeness to one another, still cut up from their scuffle just two nights before.

Ferd walked over and looked at the sagging structure. He stepped over a floor beam and looked up at the sagging portion from the interior. He squatted and remained there for a long time, just staring up at the structure. Almost absentmindedly, he reached into a pocket and produced a match. He began to work it slowly up and down. Finally, he stood up.

“Would you have a piece of paper, Sheriff? He asked.

“Just a minute,” I said. I yelled at my deputy to bring a tablet out here. He did and I handed it to Ferd. He took a pencil from his pocket. Sitting on a floor joist, he began to make notes and a little drawing. I was amazed. So was Charlie, but he pretended not to be. He would look down Main Street like he was waiting for his best friend. Then he would sneak a look at what Ferd was doing. The boys in the wagon had both gone to sleep sitting up. I watched Ferd and wondered a dozen things to myself.

Finally, he stood up and walked over. He showed me and Charlie the drawing. It looked like something out of a book.

“First you have to jack her up,” he said. “Do that quick before you put anymore weight on it. Jack it up a little extry – ‘bout two inches over straight ought to do it. Then -you build this and nail her to the top of the beam. That way you won’t even see it from the outside.”

He tore the sheet from the drawing. It added a built-up contraption that looked like a ladder made of two-by-fours on the top of the beam.

“I don’t know, Charlie began, “It don’t look like much to me.”

“Do you have a better idea without tearing anything down?” I asked and he admitted that he didn’t.

“Give it a try then.” I said taking the tablet from Ferd. I looked at him and said: “If it works, you might be a hero, Ferd.”

“Oh no sir,” he said. “Hit was most pleasurable.” He turned and climbed aboard the wagon.

Next Monday I was waiting for him when he drove up. “Come in my office for a minute,” I said. He climbed down from the wagon and looked at the new section. I noticed a slight smile when he saw the straight line of the clear span but he didn’t linger on it. He just turned and followed me in.

He stood in front of my desk with his hat in his hand. I sat down. I studied for a minute and said, “I don’t like to get involved in things like this, Ferd.”

“Sir?’ he asked.

“I think Mr. Easter puts a lot of trust in you.”

“I hope so, Sir. I truly do.”

“So it really isn’t my place to get involved, but I appreciate the favor you did us last week.”

He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me in that way they have of knowing it’s best to let someone else do the talking.

“Goddamn it, Ferd,” I said. “Charlie wants to hire you.”

“Sir?” he looked at me like I was speaking Chinese.

“Wants to offer you a job helping him build, but he’s too damn proud to ask you himself.”

He didn’t say anything. I felt a little uncomfortable and so I broke the silence. “It would be a good opportunity for you, a real job in a real trade. No more cotton chopping. No more cotton picking. Real wages, Ferd. And Charlie has a storage shed back of his place that you could make into a place to stay right here in town. It’s a real opportunity.”

“No,” he finally said. “I appreciate it. But no. I will stay where I am.”

“I appreciate your loyalty to Mr. Easter,” I told him. “But I think that even he would tell you go. You need to look out for yourself.”

“Hit ain’t Mr. Easter,” he said. “I looks out for myself and I’ll stay where I is.”

“You hard headed…” I began.

“Kin I go now, Mistah Sheriff suh?” he interrupted.

“Sure,” I said. “Go on.”

Just as he got to the door, something made me blurt out: “Are you just going to get old and rot out there in that shotgun shack?”

He turned and looked back at me. “They’s wuss places.” Then he left.

I continued to see him after that but we never talked much. Maybe he thought I was mad, but I didn’t care one way or another. I had more to worry about than one crazy colored boy who could have had a nice life in town just for the asking. Activity picked up as the Depression seemed to be about over. There wasn’t as much stealing now, but there seemed to be a lot more mischief. It seemed that when people didn’t have to worry about the next meal, they started thinking about things to get into, especially the kids.

When it happened, I wasn’t surprised at the act as much as I was at the intensity of it. It was a Monday and I was in my office having my morning coffee when I heard Mr. Thomas Easter come in yelling where was the Sheriff? Before I could set my coffee cup down, he burst in and said, “You got to get out to Ferd Starling’s house. Something terrible has happened.”

I had jumped up so fast that I spilled my coffee all over me and the desk and I asked him what it was.

“You got to see yourself,” he yelled. “Come on!”

I brushed the coffee off me as best I could and started for the door. I stopped there and took my pistol belt off the peg where I keep it and followed Mr. Easter outside.

“I’ll take my own car,” I said. “It has a siren.”

“I’ll meet you there,” he said.

I left Mr. Easter behind so I had some time to view the scene alone before he got there. I almost wished I hadn’t.

The details are in the official report but it doesn’t do the mess justice. What I found was the place pretty much demolished. When I pushed the door open, I saw Ferd right away. He was lying on the floor in a drawn-up position. It appeared he had been sitting on a chair and he had fallen onto a rifle. One odd fact was that there was so very little blood. Our investigation concluded that he had placed the end of the barrel under his chin and then reached down and pulled the trigger himself. But there was only one little spot of blood. I’ve seen many crime scenes in my life and the amount of blood is usually the sickening thing for there is always so much of it. But not this time.

I first ascertained that he was truly dead and had some time to look around before Mr. Easter got there. I couldn’t do it justice in the official report and I can’t do it justice now. There were drawings and books scattered all over. They had been pushed into a pile and repeatedly soiled. Most had been torn and twisted to the point you couldn’t even tell what they had been. But they were mostly drawings of buildings, fancy, elaborate drawings. They were beautiful drawings if you ask me. I would like to have looked at them all, but they were too nasty to touch. It was the same with the books. I determined later that they were castoffs from the school library, another one of the many things that most people didn’t know about Ferd. But from what I could tell without having to touch them, they were stuffed with bookmarks and covered with notes in every margin. Even lying there in that filth, you could tell they had been loved.

I don’t normally get sick at the scene of a crime or an accident. But I almost did that time. I was glad, in fact, to hear Mr. Easter drive up. I needed another person in that room with me.

