Dream a Little Dream

Sometimes I think it pays not to think too much, or at least to take a break from thinking about current problems and let your mind soar, like an eagle on an updraft, with loftier and more regal rumination. Put the cell phone away and try it sometime. I do.

Here’s the deal. We still have Brenda’s grandfather’s farm in north Lonoke County. It comprises 120 acres, of which maybe two thirds are cleared pasture.

Now consider the situation and make a couple of guesses.

Who gets to mow it each year?

Why is it particularly grassy and overgrown this year?

Right on both counts.

I go out each day that I’m not busy actually earning money for working and try to mow for two to four hours. My IOT, i.e. “instrument of torture” is a 1960 John Deere 60 HP tractor held together with bailing twine, bubble gum, and a bobby pin. No, wait, that’s Brenda’s smaller tractor that’s held together with a bobby pin. I’ve tried to get her to let me replace it with an actual cotter pin, but her explanation? “It’s worked just fine with a bobby pin for two years, so shut up.” (Apologies to Ring Lardner.)

Anyhow, back to my original point … let’s see … what was it? Oh yes, it had something to do with thinking, and mowing. Yes, quite right.

Sometimes, when I’ve cleared the edges by the forests, and the grass left is in a nice, semi-rectangle, the tractor nearly drives itself, and I think.

Oh, I don’t think of how we seem to becoming a nation fueled by hatred. I don’t think of how a group of madmen seem to be pulling the strings of America. I don’t think about how racial prejudice seems to be the prime moving force of politics today.

Hell no. I think of movie scripts. Yeah, movie scripts. Like yesterday.

During lunch break, I watched a bit of one of those 1950 science fiction films about how a major disruption to the earth’s crust had unloosed a terrible insect monster. You know, the kind in which the denouement always begins with, “It just might work.”

Naturally, as I mowed a large piece, I wrote a movie script in my mind.

It’s in the future, see. A group of forward-thinking women had taken over the country, educated women who believed in linear thinking, kindness, contemplation, and the ability of government to be a positive force in the lives of all. Together, they had moved men into inferior position without power. Their main job was to follow orders and remain silent. It worked like magic.

They had brought about an end to the escalation of global warming.

They were beginning, with the help of their sisters around the globe, to balance the demands of food production with population control.

They had replaced the cruel teachings of the old religion with one that blessed the least privileged of society.

The had eliminated war as a solution to religious problems by institution a universal requirement for public service.

They had formed an efficient working relationship between government and free enterprise.

We felt good about ourselves. Poverty was disappearing, replaced by goodness and concern.

Then it happened.

The San Andreas Fault showed its ass. Big time. It showed its ass all “ …down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico.” The state of Mississippi disappeared under a sheet of brown, roiling water. The state of Alabama split into.

Then the trouble started. There, from the pits below Alabama, as from the pits of hell, wild creatures flowed out, hell bent on making up for eons of bondage. These creatures, part human-like and part furry, four-legged monsters, exhibited a ferocious appetite for all things good and wholesome.

Food began disappearing. Shortages appeared in all goods that had made the nation prosperous. Neighbors fought one another for scarce resources. Some began joining bands of the recently released monsters, forming great packs that controlled areas of the country where the population was most in need of enlightened administration.

Leaders arose who directed the human-monster packs. These leaders promised all resources to their followers. They chose groups of their foes and branded them traitors to society. They began attacking resistors, and resistance began to disappear. The resistors began turning on their own leaders in desperation.

The earth began to turn brown.

Well darn. I finished the patch I was working on about then. Time for Happy Hour. It’s nice, though, to quit thinking about current affairs for a while and just dream.

My Redacted Life

We had been married about six months or so, my redhead and I. Did I ever mention that she had fulfilled the major dreams of my life? That is to say a knockout girl with long hair, a sports car, a good job, and the opportunities abounding in civilian life. I was set.

Well, almost. As the ink had begun to dry on our marriage certificate, she, this knockout redhead, informed me of the immediate cessation of driving around with “the top down.” Seems that it caused tangles in her long hair. No problem. I immediately surrendered that small aspect of my dream-structure. I suppose I was, early on, developing an understanding of the requirements for a long marriage.

