My Redacted Life: Chapter 28

Early in my career as an urban planner, Jim Vines and I had an opportunity to work for the City of Hot Springs. Tom Ellsworth was mayor. His predecessors had eschewed the opportunity to seek help with urban development from HUD. Though it was late in the game, he called us in to help reverse that policy.

We worked on "the come,” which meant that we wouldn’t get paid unless we were able to generate a federally funded project for the city, one that included planning or engineering work. Oh, he did allow us the use of his family box at Oaklawn Park Race Track, on days we finished work early. The box wasn’t perfect. It was a few rows from the front and, maybe, 20 feet or so past the finish-line.

We withstood such imperfections and had a number of pleasant late afternoons there. The experiences only served to bolster my lifelong aversion to gambling. I was worse at it than I was at sports.

Anyway, we did well in our courting of HUD. We had made enough progress that two representatives from Washington, D.C. flew in to review some projects we had in mind.

Mayor Ellsworth prepared well. Always immaculate, he was more so that day, even carried a flower in the lapel of his tailored suit. At that time, City Hall had a large landscaped entryway with steps leading to the entrance to municipal offices. The Mayor’s office was on the left and large floor-to-ceiling windows offered a pleasant view of the entrance. All was set, including a nice coffee service the Mayor had brought from home.

The HUD representatives arrived and staff showed them in. A woman in, maybe, her early thirties and a man who looked a little older entered. They wore tailored business attire and an air of professionalism so typical of federal representatives in those days. Both looked as if they could have enjoyed successful careers in modeling. We all made introductions and sat for coffee.

The Mayor did the talking by prearrangement. He extolled the natural wonders of the city and stressed the investment the federal government had in them. He moved, again according to plan, to connect the vitality of municipal government to the success of the national park. He stressed how the city had always, even in ancient times, been a place of peace and harmony for diverse cultures. It carried the reputation as a welcoming place for all.

This seemed to interest the Washington duo. As a staffer served coffee, they began to ask questions that we, silently, viewed as “buying signals.”

The Mayor was “in his element” as they say. He offered a short, but vivid, history of the city and its marvelous treasures. All was going according to plan. The female of the duo straightened the edge of her skirt and leaned forward. The man wrote notes on a leather-covered pad. The Mayor had them in the palm of his hand.

Then it happened.

From outside, a body seemed to fly through the air and land, with his back to us, against the plate glass window. It stuck there, arms out, in sort of a “reversed crucifixion” pose.

The hitherto calm urban setting reverberated with a string of profanity that I hadn’t heard used with such fluency, description, and eloquence since I left the Navy. It erupted from the mouth of a large woman in a flowing dress who had suddenly appeared. She peeled the man from the window by an arm and flung him across the building’s entry plaza. She continued the string of profanity that, more than adequately, expressed her distaste for her victim.

This had taken maybe 15 seconds and Mayor Ellsworth had yet to move. By the time he did, a crowd had separated the woman from her hapless victim, but only after she had delivered a couple of hard blows to his chin, a move simplified by the fact that he was half her size.

As the police led the still-screaming woman away, the Mayor, ashen-faced now, attempted to regain his composure. The visitors stared. The man folded his notepad. Jim Vines and I saw the chances for a substantial piece of business being dragged away with the still-screaming woman.

It was to be true. Despite his being rumored as a possible candidate for Governor, and despite his election as President of the Arkansas Municipal League, we never again, Jim and I, saw the mayor in top form. He succumbed later to an early death from cancer. Too bad. He was one of the best.

He served well, his only defeat coming as the result of a case in divorce court going bad. Feelings over it had flowed from City Hall to erupt in plain view of very important visitors to the city. How does one plan for that?

A city staffer told us much later that the protagonists in the altercation reconciled and remarried. I never bothered to verify it, but it sounded probable. That’s how things work out sometimes in our state, maybe in others as well.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 27 (Cont. _4)

Back at work, things were moving fast. Tom wasn’t too happy about the photos I took of the property west of Little Rock. I offered to take him out and show him how wooded it was and how devoid of vistas. He groused a bit and we moved on. I went back to work on the Hope project while the engineers were working on our first development project, a single-family subdivision not far from Little Rock.