He had lost his sense of urgency by then and walked in rather slowly. “Did you have any idea about this?” I asked him.

“None,” he said. “He kept so much to himself and was so dependable that I never had reason to come here. That’s why I came over so soon after he didn’t show up this morning. I just knew something was wrong.” Then I looked over and saw that he was beginning to cry.

“Do you have any idea who it was?” I asked him.

He wiped a sleeve across his eyes. “Pretty much,” he said. “There’s been a gang of boys hunting around here. I guess they broke in while Ferd was working at my place,  and it got out of control. I guess it broke poor Ferd’s heart when he saw it. You know who they are, don’t you?”

“I have a pretty good idea. Why don’t you go on home and let me take care of this?”

“Would you?” he asked.

“Go on home,” I said.

After he left, I walked through the rest of the house. The kitchen was well stocked, and hadn’t been disturbed. I wanted to get my mind off the mess in the other room, to give my head time to clear. Truth be told, I was hurting a little bit over the whole thing.

I walked slowly around the room, repeating the names of the dry goods: Pet Milk, Rex Imitation Jelly, Humco Lard, bags of Martha White Flour, Brere Rabbit Syrup, and Clabber Girl baking powder. Lots of other canned goods, lots of them. He could have lived off this for some time. There were also several jars of Sunny Brook Coffee. As I looked at it, I remarked the slogan for the first time, “Every Swallow Brings You Joy,” flanked by two birds enjoying the full freedom of flight. In the far corner of the room was a five-gallon kerosene can. For a moment I wondered why the perpetrators just didn’t burn the place. Then it came to me. They wanted people to see what their hands had done.

Finally, I had to go back into the other room. I took one more look around. The destruction had been complete, vicious and complete. I stood wondering how one person, or even a group of people, could do this to one another. There were still pieces of drawings tacked to the wall, amidst patches of faded wallpaper and sheets of newspaper. Then I noticed a plank that had been removed from the flooring. A shallow box had been attached and there were several items there: some sort of drawing instrument, several pencils and a Garrett Snuff bottle containing some rifle shells. Subsequent investigations caused us to conclude that Ferd had stored—hidden—the rifle here as well. It turned out to be a remarkable weapon, a classic Remington in pure condition. While we were holding it and trying to find any relatives of Ferd’s, it disappeared and has never been found.

The stench was beginning to be unbearable as the morning sun rose. There wasn’t anything else I could do, so I walked outside to radio for help.

There wasn’t any doubt about who did it. There were five of them but one apparently left before it happened. The others really didn’t deny doing it. They just never would talk about it much, like they had made a pact. Three of them did say the Hinson boy left before it started. Mr. Easter raised considerable commotion for me to do something. So did that old-maid at the library. Most folks around town were more intrigued than incensed. In the end, I let the matter drop. You can say I counted votes. I don’t blame you. But you have to understand that they were white boys.

After they moved Ferd out, I had one of the deputies take the dry goods to old Mrs. Courtney. Then we talked Mr. Easter into letting us just burn the shack. He resisted at first and said he was going to leave it as a shrine to what kind of county it was we lived in. Finally, he said we could burn it but to get someone to bury Ferd in the front yard, under the oak tree.

We did, and Mr. Easter had a tombstone made. All it had was his name and the year he died, since nobody knew when he was born. We never found any relatives or anyone who knew anything about him except that he was from somewhere north of Conway, in Faulkner County. Until now, there wasn’t anybody who thought Ferd Starling’s life was worth going all that way for.

Mr. Easter died that following year and the tombstone disappeared after that. Nobody knows where to. His oldest boy cut the oak tree down the next spring on account of it was shading too much cotton, he said. For a time, they plowed around Ferd’s grave but then they got closer and closer to it and one day it was gone.

I have, on more than one occasion, driven by there and stopped for a few minutes. I can’t tell you why. I’ll take you out there. If you know right where to look, you can make out a rectangle where the house stood, from the burning of it. I look out over those cotton fields and think about Ferd and about the note I found under him but never told anyone about but just put in my pocket and kept. It didn’t make any sense anyhow. I still have it at my office if you want to see it. It doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. Maybe it would to you.

He had written it out in that beautiful handwriting of his. I can recite it from memory if you like.

He had written this:

“Broken by your fears, the warm winter’s place grows cold.”

Sure. Just remind me. I’ll be glad to show it to you. And by the way, that roof span? It never did sag again.

One Beautiful Place

“Hey, you can see Puerto Rico.” Of course, any of us who weren’t working or standing watch headed for the foc’sle, forward on the starboard as per Navy rules. When we arrived, it was true. There in the distance was the faintest blue-gray outline of an island, only a miniscule tad darker than the sky. How did those earlier mariners locate such a dim spot in this vast ocean, using only dead-reckoning along with the skills and intuitions gained from a lifetime at sea? I could only wonder.

Back at our home port, I coxswained “The Admiral’s Barge,” so at sea, they left me pretty much alone. I was all set to enjoy three days of liberty on this fabled island. I can’t help thinking about it today. I wasn’t on a fast ship, nor was I going “in harm’s way,” well not really. They told us which parts of San Juan not to enter. That was simply a challenge to some sailors and they paid the price for it—and not in John Paul Jones style.

I knew we weren’t “in Kansas” when the tugs snugged us against the pier. I joined in the fun. It was bit of a different experience for our merry band of bosun’s mates. We normally employed what they called a “Med Moor” from the practice of tying ships up ass-end, oops stern-end, to the dock so as to allow more ships in the crowded ports of the Mediterranean. Pulling alongside a waiting pier was a gracious way to enter a strange port. We all felt so.

The young boys sitting on the docks, their legs dangling over toward the water didn’t agree. Each had a brown paper bag from which he took deep breaths, tapping on the bottom of the bags to help expel the fumes of airplane glue. They gazed with stoney, dreamy, faces and paid us no attention until an ensign, probably an Annapolis man, yelled for them to “get away from the dock.” Extended fingers shot up in the universal sign of disrespect. The hands went back to tapping the sacks. The ensign went back to whatever it is that ensigns do. Young boys claimed that spot for our entire stay, coming and going as if in shifts. I don’t think the beauty of that island dominated their dreams.

