Tuning in beauty and tuning our trash ...

Just as I was beginning to feel that the country is becoming a little trashy and my mind a little frazzled, I discovered something beautifully offsetting. It’s a recording of Bach’s Sonata Number 2 in A minor as performed by Itzhak Perlman. It’s amazing that, just as one feels overcome by the news, there is a solution as simple as tuning out the news and tuning in Bach.

Why it is better than reading the news?

- More sublime

- Lowers blood pressure

- Elevates the mind to the spiritual

- Was created by an adult

- For both creation and performing, requires talent, knowledge, and thought

- Will be around long after the current mess

Why is it better that watching the Fox Hate Show?

- Are you kidding me?

Enjoy this for yourself.

Feel the peace ...

Modern times ...

Sometimes the modern world confounds me. What now? The internet connection at our downtown Little Rock condo quit working after a spell of bad weather. I know what the problem is. It’s happened twice before. There’s a remote box about two blocks from our building that has something to do with our service. For some reason, a wire gets tangled and has to be restored.

Back in the 70s, when I got married, all you would have had to do was call a number that clearly identified the company responsible. A nice operator, who was only few blocks away, probably, would have cheerfully set an appointment with a repair man. Yes, a “man.” Women didn’t evolve far enough to repair electronics until much later. Everyone knows that.

Anyway, the technician would have arrived at appointed time, fixed the problem, and the Internet would have been restored. Well, not the Internet, but the Princess phone, the state-of-the art in home communications at that time. Ours, the phone, was white, a compromise. Don’t ask.

Fast forward. Let’s look at the one-page manual they left with the router. Oh, no problem. Here’s a web site to go to if your Internet quits working. I’ve foiled this ruse, though. Sometime in the past, I filched a phone number from an unsuspecting technician. All I have to do is call India and get this process started. I’ll talk to a nice woman or man who learned English easily with the aid of Rosetta Stone software, the professional version. They will speak quickly with a soft, low voice at the same volume as the phone's background noise, so as not to alarm or insult senior citizens. They will assure me that the problem is the router and they will send me a new one. That will only take a week and a trip to UPS to return the perfectly good one, but hell, I’ll have a new router.

Another three-hour conversation will finally convince the next technician that the problem was not the router but some mysterious and wicked Karma that only a qualified technician can thwart.

Now, we’re getting somewhere. Mysteriously, the contact assigns me an appointment with the tech person. Routing the appointment process from Little Rock to India and back saves someone some time and money, but not me. Anyway, a specific time is set for “Operation Fix-a-Wire.” He will arrive precisely between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Should she or he inform me of his impending arrival by phone or Internet?

I’ll say I think the phone might be better.

Wait, wait, it’s not over. The tech will refuse to accept my diagnosis until a two-hour battle with an antique contact board has ended in total defeat. Finally, finally, she or he will motor the two blocks over and fix the wire.

Halleluiah!

I’d sure miss the cute puppy pictures and the personal insults and hatred, but sometimes I think I might be happier without so many modern conveniences.

Righteousness ...

Righteous. Now there is a word that can kick your butt early in the morning. I’ve heard it used to describe everything from a good person to a guitar lick to sect-approved behavior to a “Bogarted” joint. Seems like beauty is in the ear of the listener.

It seems understandable, then, that the writer Matthew used it, in some form, for the words of the Galilean while preaching on the Mount. He said, in the fourth of his so-called “Beatitudes:

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (ESV, Matthew 5:6).

In some religious congregations, you are declared righteous because you have had your sins cleansed by Jesus.

In others, it means you are capable of sublime actions, as when the modern Jews proclaimed Oskar Schindler a “Righteous Person” for being credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunition factories in occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

Yeah. That makes sense.

On the other hand, there are people like Franklin Graham who seek righteousness by preaching hatred against those whom the process of natural selection made different. So it’s a slippery word at best, this “righteousness.” Who knows how the Galilean would have interpreted it? It’s my guess that it would have been a lot closer to Schindler than to Graham. That’s just my opinion.

Perhaps the more understandable words, though, are “hunger and thirst.” The Galilean didn’t make it easy. I’ve been lucky in my life. I’ve only hungered and thirsted for short periods unless you discount high school, and … well let’s leave that topic for, as H.L. Mencken put it, “future biographers.”

Once, though, I hungered and thirsted pretty darned bad. That was during SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training provided at no cost to me by the United States government. They took us outside Warner Springs, CA to that desert where, if you remember your grade school geography films, you can fry an egg on a rock at high noon and freeze water in a glass overnight. They starved us for several days in that dreadful environment. They also drove us into a fake prisoner-of-war camp and beat the crap out of us, but that is a story for another day.

The point is: by the time they brought us back, I had commenced to hunger and thirst most righteously.

I think that was the sort of state the Galilean advocated for those who seek righteousness. You have to put yourself in a state of high-hankering.

And I don’t care what Franklin Graham says, I don’t think a person can reach that state in a Manhattan skyscraper on a full stomach.

The Dark Side of Righteousness. 

In one of my “so what” moods today. Seems to be a lot of divided emotions around everywhere now, folks taking sides one way or another. Some think this is new. Well, sad to day, it’s not. It goes back to at least when I was a mere stripling.

Among boys in the rural communities of Arkansas, and this sometimes included both white and black kids—the latter having no say in the details—one had to choose sides.

One was either a Roy Rogers fan or a Gene Autry fan, with perhaps a sprinkling of devotees following Hopalong Cassidy, Lash Larue, or the Durango Kid, among lesser gods.

One was either a Yankees fan or a Red Sox fan. Specifically, one was either a Mickey Mantle fan or a Ted Williams fan.

One was either a Chevy man or a Ford man. Allegiances usually flowed from father to son, but lost none of the ardor in the process.

One was either a Superman fan or a Batman fan. We assumed equality if only Batman could keep a little stash of Kryptonite in the glove compartment of the Batmobile.

One was a Dick Tracy man or a Mandrake the Magician man.

For those subjected periodically to the singing of hymns, there were the “Flowers in the Mud” men or the “Gladly, the Cross-eyed Bear” men. To our credit, we never giggled with the older boys when they called out "Oh Why Not Tonight?"

We considered no choices of the female sex. They only meant distractions to our heroes and, as far as we knew at the time, served no useful purpose. They did seem to figure into the loss, occasionally, of one of our older gang members. And, they were allowed to share one bifurcation:

One was either an Elvis person or a Ricky Nelson person. Actually, for a small sub-sect of us, one was a Scotty Moore man or a James Burton man.

So you see.

