Old Times

I've only had one piece published in our statewide newspaper. Here it is for anyone who may have missed it. Published as a guest editorial in Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 2005

            Viet Nam Vets Have Long Awaited Reunion.

            The years, 37 of them, melt away in seconds.

            By Jim von Tungeln

            Sometimes a simple twist of fate can put a person in the strangest situation. I couldn’t help think this recently as I found a good spot just clear of airport security and waited for my old navy buddy and his wife. My wife was with me and we didn’t know what to expect. After all, 37 years is a long time.

            I had taken a sign to the airport, the kind you see people holding when they are meeting strangers. This one didn’t have a name, however, just a mounted photograph of two sailors in jungle fatigues mugging for the camera somewhere south of Da Nang, Viet Nam in 1968.

            We were just a couple of young bloods, goofing off and waiting for the time when we could sport our “short-timers’ chains” and start counting the off the days before we left. We were pals. His name was Wayne Pfirrman and he was from up north in Cincinnati. I was from Arkansas via a stint in the Haight-Ashbury. The only thing we had in common was that we were both stuck in that place for a year.

We lost touch after our tours ended. Although I had thought of him—thought of him many times—I had neither seen nor heard from him. My wife, Brenda, knew him from the photographs. His wife, Rose, knew me in the same fashion. Now we were all going to meet one another and answer a lot of questions.

 How did we reconnect?

            Bless the Internet. We had each stumbled across a website called “wardogs.com.” It attracts veterans who served in the I-Corps area; so we both signed the on-line guestbook.

I can’t describe the feeling when I received an e-mail from him one morning. I responded and we soon had a lively correspondence, trading memories and photographs, talking about swapping visits.

            From this, I gathered he hadn’t changed that much in either outlook or personality. I figured we would have fun catching up. Still, it had been long time, so I was nervous as we waited at the end of the concourse at Little Rock National. I couldn’t believe it.

            We had exchanged current photographs; there would be no problem recognizing one another. More as a prank than anything, I had made the welcome sign. I labeled it the “Choi Oi Reunion” using a Vietnamese word meaning “golly gee” or just about anything the speaker wants it to.

            I held the sign and waited. A security guard came up and demanded to know what was on it. I showed her and pointedly declined to explain. She sniffed and waddled away and I began wondering if we had ever really accomplished anything. Then I saw them.

            Actually, he saw me first, before I even had time to raise the sign. And then, there I was: a 61 year old man hugging and meeting and sniffling and introducing and making a spectacle, all in the middle of a crowded airport. My friend didn’t seem to mind, though. If he did, he didn’t mention it.

            A few more hugs and photographs later, we were in the car and headed for our home in downtown Little Rock. When we reached MacArthur Park, I realized that all four of us had been talking at once since we left the airport. The years and distances disappeared and we were instant friends. I knew it would be great weekend.

            And it was. Little Rock shows well and we showed it off. We filled in a lot of blanks that had occurred since 1968. And we marveled that we had ever met one another, much less become friends.

We had been the products of a high-level Navy decision that it was waste of good Marines (who should be at Khe San getting blown up) to have them guard naval facilities in the I-Corps Area. So they figured to train a group of sailors in weaponry and such and let them do the guarding and perform perimeter security. What they really produced was a group of rowdies who would just as soon fight one another as the Viet Cong  and who contributed greatly to Naval folklore and the local economy in ways sometimes permissible and sometimes not. After all, sailors were sailors back then.

            But that was long ago. Wayne completed college after the Navy and pulled a 20-year hitch with the Cincinnati Police Department. He met Rose along the way and they raised four fine children.

            I entered the field of urban planning, married well above my qualifications, and wound up somewhat respectable.

So we told one another about these things, between Margaritas and Corona beers and Nick’s Barbecue and the Flying Fish and watching the sun go down over the prettiest city in this part of the world. It was a lot like old times, except the female company was of a much higher class. When I left Wayne and Rose at the airport Monday morning, I “teared up” a little. Maybe he did too.

            We—Wayne and I and all the others—never had division reunions like the WW II veterans. I don’t remember any parades, either. It would have been nice. But, like most Viet Nam vets, we simply went about our business and were, on the whole, more successful, healthy, stable, and faithful than a randomly selected group of Americans, or so I have read.

            We always wondered – perhaps with just a tad of grumpiness - why the press gave so much attention to those misfits who claimed to represent us. It annoyed us when it later became clear that many of the misfits weren’t even veterans at all, and few, if any, had spent time “in-country” as we used to call it. But we didn’t have much time for grousing.

            Time goes by much too fast, 37 years for Wayne and me. We remember the good parts and credit youth with seeing us through the rest: the heat, the mosquitoes, the monsoons, the warm Ba Moui Ba (33) Beer, and even a typhoon. Oh yes, we shouldn’t forget the Tet Offensive and those little men who wanted us out of their country so badly that they were willing to kill us.

We wish this current band of brothers and sisters the best and can only hope that someday each one can share a few memories with a comrade who, like Wayne or me, will appreciate the words of the Viet Nam Veterans National Anthem: “We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do.”

These days, though, we are the relics we used think the old men were who sat on the front porch and talked about crossing the Ruhr River. We feel more comfortable with the words of the folksinger Eric Bogle: “It’s almost over now, and now I’m easy.”

Somewhere near Da Nang-1968

Little Rock-2005

Reflection

People ask why I’m so obsessed with the Sermon on the Mount. I answer, “Everyone is obsessed with something. Why not let it be something beautiful and timeless?

Timeless it is, and beautiful. It would be hard to find something so profoundly and exquisitely expressed as The Beatitudes. Let is talk today about the timeless nature of those wondrous thoughts, and others from that famous sermon.

General Omar Bradley expressed it this way after being exposed to the horrors of World War Two: “We have too many men of science; too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the message of the Sermon on the Mount. Man is stumbling blindly through a spiritual darkness while toying with the precarious secrets of life and death. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.”