Meanwhile, we “hit the Beach” and had a grand time. We explored the old fortresses that once guarded the island from pirates, the English, and other dangers. We experienced food and drink. We strolled the beaches, much to the disgust of the young folks. Some things never changed back then from place to place.

Some shipmates and I signed up for a trip to the rain forest. One of my memories is of the ride there in a converted school bus. I held my head in place against the window and watched the scenes roll by. The highway ran along a wide strip of land bordering, in most places, the sea. The scene changed from monumental masonry walls, whitewashed and bordering immaculate golf courses, to long stretches of cardboard shacks, hardly fit for human habitation. There wasn’t much in between.

I’ve been thinking also lately of my glimpse of the rain forest. What a heavenly place. What a blessed spot of Earth’s serenity. What kind of riches must be in store, at least in the mind, for those who would destroy such a place, one provided by nature, or God—take your pick, for us puny homo sapiens.

It was a grand trip and still provides me happy memories. If some natives proved a bit surly, it was understandable. They didn’t dislike us any more, maybe a bit less, than our own folks back home, especially in our home port of Charleston. Further, they were sorta Americans, sorta not. We fell somewhere between the extremes along the scale of their allegiances. That was no surprise.

I think the Galilean would have us love the people of Puerto Rico. Why our president doesn’t remains a secret with which his own heart must deal. We are fortunate in that we don’t have to share his demons. So, goodbye and good luck, Puerto Rico. Best wishes to a beautiful place.

Farewell wondrous island.

Want Better Schools?

Headed out to earn today. Please let me leave you with this interesting piece in The Atlantic. Nick Hanauer wrote it. He's an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, the founder of the public-policy incubator Civic Ventures.

Here’s a rich person who decided, after years of joining the Waltons in their views toward education, changed his views. Take a look at the epiphany:

For all the genuine flaws of the American education system, the nation still has many high-achieving public-school districts. Nearly all of them are united by a thriving community of economically secure middle-class families with sufficient political power to demand great schools, the time and resources to participate in those schools, and the tax money to amply fund them. In short, great public schools are the product of a thriving middle class, not the other way around. Pay people enough to afford dignified middle-class lives, and high-quality public schools will follow. But allow economic inequality to grow, and educational inequality will inevitably grow with it.

Enjoy the entire article. Back tomorrow if I last.

Youth

We had lunch, Brenda and I, downtown at EJ’s at 6^th and Center in Little Rock yesterday. We enjoyed it, as usual. I sat watching westward through the plate glass. Gosh, there have been some changes since I first wandered into Little Rock. There was the high-rise some of us still call “The TCBY Building.” I think some bank owns it now. The building we were in has been there a long time. It’s a handsome building, still extant in a time when we don’t build many handsome buildings anymore. They call it the Moore Building. I think it was where Draughon School of Business stood for years. Brenda’s grandmother graduated therefrom, perhaps from a different address.

Past the high-rise, to the west, still stands the fine structure that housed the Downtown YMCA. That’s where my life changed from a 240-pound heart-attack prospect to a marathon runner. Diagonally, across Broadway from the YMCA building, stands a motel. It began as a Holiday Inn but has suffered from remodeling and new owners since.

It remains the site of one of my most memorable Little Rock experiences, and I’ve had a few. This one “takes the cake,” as my Sainted Mother used to say.

See, when the Holiday Inn at 6^th and Broadway first appeared, the rooms boasted balconies. From them, folks on the Broadway side could look out to the west. They watched a busy commercial street by day and (this incident I’m about to relate took place in the 1980s) a largely deserted trafficway after the afternoon rush hour.

That’s when it happened, maybe six-thirty in the afternoon or so. I decided to finish off a long day with a run. It was in the early spring and the outdoors beckoned. I donned my running outfit in the “Y” locker room and walked out onto the northwest corner of the intersection, across Broadway diagonally from the Holiday Inn.

That’s when I heard it, the commotion and all. Oh, did I mention that it was the time of year, near school closing, when the high school clubs from around the state took their annual field trips to the state’s capitol? It was, and from hence the noise of screaming, giggling, and taunting.

I looked up and saw, over the empty street, kids standing on most of the balconies, raising the sort of rumpus that only the young and energetic can muster. They were staring at one particular balcony and chanting something like, “Now, now, now.”

It took less than a minute to realize their intent. A young boy, wearing only his “tighty-whities” and a pillow case over his head, ran onto the balcony, threw up his hands in a Richard Nixon “victory sign,” turned around, wiggled his behind, and ran back into his room.

This energized the crowd quite significantly.

More chants produced another exhibitioner. And, by the way, they paid no attention to me at all. I just stood there, trying to remember how it felt to be that young and daring. Another youth ran onto another balcony and repeated the act. Then another.

Enthusiasm breeds escalation I suppose, for the next performer wore only the pillow case. I guessed that he was what they call, down in Cleveland County, “a bank-walker,” or the only boy who will get out of the pond naked and strut along the banks while the rest hide in shame. Anyway, pandemonium rose. I thought I had seen it all.

But no.

Believe it or not, the next exhibitioner was of a different sex. I could tell from the exposed mammilla. May I say, without censure, that they could have competed easily for the glory of a world’s title? I considered turning and beginning my jog. “We aren’t going to top that,” I thought, as the pillow case and lacy-pink panties disappeared from the balcony.

Was I wrong or what? It must have been mania that only a crowd can produce. I’m talking of the mania that can make a grown man say something ridiculous or fledgling strive for unheralded glory. Yes, dear reader, a pillow case next appeared with the head of a nubile young woman thrust into it with no other article of clothing preventing the world from witnessing the same view as its first ever of that body.

I stared as several more applicants for “daredevilress of the day” appeared in different forms and tints. As Jimmy Buffett would say, “The crowd went berserk … .”

