Back Doors

Early morning thoughts: While standing “Quarterdeck Duty” once on a Navy base, I was told to deliver a message to the Admiral’s home. I carried out my mission smartly, but was told by the butler, “Next time, you are to use the back door.” It wasn’t a big deal, but it did mark the first time that I, a Caucasian male of European descent, had ever been told to use anyone’s back door. Walking back, I remember thinking, “What if it wasn’t the Admiral’s house and I wasn’t in the military? What if every day of my life, my father’s life, and my grandfather’s life, my people had been told to use the back door? How would that have shaped my life? How would my father have felt at the end of a day of denigration, humiliation, and back doors when he came home to assume his part in the rearing of his children?

At the time this happened, the military had its doors open for people of all colors. If one didn’t enter willingly, the draft was applied without regard to race, creed or color. So a man forced into war against his will, who served his country, perhaps being damaged in process, was still relegated to back doors at the end of his service if he didn’t fit our standards of racial purity. This means that there are more than 7,400 names of men on the Vietnam Memorial who would not have been allowed to live in many cities of the American South had they survived the war. These are names of men whose parents would have been denied service in many restaurants on the day of their son’s death, a denial supported and defended by “strong religious beliefs.” A life of back doors still awaited those mourning families.

How dedicated would I have been in service to my country if that end result awaited me?

A few short years later, the owner of an apartment building would say to me when I called to inquire about a rental, “You’ll have to come by in person so I can check the color of your eyes.” I declined and thought again of that night I walked back to the headquarters building from the Admiral’s house.

 It made an impression on me and I still wonder how many Americans survived our country’s wars only to be denied a home in which they could rest and recover, or the right to marry the person they loved, or the privilege of living free of another person’s religious dogma. That is why I’m appalled that some elected leaders–not many, but enough to terrorize the rest—would have us return any of our precious brothers and sister to those awful “back door” days.
 

Let us mourn for those who died without ever
 gaining the full rights of American Citizenship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also:

www.wattensawpress.com

www.travelswithanalien.blogspot.com

 

The Descent of a State

Sunday while resting for a few minutes, I caught a documentary on PBS about how the small town of Hoxie, Arkansas, in the mid-1950s, decided to integrate their school system, peacefully and with no court order. It would have been a model for our state on how to grant freedom to an oppressed people without creating civil disorder. We are rightfully proud of their efforts, but a not too funny thing happened.

Jim Johnson, a vicious white-supremacy attorney, rushed to the scene and, using the tired-old “They’re coming for your women,” ploy, embroiled the community in controversy, gaining notoriety that would push Orval Faubus into a staunchly segregationist stance and the state, eventually, into ridicule and disdain.

The rest is history. It proved to be one of Arkansas’s darkest hours.

It made me think of June, 1966, when I graduated from the University of Arkansas. Faubus had been in office for over ten years and had brought nothing but shame to the state during that time. The state had lost any prestige it might have once had, and was rapidly losing population.

Thus the “sucking sound” the next day following graduation, when so many who had no binding ties left the state. It was truly a mass exodus.

As for me, I went to San Francisco. In late 1966, there were so many ex-patriates from Arkansas living in the Bay Area that we would have get-togethers attended by 20 or 30 of my former classmates.

I never intended to return. As the Jack Nicholson character said, “I was just inches away from a clean getaway.”

Then the Draft Board came for me and I was  occupied for four years. During that time a funny thing happened. Winthrop Rockefeller became governor of Arkansas and I began to read accounts from home about how he was making a valiant attempt to bring Arkansas out of the morass into which it had wallowed for years, a morass that only the occasional success of its major college football team could brighten.

He was succeeded by Dale Bumpers, another enlightened soul. Then other funny things happened.

I was discharged and soon on my way back to California. I stopped in Arkansas to visit and met, through a family member, some young guys who had just started their own urban planning firm. I agreed to meet them before I “lit out for the territories.” I was that close to the “Little Rock Getaway” so to speak.

But, I found a job here. And I found a wife here. In short, I found a life here. Tall buildings were rising in my new city. A series of bright young politicians left their mark on the state: David Pryor, Bill Clinton, John Paul Hammerschmidt, Jim Guy Tucker, and Win Rockefeller. The state emerged from its dismal past and flourished. Women and people of color rose to prominence and more buildings rose to the sky. Northwest Arkansas, long a scene of poverty, began to emerge as one of the country’s leading economies.

Then a native son became President of the United States.

That’s when our progress, it seems to me, came under attack.

There were those who simply could not accept the fact that William Jefferson Clinton would be president for eight years, even though he presided over a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity marred, it is true, by personal lapses.