It did come as a surprise, however, when I received a call one day at work. “You should see,” a lovely feminine voice said, “my new haircut.”

“A trim?”

“A little more. You’ll like it.”

The afternoon proved as agonizing as the wait for a jury verdict. Later, I drove my Green Angel, with the top down of course, to the home we had recently purchase. Visions swam unimpeded through my head of “beehive hairdos” so popular in my formative years. My heart beat a slow tempo of anticipation guided by fear.

She wasn’t there when I arrived home. There was only one way to prepare for the tragic unveiling. I popped the top on a beer and put on an Otis Redding album. I waited. Maybe the scriptures would help. The only one I knew by heart was John 11:35.

“Jesus wept.”

A car pulled up. I finished the beer and waited.

What do you know? The most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life walked through the door. Of course I had figured by now that my new wife wasn’t a true redhead, but I was totally unprepared for what I saw. Outside the birds began to sing. My heart raced and my mouth went dry. I guess that throughout a long marriage, a person will fall in love numerous times. It’s best if is the same person. Worked for me as one might expect.

Decide for yourself.

We don't need no
stinkin' long red hair.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 36 (Cont._4)

Woke up early the day of my marriage, still wondering what I had gotten myself into this time. I had 12 hours to figure it out. I went back to sleep. When I finally did get up, I called my folks to make sure they were set. I called the office to check on things. I went over my modest wardrobe for the event. I checked on all the details for the honeymoon trip. I put my new purchase of Will the Circle Be Unbroken on my phonograph and sat on the couch thinking. It still didn’t make sense.

How had I moved from a lowly Naval Bosun's Mate, driving an admiral's wife and friends around Charleston Harbor to a developing professional about to marry the prettiest girl in Arkansas in the space of less than two years? I tried to think. That wasn't what I did best, but it helped pass the time. The effort proved too great, and I fell asleep again.

Later, I tried to pick the guitar like Doc Watson. That didn’t work. Then I tried to write down my thoughts like John Steinbeck might. That didn’t work either. I tried some calisthenics but that made my head hurt. Was I a failure at everything? Why would anyone want to marry me, especially such an “aggravating beauty” as I had landed—or was about to land? What if she changed her mind at the last minute? It would just show that she had come to her senses at last. Nobody would blame her.

Was there hope for me? That freeway, I thought, that ran to Lonoke would lead straight on to the east coast if one didn’t stop. From there, a man could escape to France, where I heard they had wine with breakfast. And here I was, fixing to be stuck in Arkansas the rest of my life. Or was I? One simple missed turn and the whole world awaited me. Maybe Brenda's mother, Hazel, was correct in worrying that I might not show.

Then the vision engulfed me: the smell of her full and flowing hair after she had washed it, the taste of that first kiss, the faint freckles under her eyes, the feel of hands when they held my arm, and the excitement in her voice when she told about going out on a snowy morning with her daddy, pretending to be rabbit hunting.

Oh, what the hell?

You might better be
getting your mind right.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Two (Cont._12)

Now ends the month of freedom I enjoyed between service in the United States Navy and my entry into the free world of business. Which was better? Honestly, I don’t know.

My relationship with the Navy and the military in general developed into a classic love-hate relationship over the years. The military has gotten America into some messes since World War Two, and continues to do so. For that, I distrust some things about a standing army, and many things about an all-volunteer army. On the other hand, I know some very fine people in uniform and I believe they will cling to “the better angels of our nature.” America is far better off with them serving us.

I will leave it at that. As I have said over the years, with increasing honesty, I wouldn’t do it over again for a million dollars, nor would I take a million dollars not to have done it. I’ll leave the reader to figure that one out.

On the third day of January 1971 though, a Sunday evening, I sat alone in my large apartment at Fifth (Capitol Avenue) and State streets in Little Rock, Arkansas contemplating, as one might imagine, my future. I had gone down the night before and purchased a bottle of Ripple Wine at a liquor store on Broadway, gone for many years now. I purchased the wine in memory of shipmates who had shared it with me on lazy afternoons in the cabin of one of the navy boats in our care, with a trusted “bowhook” standing watch for nosy noncoms or officers.