That was enough. The realization came instantly that I might have a hard time explaining to the authorities, should any be called to investigate, why it took me so long to realize what was happening. I started up Sixth Street. Soon, I was within view of our state’s capitol and couldn’t help wondering to myself as I fell into a comfortable stride.

How could our state produce such happy and audacious young people?

Nice view of the Moore Building.
I've seen many interesting
views since I came to Little Rock.

Living With The Stink

This house we set out to restore on South Broadway in Little Rock originally boasted two bedrooms, a kitchen, and dining room. Oh yes, of course it also had a parlor. I think all houses had a parlor back then. The L-shape embraced a back porch and that created a problem for us once, a real stinking problem.

Mr. and Mrs. Fox, I suppose after the birth of their second child in 1898, must have decided they needed more room. They solved this problem by adding a hallway over what had been the back porch and building an extra bedroom adjacent to it. I’m sure that they saw no need to remove the porch and open the hallway substructure to access from the crawl space.

Fellow preservation nuts: does this sound at all familiar?

Years later, along came Jimmie and Brenda. Then along came a family of rats, rather large rats. I won’t say we resorted to poison for I’m sure that’s not politically acceptable in today’s non-forgiving climate. Why don’t I just say that our thoughts and prayers, among other remedies, resulted in the decision of the last rat standing—the largest one—to make the decision that his final resting place, ere he rose on silver wings to Rodentium, would be in the space between the old back porch and the new hallway.

Call it revenge. Call it immortal payback, Call it our just reward for wishing an evil end to a creature who didn’t fit our concept of a happy world. We simply called it “The Great Stink.”

Having been dispatched into the darkness of the house’s crawl space on numerous occasions, I finally convinced my life’s partner to accompany me. Together, we realized, to our resigned disgust, that the space wherein lay the body of Rattus rigormortus was quite inaccessible to human endeavor.

As all mentally challenged historic preservation people are accustomed, we decided that we must live with the problem. We noticed that friends avoided visiting during meals. Sales people shunned us, as did the religious pamphleteers. Our dogs preferred the backyard, even on chilly days. The city building inspector approved projects based only on our word.

There were disadvantages as well. Meals became sullen affairs, avoided if possible. This was before we discovered Fabreze, so I could only guess as to whether Rattus Odiferous clung to my attire at work along with the plaster dust. Odors create bad dreams as well as other nighttime vexations. Oh yes.

German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, in typical Teutonic eloquence said: “Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich stärker." That, of course, translates into, if I remember my college language class: “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”

All I can say is that Friedrich Nietzsche probably never had a dead rat stuck in an inaccessible spot next to his kitchen. Hell, I’ll even bet he never tried to renovate an old house. If he did, that may account for his own death.

A lessor quote by the man maybe fits us better. He said once, “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

Well, as another great philosopher, Jethro Bodine, once said when he dropped a boulder on his foot while pursuing a sculptor’s life, we “commenced to suffering.” Suffer through it we did. The rats never came back. Some, not all, of our friends did. What about us?

We learned, that the burdens, trials, and embarrassment of a rat in your life require patience, lots of disinfectant, better regard for future blowback, and the knowledge that “this too shall pass.”

If I've told you once,
I've told you a thousand times:
think before you act.

Theology Time: “Don’t waste your breath.” I heard my Sainted Mother say that time and time again. She was more or less telling me to shut up. I think the Galilean told his listeners that during the Sermon on the Mount. Remember Chapter Seven, Verse Six? I’m sure you do. That’s when he told the crowd, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

Ah well, that’s a little more than “save your breath,” now isn’t it? Oh, and we’ll stick with the King James Version again this week. We don’t want to stray away from the scriptures in the original English. As Granny would say, “Taint fittin.”

No, it’s always amazing how the Galilean could talk about so many possible things at once. Let’s look at some things one at a time. Swine—pigs if you will—caught hell in the Bible. The Jews wouldn’t touch them, despite the smell of bacon frying. Pigs even got loaded up with unclean spirits on one occasion and had to go drown themselves to cleanse things. Now here same swine are, trampling on our values, or at least our valuables. You might say that those Judeans looked on pigs the way some of their modern counterparts look on immigrant families fleeing death and destruction.

So, what is this most valuable thing that we ought not let those swine do the “Pig Polka” on while the world watches? The metaphor used here is pearls. One must assume that everyone in the crowd viewed pearls as something of value, perhaps a most valuable possession. Today, he might have said, oh, I don’t know … “cell phones?”

Anyway. It’s popular today to claim he was talking about wisdom, the wisdom of righteousness, holiness, or understanding of “The Law,” that Trumpian thing that one moment was to be fulfilled and the next abolished.

As one writer has said, “If we take our wisdom (like precious pearls) and throw it all around without knowing whether it might fall before dogs (an impure or self-righteous heart) or swine (someone who is considered unclean), Jesus warns us that they will likely tear us to pieces. This means they will twist and distort what is said and then come after us!”

Yeah. That seems to make sense. But wait just a moment, as “Rabbi Columbo” might say. Doesn’t wisdom and learning sort of catch hell in the Bible, along with our piglets? Paul was an educated man. In fact, he tells us so in Acts 22:3. He is not above chiding his followers in Corinth though, with," For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise. For ye suffer, if a man bring you into bondage, if a man devour you, if a man take of you, if a man exalt himself, if a man smite you on the face." (2 Corinthians 11:19 - 20, KJV).

Going back a bit further, perhaps the earliest stricture in Judeo-Christian theology warns us that we must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil … .”

What might be our “pearls” then? Maybe the Galilean just wanted to create a mind picture of our taking what is most valuable to us and wasting its importance by casting it meaninglessly into the mud at the feet of evil forces. Let us all think, then, of what is most valuable to us. What would we fight for? What would we die for, it need be? What is that for which we would face the forces of mighty nations?

I think I might stick with wisdom, the right to study and learn. Didn’t someone say, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth?” 2 Timothy 2:15 (KJV)

Yours may be different. For some, it might be the right to vote in a free election. Would we ever wish to cast that precious pearl before swine?