We would move to question his seemingly unfair comparison to “men of God,” and “men of science,” unless we considered the general’s temporal setting. He was speaking in an age in which true people of God sought love and grace, while people of science created the atomic bomb. What would he have thought of the so-called “religious leaders” of today who stand on piles of cash conned from gullible victims or well-funded political platforms and preach an anti-education message designed to inflame and separate the masses and make us discriminate against our LGBT brothers and sisters? Perhaps he would have cautioned, as did the Galilean, “For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:20 (KJV)

One of the main themes of the sermon is, to me, the need for reflection, in this case the need to reflect on how to achieve righteousness. The timeless nature of the sermon, again in my opinion, is that we so badly need to stop and reflect on the gains in science. This would include the need to reflect on how science and technology could lead us to a more benign treatment of those around us, others in the world, and our planet. We seem in a headlong rush to utilize the miracles of science to demean and divide ourselves from one another. Surely, we could conceive better use of the Internet if we took time to contemplate, truly contemplate, the miracles it offers.

John Steinbeck had a similar thought in one of his reflective observations in his marvelous work Travels With Charlie, published in 1962 and documenting a 1960 road trip around the United States. He noted, "The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world."

George Orwell had his protagonist in 1984, Winston Smith, feel the pure joy of reflection, prohibited in his time,  in this manner:

“Winston stopped reading, chiefly in order to appreciate the fact that he was reading, in comfort and safety. He was alone: no telescreen, no ear at the keyhole, no nervous impulse to glance over his shoulder or cover the page with his hand. The sweet summer air played against his cheek. From somewhere far away there floated the faint shouts of children: in the room itself there was no sound except the insect voice of the clock. He settled deeper into the arm-chair and put his feet up on the fender. It was bliss, it was eternity.”

Seems a worthwhile endeavor to me, to satisfy our need for reflection. Didn’t the Galilean himself say, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:  For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. 7:7-8 (KJV)

Maybe it would make him happy if, just for today, if Americans ask more and speak less.

Artwork by my friend Lisa Casey

Simple Things

“He was almost always happy, I think.” Somehow, I remember that as a quote from Dylan Thomas when he returned to Swansea as a grown man and found the old park keeper from his childhood. When asked about some of the children he had known, the keeper had that to say about the name “Dylan Thomas.”

Trouble is, I can’t find that exact quote, so maybe I made it up. Anyway, I thought about it yesterday. I thought of another quote and this one’s easy to find, “I make myself rich by making my wants few.” - Henry David Thoreau. It’s from Walden Pond, I believe; can’t quite remember. I know that a similar quote of his is, from Walden that is, “...for my greatest skill has been to want but little.” Then there is the unforgettable, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Anyway, yesterday was a simple but happy one for me, although I scarcely expected it. I had finished a little pro-bono piece of work I had gotten tangled up in because of my charming personality. Would you believe because of a pathological inability to say, “No?” Take your pick.

Then I found myself nonplussed for having volunteered some time ago to address a graduate class in the MPA program at UALR, on a Friday evening, believe it or not. Who wants an education that badly? Turns out, about 20 of the finest young folks I had met in some time do. We had great fun. I unleashed old jokes on a new audience. They laughed politely and disarmingly. They said things I intend to steal. (On casinos to end poverty and create urban rebirth: “They’ll come into our dirty home and take our money and money from strangers to keep for themselves.) They asked intelligent questions, made incisive comments and, I couldn’t believe it, never inserted an extraneous “like” into any sentence. Wow.

On the way home, I hit the “Overdrive” app on my Bluetooth. I had downloaded the old John Steinbeck book Travels With Charlie from 1962 that I last read when first it was published. I had forgotten how a master writes of simple things. Oh, wondrous word. I’ve read imitations since, some good, like Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon. More recently, there’s one in which the author loses his way as often as he finds it, Spying on the South by Tony Horwitz. None capture America like Steinbeck. There just aren’t many like him. It entranced me.

It also made me think of something I read a while back. There was this man whose life was so totally devoid of any meaningful substance that he actually retraced Steinbeck’s journey across America for the simple purpose of proving that he, Steinbeck, couldn’t have camped at some of the places he claimed. Oh dear, the venerable old writer had used … shall I say it … poetic license. The horror! The horror!

And speaking of horror, back home I learned that we are about to do something about this mess into which we’ve gotten our country. It’s about time. I think the author of Grapes of Wrath would be pleased.

At day’s end, I could say that a simple time brought me simple joy, and it was free. I don’t think I could have bought it with any amount of cash.

Fiction Friday: First installment of a piece inspired by a story my late father-in-law Julius Cole used to tell around the supper table.

THE SECOND COMING 

by Jimmie von Tungeln       

 Now the reason that I got involved in this in the first place was because of my second cousin Clifton who was two years older than me. And the reason I don't mind talking about it when there are so many people who for all those years didn't mention it hardly at all and if they did they almost always said it didn't happen the way someone heard it did and even then usually lied and said they weren't there, is because I don't owe anyone in Hog Eye Bend, Arkansas one blessed thing. The only one I would have protected anyway was Clifton who got killed in the Second World War though they wouldn't take him at first because he couldn't pass the IQ test.

            Mama would say later that it turned out Clifton was just smart enough to get himself killed but that's not the way I looked at it. I sort of idolized him, him being older and everything, and I felt he had a good mind. It took a good mind to stand out in those days. And Clifton stood out as far as it concerned me.

            “Fun is where you find it,” – Clifton used to say, and I agreed. “Fun is just about better’n  anything’” he  would add. “It keeps us from bein’ mules or such.”  I mean, does that sound like the philosophy of a person who couldn't have passed an IQ test if he had wanted to? Really wanted to?

            Anyway, fun was what we were looking for and it was fun that brought us to where we ended up, which brought us to have a front row seat at the most exciting thing to ever happen in or about our little settlement, and which revealed so many things about so many people. You could say that it was part of the folklore of the Arkansas delta, even if it was recorded by two boys scarcely old enough to realize what was happening, much less old enough to attach much meaning to it.