An old phonograph I had found at the last moment before leaving home played the album Hot Buttered Soul by a man from Memphis named Isaac Hayes, already becoming a legend. I had purchased it at a Little Rock landmark called Moses Melody Shop during a walking tour of downtown Little Rock. That store, too, vanished years ago.

The experience would have been complete with the aid of what some shipmates (we called them “brothers” in those days) called “herbs.” But I had put that behind me. In fact, I had planned the evening as the breaking of my last ties with fast ships and going “in harm’s way.” Partway through the bottle of Ripple, I took out a notebook and scribbled some thoughts. Next morning, I read what I had written.

It was pretty much gibberish. I don’t think that my mind, at that point, could grasp the enormity of what might await on life’s next heading. The wine didn’t help. I’ve never written anything since after even the slightest drop of alcohol. Creativity is not a movable feast. It demands clarity, sacrifice, and solitude, at least as far as I can tell. Maybe Hemingway drank while he wrote, but ... he was Hemingway.

I finished the wine and walked to the window. A few cars slid by on Capitol Avenue. The city was going to sleep, and so should I as well. I secured my mental anchor chain with a “stopper-hitch,” and disassembled the detachable link holding me fast. Now freed, the “bitter end” slipped off, and I began to drift away from my moorings. I was free at last.

In bed, I couldn’t stop wondering about my life until this point. Lonely? No. I had four years of adventures and shipmates passing in the dream-fog to keep me company. And who knew, perhaps someone else was drifting to sleep, somewhere, wondering what the future might bring. Might our drifting vessels cross courses some day?

They might. Who could tell?

My Redacted Life: Chapter Two: (Cont. _ 4)

So here I was, a mid-twenties vagabond, just released from the military going to a city I knew nothing about and not optimistic at all. An recent acquaintance said he knew two young urban planners who had started a consulting firm in Little Rock. That’s all I knew. More on that later.

It was 1970 and nearing the end of the so-called “Great Society Era.” More on that later.

A bit about me. I had quit smoking two years before. I moved from sometimes three packs a day while overseas (depending on how the six-hour watches fell) to zero cigarettes per day in one four-hour period. Quitting is that easy. You just stop. You don’t use medication. You don’t brag about your efforts. Your don’t do it gradually. You don’t make a big fuss about it. You just goddam quit.

You also get fat if you’re not careful.

I had quit my second day aboard the USS Hunley. Navy ships serve four meals a day, one of them at midnight (Midrats) for those going on, or coming off, watch. Guess who, with a newly found and ravenous appetite availed himself. Yep. Oh, and there was a "Gedunk Bar" on board that stayed open from eight to 12 bells. It specialized in calories and I was a regular.

So I wasn’t the very picture of a modern urban heartthrob as I motored toward Little Rock. Overweight and wearing cheap “civilian” clothes, I probably looked like an applicant for a Fuller Brush job. Oh, I was a handsome devil to those discerning souls who chose to look beyond mere physical appearance into the more meaningful character of a person. (I’ll have more on that later).

I was mentally visiting another planet when I reached the outskirts of Little Rock, When I returned to the actual moment, I was surprised to see two new modern office towers rising above the downtown area, dwarfing a third, the Tower Building. It had been built while I was in college, as part of an urban renewal program.

It struck me, the sight did, not a blinding strike, such as the one Saul of Tarsus experienced on the Road To Damascus, but an eye-opening strike. Here was modern American city in need of a new band of heroes. My eyes opened to new possibilities. Scenes swirled in my head, and none involved the State of California.

I squirmed in my car seat and straightened Daddy’s old “wedding and funeral” tie.

Look out Little Rock.

Look out World.

Tell me more about
urban planning. I'm
terribly interested.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Two (Cont. _2)

Out of the military a couple of weeks, I was getting restless. Here I was, one foot out the door heading back to California, and the other responding to a mother’s request to find work in my hometown. Mothers win. Always.

It was early December of 1970, and she had convinced me to make one more try at dropping anchor in what she saw as life's safest harbor—home.