Divided opinions flow from us like streams from snowy mountains. Difference is, we never wanted to kill anyone over them. Heck, even our heroes didn't advocate that kind of divisiveness. 

Heroes get old, as do our memories.

 Fiction Friday. Here's one I did long after reading From Romance to Ritual by Jesse Weston. Yes, you'll recognize it as one of the sources recommended by T. S. Eliot as an aid to understanding his classic poem The Waste Land.

ARTIFACTS

By Jimmie von Tungeln

The fierce August heat poured from the sky without mercy upon the solemn fields. Below, nothing moved or showed any signs of life except the efforts of a small boy darting like an atom below the cruel sun. He hopped along a turn-row from one stalk of cotton to the next. The loose soil burned hot enough to scorch the soles of his feet, but at row’s end, the cotton threw a small circle of shade, providing relief for the traveler. He rested in each shadow for a moment before hopping to the next and, with this strange rhythm, reached the trees along the edge of the bayou where the dark forest promised relief. He reached into the pocket of his overalls to make sure his prize was still there, that it hadn’t bounced out or found a hole through which to escape. Feeling its cool, polished form, he smiled and entered the woods, safe from his ordeal by heat. The woods enveloped him like a mother’s arms might wrap around a young child and the vast fields of cotton again lay unmarked by human activity.

            Inside, giant, brooding trees shut out most of the sun’s light so that the boy felt the cool damp soil against his bare feet. He eased to his right and found a familiar trail, then struck for the bayou. The forest was quiet like the world on a frost-covered morning and the boy shivered at its majesty. He moved with a knowing assuredness among the vines and bushes. Before long, he spotted his target. He approached without making a sound on the soggy leaves.

            The old man sat in his place, like a piece of the ancient vegetation itself. A rusted five-gallon bucket provided a seat. He held a long bamboo fishing pole over the water and a white flour sack on the ground held, the boy knew, both bait for fishing and food for the old man. The man sensed, rather than saw, the boy and he spoke without turning his head or removing a battered pipe from his mouth. “Marse Robert,” he said.

            “Hey,” the boy replied. “They bitin’?” He found a spot to the old man’s right and sat.

            “Mostly slow, today,” the man said. “How you doin’?”

            “I’m almost six years old. My birthday’s day after tomorrow—August 21.”

            “Well now isn’t that something?” The old man eased the fishing pole forward until the baited hook emerged. Then he swung the line toward him, grabbed it and inspected the bait. A mangle of worms dangled in several directions and he found no sign of molestation. He adjusted the cork—a relic that had long ago been retrieved from the top of an empty snuff jar—then slid his hand along the line towards the hook. Turning away from the boy, he spat on the bait and tossed it back into the bayou. Late summer rains had flooded the banks and the dark, sluggish water pulled the cork toward some unseen destination until the line went taut and stopped it.

            “I was born in 1920,” the boy continued when he saw that the man was no longer occupied.

            “You don’t say,” the man said, pulling the pipe from his mouth and exhaling a puff of smoke which floated across the bayou like spiritt seeking a companion. “You be grown before we know it.”

            “How old are you?” the boy asked.

            The old man looked at his pipe. “The ‘chidren’ says I must be pushin’ on the door of 90 years or so,” he said. “I don’t rightly know.”

            The enormity of the number stunned the boy and he drew is knees up and stared at the meandering water. Then he remembered. He stood up in that single, fluid movement that only the young can accomplish and thrust his hand into his pocked. He retrieved his prize and thrust it toward the old man. “I fount an indian ‘arrerhead,’” he said. He held a perfectly formed artifact of pure black stone, contrasting against his small, white hand. The stone approached five inches in length and still held the sharp edges and fine point that its maker had first chipped into it.

It was too large to fit an arrow’s shaft. It doubtless had formed the head of a small spear. The old man regarded it, admiring its symmetry and the perfection of the creator’s art. “You shore fount a beauty there. Wherebout’s did you get it.?”

“Up the bayou aways, on the edge of the field the day after it rained. Hit was just a layin’ there. Poppa said Indians used to live here before we did.”

“They did indeed,” the old man said. He took the pipe from his mouth again and looked at the boy, bent toward him slightly to increase the importance of the moment. “Would you like to know something?”

“Sure,” the boy said, infected by the old man’s solemnity.

            “I remember when there were Indians here, at least one family. I remember when that last family left.”

            “You never…,” the boy started. The man’s look stopped him. “How could you remember Indians? Ain’t that been long time ago?”

            “It has for a fact,” the man said. “But I’m an old man and I wasn’t much older than you when the last ones left.”

            “Where were they at?”

            “Right down on this very bayou. This land wasn’t all cleared then and they lived in a lean-to right down near the edge of the water.”

            “Did you ever talk to them?”

            “Never did,” he said. “They kept to ‘theyselves’ and nobody ever went near them far as I knows.”

            “What happened to them?”

            “They just disappeared one night. Somebody noticed they left and nobody ever knew a thing about where they went.”

            “Did they leave anything?”

            “Not that I ever saw. When folks disappear like that, ain’t usually much left of them, ‘cept something like that there thing you holdin’. Folks finds things like that ever now and then.” He nodded at the artifact for emphasis. "Hit's a beauty alright."

            They boy stood without moving, absorbing this information and turning it around in his mind. The man returned to his fishing and his pipe. After a time, the boy closed his fist and returned the artifact to his pocket. “See you around,” he said and started walking upstream.

            “Yassuh,” the old man said and moved to inspect his bait again.

            The boy found a trail and followed the water as it edged sullenly toward its destination. From time to time, he felt in his pocket for his prize. It seemed to grow larger, he thought, the farther he went upstream. He thought about what the man had told him, and he thought about how the old man’s eyes had seemed to sparkle as he talked, almost as if a mist settled on them. He seemed to see the mist again and he felt as if he could see through it right into his own existence until he could almost see the very essence of what made him himself. He shuddered, “Indians,” he said to himself. Then he stopped and made a decision.

            The bayou was about to make a bend and he knew the trail would end. This was the perfect place. He searched among the trees until he found what he needed—the stump of a large tree left when a storm had taken its top. He scooped up a double handful of the soft mud at the water’s edge and carried it to the stump.

            He formed the mud into a small, smooth base. Then he went back to the water and washed the mud from his hands and wiped them dry on the legs of his overalls. He walked back to the stump, and looked at it, examined the small mud bed he had formed, and evaluated the worthiness of his handiwork. Then he took the artifact from his pocket and examined it as if he were seeing it for the first time. He held it in both hands, aiming the point upstream and into the impenetrable forest ahead. He slowly, and with as much respect as he could muster, laid the object on the bed of mud, pointing into the unknown. Then he backed away and stood still until he felt himself merging with the woods, the bayou, the artifact, and even the old man still fishing downstream. Maybe even, he felt, with the vanished ancients themselves. He felt himself becoming dizzy and then he felt a shaft of light coming from beyond the trees. He turned towards it and started from the forest.