            I was ten at the time, and Clifton was twelve, he being twenty-one when they hit Pearl Harbor and not living long past that. It was in August when the crops were laid by, that being another reason why so many people got involved. Had it had happened any other time of the year, most people would have been in bed and would never had even known about it.

            "I got it all figured out," Clifton announced one day, no warning, just out of the wild-blue. Just like that.

            "What?"

            "You know anything about girls?"

            "What?"

            "You know!"

            "Oh yeah," I lied.

            "Ever see one nekkid?"

            "Oh my God!  Who?"

            "You won't believe it."

            "Who?"

            "Geehaw."

            "Gehaw?"

            "Geehaw."

            "Why would anyone want to see that?"

            "Cause she's a girl, stupid!"

            "Oh."

            Until that moment, I had never thought of Gehaw as a girl, or as anything else for that matter.  I didn't even know her name except that her last name was Ratliff and she was one of the Ratliff's from south of Pine Bluff — the means ones —- the ones that Papa said married one another. I hadn't even heard her talk except to her Daddy's mules which she drove from sunup until sundown every day and all she said to them was "Gee" and "Haw." Of course that's where she got that name.  She was about eighteen, I suppose, real tall and real skinny as I remember.

            "You kiddin'?" I asked.

            "I got it all figured out."

            "What?"

            "How'd you like to watch her take a bath tonight?"

            I tell you I was stunned by the prospect of an escapade of such magnitude. Clifton sensed it. I could tell by the way he looked at me.

            "Take a bath?"

            "That's right!"

            "How do you know she does?"

            "Hell, everybody takes a bath."

            "I mean how do you know she will tonight?"

            "She does every Saturday night, right before dark. Fish Johnson told me and Chester's Gracie told him.

            Now I wouldn't bank a whole lot on what Fish Johnson said but Chester's Gracie was about as reliable a person as you found in Hog Eye Bend. She shared that common first name with a bunch of other girls about her same age as a result of the Lady Evangelist Gracie Throughgood who had held a week long meeting in Kingsland about twenty years earlier. She must have made quite an impression on the local people, for almost any girl born the next three years was named Gracie. Since they were mostly related, there was considerable confusion until they started getting married at which time they took their husband's first name as an identifier. We had, in addition to Chester's Gracie: Newt's Gracie, Jesse's Gracie, Neddo's Gracie, and Ed's Gracie just on our road alone. And my Grandmother, who was given the name half a century before this all happened, was called “Papa's Gracie” the last few decades of her life.

            Anyway, I never thought at the time about how Chester's Gracie might have come by this information because I was considerably troubled by Clifton's plan. I knew from past adventures that he tended to underestimate both the degree of difficulty as well as the time required for execution. "First you got to get started and then you jest play 'er as she goes," was his tactical battle plan for most undertakings. And his plans tended to get larger and more complicated as we got older.

This one presented a pretty good step up, even for Clifton.

            "You mean we just slip up and watch her?" I asked. 

            "As easy as that," he said and he got that blank look on his face like he did when he was thinking. He hadn’t said so yet but I knew we were off on an adventure.

            Now this discussion took place on Saturday about noon and we were supposed to embark about an hour before dark. Normally, this would have been simple since Clifton and I stayed with Uncle T.J. and Aunt Hallie, his grandparents, most of the summer. But, as I said, the crops had been laid by and Papa used this time of year to make whiskey and that was a problem. 

            The making of the whiskey wasn't the problem as much as the testing of it, a job which Papa trusted to no one else and which often rendered him unpredictable by Saturday night. Once he made a particularly bad batch and became convinced that the "White Russians" were coming after us, whoever they were. That night we all huddled in a corner while he sat in a chair in the living room with a deer rifle across his knee, waiting for the attack.

            "I'll shoot the goddam monkeys," he kept saying all night while Mama kept up a steady line of prayer. It turned out later that he didn’t even have bullets in the gun. That would have been lucky for any intruders, I suppose.

            That was when I began staying with Clifton whenever I could. You never knew when whiskey and imagination might collaborate to create a new enemy for Papa. That might, of course, keep me at home and I sure didn't want that to happen tonight.

Thinking back on it, I don't think it was so much to get to see Geehaw take a bath as it was for the honor of being asked to by a man much older and wiser man than I. That has moved more men than me to stranger adventures, I’d be willing to bet.

            "What happens afterwards?"  I assumed a logical continuity.

            "Nothin’”. We may tell Fish but we may not. He talks too much."

            "What happens if we get caught?"

            Clifton looked at me as serious as death and drew an imaginary knife across his throat.  "Old man Ratliff would kill us I reckon."  Then he looked at me suspiciously. "You in this with me?"

            "Sure," I said and in the saying of it I felt the metallic taste of the knife blade. I had always taken it for granted that, if I were to be killed, it would during some great brave act, like protecting my family for instance... say from an onslaught of White Russians. Only my respect for Clifton could have forced me to face such a sacrifice as the price of watching Gehaw Ratliff take a bath.

            But I was game and this adventure was as good as underway,

(To be continued)

Farewells

I guess today is the day everyone starts in on what songs the documentary Country Music missed and who was slighted. I think they probably covered the scene as well as one in the space allowed and without causing eyes to glaze over. I suppose they regarded Glen Campbell as to "pop" but still I would like to have seen this classic  included.

They did mention Hank Garland as a session player and caught him in one shot of a Patsy Cline session. They made Marty Stuart into some sort of classic prophet and that's no problem. The few, the very few, people I know who are personally acquainted with the Bluegrass/Country scene don't have much good to say about him, but hey, that's inductive reasoning at its worse. Anyone "in the know" please chime in. I'm almost always wrong.

Anyway, it was a classic documentary, perhaps the best I've ever seen. Of course it had lots of actual footage with which to work. There was no way interview Joshua Chamberlain or one of his lieutenants live after Little Round Top, now was there?