Today, I feel the state tilting backwards into that dark abyss once more. A state law that legalizes hatred becomes effective today, allowed by many who chose to ignore the “better angels of their nature.” The editorial page of the only statewide newspaper daily fans the feeling of disrespect toward our nation's President. Far too many churches have turned from preaching love and grace to encouraging the abhorrence of strangers. There is an outpouring of vitriol against non-Caucasians that hasn’t been this evident since the lynching of black people in our state at the height of the Jim Crow era. Those whose hatred is most uncontrollable are “agged on” as my mother would say, by those who should know better but who are deluded into believing that their right to own firearms is endangered. This is a most terrifying combination in my opinion. It is like a gas can resting alongside a stack of dynamite.

We’ve sunk too many roots to make a getaway at our ages. We might, if we don’t live past normal life-expectancy, survive since we descend from Northern European ancestry, the one truly protected category in our country. If we live too long, the haters may get around to the educated and progressive-minded, but we will be tired and ready to go by then.

In the meantime … my advice to a young person? “Run Dude, run!”

 

It seems that this action is now protected
by state law in Arkansas. Shame on us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also:

www.wattensawpress.com

www.travelswithanalien,blogspot.com

 

My Short Life of Crime

My father decided, the year I turned fifteen, that a summer job would provide just the catalyst through which to redirect me from a life of idle languor to one of resolute achievement and ultimate success. He was, he assured me, there to help. Little did he know that his efforts would nearly veer me into a life of crime.

It happened this way. Daddy procured for me a job at a “filling station” in downtown Pine Bluff, Arkansas. It was during the late 1950s and life was slow and predictable, particularly in the summer months. The station employed two full-time attendants, me, and a college student, the son of a multi-millionaire cotton farmer, a father who also saw work as a cure for most ills. The college kid arrived at work each morning in a brand new Corvette Stingray that probably cost more than the annual salary of one of the regular workers. My sister dropped me off on her way to work at a bank in the family car, an old purple Pontiac my classmates dubbed “The Purple People-eater.” Life can be sorrowful for a high school kid with a color-blind father.

Social disparity aside, we were a happy crew. When we weren’t serving customers, we washed cars, the college kid and I. When there were no cars to wash, we greased vehicles that were hoisted on racks like kings on their thrones. When there were no cars to grease, we learned things that would, the older guys assured us, stand us in good stead in later life—like shooting craps, doing card tricks, and learning how to spot girls who lived “on the spicy side of life.”

What, one might ask, could go wrong? It had to do with the FBI.

Two Special Agents, both bachelors (I think maybe all the agents were then) roomed in a boarding house two blocks from the station. It was our privilege to maintain their vehicle, a powerful Ford affair, in peak condition from which to fight crime, ferret out the Communists lurking in Pine Bluff, and make the city safe for all citizens.

They left that car in one of our vehicle bays at night and that is where the trouble started.

During the day, the car sat on the street, ready for action in the event of a Communist uprising or a chase after known criminals. It came to pass that it was my lot one hot summer afternoon to move the vehicle from the daytime spot to the vehicle bay. Like a good scout, I drove the car into the bay, left the key in the ignition as I had been taught to do and, having been told not to forget to close the bay door, followed that instruction. Then I was careful to lock the bay from the inside.

At such a high level of professionalism, I could already see myself being accepted as a Special Agent with all the glory that such a life promised. Certainly I would achieve a grander post than a boarding house in a sleepy southern town. Maybe even New York. Just wait.

What no one had told me was that, due to a lack of criminal activity, and a failure to dig up a single Communist in our city, the station owner had agreed with the agents that the vehicle bay door wouldn’t be locked at night, just closed. This presupposed that nobody would be stupid enough to prowl around where an FBI vehicle was parked.

Wouldn’t you know it? That night, the only bank robbery that I remember occurring during my entire time of growing up in that area occurred. It was in a little farming town with a branch bank some thirty or so miles away.

I knew nothing about this until I slammed the door on “Old Purple” next morning, ending some argument with my sister, and walked into the station.

Somber can’t describe it. All three of my comrades were leaning against a counter looking at me as if I were carrying a copy of Das Kapital. I nodded but not a single one of them nodded back. They just stared. Finally the one we called Boss spoke.

“Where were you last night?”

“Me? At home.”

“Can anyone prove that?”

I knitted my brow. What business was that of his? “Sure, the family. Why?”

“What time did they go to bed?”

He knew what time my parents went to bed. “With the chickens,” as they say down south.

“Your sister there?”

“No, she was on a date.”

“Hmm,” he said. “You better get your story straight.”

“My story?”

“Your story.”

“What,” I said, “on earth are you talking about?”