I wasn’t optimistic. So far, the folks in Arkansas hadn’t been real impressed with either my qualifications or my veteran status. I had been four years away and my puny Bachelor of Arts Degree seemed a distant and impotent achievement. Peers who had evaded the Draft had been learning and earning for four years while I languished, or so it seemed to me then.

The Honorable Discharge, such a proud achievement and sine qua non of my youth was now being pretty much translated as “chump.”

But my cousin Troy, with whom I was very close, worked for the city and knew the Director of the Urban Renewal Agency in Pine Bluff, a nice fellow named Charles Rush. Troy had arranged for me to meet the director and discuss the potential for meaningful work in the state. It was rumored that he knew a lot of people.

So, I bundled up and headed to the city’s new civic center. It, at the time, was a proud new addition to the city, designed by the architectural firm of Edward D. Stone, until then perhaps the most famous architect produced by our state. It was an extremely unfunctional facility that hasn’t stood up well, but that’s another story.

Mr. Rush welcomed me into his office graciously. I didn’t own a suit, and a needy shipmate had stolen most of my civilian clothes just before I left the service. I did borrow a tie from my father. I think he had purchased it for funerals back in the 1950s. I’m sure I made a splendid appearance.

No, Mr. Rush explained, there wasn’t much work for a college graduate with no special qualifications in the area. I had pretty much decided that on my own, but thanked him for his insight. His office, he said was fully staffed and he knew of no positions available anywhere.

We talked, I could almost hear the sounds of foghorns from ships heading west through the Golden Gate and taste the salty fog of my beloved San Francisco. I had tried, Mother, so take that and grant me my freedom.

I thanked Mr. Rush for his time and began, mentally, to assess the route I would take to the West. Arkansas had a new governor who seemed willing to continue the progressive programs started by his predecessor. I wished the best for my home state, but California was a big place and opportunities seemed to grow on trees there. I had even been able to find a job in “The City” while I was burdened with a 1A status (Same-same Goodbye my Darling, Hello Vietnam) from my local Draft Board.

Just imagine what a free man could do there, in San Francisco I mean.

I had a hand on the office door when Mr. Rush said, “Wait a minute. Would you be interested in working in Little Rock?”

I thought I was marketable,
 but to whom?

Growing Up Southern: December 6, 2017

Did I ever tell you about the time the Hester boys and I decided to build a raft and float down Bayou Bartholomew from Jefferson County, Arkansas to New Orleans?

It was like this.

The Bayou ran just south of the city limits of Pine Bluff back then. In places, it was clogged with stumps, logs, and wild growth. But we found a stretch that promised to run fairly clear for a mile or two, then we would take our chances on getting the rest of the way to New Orleans, if our parents gave us permission (and supplies).

We had a nice place to start from, it being a clearing we had used as a hideout and as a defensive position to ward off any invasions from the city boys on the north side. It was an ideal raft-building spot. We had a fair collection of tools by then, including a couple of rusty old axes we had pilfered from a junk pile and a “mill bastard” file I had borrowed from my daddy’s tool box. It was going to take work, but we had all summer.

The Hester boys claimed, or at least their mother did, ancestry with some famous Indian chief or other, so it was naturally assumed that they possessed some genetic understand of raft construction. First thing one Monday morning, we selected our first tree and commenced work.

The idea suggested itself before long that our Indian forefathers didn’t value the art of felling trees very highly. Progress proved slow. We took turns at the effort. Wesley, the oldest Hester boy went first. Then I took my turn. Robert Hester went third. The youngest of that family, Bobby Joe took one turn and jumped ship. We didn’t mind, for we had already decided that three passengers was about all our raft would handle.

Long story short. By Friday, we had felled our first tree and cut it into ten-foot lengths. A glorious life of adventure lay straight ahead. We spend the weekend pilfering every scrap piece of rope we could find and reassembled our band at the port of debarkation Monday morning. The time for initial assembly was upon us. We needed to make room for the next tree.

Did I mention that I can’t remember what kind of tree we chose for our masterpiece? It might have been Pine, for I remember vaguely christening it the “Pride of Pine Bluff,” as we imagined our historic entry into the Crescent City.