At least one mention was of someone that I though I was the only one who had ever heard of. That, of course, would have been Nanci Griffith. She stole my soul years ago with this cover of a favorite Bob Dylan number. As my old friend Gary Toler once said of someone, "had [she] been an old sailor, she could have lured me off to sea." Connoisseur reviewer Jared Lawrence Burden once observed, “As she talks, the young men in the audience are wishing that Nanci Griffith were their girlfriend, the older men are wishing she were their daughter, and the women are wishing that theyou, too, could play guitar and sing.”

Anyway. There's an old story about two travelers crossing the desert who were told by a genie to fill their saddlebags with sand before going to sleep and they would awake in the morning "both glad and sad." They did as told, somewhat sleepily and half-heartedly. They awoke in the morning to find that the sand had turned to diamond overnight. Then they were glad for the presence of the diamonds but sad that they hadn't gathered more sand.

I'm both glad for the Country Music series for what it gave us, and sad that it's over and we must return to these troubled times. Maybe it both taught us a little about how to handle heartbreak, and offered us some hope. It's somewhat like my definition of a perfect visit to a friend. That's when you must leave, but you wish you had one more day to stay. That will always make you want to come back again.

Mixtures

Odd, but Country Music, the Ken Burns documentary, continues to amaze. From last evening’s episode, for example, I learned that the classic song Me and Bobby McGee, written by Kris Kristofferson, grew from his admiration of the 1954 Italian film La Strada (The Road) directed by Federico Fellini. Now that’s the magic of the whole Ken Burns series wrapped up into a single song. It's a country rock number written by a West Point instructor/Rhodes Scholar, based on an “artsy” foreign film, and turned into an immortal bit of Americana by a drug-crazed blues singer who rose to fame from  west coast hippie venues.

It just doesn’t get anymore entangled in modern cultural vines as that, now does it?

They say though, that the most moving songs, especially in the country genre, are those that make you feel they were written just for you. That’s Sunday Morning Coming Down for me. When I first heard it, I was stationed aboard the USS Hunley (AS31) in a desolate mooring five miles up the Cooper River from Charleston, South Carolina. Having finished a year-long tour in Southeast Asia at the invitation of my country, I thought maybe the Navy had wrung the last ounce of worth from me and that we should maybe part ways.

No such luck, they sent me to a worse berth. I had saved enough money overseas to buy an old Chevrolet car, though. So on Sundays, after a night “on the beach” in bars and cheap trailer parks, I’d drive into Charleston, careful to avoid direct contact with the honest folks there who seemed, for some reason, to hate American servicemen far more than the citizens of Da Nang had.

When, therefore, I heard the lines,

In the park I saw a daddy

With a laughing little girl

He was swingin

And I stopped beside the Sunday school

And listened to the song

That they were singing

it sure made me feel like "something I had lost somewhere along the way." I had never met Kris Kristofferson, but I knew that he knew what loneliness was. Man, did he know.

I made it through South Carolina, as I had made it through Vietnam. They didn’t try to destroy you with guns in Charleston, they just tried to make you disappear with bitter indifference. The wounds last, nonetheless. Later though, I met Brenda and things got better, a lot better.

This is still one of my favorite musical pieces in the world, though, that and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Maybe I’m as mixed up, but not as talented at expressing it, as Kristofferson.

Mixtures often turn out well.

Paths

There’s a scene from Federico Fellini's (underrated in my opinion) Italian film, La Dolce Vita—"The Sweet Life"—in which the restless reporter Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) is called to the home of his new friend Steiner. To Marcello, Steiner represents and offers an admirable life of intellectual pursuit away from the insane and immoral world chased by Marcello and other members of the paparazzi. The reason for being called to Steiner’s home is not admirable, though. The man has killed himself and his two children whom he had kissed goodnight in the same bed in a previous scene. Marcello must identify the bodies.

A somewhat similar theme appears in another highly underrated film, Educating Rita, a 1983 British offering based on a stage comedy by British playwright Willy Russell. In it, the heroine, trying desperately to escape a dreary, mundane life, rooms with a vivacious roommate who seems to love and enjoy life and Gustav Mahler in equal and enthusiastic proportions. Yes, of course Rita returns home one day to find that her friend, the joyous lover of life, has killed herself.

Why bring this up on an otherwise cheerful morning? It’s just that I was thinking of people I’ve know who seem to have led impeccable lives. Mine, meantime, has been a constant struggle against addictions, rocky roads, underachievement, wastrel-leanings, and bad choices (except in marriage, profession, and friends). Somehow, I overcame the allure of sin’s bright colors and landed safely on a stable shore. Still, I wonder why I didn’t follow the leads of my impeccable friends and save a lot of time and heartbreak.

Then I think of these two favorite films and the epiphany comes. We just never know, do we, what demons rest in the souls of those about us? It wasn’t too many years ago that the top-ranking admiral of my beloved United States Navy committed suicide when enemies reported a minor infraction among the ribbons on his chest. He had risen from Seaman Recruit in a special program the Navy once had whereby promising enlisted personnel were selected for education and a commission. It seems that, no matter what his personal achievements accomplished, the Annapolis crowd never let him forget his humble origins.

We only have to look at the morning headlines to realize that life forms no straight path to either virtue or success. A brilliant but disturbed friend of mine described it thusly: “When you’re born, they give you a bucket. As you go through life, they fill it with … .” I won’t say with what he thought they filled it, but you get the picture. The last words I ever heard him say was that he was in a Navy “nut-ward” and had “given my bucket back to them.”

As the Bard of Avon once said, "Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall." It’s scary, but, on the other hand, perhaps there is someone out there with a very heavy bucket who is ready to save us from all this. If so, it’s best that we not form instantaneous decisions about them.

Who knows?

Decisions

As our public schools crumble, our planet fries, our poor sleep on the streets, our children are trained (once again) to hide beneath their school desks, and our country becomes increasingly aligned with the most wicked institutions of the planet, do we pause to wonder? Why do those with the most unworthy intents possess the most wealth to carry out those intents. Why are the truly righteous silent? Why do the godly perish while the wicked run free?