Those who had seen the layout said it would be the best subdivision in the area. Gently curving streets offered a smooth circulation system. A well-landscaped entry way promised to add a level of sophistication not common around the two towns bordering the site. All looked promising.

I was beginning to see what a talented staff we had. Ron McConnell was a maser technician. He had learned his craft well at the highway department. Even the engineer spoke highly of him and he didn’t speak highly of too many folks.

The others in the office I’ve already mentioned. I was probably the weak link, just an old former sailor trying to get his “land-legs” going. I suppose the others feared some sort of flashback, so they pretty much left me alone. I bumbled along.

But I was meeting some fine people as I traveled the state. The elected officials I met were dedicated public servants with a reputation for honesty and diligence bested my no other profession I’ve ever encountered. Salaries for mayors and state officials were set at a pittance by the state. Mayors and others served more from a sense of noblesse oblige than necessity. It did stop decent and qualified people who lacked private resources from running for office. The thinking was, I guess, that if we paid well, we might elect scoundrels who just wanted to get into public office to enrich themselves, their friends, and their families.

I’ve met many fine and admirable mayors. One did not solely exhibit the most of those traits by any stretch, but did typify the high quality of individuals who have served our cities. His name was Tom Ellsworth and he served as Mayor of Hot Springs for a number of years. In Arkansas, it is a matter of great respect to carry the sobriquet of being “an old family.” He was “Old Hot Springs,” make no mistake about that. In addition, he was the epitome of a true Southern gentleman, always dressed to “the Nines,” and gentle in both nature and action. To show what an institution he was, I’ll point out that his family estate had a name: “Wildwood.” That’s “Old Arkansas” writ large.

His name I mention with reference, and because he was the victim of a bizarre incident involving visitors from Washington D.C., members of our firm, and a cast of local citizens. It deserves mention in a redacted version of my professional career.

More tomorrow.

The Ellsworth family home, circa 1884.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 26 (Cont._3)

As hard as it was to tell that woman that she was right, Brenda had me walking by noon Saturday. The more I walked, the better my ankle felt until I could get around without my arm around her shoulder. I didn’t share that with her for a spell, but she finally figured it out on her own. She spun away from me, turned, cocked her head and smiled. “Miracle cure, if you ask me,” she said.

What could I do but agree? I leaned over and kissed her. “Thanks.”

“Want to do something special? She flexed her eyebrows up and down in a disarming and devilish fashion.”

My heart fluttered. “Like what?”

“Take me to Hot Springs.”

“Hot Springs?”

“Yeah. I wanted to go before school starts in the fall. This seems like a good day for it.”

“Okay,” I said. I was stuck a couple sentences back, but it didn’t seem like terrible idea.

“Let me go change. I’ll be right back.”

I showered quickly and put on some jeans and a t-shirt, not a nautical one, just a modest blue thing that spoke, I thought, of stability and masculinity. I was hardly limping by now.

She came back just as I was finished dressing. She wore loose white slacks, a form-fitting and revealing blue pull-over and sensible walking shoes. Her long hair sparkled as it hung down her back. “I’m ready,” she said. “And quit looking at me like that.”

I came to my senses and escorted her to the car. I added a slight limp for pity’s sake. Soon we were on University Avenue headed for I-30 and adventure. She settled in an told me about some stunts that she and Vernell, who was from the Hot Springs area, had pulled while attending college. Common courtesy and a natural life-wish prevents divulging details. Let’s just say they weren’t the placid students they sometimes wished to portray.

We passed the Arkansas Highway Department “castle” just before leaving the Little Rock city limits. It towered over the landscape, an isolated and independent part of state government. Its chief function was to build highways and freeways that would induce traffic congestion. It would become very good at it over time.