“Somebody robbed the bank at Sherrill last night, just as they were closing.”

“Really?”

“Really. Guess what else happened?”

“What?”

“Somebody locked the FBI car in the bay here and the FBI guys had to walk all the way back home and get the key or they might have gotten over there in time to catch the thieves.”

The weight of the world began to lower on me like one of our fully loaded vehicle hoists. I said nothing.

“Don’t leave,” Boss said.

“What do you mean, don’t leave?”

“The agents want to question you when they get back.”

“Question me? Why?”

He looked at me like I had just asked where sunlight came from. “Because you are the one who locked the FBI car in the bay.”

I couldn’t speak. I tried but my vocal chords just made a little squeaking sound like a screen door being opened on a hot summer day.

“They are pretty sure,” Boss said, “that you were in on it.”

Robinson Crusoe, on first reaching shore, could not have felt more abandoned and alone than I did at that moment.

“Don’t worry,” the college kid said. “We won’t hear them.”

I finally found my voice. “Hear them what?” I said, a half tone below “High-C.”

“Interrogate you,” he said in a grave voice honed by years of hazing fraternity pledges. “They are going to take you to the Police Station. That way they can just go ahead and lock you up if they need to.”

“Lock me up for what?”

Boss said, “Aiding in a bank job is a pretty serious offense.” He told me that he had assured the agents that all his employees knew not to lock the bay at night. Mine was clearly a renegade action. With that, they all found something to do that didn’t include me. I moseyed around, bumping into things, until I finally found a quiet place to sit and await my doom.

Maybe prison wasn’t so bad, I thought. Maybe I could learn to sing there. Elvis did in some movie. Or maybe I could escape. As the minutes evaporated, so did my options, until only dark despair remained. Then I heard the sound.

It was the dark rumble of the souped up engine of the FBI car. It came into view, lumbered alongside a gas pump, and stopped. It didn’t occur to me to attend it until I looked around and saw nobody in sight. I was alone. The agent driving honked and the sound evoked the signal for a large door to close on my life. I wandered out.

The driver rolled down the window and smiled. “Hey sport,” he said. “We drove this old gal a piece today so fill her up.”

“Fill her up?”

“Fill her up, and check the oil.”

“Yes sir,” I said. “Anything else?” I would get this thing over once and for all.

“Windshield’s dusty,” he said. “Oh…” Here it came. I froze in fear. “They forgot to tell you but you don’t lock that bay door at night. Saves us some time and trouble.” With that, he turned to the other agent and began to compare notes. I moved to the gas pump.

As the pump hummed to life, my life hummed afresh. Then I saw three heads peer around from the back of the station, each laughing like the act would soon warrant censure. I squeezed the handle as if it were a lover, took in the smell of gasoline as if were the scent of roses, smiled at the three guys, and nodded. That was a good one, all right.

 

Maybe they would have taught me
a trade in prison. I'll never know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also www.wattensawpress.com

www.travelswithanalien,blogspot.com

 

Old Homes

Early morning thoughts while listening to a Sibelius violin Concerto:

On Sunday evenings I like to watch Nicole Curtis on the DYI Channel show “Rehab Addict” for three reasons. First (and don’t you dare tell the Queen B I said this) she has the kind of looks that would make an oak tree sprout rosebuds. Second, she has good tips on renovating houses, something we still try our hands at from time to time, the Queen B and I. Third, Nicole doesn’t destroy. She saves and renews.

That’s refreshing on a channel that usually features wild-eyed morons with sledge hammers destroying perfectly good cabinetry that could either be saved or donated to a family who needs it. They follow this by putting up cheap, gaudy cr…, uh, stuff that won’t last a year.

We have never built a new house. We’ve restored an old Victorian cottage in Little Rock’s Quapaw Quarter and an old farmhouse in Lonoke County, both to some degree of respectability. We also spruced up a couple of other homes to the point where we made a profit upon selling them.

Now we are renovating a condominium in downtown Little Rock. Actually we are having it done. We’ve gotten a little slow in “the springabout” to be lifting sheetrock panels over our heads as we once did.

Living in a “throwaway” culture is a little sad, though. The typical automatic dishwasher now will perform, from my investigation, for somewhere between six and ten years before it must be replaced. In our small condo unit, the dishwasher installed in the seventies whines a bit but still does the job. So do the bathroom sink fixtures. Can you imagine how long those silly things that one just taps to make the water come out will last? Oh well.

Anyway, it seems that the idea of “sweat equity” doesn’t command the appeal it once did. In my profession, we concern ourselves a lot with the concept of affordable housing. In an increasing number of cities, it simply doesn’t exist. If a young couple starting out wants to work there, they won’t be able to live there. Too bad.