We have, over the years, printed untold tons of literature aimed at answering the simple question of why bad things happen to good people. Each time we bury someone who died of cancer too early in life, or see the newsreel shot of a casket bearing a young child slaughtered at her school, or witness an innocent neighborhood destroyed by drugs or a tornado, we ask why a merciful deity allowed it.

“His ways ain’t our ways,” a film character answers. The Galilean phrased it more eloquently in the Gospel of Matthew 5:45 as the spoke it from the sermon on the Mount.

“[Be] the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” (KJV)

Well there you have it. A city in Texas receives more than 40 inches of rain while people die of thirst and hunger in Asia. “His ways ain’t our ways,” say those from dry, clean rooms on full stomachs. What then, was the Galilean doing from that immortal spot in Judea? Was he just fooling with us? His ways, after all, ain’t our ways, are they? Don’t we identify more with the voice from Proverbs 11:10, where the elders say, “When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth; and when the wicked perish, there is shouting?”

Sometimes, these days, all we have to do is turn on the TV and we can watch portions of America shouting with unrestrained joy when things go well with the wicked while the righteous, along with our beloved planet, face perishing.

Maybe the Galilean wasn’t simply saying, “his ways ain’t our ways.” Perhaps the most famous sermon ever uttered was all about decisions.

Yes, it might have been about making up our minds to do right. There are what we tend to call “decision points” all through the sermon. Some are transcendent in their pure beauty, like when he tells is who is blessed. Some make us uneasy, like the expanded definition of adultery, broadened to include our very thoughts. (So long, Scarlett.) Some are fairly simple: “That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (5:20) Yes, it would be nigh onto impossible not to exceed the righteousness of a Joel Osteen, wouldn’t it?

It goes on and on, this sermon, exhorting us at each step to face and make decisions some of which include, in equal portions, discomfort and righteousness. Perhaps we might better understand if we included one last phrase. How about the following?

“His ways ain’t easy, are they?”

“The day when rain falls is as great

 as he day on which heaven and

earth were created” – The Talmud

Shame, where is thy sting?

Been thinking about shame lately. Shame? The young folks ask us what we mean. For them: as a noun it is that painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. Yeah, I know we use every asset available to protect you from it. But, the old folks used to say things like “Her face turned red with pure shame.” It was a major method of controlling behavior. Yes, really.

As a verb, the word was used as an action to make someone feel bad (ashamed) about some untoward action. “She shamed him right out of acting like that.”

Yes, really. I know we don’t employ it much anymore. Today, when someone says or does something with which we disagree, there is a fairly well-defined process. First, we demean, criticize, curse, or bear false witness against them. If that doesn’t work, we file legal action. That failing, we kill them, either socially, financially, figuratively, or actually.

My Sainted Mother had a more effective, by far, process. She could scald the anger right off you with a simple, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” I remember once making an improper hand gesture toward my sister in a public place. Not being one to suffer in silence, she reported the incident to Sainted Mother.

SM didn’t try to be my pal about. She didn’t psychoanalyze my action. She didn’t put her arm around me and tell me that we all make mistakes. She didn’t try to explain logically why an alternate action might have been more appropriate. She didn’t even try to protect my self-esteem.

No, she said, “What would you think if some bully on schoolyard made that gesture to me?”

When my chin hit my chest, she followed with, “If you don’t show respect for your sister, who do you expect will?”

That did the trick.

I maintain that we might introduce shame into our national lexicon. What if, when a former reality TV star publicly ridiculed a person born with physical differences, instead of electing the bully president of the United States of America, we had figuratively hung ribbons of shame around this shoulder and made him walk through the village with his chin on his chest?

It’s interesting to think about it. I thought about a few days ago when I had an interesting conversation with a progressive police chief in one of our Arkansas cities. We were talking about the use of physical devices to control traffic, things like speed bumps and four-way stops. We both agreed that they suck at speed control.

“Know what works for us better than anything?” he asked.

I didn’t.

“Those simple signs that tell you what the speed limit its on the bottom and what speed you are driving at on top. Works better than anything I’ve found.”

Is that an example of the effect of shame caused by instantaneous feedback? I think so.

Maybe, just maybe, the owners of the social-media outlet “Twitter,” ought to attach “ribbons of shame” to egregious postings.

Couldn’t hurt. Could it?

Storms

Fiction Friday: Last week we met a group of men gathered around a wood stove in a country grocery in 1947. It was rural Arkansas and a tragic tornado had just ravaged their part of the county. Their reveries stopped when one said, "Speaking of hell to pay, look coming yonder." And …

(Apologies for some language of time, place, and people.)

______

The men all turned in time to see a woman burst through the door of the store. She stopped just inside the door, and turned toward the men, saying nothing. She eyed each one. When none of them spoke, she turned and walked to the counter.

           "Good morning, Miss Sheila," the Grocer said.

           "Ricky needs some stuff," she said, and slapped a piece of notebook paper down hard on the counter.

           "How's Arthur doing?" the Grocer asked.

           "He died last night," Sheila replied. "You got all this stuff?"

           "Would you tell Ricky that we're certainly sorry to hear that," he said.

           "You can tell him yourself. He'll be by after awhile," she said. "You got all this stuff?"

           "I'll just have to see, Miss Sheila," the Grocer said. "The storm disrupted all the supplies and I'm trying to ration out so everybody can get what they need 'til things get back to normal."

           "What everybody else needs ain't my concern," she said. "Can you fill this order or not?"

           "Miss Sheila, I'll just have to see. Some of the stuff's in the storeroom," he said.

           "I'll be back in a little while," she said, spinning around and strode out of the store in long strides.

           "That gal's as cordial as she ever was, ain't she?" said Rufus.

           "I guess if you was as rich as she is, you wouldn't worry about being cordial either," said Odell.

           "Rich? She ain't rich," said Rufus. "She married the poor Maleson boy, not the rich one." He searched for words. "She married the sorry one."