We came to the small settlement of Bryant, a community that had grown up around a sawmill and boasted a bank that had been robbed four times by the same man. Next was the blue-collar union town of Benton, center of the state’s aluminum industry. Beyond that, was the Saline River, on which, farther south, Civil War armies had fought a fierce battle at a place known as Jenkin’sFerry. A Union victory had saved the remnants of a large force that left Little Rock months earlier with conquest in mind and nothing but adversity in waiting. My great-grandfather’s unit participated in the battle, on the losing side.

We didn’t care about those things. We turned off the freeway and began the lovely drive that would take us to Hot Springs.

All cities in our state are unique. There are three that are more unique than normal: Eureka Springs, Helena (as it was known at the time—any city where Robert Johnson had played guitar is unique), and the “mostest” unique city in the state, Hot Springs. It is the only city in the country built around what would become a national park. In fact, the official name of the city is “Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.”

Oddly the spot on which the city rests has always been a place of peace, a welcome site in what can be, at times, a troubled world. Ancient Native American tribes, often at war otherwise, would meet in harmony there, in the “Valley of the Vapors” to trade, often for Novaculite Rock, also called Arkansas Stone, a hard rock useful for fashioning knives and other instruments, including arrowheads.

During the mobster era, rival gangsters would visit the city under a truce of peace to avail themselves of the baths that utilized the natural hot springs that flowed from subterranean sources. Characters as disparate as Al Capone and Babe Ruth knew the city well.

We didn’t care. I had parked the Green Angel and we were walking along Central Avenue, the main, actually the only, through street in the downtown. It was built over a creek that ran through two hillsides. That provided the only option for transportation through the pass, but it also tempted Nature, periodically, to remind puny humans of its power to flood and destroy.

As we walked along, I felt people staring at me. After much observation, I realized they weren’t staring at me. As we walked along Magnolia-lined sidewalks, I felt proud. Let them stare at that sashaying beauty holding my hand.

I didn’t care. Was I a lucky man, or what?

Our special city.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Six (Cont._4)

The winter of 1971 was nearing a close and there was no discontent on my part. I even bought a couple of new shirts. Jimmie was in tall cotton, as they say.

I had expanded the project check list to include a list of key accomplishments that had to be made on each. Since we knew which steps were time-consuming, we could avoid getting caught unawares. If all proceeded according to plans, we felt, as John Agar used to say in the monster movies of the 1950s, “It just might work.”

Since I now had some free time while the drafters were preparing maps, the bosses sent me to Hot Springs for several days. We had been hired by a bank to research the market for office space in the downtown area. All I had to do was contact the owners of existing office space, lie that my firm was considering a move to the city, and take notes on the existing inventory. Since lying was pretty much second-nature to me, the assignment posed no problems.

The thing I remember most about this venture was lunchtime. There was a deli in downtown Hot Springs called Mollie's and there they made what was probably the best corned beef sandwich ever produced on American soil. Their pastries were even better. It was a small treasure added to a city that was already, and still is, a treasure for our state, one of its finest.

There was an atmosphere and an ambiance that combined with the food in this hallowed venue. Family owned and operated, it had pleased customers for years. The air inside fairly crackled with the spirit of history. It was a magic place. Sadly, it burned years later and the family moved it into former house just outside the downtown area.

Know what? The food never tasted the same there. There were the same cooks, same waitresses, same owners, but not the same taste. You can’t replicate the value-adding blessings and atmosphere of history.

The same is true in a way of urban planning. We tore down, or allowed to deteriorate, burn, or collapse many old buildings, only to see them replaced by monstrosities that appeared to be made from the same plastic used in Mattel shipbuilding kits. A little of our national pride is scraped away each time this happens.

Fortunately, Hot Springs has held on to most of their old structures. It is a peaceful city. Ancient Native-Americans from different tribes used to put aside their differences and trade there in harmony. Gangster declared it a neutral zone, and famous figures such as Al Capone gathered for the baths and for rest. At the time, I lacked the experience and background to appreciate how fortunate I was to be assigned to such a wonderful place. In fact, I didn’t know much about anything urban, least of all what I was doing.

I only knew that I didn’t have to carry a rifle to do it and that those corned beef sandwiches were damn good.

Could life get any better?

Hot Springs National Park , Arkansas
Still one of our greatest treasures.