Some have paid the
price for their pearls.

Confession Time

I’ve never physically assaulted anyone. Never intended to. Don’t intend to now. I’m always amazed at reports of men abusing their wives. Oh my. If I even thought of it, “Mr. Louisville” would come out from under the bed and I’d be heading for the nearest “hidey-hole.” Even if I intimidated my way out of it, there wouldn’t be a spot in the most desolate place on the planet where I could ever get a night’s sleep. That’s all there is to that.

Anyway, I’ve never thought in terms of violence to settle affairs. That’s what communication is for. I have this deep-seated belief—you don’t have to agree—that people who are prone to violence are those who lack skills in communications. I always wanted to talk them into setting up public speaking courses for prison inmates and warmongers, but that’s another story for another day.

Today … it’s confession time.

Yes, dear reader, there was once in my life when I contemplated violence against one of my human brothers. Please don’t tell the Galilean. I only think about it today because of yesterday’s news. A man pretty much devoid of admirable qualities died. Oh, you should have seen the vitriol heaped upon him in social media. Wow.

I subscribe to the Latin homily, De mortuis nil nisi bonum. It has been translated as:
- Speak only good of the dead
- Speak nothing but good of the dead
- Of the dead speak kindly or not at all

According to the tradition, the author of this sentence is Chilon of Sparta, one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. Its quoted source now includes about every philosopher produced by ancient Greece or Rome. Nonetheless, I found myself also thinking, yesterday, of the Clarence Darrow quote (usually attributed to Mark Twain): "I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."

Getting back to the topic of exacting violence on another human being, I have sinned, dear reader, at least in thought, and the Galilean did say that’s as bad as doing it.

It happened this way.

In the spring of 1966, the Draft Board caught up with me. I was living, quite by accident, in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco and working for Babcock and Wilcox on Mission Street at the foot of the Oakland Bay Bridge. No problem with the draft. I’d suffered from, and been treated for, asthma as a child. I’d simply contact the clinic wherein I was treated and have the records sent to that obnoxious board. Alas … the son of my original physician was now running the clinic. He let me know that my records had been destroyed and that I should feel honored to serve my country.

Well, crap.

Acquainted as I was with the news, I ran, I think literally, down to the recruiting station and joined the Navy on a six-month delay. Something was bound to happen in that length of time.

It didn’t, and in December I found myself on a plane headed for San Diego and Navy Boot camp. I had this hangover, see, generated by well-meaning but thoughtless friends. It was not your regular hangover, but one where you would sell your mother to Joe Stalin if he would only make it go away. We got there, and they took us in. They put me with 60 of the sorriest looking misfits I had ever seen. As someone said yesterday, compared to them, I was the Messiah, despite my condition.

Next morning, I still had the hangover at breakfast. I had the hangover and piled atop it were tons of regrets. What had I done? I tried to look at my meal but only saw sorrow and despair heaped high in front of me. Oh, did I mention we hadn’t bathed?

That’s when it happened.

A bright-eyed and freckled-faced recruit from somewhere in Texas looked up from the table, and announced to us all, as if it were a message from God, “One thing I can say about this here Navy, they give you all the sweetmilk you want for breakfast.” With that, and I'm not making this up, he raised his glass as in a toast.

My mind filled with images of torn limbs, spouting arteries, and coffins. I’ve always believed that only the physical limitations created by the lingering hangover prevented my violent thoughts from taking action.

I’ve thought often that I would still be in Leavenworth had I followed my inclinations. But, since I later reconciled with my (now) beloved United States Navy, I also think about the fact that, had I followed my alternative and sought OCS in the Army, I’d probably now just be remembered as a name on a wall somewhere. So, I’m glad I didn’t murder anyone, however justified it might have been.

There. Now how many “Hail Mary’s” do I need to say?

I even "friended" some
of my shipmates.

Of Castles and Homes

Last week, we learned of a mysterious farm hand in the Depression-era Arkansas Delta. Here is an account of the same man from a different voice.

The Last Cotton Boll

II

Sure, I can tell you about the one that they called Ferd Starling. You ready? Where should I start? Maybe by stating up front that I knew him before it happened just enough to recognize him. I knew which of the “shotgun shacks” was his and that’s why I knew him. When Daddy and Momma first got married they lived in that house for awhile until they could afford to move over on the Taylor place and that’s where we were living when I saw him the first time.

He drove up in one of Mr. Easter’s wagons one day while I was in the front yard chopping wood. I don’t think he looked any different than any other––a little bigger maybe. There was something about him that made you think he was a little smarter. I don’t know what it was, just a feeling or something in the way he talked. He stopped the wagon and I stopped chopping and he asked me if I was the Hinson boy. It come to me to ask why he wanted to know, but instead I just said that yes I was Timmie and could I help.

Was it my folks that used to live on the Easter place he asked and I said that was what I understood but I didn't live there long. I grew up on this place.

Come over here he said and again it come to me to ask why but instead I walked over. He reached under his seat and pulled out a greasy paper sack and handed it to me and I looked inside. There wasn’t anything in it but an old brown curved woman’s comb and I looked back at him, probably with a question on my face.

He said he found it behind the cook-stove in the house and since we had been the only family lived there in anyone’s memory that had a lady in the house he thought it might belong to my Momma. It’s tortoise shell he said and asked me if I knew what that meant and I said no and he said it was made from a turtle shell, only turtles around here weren’t big enough to make them from and this had been made from some turtle that lived a long way from here. He asked me if I had ever been out of Arkansas.

I said no and then thanked him and said I would ask Momma if it was hers. I wasn’t much interested in women’s stuff and I guess he knew that for then he asked me if I wanted to see something. When I didn’t answer, he reached under the seat and pulled out the prettiest 22-rifle I had ever seen in my life. Every inch of it was polished like it just came out of the box. I whistled and he asked if I wanted to hold it and of course I said yes I would.