           Thomas Hyatt leaned forward on his nail keg. "Don't guess you've heard the news, have you, Rufus?"

           "What news?"

           Thomas leaned back. "You heard her say that oldest Maleson boy died last night, didn't you?"

           "Yes," said Rufus, "but what's that got to do with Sheila and Ricky?"

           "A whole lot," said Thomas. "Lawyer Wingate explained it to me. See, Arthur and Mr. Dunk Forrestor's daughter was farming that fifteen hunderd acres down off Frenchman's Bayou. They say that's the best fifteen-hunderd acre farm in the State of Arkansas."

           "Yeah, but that belonged to Ole Man Dunk. Arthur was just farming that for him."

           "Don't you see though," said Thomas, "Ole Man Dunk only had that one daughter. He was out at Arthur's house when the storm hit. It kilt him right off. The daughter lived for two days. And Old Man Dunk never trusted lawyers enough to have a will made out."

           "So," said Rufus, "what does that mean?"

           "Well that means she inherited everthing the Ole Man had."

           "Well, what's that got to do with Sheila," said Rufus impatiently.

           "Well, when she died, Arthur lived for, what now..., three more days?"

           "And?" said Rufus.

           "That means that Arthur inherited everything Ole Man Dunk's daughter owned."

           "So what are you trying to tell me?" said Rufus.

           "I'm trying to tell you," said Thomas, "that when Arthur Maleson died, Ricky inherited everything he owned. Ricky and Sheila have that fifteen hunderd acre farm now, plus everything that Ole Man Dunk had," he paused. "And he had a lot."

           "What about Mr. Dunk's brothers and sisters? They helped him buy his first farm before he ever got rich."

           "They got about the same claim to it that you and I have," said Thomas. “Lawyer told me yesterday that if Arthur died, Ricky was going to be one rich man.”

           No one spoke for several minutes. Finally Odell spoke, as much to himself, as to anyone in the room, "Things change pretty fast after a storm, don't they?"

           "I tell you whut," said Thomas, "If I was to inherit that farm, I'd sell it and buy me a freight truck, and I'd haul freight from here to California and back."

           "Well, Tom, if you inherited that farm, you could buy a whole fleet of trucks," said Rufus. "And you could hire people to haul for you."

           "And them steal half of everything they haul?" said Thomas. "No thanks. I'd just buy me one and drive it myself."

           "Well, you'd know about that sort of thing," said John. Then he asked, "Have any of you'all seen what happened to Arthur Maleson's house when the tornado hit?"

           No one spoke but Odell. "No, I ain't been hardly past Armistead since it happened, have you?"

           "Boys," said John, "I tell you, it turned that house completely upside down, in one piece, and set it out in the middle of that Bayou. Hit's a wonder Arthur lived as long as he did."

           The Grocer walked by to retrieve a hoe from several that hung on the wall.

           "Don't bother giving it away to Ricky and Sheila," said Thomas. "They got plenty of money now."

           "Maybe they'll just pick up what you owe me too, Thomas," said the Grocer, walking back to the counter.

           "I reckon they just might," said Thomas. "I was always right fond of Miss Sheila."            The men laughed. The room was quite for a minute, then John said, "That was a shame about poor Arthur. He was a fine man."

           "Yeah," said Odell. "He wadn't but about nineteen when his momma and daddy died. They left him and Ricky by theyselves."

           "He shore had his share of trouble raising Ricky," said Rufus.

           Thomas leaned forward again. "They tell me that he was about to fire Ricky, right before the storm hit."

           "What for?" said John.

           "Being so mean to the coloreds, is what I heard," said Thomas. "He made old Roedock Tiggens so mad he quit, and old Roedock 's the best worker in Armistead County."

           "Yeah, Ricky's a bad 'un, all right," said John.

           "No," said Thomas, "he was a bad 'un. He's a rich 'un now. He can do whatever he wants to, and ain't nobody gonna say nothing about it."

           "Ain't that for shore," said John.

           The mood that settled on the group now was different. Perhaps they seemed expectant. Or maybe with the new knowledge there was a new importance. The discussion itself took on loftier aspects.

           "Boys it ain't often in a man's life that he gets to see something like what that storm done," Rufus observed.

           "We was a real part of history all right," said Thomas.

           "Hell I didn't even think you were in the county when it happened," said Odell.

           "I was just as much a part of it as anybody," said Thomas. "I was just a little late getting on the scene."

           The men all laughed.

           While they were laughing, Ricky Maleson walked in.

           None of the men spoke. When they had noticed who it was, each turned his eye on the stove in their center and said nothing. Ricky seemed scarcely to notice them and walked to the grocery counter. Nodding to the Grocer, he asked if Sheila had been in.

           "Just a few minutes ago Ricky," the Grocer answered, then added "We're all mighty sorry to hear about Arthur."

           "We appreciate your prayers," Ricky said and then seemed to notice the group of men for the first time.

           "How you boys doin'?"

           Odell answered for the group. "Depends on who you're asking. Some of us better that others. John here lost just about everthing he...."

           "Any of ya'll want work?" Ricky interrupted.

           None of the men spoke. Thomas reached for the poker and leaned forward to open the door of the stove. He moved slowly, deliberately, as he first studied the progress of the fire and then began, slowly, to rake the poker across the top of the burning coals. The others watched him intently.

           "We need some more wood," he said after a few strokes, and began to rise.

           "Wait just a minute," Ricky said, "I asked if any of you men wanted work."

           Thomas stopped after rising and looked at the other men. Each in turn looked and Thomas and then cast their eyes on the floor directly on the floor in front of the stove. He sensed that he had been trapped, elected.

           "What kind of work?" he finally asked.

           "Supervising work" Ricky said. He walked slowly to the group of men until he stood near, not in, the center of the circle and stopped. He reached into his shirt pocket and removed a packet of cigarettes and a piece of folded paper. The men could see that the paper was rich and formal, with tightly spaced lines of type. Folded into a shape the size of the cigarette package, it was clear white on one side and a grimy brown on the other where it had been in contact with Rick's shirt.