            He whistled now as he walked.

Movie review time ...

Been watching a good film lately, several times in fact. To see it, you will need Netflix. I’m talking about the Netflix film The Highwaymen. It tells the story of two aged Texas Rangers, Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner) and Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson) who set out to stop the murderous rampage of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. It is superbly done, worth watching, if for no other reason, than to see actress Kim Dickens playing Hamer’s wife. Ahh.

We might view the film as a correction of the 1967 (highly romanticized and inaccurate) version that pictured Frank Hamer, known as the most famous Texas Ranger of all, as a bumbling meanie played by Denver Pyle. This new film doesn’t always follow history, but the inaccuracies derive from maintaining a storyline and screenwriter’s license. It plays heavily on the popular adoration of the outlaws. Actually, as Jeff Guinn tells us in his meticulously researched biography Go Down Together, the public allure of the pair disappeared after the April 1, 1934 cold-blooded murder of Texas Highway Patrolman H.D. Murphy near Grapevine, Texas.

Guinn says that one of the other gang members did the murder, not Bonnie or Clyde. But Patrolman Murphy was engaged to be married, and after his finance wore her wedding dress to his funeral, public sentiment for the country’s most famous criminal pair evaporated like a Texas wind funnel.

The interplay between the old rangers is a marvelous bit of cinema, played by two great talents who aren’t afraid of growing old on screen. I can’t imagine how the producers managed to capture the look and feel of Depression-era America, but they did. Wonderful, wonderful, film.

I became fascinated with Bonnie and Clyde as a pre-teenager because I thought they looked a bit like my mother and daddy. You can imagine the fantasies that produced. The fascination continued into adulthood and culminated some months ago in a road trip with pal Sonny Rhodes. We trekked to the actual site, near Gibsland, Louisiana, where the duo was gunned down, sans Mirandizing, by a group of law officials that included, yes, Frank Hamer and Maney Gault.

Oh, and I leave you with a tidbit from Arkansas. One brief scene in the film shows Frank Hamer reviewing crime scene photographs of some victims of Bonnie and Clyde. One quick snippet is, I am told by Alma, Arkansas officials, the actual photo of Marshall Henry Humphrey.

As the city marshal of Alma, he was making his rounds on the night of June 22, 1933, when he was surprised by Bonnie and Clyde's gang. They forced him into the town bank, tied him to a pillar with baling wire, and stole the bank's small safe. They even stole Humphrey's gun.

The next afternoon he again unexpectedly ran into the gang, this time on a road north of town. A shootout ensued, Humphrey was mortally wounded, and the gang then stole his replacement gun. The city recently erected a monument to Marshall Humphrey.

Bonnie and Clyde were holed-up in a motel in Oklahoma at the time, having sent the gang members to Fayetteville to rob a grocery. The film (somewhat) accurately pictures Bonnie with a limp from being burned with battery acid when Clyde ran their car off a bridge. Guinn says that, by the time of her death, Clyde actually had to carry her.

The duo appears only briefly in the film. They mostly serve as off-screen presences. The film is about Hamer and Gault, two old lawmen sharing one more adventure with grouches and insights sharing equal billing..

Watch the film. It’s real sleeper. If you don’t have Netflix, subscribe. Else ways, burst in on someone who does. Not me though, some other feller.

Where the crime spree ended.

Earning

Off today to make some money and to what I do.

Youth and road trips ...

It was January 1965. I remember it well. Road trip! They always took time off between semesters at the old U of A about that time. A friend, Leland Bassett from Fayetteville, had a Volkswagen Beetle that, I think maybe he bought from Ronnie Hawkins or one of the guys in the band. Another friend, later a Green Beret, named Mike Dunkum had a rep for being game for about anything.

They cooked up a scheme to drive to Phoenix, Arizona and look at some Frank Lloyd Wright houses, all three of us in “The Bug.”

There was only one problem. I didn’t have the money. I had scraped enough for a semester but had little over for “discretionary activities,” i. e. fun. I was janitor at the Chi Omega House. That gave me ten dollars a week plus meals. I budgeted $500 per semester, back then, and that included funds from summer work, weekly pay, and money my family could send. Back then, the U of A had no tuition, just a registration fee of a hundred dollars or so. Of course I had no car. What the hell need had a college student for a car?

Anyway. The thought of missing a trip to Arizona was disappointing.

But, at that moment, a miracle happened.

I don’t know if it was instigated by the Galilean or what, but the housemother, “Mother Mann” came by just before semester break came and brought my pay. Lord, lord, I had forgotten. They, those blessed Chi Omegas, paid me for the time during break when I was off. With some extra I had saved, I now had three ten-dollar bills: $30.00. that was an amazing amount of cash to hold in one’s hand at one time. I called the boys.

We “ciphered” awhile. Gas was about 20-25 cents a gallon. That would power a Volkswagen a pretty good ways. We didn’t plan to drink any beer or booze. Of course we could sleep in the car, two napping and one driving. Hell’s bells … road trip!

I won’t go into details. Let’s just say it was one of the highlights of my life. We saw the houses we went for. A few of the owners, including Raymond Carlson, editor then of Arizona Highways, and his gracious wife Lois, a contributor to the magazine, invited us in for a detailed history and tidbits of actual conversations with The Master.

Another highlight was waking up in a parking lot and watching the sun rise over the Grand Canyon. Half our money was gone by then and we couldn’t even afford to travel the Turner Turnpike, then a toll road, through Oklahoma on the way back to Fayetteville. Fun was scarce that semester and weekends sometimes were mockingly lonely and devoid of pleasure. But, Joseph Conrad described youth as  “… the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort—to death;”

I’ve never doubted for a second that our marvelous road trip was worth it.

Later, inertia overtook Mike Dunkum, and a recruiter named Sergeant Goforth (no, I’m serious) talked him into joining the Army. He came back from Vietnam a Green Beret captain and, perhaps it seems, with a residue of Agent Orange.

I cannot furnish the whereabouts of Leland Bassett. He always marched to the beat of a different drummer and there is no telling where it led him.

Myself? I returned from Vietnam before Dunkum, due to his advanced and lengthy training. I felt much embittered over the enmity I received from the Americans “whose freedom I had protected” (barf). Fortunately, I married well above my station and it has turned out fine. I do wear my "service" cap most places since it frightens most folks and pisses off a lot of conservatives. Life has settled into a gentle pace, kept fresh by the recollections of youth. Things are good for us.