He pulled the bolt back and checked the chamber and handed it down to me. I knew that I never had, and thought that I probably never would, hold anything that pretty in my hands, ever again. If I had owned that whole farm that Momma and Daddy were helping to sharecrop, I would have traded it to him for that rifle. Where did he get it I asked and he just said that a man who taught him a trade and other things left it to him when he died.

It is a beauty I said and handed it back to him real slow. He put it back under the seat and then reached behind him and pulled up three dead squirrels tied with a string. He handed them down to me and said give them to Momma along with the comb and she could cook up a meal that had come from that gun. I thanked him and then he said maybe I’ll see you again sometime and I said maybe so and he drove off.

It turned out it was Momma’s comb and it had belonged to her grandmother and probably was bought at Memphis when they were moving west. She said it was a nice thing for him to do. She had never expected to see it again and had been real bothered by that. She wouldn’t cook the squirrels, though, for she said she didn’t know where they had been nor how long they had been shot but I wasn’t to tell him that if I saw him again —just thank him for the comb and that was all.

I did see him again not long after that... He walked by one day in early fall carrying that rifle and a bag and saw me in the front yard and of course I stared straight at the gun.

He called me over and said he was going to Beauford’s Bayou to hunt squirrels. It was a kind of misty day with not much of a breeze and he said it was just the right weather for “still hunting.” Then he thought for a second and said that I might ask my folks if I could go. I said they and my little brother had all gone with my Momma’s uncle to Pine Bluff to visit and wouldn’t be back home ‘til after dark.

He just nodded and started to walk away. Then I yelled after him that I was sure it wouldn’t bother them. So he said come on then, let’s go.

We walked along together and he asked if I had hunted much. I said some but my Daddy worked so hard we had but little time. He asked if I had my own rifle and I said we didn’t have but one and it was an old one that had some rusty spots. But it shot pretty straight and hard, I thought, for such an ancient gun.

Well sometimes old things is good he said and we could always learn from them. We were to the bayou by then and didn’t talk much more. We walked out of the sunlight and into the dark woods along the muddy stream. It was only a little ways from the road and the cotton fields but it seemed like a different world. I always liked it there. We found a likely spot and sat down so any breeze would carry behind us. After a while, the woods just seemed to forget we were there. The mist settled on us real slow but it wasn’t enough to get you wet before it dried. I tried not moving a single muscle and thought about how some Indian probably hunted once in this very spot. I don’t know what Ferd thought about. He just stared out into the forest and nodded his head every once in awhile.

Sure enough, before long a whole family of squirrels came out to play and once they had climbed a giant oak, we moved into place. I didn’t even dare ask him but I suppose he knew what I was thinking for he whispered and asked if I wanted to shoot one. Sure I whispered back. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a few greasy looking shells along with a couple of matches and a pocket knife. He picked one of the shells and loaded into the rifle and handed it to me. He pointed to a large squirrel that had heard us by now and had frozen in perfect sight along a huge limb. I took careful aim and I’m sure I rushed it too much for we saw the bark fly a good foot or so behind the squirrel.

To my surprise it didn’t move and I handed the rifle back to Ferd. He said no, it was my squirrel and to try again. Don’t jerk it this time, boy, he said. Take your aim and then just pull your whole body tight all at one time like you was trying to make yourself small. I did just what he said and we both smiled when we saw the squirrel tumble off the limb and fall and then hit the ground with that thud that any squirrel hunter loves to hear. He said I would be a real hunter.

Neither of us had a way of knowing that six years later I would show a boy from New Jersey how to shoot Germans the same way.

We shot three more and then started home. I thanked him for the trip and said that Momma thanked him for the comb and he said take the squirrels with me. I tried to say no but he just said he was going to be too busy to cook any squirrels and I should take them. I didn’t want them to go to waste but I couldn’t help but remember the last time, though I didn’t tell.

Then he said something that struck me as odd. He said he really wasn’t that interested in hunting for squirrels. He was just out observing how trees were formed and he needed an excuse to be in the woods alone. His ways were different, I suppose.

It turned out that after I vouched for the squirrels, Momma did cook them although she was upset about the fact that I took off without telling anybody. She knew I was growing up, though, and she could tell it had been a real good time for me and she went ahead and let me enjoy the thought of it for she said folks like us didn’t have enough good times in life. I’ve thought many times, after it happened, that she was so right.

It started out innocent enough as most things do. It was a few weeks later and we were using up one of those fall Saturdays. It was me and the two Cooper boys and Bobby Skinner and of course Ricky Pickens who had got the whole trip up and who, as everyone knows by now, was responsible for what happened although others suffered for what he done.

We were what we called hunting although really we were just wandering through the cotton fields looking for something to shoot. The crops were all in and we walked through the dead, empty stalks. They would rattle when the wind blew and it was a little spooky like they were cotton-stalk ghosts trying to talk to one another. We were spread out, each with a rifle though the Cooper boys only had one between them so they had to take turns. They would get to arguing about whose time it was and Ricky would have to stop us and straighten it out. Goddamn it he would yell, you are scaring off any game within twenty miles so one of you take the goddamn gun till we get halfway across this field and then the other take it the other half. It wasn’t working too well, however, for they would start to argue again before we went fifty yards.

So Ricky was in a bad mood and it threatened to ruin the whole day and I was really getting ready to go back home. It helped a little when we found an empty Yellowstone Whiskey bottle. Ricky made us take turns throwing it up in the air while we tried to shoot it but none of us could. I tried a couple of times but didn’t have but a few bullets and didn’t want to use them up on such an impossible shot as that. So I quit and pretty soon so did the others except Ricky who seemed to have taken it on as a personal trial and kept shooting and making us, one after the other, throw it up for him.

We soon got tired and said that we weren’t going to throw it up for him anymore and that seemed to make him madder than ever. He called us a bunch of sissies and said we weren’t coming next time and that he would just bring some girls along and we could all go straight to hell. He had a mean street like that and that was the cause of our little run-in a year later on the main street in Armistead. But, back to that day, he was already in a bad mood when we reached the edge of the field and came out right up in front of Ferd’s house.