           Ricky left the paper folded and held it in one hand as if it were folded money while he shook a cigarette from the pack with the other hand. He placed the pack in his pocket at looked at the men. After a few seconds, Thomas handed him a match and Ricky nodded. He looked at the fire which was hissing and roaring hot. He walked farther into the circle and placed the match against the stove. It immediately popped as the head exploded into a small flame. Ricky watched the match briefly and then raised it to light his cigarette.

           He drew from the cigarette, looked toward the ceiling, exhaled and then looked back at the men. "I come into some money boys." He held the folded piece of paper high in his hand as if it were holy. "Big money."

           The men stared at the paper, their eyes bouncing almost in unison as Ricky shook it for emphasis. No one spoke until the Grocer asked, from behind his counter, "You talking about Mr. Dunk's money?"

           Ricky wheeled. "It ain't old man Dunk's money no more. It's mine now! If'n you don't believe me, read this," he said as he waived the paper toward the Grocer.

           "It may belong to you now, but it's still Mr. Dunk's money," the Grocer said, locking Rick's eyes with his own.

           "I tell you it's mine," Ricky shouted, almost shrieking. "It was Arthur's and when he died it wasn't his'n no more. It's mine." You read what Oscar Wingate, Attorney at Law, says about it." He was unfolding the paper.

           "Why Ricky," Odell said, "We already know about it. Hit's a bad wind that don't blow somebody some good."

           "Let me see it," Thomas asked. "I done told them about it, but I'd like to see what Lawyer Wingate said, exactly."

           Ricky turned and handed Thomas the letter. He opened it and read slowly as the others looked at the one soiled rectangle in the back of the paper. As his eyes reached the bottom of the page he spoke softly. "And if the facts are as you stated, it is my opinion that you would inherit the entire estate of Arthur Maleson in the event of his death, there being no will or other legal claim upon the property. This would, as far as the facts are ...," Thomas stopped.

           "Ascertainable," said Ricky.

           "Ask-er-taintable," Thomas continued, "...include the estate of the late Dunk Forrestor which passed to his daughter, Ellen Forrestor Maleson upon his death and which subsequently passed to her husband, Arthur Maleson, upon her death."

           Thomas folded the paper gently into its original shape and handed it to Ricky. The small circle where the men sat was hot now as the fire reached its peak and the air seemed dark and heavy. Thomas leaned back on his keg so he could watch Rick's face.

           "You mentioned work," he said. "What would a man supervise, say he was intersted?"

           "Why blacks of course," said Ricky. "White men supervisin' niggers. That's the way it's always been, ain't it."

           "I don't know... I've been supervised an awful lot in my day and I ain't no nigger," said Thomas and the men all laughed.

           Ricky glared and the laughter stopped. "This ain't funny," he said. "Ever since the war ended, more and more of them are movin' north. Now a bunch of them around here got killed. They's want'in to build plants around here now for the whites to work in. What's it all gonna mean to us farmers?"

           The men looked at Thomas who looked at the Grocer who merely sat watching intently. Thomas looked back at the men who turned to Ricky.

           "I'll tell you what it means," he said. "It means we all gonna be out chop'n cotton right along side what hands is left."

           "What's wrong with that?" asked the Grocer. "That's what we did in the old days...that's what Mr. Dunk did."

           Ricky ignored him and spoke to the men again. "I thought about this all durin' the war," he said. "It was good that I stayed stateside. Good for us all."

           "How's that," asked the Grocer. "I thought what we did in France and Germany was good for us all."

           "Because I had time to think," said Ricky. "I spent the whole war thinking about how I would run things if'n I had money and now, by God, I got the money."

           "How's money gonna keep us in field hands if there ain't no field hands?" Thomas had leaned forward now and was watching Ricky intently.

           "Organization." Ricky said.

           "Organization?"

           "Organization. We'll have a cooperative that can hire the hands that are available and you men can be the supervisors. We'll move them from farm to farm and you keep them busy. You know how field hands is."

           "Dumb and lazy?" Odell asked.

           "Hell no, they's smart enough to get by without working a lick if'n somebody don't make ‘em."

           "And Lord knows they work hard when somebody like you is around to make them, don't they," said the Grocer.

           "I got my ways," Ricky said. "You keep a boot up one’s hind end and they'll work plenty hard for you."

           "Until they get enough and move up north," said the Grocer. "Ain't that right?"

           "I got an answer to that problem that might interest you," said Ricky. He turned to look at the Grocer and then turned back to look at the men again.

           "If we handle it right, we can see that they stay too far in debt to move anywhere."

           "How's that?" One of the men asked.

           "We own the stores and someday the bank too," Ricky said. "As long as they have to buy from us, we can keep them as far in debt as we want."

           The men looked embarrassed. Not a one of them would look at the Grocer who sat watching Ricky's back. Outside the sun moved toward the horizon and the store was becoming darker. The stove still burned with a hum, the only sound except for a periodic creak as one of the men would shift his weight. Each made an attempt to appear thoughtful. Each looked more discomfited as the effort increased. Ricky waited and the Grocer smiled. He eased into a more comfortable position with his back resting against a shelf stacked with canned goods. Then he reached into his pocket and produced a partial block of tobacco. From another pocket he pulled a knife, opened it, cut a cube from the block and, holding it between his thumb and the blade of the knife, placed it in his mouth. To the men, who could see him behind Ricky, he seemed to be enjoying himself.

           "I need to know who I can count on," Ricky said. "Let me know today so I can start my list. Overseers - you'll all be overseers." He turned to the Grocer stared for a second as if the Grocer might have something to add. "Sheila will be back for them supplies," he said and then he turned and walked to the door. Turning around, he looked once more to the group of men. None of them spoke and he nodded his head as if he were counting them. He opened the door and left the store.