We were lucky. We were young once, and foolish. It simply never dawned on us that we couldn’t take a fallen down old home and bring it back to life. I suppose had we been smarter, as these young folks are today, we would have known not to try it.

But I’m awfully glad we did.

Brenda and my nephew, the late William Howard Morgan, Jr,
work on a 1890s Victorian Cottage in Little Rock.

See also: www.wattensawpress.com
www.travelswithanalien.blogspot.com

Genes and Such

Due to some strange combination of genetic forces, I maintain, at Senior Citizen status, a full head of hair, most of it still a dark brown. I consider myself somewhat blessed by nature. I could have, just as easily, and through no input on my part, enjoyed a similar genetic arrangement that resulted in my sexual orientation being directed toward those of the same sex.

I only hope that, in the latter case, I would still consider myself blessed.

In neither case would I have been any more personally responsible for the outcome than would a Walton heir who will be blessed by being enormously wealthy, barring a cataclysm, for her entire life without having to work a day of it.

It’s a “sperm and egg-mandated” existence with which we are blessed and we make of it what we can and will.

There are those, of course, who choose to assign either their good fortune or bad fortune to religion. It is their right, and I donated four years of my life to national service thinking I was protecting that right. Boy was I surprised.

I just hope that the law working through the Arkansas legislature doesn’t result in the decision of a bald man, who blames his lack of hirsuteness on his god, and who sells Four Roses Bourbon, or some other life-enhancing prescription—perhaps even an life-saving one—that he won’t serve a man with a full head of hair.

 

See also www.wattensawpress.com

www.travelswithanalien.blogspot.com

 

Compassion

Early morning thoughts with my new good friend A. Vivaldi:

You know, when the United States Supreme Court eviscerates the Affordable Health Care Act, it won’t affect me or my family. I say “when,” not “if” for they would seem to have the votes. Four justices hate President of the United States Barack Obama so viciously that they would vote to depose him and replace him with Charles Manson if they had the chance. A fifth hates government itself badly enough to join in the disgrace.

No, it won’t affect me our mine.

It will affect the person I know who is alive today because the AHCA allowed a life-saving medical treatment that had previously been denied for lack of money, that person who forwarded a shameful cartoon not long ago comparing President of the United States Barack Obama to a gorilla.

It will affect the person I know who is healthy enough to work but instead exists totally on disability payments and medical care provided by us, the taxpayers, and who rarely completes a sentence without including a reference to “that n****r president.”

It will affect those who, physicians report, are receiving health care in record numbers for the first time in decades because of the AHCA, but who recently traded six years of shame for six seconds, at the voting booth, of revenge against the country for electing a person of color as President of the United States.

 

So all we can do is wait and hope for a "Beckett Moment" when justices may, in a flash, realize there is a higher mandate than a political directive. If it doesn't happen, we'll just watch the poor die and remember, like "Camelot," that there was once this brief shining moment in America.

Oh, and it won’t affect the health care of the Supreme Court justices or the members of congress who are egging them on. They have, and will continue to have, excellent care provided by us, the taxpayers.

So why, the followers of Ayn Rand would say, should they care since it won’t affect them and why should you since it won’t affect you?

I guess it is because I have a heart and because I agree with St. Luke.

St. Luke - I think he quoted a man
who said something about the
poor being blessed. Oh well, it's
an outdated concept.

See also www.wattensaw.presss.com

Education

Early morning thoughts with Antonio Vivaldi: What a blessing it has been to have my mother-in-law, the Lady Hazel Welch Cole living with us. This past week at the supper table (that marvelous institution that has created so many great Southern story tellers) she began telling us how her father, back in the 1930s, would travel around the countryside and read newspapers and other things to folks who couldn’t read themselves. Born in the late 1890s, I’m sure Virgil Welch wasn’t highly educated, but was, nonetheless, willing to put what education he had to good use. Would that more people did that these days.

It seems now that we are beginning to distrust, even, with some, to despise education. Before we fall to this temptation, it might do us good to stop and think what it would be like if we couldn’t read—to go through life without ever seeing the wonderful words of Shakespeare or the Sermon on the Mount.

Much like a surgeon’s knife, education can be used to save life, comfort life, improve life, or destroy life. The use we choose remains the monumental challenge for each of us. As for me, I think I shall listen to the “better angels of my nature,” and try to make the world a little better place with the things I have studied and learned.

Also, I think I’ll encourage the Lady Hazel to tell us more about the old days as long as we have her with us.

 

 

Who knows what treasures lie in the minds,

and what goodness lies in the hearts, of others?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also www.wattensawpress.com