Still, I miss my old friends and wish we could, maybe just for a day or two, relive life in a small car, driving unknown roads, even through an America I no longer recognize.

Oh well, we’ll always have the Grand Canyon and the Carlson House.

Fully restored, like me

Wakeup calls ...

Early in the morning, my Sainted Mother, particularly on a Monday School Day, would sneak into my bedroom, yank off the covers, and yell, “Wake up Jacob. Day’s a’breaking.”

Those times tested my undying love for dear Mother more than any I remember.

Over the years, I tried several of what I believe to be more gentle ways of waking someone up who has slept past my appointed schedule. To wit:

“Wake up and see the wonderful day given us.”

“All the other pretty little girls are up already.”

“Wanna take part in a wonderful day?”

“You said wake you up at Seven. It’s Eight.”

“I think Matthew McConaughey has taken up religion. He’s at the front door asking for you.”

“Candygram.”

“The fish are biting.”

“Momma always said that only bad girls sleep this late.”

“I think the house is on fire.”

“Your face is going to freeze like that.”

They always end the same way, though.

“Is that a baseball bat in your hand?”

Plenty of sleep is the secret to
a long life, and marriage.

Hard times ...

Theology Time: I’m still stuck on the Beatitudes. I skipped the Second last week for some reason or other. Maybe it’s because this year so far has involved so much mourning for me and my family. Back to it though, on the Mount, the Galilean sought to comfort us:

“Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Taken out of what seem to be the conventional context, we might expect to be comforted when we have cause to mourn. In this context, we might withstand horrible sadness in anticipation of earthly comfort. This comfort will be all the more soothing and wonderful because we have known the hard times and they are past. The winds of fortune blow from all directions. Wait for a better day. Help is coming. This [sadness] too shall pass. A better day is coming. Happy days will be here again.

We know that it isn’t true. Even when we pray in song, the way Stephen Foster did, imploring “Hard times, come around no more.”

Times don’t always get better. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes it just keeps piling on. That’s why the conventional interpretation for the word “blessed” in the Beatitudes is “happy.”

No, we don’t accept hard times because they will end. We don’t mourn because our troubles on Earth will end.

We mourn because we anticipate a place  beyond Earthly life where mourning will end and those who have borne it the most will be the happiest to get shed of it. The Galilean was promising us a better home, a heavenly home, where troubles will be no more.

That’s not much comfort for those who harbor doubts instead of faith. Even those who aren’t affected by personal troubles must tremble at the condition of our country and the world. We recall the words of Matthew Arnold perhaps, in his poem Lines Written in Kensington Gardens:

I, on men’s impious uproar hurled,

Think often, as I hear them rave,       

That peace has left the upper world, 

And now keeps only in the grave.

Arnold found peace in quiet garden. Many find peace in the words of the Galilean, and bless him for it. A friend of mine from years ago during my time in the United States Navy, found it another way. We were in temporary duty at a base in Monterey, California. I had already received orders for Naval Security Forces at Da Nang. He had no idea where he would go. It didn’t matter. He hated every aspect of military life. Location made no difference.

His name was Robert and he carried around a number of problems, some social, some political, some romantic, some internal, and some external. One day, as we walked through a then-deserted Cannery Row, he looked at me with sad eyes and said, “You know, when a child is born, they give him a bucket, and as he goes through life, they shovel crap into it, and he has to carry it with him through life while it gets heavier and heavier.”

It was somber thought and I remember wondering, at the time, what John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts would have thought of it. I didn’t think long on it. One morning, Robert failed to appear at muster. I figured his assignment had come through.

About two weeks later, shortly before I was to leave, a call came my work place. Personal calls didn’t pass muster, but they let me take it out of sorrow for my future, I suppose. A happy voice greeted me. It was Robert.

“Where are you?”

“At the nut-ward at the Treasure Island base in San Francisco,” he said.

“How did you get there?”

“I told them I was giving up my bucket of crap and the Navy could do what they wanted to with it.” Then the phone went dead.

I never heard from him again.

Comfort them?
Or test them for drugs?

Time for something I just made up out of the cesspool of my mind.

The Casserole Brigade

By Jimmie von Tungeln

The Casserole Brigade started showing up two days after Dora Mae’s funeral. There were a half-dozen members appearing from the mist of John Paul’s despondency like soldiers emerging in dim shapes from no-man’s land. To them, he appeared numb and vulnerable, no doubt dazed from the damage his loss had caused, so suddenly and unexpectedly had it burst upon him. Easy pickings.

At first, there were evening treats designed to soften him up for later assaults. A plate of spaghetti or a surplus Chicken Tetrazzini from a dinner for a sister. “My late husband used to call it “Chicken Tetrachloride” but then he always had more money than taste, ahem.”

And of course there were the casseroles. They came in every form imaginable and some that, quite frankly, John Paul could never have imagined. There were ham and cheese casseroles, egg and cheese casseroles, egg and anything casseroles, and casseroles made, apparently from whatever lay uneaten in a refrigerator at any given moment. Consuelo Remindez, wife of the late manager of “La Casa Ensinada” even once brought him a Chili Relleno casserole that had nearly taken off the top of his head. His vote for most bizarre was though, for a considerable length of time, a broccoli and corn bread casserole that Emily Kesterson had left at his door one evening with a note that said simply, “We must each find a way to get over our grief.”

She was always the shy one.

She would come late, and on the few times she knocked on his door, she knocked softly, so softly he could scarcely discern it from the noise of the city.

“I’m sorry.” That’s the way she always began.

The others weren’t as subtle. Marcella Goodwin, for example, would catch him in the lobby waiting for the elevator. “Gonna bring you a brand new dish tonight,” she would announce in a voice audible to anyone near. “That’ll be two, counting me, har har.”

Folks felt good about it. John Paul and Dora Mae never did seem that they could afford to live in the building. He must be suffering both emotionally and financially, it was surmised. A little help from the ladies here and there must have been welcome. Everyone commented on how well John Paul seemed to be doing. Besides, he enjoyed the casseroles and welcomed them, most of them at least. As long as he smiled and dined, they kept coming like products on an assembly line.

It went on like this for some time. When those at the morning coffee gathering tried to remember later, reminisces ranged from a month to three months. At any rate, it was long enough for Parker Thompson to start a pool. He called it the “Land John Paul Pool” and it is whispered that he had collected nearly a hundred dollars before the news hit the condo like a tsunami.

One day he just wasn’t there anymore.

“Not here?” Someone asked. “You mean he went on a trip?”
 “No,” a daughter explained. “He and a friend moved to New York.”