           "Life's funny, ain't it?," Thomas said. He waited for an answer but nobody spoke. Heads turned slightly toward the Grocer and watched for a reponse. He chewed slowly and stared back. A smile appeared briefly. Still saying nothing, he walked from behind the counter, crossed the length of the store, walked outside and spat. Stopping to look both ways along the country road, he left the men alone.

           "He ain't for it, I can tell," said Rufus. "I watched him the whole time Ricky was talking and I could tell he wasn't going for it."

           "Why should he?" Thomas asked. "Ain't nothin' in it for him except competition. Man that's rich already could drive another man out of business if'n he wanted to."

           Otis spoke next. "Bet Ricky would be just the kind to want to, don't you reckon?"

           "Ricky's rich now. He sets his own rules," said Thomas.

           Outside the afternoon sun began easing toward nightfall. Inside, the group of men sat quietly. There was a heaviness in the room now, as though a peace had settled in but at the cost of draining the vitality from the room. The interlude was not unpleasant and the men stared silently at the stove in the center of their circle. Every so often one would raise a cigarette to his lips and pull smoke slowly into his lungs. Expelling silently, he would seem to drift, as though his mind and body were so linked that the floating away of one would pull the other. It was the sort of moment that would usually produce a joke from Thomas, but this time nothing came forth. This time the mood was altered by the Grocer who pushed the door open with a crash and strode into the store with long, heavy steps.

           "Here comes your new princess," he said.

           "I got to be goin........ Thomas began. It was too late. The truck was already squealing to a stop in front of the store. The entire group froze as the door opened and, seconds later, slammed shut. They couldn't see but felt, sensed, Sheila approaching. The only person moving was the Grocer. He busied himself behind his counter, safe, it seemed to the others, from the approaching storm.

           The door burst open and Sheila was in the store.

           "I Come for the supplies," she said. "You got them ready?" Looking at the group, she nodded. "One of you boys help me load this stuff."

           "Sure, Sheila," John said, starting to rise.

           "Here," Sheila said, reaching for one the sacks that the Grocer had stacked waiting. Suddenly she stopped. Still holding the sack, she turned to the Grocer. "Did you have everything?"

"Not quite," the Grocer said, reaching for the list she had left. "Some of these things I'm rationing so we don't run out. They's still folks counting on me for supplies until the deliveries are on a regular schedule again. You come back in a couple of days and I can finish you up."

           "I told you, by God, that I wasn't intersted in other people."

           "You may not be, but I am."

           Thomas saw it coming first and had time to duck. The others stood stupefied as the sack of groceries flew toward them. Cans, wrappings of meat and assorted packages flew into their midst, bouncing of the stove, the walls, the floor and, in the case of Rufus Thomas who was hit smack in the face with a can of peaches, the men themselves. The contents of the sack spun, crashed, slid, bounced and careened in all directions as the group scattered in a direction for each participant.

           "Goddam you! Didn't you talk to my husband," she shrieked at the Grocer.

           He said nothing. He waited for a long time as Sheila's breath came in heaves, her face red with anger home of not being obeyed. The Grocer seemed to wait, making sure that there was not more. Then rising, he began to walk around the counter. He moved slowly, as a man finishing the last tasks of a long day. Crossing in front of Sheila, he began to retrieve the contents of the sack, now scattered around the room.

           Sheila watched him without seeming yet to comprehend that it was over. "I'll give you one more chance," she ventured. "Give me what I want and I'll be gone." Then she added - "I won't say anything to Ricky."

           The Grocer ignored her and continued to place objects in a sack. Sheila watched him, unbelieving. They watched her as she became calmer. She took a breath and turned to the men. "I guess it's over here." She turned to the men and stiffened slightly. "Ricky wants your answer."

           The men stared back. Not one of them spoke. Gradually they turned to the Grocer who was standing just behind them. He looked at them one by one and each, in turn, lowered his eyes. The grocer then looked past them at Sheila.

           "Tell him that he's won," he said. "And that the old days is done fer."

           "I thought so," said Sheila. Then she turned and left the store.

           Somewhere near the group a fly buzzed. Smoke from the cigarettes was thick and heavy in the room. The Grocer finished gathering his produce and laid the crumpled bag on the counter. He circled the counter and returned to his seat behind it. Still chewing the cut of tobacco, he listened as the men continued talking. They stopped after a minute and Thomas said to the Grocer. "You know this may be the end for you."

           "I reckon," he said.

           "Ain't you worried?"

           "I may move up north myself."

           "They have storms up there too, I guess." Rufus offered.

           "There'll always be storms," said the Grocer and he began to place the groceries back onto the shelves.

           "Hit was some storm all right," said Thomas. "You going back home John?"

           "I reckon. Ain't much left." He looked into the stove. "Do you want to know what the oddest thing was?"

           "What?" Rufus asked the question and the other men leaned forward.

           "When I come out of the storm cellar," he began. "I had the family stay put while I took a look around. I could see right off that it was all gone. Purty much so, anyway." He stopped. The men waited.

           "I walked over to where the house stood. Hit was gone. So was the barn. Pens, cribs, everthing." He stopped again. He reached in his pocket for a cigarette and lit it before he spoke

again.

           "I walked over toward where the big oak tree in our yard used to be and then I noticed."

           The men watched with total silence. He puffed on the cigarette again.

           "The kids had been playing under that tree. They were playin' with mud pies. Had them made up in some fruit jar lids on an old board they had propped up on some concrete blocks. Them lids was laying there like nothing ever happened. Still had the little mud pies on them. Just laying there. Hadn't even been moved by the whole storm. That was all that was left. No house. No barn. Just those little jar lids layin' there like the kids would be back any time. I reached down and flipped one with my finger. Just a flip and I knocked it off the board but the storm didn't touch it."

           He reached forward and put the cigarette out on the hearth of the stove.

           “Just seemed funny," he said. "That's all."

           "Hell John," Thomas said. "Storms is like women... you figure them out and you'll be the rich one.”

           The men all laughed.