It sat there like every other shack up and down the road. It did have one old oak tree in front that had never been cut down. On the other sides, though, the cotton had been planted right up to the house except for a well and outhouse in back. It almost looked like it had grown right up out of the ground, along with the cotton. In the back it looked like he had at least two cords of wood cut up and stacked. He was ready for the winter.

Ricky said he was thirsty and let’s go make him get us a drink but I said I had to get home. He said he couldn’t make it home without a drink of water first and asked the others if they wasn’t thirsty too. Naturally they said yes and Ricky started off toward the cabin yelling for Ferd to come outside.

Nobody came and then Ricky went up to the door and knocked. Still nobody came so he opened the door. There wasn’t anyone there so he just walked in. I figured he would take a quick look and leave but then he hollered look at this shit, just come and look and the others walked toward the door.

I yelled Ricky let’s go but the others walked in too and they started yelling come look at this. It suddenly occurred to me that they might have found the gun so I walked in too.

It took a second or two to see in the dark room but I could see what they were talking about. There was a kitchen in back and a front room where Ferd stayed and that’s where we were. I knew we were in violation but I could no more move than the rest of them. There on one whole wall were pictures drawn on writing paper that were prettier than any book I ever saw. Buildings mostly—but buildings like none I had ever seen before. I didn’t know it then but they were cathedrals like they have in France and Italy. I’ve seen them since, but standing there that day I had never seen any thing like it. The sheets were tacked to the wall with roofing nails and in some places there would be six of them put together for one big drawing. Building after building seeming to be held the ground by little stone webs coming from the top and arching to the ground. Some of the sheets had small drawings of how stones and bricks fit together and notes written in the neatest handwriting I had ever seen.

I looked around and then I saw the books—row upon row. Ferd had made shelves from bricks and some old barn lumber and there were rows of books stacked against one wall. There was a table made of bricks and an old door covered with a piece of cardboard. And there in one corner was a bed made up as neat as you please. It was the strangest thing. In the other corner was an old stuffed chair and a wood heater and between them was an ancient table with a coal oil lamp on it.

We were stunned. The room got still and all we could hear was the sound of our breathing. It was deathly quiet.

Then we heard a loud thump and nearly jumped out of our skin. I was closest to the door and hated like anything in the world to look but I knew I had to. I turned and looked at the front door. There was nobody there. I walked to the door and down the steps and heard the knocking again. It was coming from the side of the house so I walked around and then I saw it. A large cotton boll, dried up and never opened, was swaying from a stalk in the wind and knocking against the side of the house. Just a cotton boll, that’s all it was and I yelled inside and told them and said let’s go.

They didn’t come out and I yelled again and then I heard Ricky say you son of a bitch you goddamned son of a bitch, who do you think you are? I yelled back and said what’s wrong and he kept yelling you son of a bitch. Then I heard a loud noise and I ran to the steps and looked in. Ricky was swinging something against the wall with the pictures on it and I yelled stop.

He just kept swinging as the pictures started flying off the wall. He said you sorry son of bitch , I’ll be goddamned if you do this and he kept on swinging and then he told Bobby to turn the goddamned table over and he started to do it and I yelled stop and started in and then he turned on me. Either help or get the hell out he said and I said stop this right now and said I would tell the Sheriff and he said we’ll be through before the Sheriff can come and go right on and tell him.

I’ll stop you myself I said and started in. That’s when they all turned to face me and I saw Ricky had a poker in his hand and the others all had a brick.

Come ahead Ricky said and we will fix you too. Now help or get the hell out he said and the others looked at me too. Looks of hate and anger ran down their faces like drool from a mad dog’s.

I said once more let’s get out and they all took a step towards me at the same time.

I backed down the steps and Bobby stood watch at the door while the others started in laughing and tearing the place up. I heard books hit the floor and sound of paper tearing. Please Bobby I said, you know this aint’ right I told him again but he just said get the hell on and it won’t concern you.

Oh no Ricky don’t do that I heard one of the Cooper boys say and I heard the splashing of water. I felt sick to my stomach and Bobby said get the hell on again.

I think about that decision a lot. There were four of them and one of me and we were a mile from the nearest house. We had stacked our rifles against the Oak tree and I backed up to where they were and picked mine up without turning around. I didn’t trust Bobby in this mood.

I held my rifle and looked at the house again. The knocking about had stopped and then I heard one of the Cooper boys laughing and yelling oh my god Ricky and then they both squealed and I backed up to the road and turned and left them there. I remember thinking I hope they don’t find his rifle but of course it turned out they didn’t and I went back home.

I told the Sheriff my side of the story and even the rest of them agreed I wasn’t in on it but to me that never meant I wasn’t as guilty as the rest. He—the Sheriff—was asking lots of questions about it but I heard that Mr. Pickens came to see him and the questions stopped. I never had anything to do with the rest of them after that except for beating up Ricky Pickens in the Main Street of Armistead a year later which made a reputation for me in town and it wasn’t a bad one. It was over mistreating a shoeshine boy though, and didn’t have anything to do with what they did to Ferd. At least I don’t suppose it did.

Ferd taught me some things and for that I am grateful. Those were different times back then, when colored people didn’t have what you might call rights or anything. They had to be so careful. So I wasn’t his friend or anything. Even if I had known him better, there would have been this wall between us. He just taught me some things, that’s all. I’ve always tried to learn from people whenever I could.

That’s about what I know about the affair, or what I care to remember. There was this one other thing. Years and many experiences later, after the storm of 1947, I was farming near Ferd’s old place and I found a crumpled sheet of paper that had blown into the hollow of a tree, laying there like it was a treasure map or something. I guess it blew there in all the commotion. It was faded and stained and almost fell apart in my hands. But I was able to unfold it and recognized the drawing and handwriting as Ferd’s. It was a part of one of the pictures of a church he had drawn. He had written on it:

Oh mighty structure.

The glorious buttress!

 So far to soar for man.

Someone had taken a pencil and changed it to:

Oh mighty strut
The glorious butt!