“You mean he had a girl friend?” Marcella said. “Whose casserole won?”

“No, it was his friend Fred.”

“Fred?”

“Yes, they have leased a place in Manhattan.” Complete silence settled on the room. From that day, no one ever mentioned his name again, much less the power of the casserole. 

Seeking health and knowledge ...

Back when I was younger, so much younger than today, I used to jog a lot. After a couple of years, my blood pressure was a steady 120/80 and my weight was down close to what it was supposed to be, 190 pounds. I was cool stuff … or thought I was. I was a “hunk” or thought I was until my trophy wife just laughed at me. Everybody else though I was obsessed. The country doctor in Lonoke, Byron E. Holmes, M.D., said I was crazy and that jogging would ruin my knees. That’s the last thought that went through my mind on the operating table recently as they prepared to replace one of those knees.

Anyway. I had a running buddy by then. I’ve mentioned him before. He was a little shorter than I and maybe 30 pounds lighter. He had run track in high school and had never smoked. That should tell you something.

As in, he wore my ass out most mornings.

In all though, he was interesting. He knew lots of things, some of them useful, some of them fascinating. For example, one morning, while I was puffing like a freight train while we were negotiating a particularly vicious hill, he turned, ran backwards, and related, in great detail, the history of the Battle of Majuba Hill, back in the first (I think) Boer War. I was terribly interested, but lacked the breath to speak at the time so he never knew, not that he would have cared.

He had one annoying habit. He insisted on choosing our route each run. He could, and I’ll swear this is true, choose a route that was uphill going and uphill returning. How he did it I’ll never know.

All in all, he was a nice fellow. I think I mentioned that he was a graduate of Harvard Law School and sometimes he would tell me interesting things about the law, as long as he was sure that I wasn’t trying to pry legal advice from him. He would clam up if I dared ask what he called a “say a man question.” For example, “Say a man were to claim his new stereo system as a tax deduction because it relaxed him while he was earning?”

His advice, “Nice try.”

No, he would be more likely to tell me fascination stories about when he worked with a group on a new criminal code for the state. For example, once they were dealing with the question of bestiality. When someone cited an old case about a farmer and his mare, the room went silent. Then, an old legislator who was assigned to monitor the group couldn’t forbear asking the question, “What breed of mare was it?”

I thought that was pretty funny, although I didn’t have enough breath to laugh at the time. There was another question emanating from a lawsuit involving a woman, a supermarket, a cucumber, and what legally constituted a “vegetable,” but I can’t go into details about that one.

He told another story, supposedly true, about an actual legal defense based on an incident with a well-known state representative. He was accused of some shady deal or other (this was back when they actually charged politicians for engaging in shady deals). He assured the jury that (1) the crime for which he was accused was really a stupid thing for a person to do, (2) that it would take a really stupid person to even think of doing it, (3) he had two college degrees and had passed the state bar exam, (4) his constituents had voted for him to be their state representative for years, (5) he could not possibly be a stupid man, and, ergo, ipso facto, or whatever, could not possible have committed the malfeasance in question.

He got away with it and the defense is still in practice, bearing the name of its inventor.

Who says physical fitness can’t be fun?

The man never met
a hill he didn't love.

Hope is where you find it ...

Spent yesterday with some of the best folks in the world, a group of municipal officials from around Arkansas. We were there to teach them something about urban planning. I think I learned more from them. Here are some of the most interesting topics discussed during breaks and lunch.

A council member from LA told me the most interesting story. She was in a group interviewing a young lady for a job. It was a typical interview except for one thing. The girl had her cell phone in between her hands and was busy texting during the entire interview. Yes, texting. She listened and answered questions but only stopped texting to look up at the interviewers once. That was when they told her the hours were from eight to five.

She stopped texting. Looked up, and said with surprise. “Eight to five?”

Yes.

“I can’t possibly be here before ten.” Back to texting.

Friends. It’s a new world in which we live. No, she didn’t get the job. Her parents probably blame affirmative action, or immigrants.

Another person told me about a modern problem in her city. Seems teenagers (and maybe older) males are flying drones, with cameras, over back yards and filming girls sunbathing. One lad was caught and offered the excuse that he had sought after the young lady as a girlfriend and had been rebuffed. Thought maybe some videos might produce leverage. Or whatever.

I heard about the “developer” that offered to fix a city’s affordable housing problem with some container crates, probably from Home Depot’s dumpster site, fitted onto a flat-bet trailer and parked on a site. He assured the Mayor that "tiny homes" were all the rage now in urban planning.

The most common topic was about a phase that seems to be sweeping the cities in our state. I call it the “Pirate’s Code Problem,” from the film Pirates of the Caribbean. Remember the response when the heroine invoked the “Pirate’s Code?  “… you must be a pirate for the pirate's code to apply and you're not. And …, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.”

Yes, our cities are facing an increase of conflicts with builders and developers, mostly the local ones, who consider a city’s adopted regulations more as guidelines than actual rules, and act accordingly. They are hoping, it seems, for a return to the government of yesteryear, what I called “regulation by last name.”

I’ve thought about his and have two hypotheses, one negative and one positive. On the negative end, we are living in a time when those at the very top of the “governmental food chain” never miss an opportunity to show their disdain for the rule of law, good government, the general welfare of the population, or—really—the social stability that comes from common decency. It would be no wonder that this attitude would trickle down into local government.

I have a more positive hypothesis, borne out by the attitude of the folks I talked with yesterday. I think we have one of the most educated and attentive brood of elected officials at the local level in this state that I have seen in almost a half-century of dealing with municipalities. And they care deeply about their cities, hence the conflicts with the “dab a little gravel and run” developers.

If I’m right, look out you demons of darkness. Attitudes and actions can trickle up as well as down.

Out with the smell of sulfur.
Make America smell good again.

We're all French today ....

When you wake up in the morning and there is a part of our soul like the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris  missing and so much ugliness still extant, it makes one think. I thought about the French, and France, a lot yesterday. I suspect we all did.

I’ve never been there. I thought about it once. I could have extended for another six months in the “Dirty Little War,” and they would have sent me anywhere in, what they called back then, the “Free World,” for a month and then brought me back. It was called “basket leave” and didn’t count toward any leave on your records. It was free, but so would have been the “ass-whupping” my Sainted Mother would have given me next time I saw her.

Still, I thought about it. I had read that those folks drank wine with breakfast and I thought that was pretty neat. Oh yeah, there were the cathedrals and museums and places where Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the others showed out. It would have been terribly interesting, but I opted to return home, or at least to go to Charleston, South Carolina and live aboard a ship for a year and a half. Oh well. Sainted Mother was happy, but she didn’t have to deal with the people of South Carolina and their gendarmes. They made the Viet Cong seem like Disneyland tour guides.

