Chapter Eleven: (Cont._3)

Knowing where you are on the planet has always been important in urban planning. It hasn’t been easy. By 1971, we knew about where we were due to the efforts of two land surveyors, Prospect Robbins and Joseph Brown, who set out in October, 1815, to survey the land acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase.

What motivated this? The federal government chose to award land grants to veterans of the War of 1812 and needed appropriate descriptions for the allocations. In fact, I write this from a farm that was part of a grant awarded by President James Monroe to one Grady Thomas, formerly a private in Jones’s Company of the 24^th Regiment of Infantry.

Most veterans sold their grants to settlers moving west. There is no record that Grady Thomas ever emigrated to what is now the State of Arkansas.

But I digress. Let us just say that the surveying was an arduous undertaking, one commemorated to this day by a state park. When I started work, the survey information, along with more modern data, chief of which were topographic elevations, were available on individual sheets that we simply called “topo maps.”

These sheets only covered 60 square miles or so. To use them, the process involved getting into a car, driving to Roosevelt Road in Little Rock, purchasing the map(s) from the United States Geologic Survey) bringing them back, and usually trimming and taping several together. If you were close friends with a photographer, as I was, you could draw a very thin line on the original and have the map enlarged so that the line was a specific length that would produce a traceable result at a workable scale, sort of.

Later, this would all involve a dozen or so keyboard strikes.

Information is key to making good decisions for future generations. Pity the society that ever eschews information. It would be like choosing not to breath oxygen. Accordingly, we struggled with topo maps and census tables, often leaving the office at the end of the day with strained eyes and a throbbing head. In the process, we would slowly develop what we hoped would be a logical course of action for our clients.

Sometimes we were more successful than at others, the chief obstacles to success being politics, lack of resources, and the dreaded “Law of Unintended Consequences.”

What’s that? Oh, it is like when the government spends a fortune on a major traffic artery with which to move goods and services and then allows it to be clogged with adjoining commercial enterprises to the point where traffic no longer can move along the artery and another must be built farther out, often with the same results. One major American city had gotten up to eight rings, I think it was, before the whole system toppled over like a Delta thunderhead on a summer afternoon.

Evenings after struggling all day with facts, figures, and maps, it was nice to return to my simple apartment and enjoy the benefits of having a friend like Jackie, from over on Riverside Drive where they didn’t worry a lot about the future.

Where the survey started

My Redacted Life: Chapter One (Concluded)

This brief segment ends the first chapter of my “life after military duty.” That duty had afforded me ample time to ponder my future. Unfortunately, I was still at a loss, despite all that pondering, and I’m hell on pondering, just ask my wife.

Back then, though, I felt the way a modern shopper does when looking at shelves stocked with (it seems) hundreds of kinds of toothpaste. They say that having too many choices inhibits decision-making. I don’t know. I have observed that football team captains don’t tend to marry early in life, unless they have to, and many of them do.

As for me, I had always reckoned on returning to San Francisco upon my separation, maybe signing up as a merchant seaman. Or, I had a drafting job supposedly waiting with Babcock and Wilcox, one I had filled while facing the military draft. They were supposed to hire you back when you left the service, but I found out later that there were lots of ways companies had to screw veterans over. That in itself, screwing veterans over, would prove to be a national obsession, but I didn't know it yet.

There were also these things I had heard about in the Navy called “computers.” They sounded too complicated for the folks in my old SF neighborhood, but who knew? Maybe there was opportunity there. Besides, San Francisco was about the goddamdest, gut-busingest, goldardnest, fun-chasingest place in America to live, as long as you had a  job and a good, heavy, summer coat. The thought of returning there was a strong pull, particularly for one who had just served a two-years sentence in that hellhole of hatred and incivility known as Charleston, South Carolina.

Returning to “The City” seemed a logical choice. I had, after all, left my heart there. Or was it Bangkok? I couldn’t remember, but I was in “California or Bust” mode. I could almost smell the Eucalyptus trees and feel the bite of the early morning fog, not coming on “little cats’ feet” but like thundering herds of bison bounding down Haight Street from the wide, old Pacific. I figured on lighting out before too long. The pull of the West was too strong.

I hadn’t, though, counted on my Sainted Mother. Stay tuned.

Pre-Military pondering ...
San Francisco Beach 1967 ...
Notice the pack of Camels.

Morning Thoughts: February 26, 2018

Some decisions in life are easy. I decided to marry my wife the instant I saw her sashaying toward me, her long red hair “just a’swinging.” That was the very first time I ever saw her. When she gave me that, by now well-known, “what the hell are you looking at?” look, I knew I had made the right decision.

Some decisions are simple but complicated. I had just as soon not have entered the military when the time came. I thought I was doing just fine. It got complicated when the United States Department of Defense inserted itself into the equation via the Draft Board in my hometown. Since my father was no physician, attorney, banker, or fourth generation patriarch, there was no arguing with the members of that dreadful board.

It was simple, though, to decide what branch would receive the honor. I had long revered the United States Navy. When I was fourteen, an older cousin came home from four years of service telling of what sounded to me like the rip-roaringest, goddamdest, gut-bustingest, fun-filldest time a person could have and not get arrested for it. It spell-bounded me for sure.

I could, at that age, imagine the seas swelling beneath me and the salt air putting hairs on my chest with each breath. I imagined walking the streets of ports of call, the local girls “getting the vapors” just looking at me in that dazzling white uniform. I longed to reach the age at which my folks would allow me to quit school and enlist. I was in a state, so to speak.

I grew out of it, gradually discarding all the recruitment material I had collected. I set my mind on more civilian goals. But when the aforementioned draft board intervened, I retained enough of my boyhood enthusiasm to seek out a nice young man in one of those white uniforms. He assured me that I was just the sort of person they—the Navy—and he, were looking for. He painted such romantic visions of romantic seaports, bravely weathering rough seas, and sharing sunrises with flying fish that I was sold.

“Give me a fast ship,” I said, “for I intend to go in fun’s way.”

When my beloved Navy handed me orders for Vietnam instead, I had to another decision to make.

I was stationed in Monterey at the time, but on a weekend jaunt to LA, I met some people who offered a way to get me to Canada, undetected. Our northern neighbors didn't indulge in such things as unprovoked wars. I pondered that decision for days. Then one morning, sitting on the edge of The Great Tide Pool in Monterrey, I made the decision to play the hand life had dealt me, for better or for death. See an only slightly fictionalized account of it here.

Now, each time I see our current president’s face on television, I realize that, if a certain party hadn’t sashayed by me once, I would still be regretting that decision I made long ago with the wide Pacific Ocean beckoning me toward the unknown.

Decisions force us to learn that we must, in life, take the dismal along with the sublime. Our strength to face the future, in fact, is tempered by the fires of previous trials. We press on.

These mental meanderings result from the fact that the subject of my greatest decision and I face a trying and major task today. It will test us, but we will prevail. We are well-tempered, after all, and will face it together.

Someday, maybe I’ll have the strength and eloquence to talk about it. In the meantime, if you think you hate this Monday, you have no idea.

Advice: Never include a military
recruiter in your decision-making.