So fart for man.

I guess they thought that was funny.

To be continued …

Death at The Bridge

There’s a road near the center of Lonoke County, Arkansas called “Doc Eagle Road.” It takes off from “Old Highway 70” just before you reach the city limits of Lonoke and runs generally south until it reaches Bevis Road at which point it becomes “Cole Road,” a name chosen by the 911 folks. It’s the road on which Brenda’s family and a bunch of other Coles lived.

Anyway, Brenda’s dad and his family lived on Doc Eagle Road when time came for him to be drafted into the United States Army in early 1944 and spend the rest of the war with the 79^th Infantry Division—called “a fighting unit”— as it battled its way across France, Belgium and Germany.

So Julius, that was Brenda’s dad’s name, was quite familiar with Doc Eagle Road and its most widely known landmark, called simply, “Doc Eagle Bridge.” He told this story.

It seems that in 1866, just after the Civil War, a stranger wandered into the town of Lonoke. Nobody knew much about him, but he got into an argument with a local man and it resulted in a “cuttin' scrape.” Actually, locals called it “a duel,” and it took place at Doc Eagle Bridge.

The local man killed the stranger and they buried him a mile or so to the east at the edge of a field. Years ago, after Brenda and I married, I spent a lot of precious time with Julius. He would tell me about coming home from the war and walking the five miles or so from where the bus dropped him off to their new place, just off the far end of Doc Eagle Road. Incidentally, he would find that his family had spent the money he sent home to “buy me a fillin’ station,” on more farmland and a car for his younger brother. That’s a story for another day.

He would also point out, as we drove to tend his cows, the grave of the stranger killed at Doc Eagle Bridge. He never failed to tell the story again. He was like that. He didn’t give up on a good story. If a story was good, it was worth retelling.

They had plowed around the grave site for years, the simple tombstone standing among growing cotton or soybeans. There was no name on it, just "Born 1833, SC" and "Killed 1866." I couldn’t help noticing that the rows came closer to the grave each year.

Then one year, the tombstone disappeared and the plowed rows obliterated the grave. I couldn’t even begin now to tell you where it was. Maybe Brenda could. Julius always said that they threw the tombstone in a ditch somewhere.

As I get older, I can’t help thinking about the stranger who wondered into a strange land to face death. Was he a trouble maker? Was he an inciter? Was he careless? Was he different? We know he must have been white, for his murder wouldn’t have merited the honor of a duel otherwise. Was he thoughtless? Had the trials of his own cruel war clouded his judgement? Was he, perhaps, just walking his way home when he stopped in Lonoke?

Or was he a simply a stranger? That’s enough cause to call a person out these days. It probably was then, too. What thoughts might have passed through the mind of the young veteran, Julius Cole, as he walked across Doc Eagle bridge that night, the horrors of war still swimming in his head?

Do you suppose he might have wondered about his own case, being sent into “harm’s way” and surviving, as opposed to a man seeking food and shelter and finding death instead? Do you suppose he found life, at that moment, a little unpredictable?

We’ll never know.

Julius Cole, center—survivor

Grand Visions

Some sights stay with you forever, just as real as the moment they happened. For me, one was the first time I saw Brenda. I know. I know. I’ve described many times how she sashayed by and grabbed my heart as she passed, never letting it go.

Another was the time I was enjoying a brief dalliance with the “sport” of scuba diving. My friend Doug Sisco and I booked a trip to the Cayman Islands where, on one dive, we traversed a short, winding cave to exit directly over the “Great Cayman Wall,” staring down into tree miles of darkening blue water, suspended above it like cosmic interlopers. Oh my.

Oh, and speaking of blue ocean water, I can’t forget the sight of the South China Sea from the airplane window as I left another place. I only mention it because I dreamed last night that they sent me back, the first reoccurrence of that dream in a long time. I think that’s a compensating dream after an aggravating day, my mind saying, “It could be worse.”

There was, going back a bit further, my first glimpse of Old Main, soaring above the “Mother of Mothers” as viewed from my family’s car on old Highway 71 coming into Fayetteville.

I can’t forbear mentioning one other sight that never fails to stir my blood. It was back in the 1980s I think. My old friend, running buddy, and legal mentor Argumento deMinimus, the Harvard-Bred lawyer was spending two weeks of Army Reserve training at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Brenda and I flew up to visit ere he left. At some point, someone said, “Hey kids, let’s go to the Gettysburg Battlefield.”

Off we went. Arriving there, we found ourselves a little disoriented by the traffic and disorder. It’s a big place, the battlefield park. It is immaculately preserved, due largely to the initial efforts of one of the battles’ self-aggrandizing jerks, Union General Daniel Edgar Sickles. Sickles nearly blew the victory and then spent the rest of his life trying to destroy the career of General George Meade who whipped Robert E. Lee to a standstill at the three-day battle and was never forgiven for the insult, either by Abraham Lincoln or the writers of history.

Anyway, we decided to advantage ourselves of the first available parking place and then become oriented. This we started to do, wandering through a small entryway and heading up a slight incline toward the visitor center. As we walked, a small white building appeared on our right. “Hey,” I said, “that looks familiar.” Nobody listened. They just walked on up the hill. “Hey,” I said, “isn’t that General Meade’s Head … ?”

I didn’t finish, for I reached the top of the ridge where the other two already stood, transfixed. I froze as well. There we stood, at what they call “The high-water mark of the Confederacy," where from a line of battle a mile away, three divisions of Confederate troops had marched inexorably to doom against a Union force of men and cannons arrayed along the ridge where we stood.

I tell you it was really something. It makes chills run up my spine just to recall it. I have no truck with either the Confederacy or the cause for which it stood. I must admit, however, to recalling, at that very moment, the immortal words of William Faulkner, penned in his last novel, Intruder in the Dust. Remember what he wrote?

“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.”

Neither a charge, nor Pickett's...
His widow promulgated that myth.
It was an assault, an insane one,
by nearly 15,000 brave, but
misguided, men and stopped
by other brave men in epic battle.