At any rate. I’ve thought about the French over the years. I’ve heard that they don’t like tourists, but I’ve also heard that they don’t like anyone and that it is only Americans who take it personally. My father-in-law was through there with the 79^th Infantry Division. He wasn’t too fond of the French, but then, like I’ve heard many a veteran of the “Good War” say, the only Europeans that the American soldiers liked and identified with were the German people, and that was after all the fighting and crap.

He told the funniest story. During the occupation, he saw a young woman standing in the yard holding a young dog. Trying to maintain good international relations, he commented on what a nice “puppy” she had. After several moments of miscommunication, she nodded in understanding and giving the universal “wait one” sign, ran into the house, returning moments later with a partial role of toilet paper.

I thought about when the French opted out of the monumental crime and misadventure known as the American invasion of Iraq. There was once, while at a “church” function, I heard a dentist, his son, and a “minister,” without one second of military service between them, referring to “French Surrender-Monkeys.”

Gagging, I held my tongue, but thought about French villages that, after World War One could hardly muster an undamaged man between the ages of 14 and 70, “Surrender Monkeys” indeed. War is a simple matter for people, like most of our current leaders, who have never seen one up close and personal.

So, I spent some time yesterday regretting the fact that a wondrous work of human endeavor was gone while the most corrupt government in American history still stood. You know, I read once where the French had let that cathedral deteriorate, paying it scant attention, until Victor Hugo immortalized it in his famous novel. Then, observing it, as if for the first time, falling into ruin, they went about restoring its wondrous beauty.

           

Maybe it takes the realities of abuse and neglect to awake people to the beauty, not only of structures, but a country as well. I, for one, will hold out for restoration instead of the all-consuming fire. I think it's important.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health,

and quiet breathing.
- John Keats

My Redacted Life ... having fun

I try not to, but I seem to learn things and associate things no matter where I go or what I do. Sometimes I think I drift toward empiricism, the theory that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience. In my case, it seems that all knowledge is connected by a fine thread, that only I and gifted others can see. For example, how many could, as I did, connect a bunch of kids shooting baskets at the gym with public administration?

It happened like this.

We walked at the gym this week on a track that circles above a basketball court that is usually filled with young kids. We enjoy watching them as we circle, and circle, and circle. They exhibit universal good behavior though their talent levels vary. That doesn’t seem to affect their enthusiasm levels one bit. It makes our walking and thinking more fun.

This particular day, I noticed one thing. The kids there on that day just weren’t very good. Naturally, I began passing judgement. Some benign coaching might improve them immensely. I would be just the person to do it.

See that little feller? His strength is quickness and dexterity. Is he using it? No.

That one over there needs to build his arm strength.

Watch out son, don’t try all that fancy dribbling. Keep it simple.

Hey you, pay attention.

Then they all went a little crazy and started shooting from beyond what I think they call the “three-point” line. Most couldn’t even reach the basket. It led to a frenzy of wild shooting and much laughing.

This all led me think about my profession, how city governments don’t build on their strengths and concentrate too much on unrealistic population goals and not enough on building their people.

These kids weren’t going to get better. Lots of cities were going to languish. All for the same reason.

Maybe a lack of oxygen cleared some of my brain passages. Maybe not being transfixed to the Internet gave me a moment of clarity. Whatever it was, a thought came flashing, pure and pristine, from the depths of my darkness, like a blazing display of bravura from a Beethoven symphony. I had a thought. Everything would be okay. All was fine.

These kids were having fun. That was the important thing. They were enjoying freedom from adults coaching them, parents yelling at them, parents yelling at other parents, whistles blowing, and crowds booing.

They would get better. Some would become very good. Right now, they were discovering the joy of playing for fun. I’m sure that is a wonderful feeling, playing for fun whether you ever get to be a professional or not, playing for fun because it makes you smile.

I decided that I would go home and pick the guitar for a while. I wouldn’t ever get good at it, but it would make me smile and I wouldn’t be thinking ill of anyone while I did it.

I decided that I would stress to municipal officials next week that if practicing governance didn’t make them smile, they weren’t doing it right.

Don't get me started ... Theology Time

Theology Time brings me great trouble this week. I have seen many of those close to me, related in myriad ways, suffering in great and varied degrees. The idea of a Divine Plan is not one I wish either to discuss or dwell upon. A passage from Conrad’s short story Youth best describes my feelings this morning toward a “holy interventionist.” The story unfolds about a young man on a ship transporting coal to the Orient. The coal catches fire and the ship explodes beneath the feet of the crew members. Intervention arrives in the form of Malay sailors who don’t seem overly interested in the surviving sailors. The youth gives voice to a primal plea that could have been hurled from high mountains at the multitude of gods that humans have chosen to follow.

He said, "I thought people who had been blown up deserved more attention."

Anyway, back to the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the Beatitudes, specifically the third one ascribed to Matthew, according to whom, Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Now that’s going to come as a hell of a surprise to the billionaires that walk amongst us. Doormats are for walking on. They don’t inherit “jack-diddly.” Give them an inch, and they’ll want a mile. Provide them a full stomach and a warm room and they’ll want public education and health care next.

Anyway. What did Jesus mean when he mentioned the “meek?”

First, we must understand that there is no contemporary mention in recorded and reliable documents that the figure of Jesus, (I prefer to call him “The Galilean” for the regional implications) ever existed. The first mention of him in official history was by Josephus, a Jewish historian who mentioned the death of the rebellious rabbi some 150 years after his assumed death.

Nor, do we stand assured that we are reading the exact words the Galilean spoke them. Matthew relied upon, we are told, original material supplied by an anonymous source called “Q.”

Further, the crowd to which the Galilean spoke wasn’t homogeneous by any stretch of the imagination. First, there were the disciples, who maybe weren’t the most trustworthy critics and may have considered themselves as above the common folk. Then there were the right-wing fundamentalists of the day, the priests and Sadducees who hated the upstart and had the power of the Romans behind them—the ones with the weapons. That brings us to the military rulers who surely had spies in the crowd. Finally, there were the common folk, some of which probably listened only to state-supported news for information. Who is left? The meek of course.

What, then, in the hell does it mean to be meek? Who knows? Maybe the best thing to do is look at the Speaker himself. What was there about him that might fefine meekness?

He eschewed worldly goods, that’s for sure. That’s for dang sure. He didn’t preach from some converted sports stadium, arriving in a Rolls wearing suits worth tens of thousands and ties worth thousands. A simple robe and some sandals. Perhaps they were made from automobile tires. Perhaps not.

He didn’t bluster like some professional wrestler or reality TV star. In fact, other than the time he got pissed over businessmen obtaining loans in the Temple, he was extremely mild-mannered, certainly not timid, but polite and well-spoken.

He seemed to be truth-oriented, a trait among leaders that fades out of sight more each year.

He was non-judgmental, even toward immigrants and those who, for reasons of genetics, might be ill or differently-turned. We’ll leave that one there and pick it up when we get to Saul of Tarsus.

He was humble to say the least. Picture Donald Trump or one of this spawn washing someone’s feet. Go ahead. I dare you. Thought so.

My advice du jour? If you want to pattern your life as you think the Galilean would want you to, “Q” is a better source than Sean Hannity.

Dialogue ....

 Checked on Facebook today. Too much hate. So, I’ve been listening to it rain and thinking about how so many phrases there are that so many people wouldn’t understand these days. Maybe if we softened our dialogue, it might calm our whole country a bit. How many still understand the following?

“Don’t stand there with that ice-box door open.”

“I’m gonna cut me switch.”

“It’s about time we gave you another permanent.”

“It runs like a sanger sewing machine.”

“They just drove by and was sackin’ air.”

“This place is in bad need of some hooverin.’

“That man is puredee mean.”

“He wouldn’t pay a nickel to see a piss-ant eat a bale of hay.”

“It’s so cold it’ll cut your water off.”

“Rich as five feet up a bull’s [hind end].”

“… like a jackass eatin’ briars.”

“Just a hop, skip, and a jump … .”

“Fit to be tied.”

“Your face is gonna freeze like that.”

“Were you raised in a barn?’

And that’s how the hog ate the cabbage.

The Russians love this.

Friday Morning Fiction ...

It's almost time for those awful signs to start appearing. The ones that give me a case of PTSD. Yeah the ones about VBS. So, here is "Friday Morning Fiction." Pardon the length, but I had a lot on my mind. Pretty much factual, in case you are interested.

No Vacation for a Pirate

By Jimmie von Tungeln

  

            The following happened in different times. Not old times, just different times. Most mothers were home all day then. Most fathers were away working. Children followed their own instincts and must have been particularly annoying. Mothers missed no opportunity to be shed of them for a few hours, or even all day. As I was to learn, it was also a time set aside for my religious instruction, specifically for a consolidation of my vague images of Hell, in form of a particularly nasty institution known as—one can still almost hear thunder and the neighing of horses at the mere mention of the word—Vacation Bible School

            Perhaps the ill-timing of it all fueled my extreme reaction. They seem always to plan these things in the summertime and this was a particularly bad bit of scheduling. It seemed to be set out purposely to interfere with the duties of a group of ten-year-olds who had no other mission than protecting both the physical and reputational well-being of their community. We had, over the last few months, coalesced into the sort of group about which folk songs were written during the Dark Ages. We were heroic. We were virtuous. We were protective of our lands and people. In short, we had responsibilities, and they didn’t include religion.

            A group of pirates from north of Bayou Bartholomew, for example, was in the process of building a raft with which to invade all settlements to the south. This was the established territory of our little band of privateers. Question was: who would stand between the invaders and our women folk if we were to be called away? There were forts to be built, traps to be laid, and counter-offensive craft to be built.

            The alternative spelled utter disaster. Ben Shannon explained it to us as we gathered around a hastily built campfire near the bayou’s edge. He was not our leader, per se, just older and more educated. “They’ll come rapping and pillaging our women,” he said. “At tar’s pure histry.”

            We shuddered at the thought as our blood ran hot and fired our anger like an open circuit suddenly lighting a darkened room. Rapping and pillaging indeed! (As adults, when we absorbed the difference between rapping and raping, many of us would come to think we would prefer the latter, but that’s a story for another day.)

            Pirates were only a part of our problem. At the same time, a group of rustlers from the Union Community had begun to range perilously close to our hideout on Ferdinand Thompson’s land. We had to settle affairs with them once and for all and it wasn’t going to be a sight that innocent folks should witness.

            On top of that, a group of semi-professional baseball players from the Hog-eye Bend area was threatening to descend upon the field on the edge of Ridgway’s dairy land and issue a challenge to any locals brave—or dumb—enough to meet it. We weren’t the type of fellows to back away from anyone, even from a team that reportedly fielded a player who could re-wrap a baseball with electrical tape so tight that it hit almost like a new one. We’d knock his fancy ball right back in his face.

            In the midst of all this, the two Hester boys, O.G. Stanford, Bobby Joe Benson, his brother Robert, and I all heard the sentence pronounced.

            “Unity Baptist Church is having a two-week Vacation Bible School and I have signed you and your sister up,” my mother said. She said it so softly and matter-of-factly that she might have only been stating we were having leftovers for supper. It failed to even register in a mind that was filled with sword-fights, running gun battles and strikeouts.

            “That’s nice,” I heard myself say, not anticipating the doom to which I had just sentenced myself.

            I forgot it all until the next Sunday evening. Somehow I had lived through another Sabbath and was preparing to assume my duties as the gang’s quartermaster the next day. In my kit, I had packed a penny-box of matches and a book of cigarette papers filched from my father’s grocery store. Eddie Holland had been swiping pinches of Bull Durham from his daddy for weeks now and we had the goods to provide a swell smoke for the entire gang. I also packed away a five-cent package of firecrackers left over from Christmas and a picture of a Marilyn Monroe in a bathing suit that I had torn from a Parade Magazine. I had my Uncle Jack’s survival knife from the Korean War and a magnifying glass that was useful for starting fires, and also for frying ants. It was going to be a good Monday.

            Then I heard my mother yell from the living room, “Jimmie get in there and lay out some clothes for Bible School in the morning. Misses Cochran’s coming at 8:30 and you better not make her wait.”

            My blood froze. Bible School? Was she kidding? I answered back immediately in my best pirate voice. “Huh?”

            “You heard me.”

            “Did you say something?”

            “Now don’t even think about opening that little smart mouth of yours to me. You get ready.”

            “Aw momma.” Did she want to be rapped and pillaged?

            “Don’t you ‘aw momma’ me. I gave them a love offerin’ and you’re goin.’”

            “But Sonny Averitt has a new snake and he said we could come over and look at it in the …”

            “Don’t make me have to come in there.”

            So, the gang of prisoners dutifully reported outside the church next morning. There were five of us—Bobby Joe had rubbed some mustard in his eyes and convinced his mama that he might have the “chicken pops.” True pirates are born to embrace suffering.

            Anyway, we lined up as if we were awaiting the boat to Devil’s Island outside the church door. They let all the girls in first, including my sister who was older than the rest of us and ended up being a sort of guard for the duration, in addition to her normal job of reporting my every movement and utterance to the authorities at home. There were about 15 of us in the group, and not a happy face among them.

            Finally, our teacher, a Misses Krebbs, appeared at the door and bade us enter the foyer. Once that far inside, she stopped us and, as we huddled in a tight bunch near the coat racks and tables piled with offering plates, taught us the daily prayer we were to utter before we entered the church each morning.

I am a sinner, let me pray,

God has given me this day.

At every step, I’ll stop and say,

He will guide me all the way. Amen

            I think she made it up herself because she seemed pretty pleased with it. After a dozen or so tries, we got to where we could say it together and she allowed us in the church.

            Miss Krebbs was a stout little woman with reddish hair pulled into a bun. She had obviously been through this before, for the first thing she did after she sat all the boys down in the back of the room—the girls were already up front singing songs—was to single out the biggest boy in the room. He was a big boy, older than the rest of us, named Terry Clayton and was from the east side of town─where they raised the tough ones. We learned later that he was in Vacation Bible School as an alternative to reform school, so he was prepared to endure a good deal of unpleasantness. It started immediately.  Miss Krebbs brought him to the front of our little group. He turned and faced us with magnificent defiance and we all envied his “look.” She then presented him as the type that would reap great benefits from the coming experience, and patted his back. He turned a crimson red, and those of us who were experienced in the ways of the truly fearsome saw dead bodies and raw bloody veins swirling in his head.

            Next, she looked at him and asked, “What do you expect to get from coming to vacation bible school,” she asked.

            Well, she might have just as well asked him what he thought of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Here was a boy who had never planned even a half-step beyond his immediate existence in his life. He turned even redder and finally looked at the floor.

            Miss Krebbs made him suffer for what seemed like minutes before she sat him down, broken and humiliated. Then she asked, “Who in here loves Jesus?”

            Every hand shot into the air.

            I won’t go into great detail about the ordeal that followed. As the remnants of our little band proceeded, without us, to build a raft capable of transporting the band all the way across the bayou to intercept the interlopers, we were cutting out pictures of the prophets to paste on large poster boards. The only part of our day that offered any chance of relief for our tortured mind was singing. It didn’t take long before we discovered that we could change the words of songs ever so slightly without drawing the attention of Misses Krebbs or one of the other guards. Of course my sister was a little more worldly-wise than the adults so we had to be extra careful. She knew the easy ones such as Gladly, the Cross-eyed Bear. We did manage, though, to slip by her such gems as Flour in the Mud.

            But our pleasures were few, all in all. Once, we had to study the Book of Job, which consisted pretty much of a story about how God and the Devil took bets on how this poor guy named Job would act if they played tricks on him. I guess they thought it pretty funny. Actually, we had done the same thing a few times with our gang’s favorite jester, Buddy Austin. We would do things like twist him up in a bag swing and let it twirl him around a bunch of times and then take bets on how far he could walk before he fell. It was a kid’s game, at best.

            The study of poor Job did provide one bit of drama. Toward the end, when the unfortunate man had endured almost more than humanly possible, Misses Krebbs stopped the discussion and asked who could provide an explanation for it all. Well, old Terry Clayton just sat there for a few minutes. We were ten days or so into the sentence by then, and I suppose the imagined peace and freedom of reform school were beckoning him like the Sirens of Phorcus.

            He all of a sudden blurted out, it was the first time he had spoken since his opening day humiliation, “I guess it means that when you have nothing to lose, it’s better to be the shooter than the dice.”

            It was the last I saw of him until a number of years later when he stopped me for speeding. He was five years in the police force by then and let me go, a favor from one victim to another.

            On another occasion, they brought in this carpenter who was going to show us how to work with wood. We thought this was going to be really neat until we found that the project would consist of building crosses and not any good stuff.

            I immediately got into it with our instructor because he didn’t like my choice of wood. I was, and still am, partial to the darker woods like walnut. He claimed we should use lighter wood to symbolize the purity of Christ. Jesus!

            After a few days of sawing and bending a number of nails, our crosses began to take a number of shapes, few of them recognizable as the stated goal. On top of it all, the man refused to answer any questions of a practical nature, such as tips on building rafts or stockades for a hideout.

            As the end of our cross-building approached, O.G. Stanford finally asked Misses Krebbs what the finished products would be used for.

            She didn’t hesitate a second. “You are building them to be donated to the poor colored churches in town.”

            We just looked at one another. Hadn’t these people suffered enough already?

            The absolute most idiotic thing about the experience was that Misses Krebbs never even learned my name. She knew my sister’s name, and she knew our relationship. But for some reason, she insisted on calling me Jimmie Valentine, for the pure sadistic pleasure of it I suppose. I still have, among my clippings about the Tet Offensive, my photos of enduring a storm at sea, and the results of a tornado which I survived, a small folded certificate stating that Jimmie Valentine had, indeed, survived (it actually says “graduated from”) Unity Baptist Church Vacation Bible School.

            Yes, it, as all ordeals do, ended. In this case with “Boo-Hoo Day.” That’s the day they wrap it up with a children’s sermon from the church’s preacher and, traditionally, all the girls get “saved,” some of them for the fourth or fifth time. All the boys declined the honor except for Johnny Staples and that is a complete story in itself.

            For the rest, we returned to our gang to learn that, in our absence, the remnant members had discovered that rafts made from green pine trees don’t float well enough to support the weight of a pirate gang. To make matters worse, Ferdinand had discovered our cowboy hideout on his land, torn it up, and reported the discovery to my father to whom he handed over the bottle containing a half-inch of bourbon that someone—we denied any knowledge—had been carefully collecting from throw-ways for months. Of course the baseball game had to be forfeited and our team was forever known and “The No-shows.”

             A pretty sad experience? Yes, in many ways. The gang never reorganized. The next summer my father secured me a job working on a milk truck and a succession of summer employments followed until one day I awoke to be staring at a grown man in the mirror and it was not the face of a pirate. It was a face, however, honed to some degree from raging along the banks of Bayou Bartholomew, once, with a ragtag gang of fierce warriors, protecting an imaginary group of innocent women from the prospect of rapping and pillaging. So I am glad of my youth, even with that summer’s experience. Outdoor freedoms such as we enjoyed seem to have disappeared along with pirate gangs and second-hand baseballs.

Were there lessons learned? There was one—after enduring Misses Krebbs, and vacation bible school, there was never any doubt in our minds about the true horrors of Hell. That has always provided a little touch of religion in the night.

Ready for Salvation