We lined the sections so they touched one another, rolled them to the pre-prepared entry point, lined up at third points and rolled the first phase into the brown water of Bayou Bartholomew.

I wish I could remember exactly what species of tree we had chosen, the exact kind that we had spent a week on in assembly, the source of so many blisters and splinters, and the cause of such fatigue. Then I could acquaint you with a fact that might prove useful to you some day.

That species of tree won’t float when it’s green.

Maybe none will. We never knew. As we watched those logs disappear into the brown soup and roll to the bottom of the “longest bayou in America,” our wanderlust sank with it. We decided, after a gang-vote, that our next construction project would be land-based.

We were going to build a tower so high we could see Little Rock from it.

We never did, though.

Stuff that dreams
are made of.

Morning Thoughts: November 21, 2007

Ran into a high school chum the other day and enjoyed a flood of memories. Gosh it got me to thinking. Yes. I said, "thinking."

Particularly, I wondered about other kids my age as we passed that difficult time known as the “pre-teen” years. It’s tempting to think about those folks, and consider what must have been occupying their thoughts as that magic age of 13, bore down upon them.

Sam Shepard, recently deceased actor and playwright who was born the same day as I, might have been visualizing how to portray life through acting.

George Harrison, the Beatle, might have been visualizing how to introduce exotic instruments into Rock and Roll.

Actor Robert De Niro was probably just listening, “hearing things.”

Jimmy Johnson, future football genius, was probably dreaming of coaching for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks someday.

Bobby Fischer, future chess master, was probably thinking of how to master the “Ruy Lopez” opening.

Keith Richardson? Who knows?

Barry Manilow? Who cares?

John Kerry? How America would treat a genuine war hero in the future.

Little Eva, pop star? How to combine dancing with singing.

Joni Mitchell? How neat it was that you could see the tops of clouds from airplanes.

Joyce Myer? How the Galilean couldn’t have possibly meant what he said about being rich.

Sharon Tate? Sadness. Only sadness.

Joe Namath? What’s the best way to get girls?

Newt Gingrich? How the Galilean couldn’t have possibly meant what he said about divorce.

Randy Newman? Who could tell? The thoughts would have been flying by too fast.

Janice Joplin? How to be more popular.

Billy Jean King? What’s a man got that I don’t have?

Arthur Ashe? What’s a white man got that I don’t have?

Bob Kerrey: Bravery.

That’s enough. It was fun, but the day beckons. Maybe some readers can think of some others.

Me? Oh. Let me think. Oh yes.

I distinctly remember wondering which Mouseketeer got to take Annette Funicello to the studio ice cream shop during a break from filming.

Growing Up Southern: October 16, 2017

Have you ever lain in bed at three o’clock in the morning and thought about some horrifically embarrassing thing you’ve done? I have. There are so many for me to visit.

I even worry that one of these dreadful incidences will define me forever. Will I be the one, for example, who proved to the world one Saturday morning when he was nine years old that he was the worst athlete that ever tried out for Little League Baseball in the entire history of the sport?

Or would I be known as the boy whom the class sissy beat up in front of the entire fifth grade, an embarrassment resulting from not knowing that the other kid’s mother had paid for boxing lessons designed to protect him from bullies like me?

Would my bona fides also mention that I once published a planning report recommending that a city pay more attention to its “pubic” spaces?

Or that I once almost caused an Assistant Secretary of the Navy to fall overboard while docking my Admiral’s Barge against a particularly violent current on Charleston's Cooper River?

Or what my best buddy and I got caught at when we were in Jr. High School?

I could go on but it would make you despondent as well.

If such memories ever plague you, try thinking of Fred Snodgrass, who had achieved every young boy’s dream of playing major league baseball. It fulfilled a dream, that is, until that awful incident 105 years ago today. As reported on This Day In History this morning:

“On October 16, 1912, New York Giants outfielder Fred Snodgrass drops an easy pop-up in the 10th inning of the tie breaking eighth game of the World Series against the Red Sox. His error led to a two-run Boston rally and cost the Giants the championship.

“The error—dubbed “the $30,000 muff” because that’s how much money the Giants stood to win from a Series championship—stuck with Snodgrass for his whole life. After he retired from baseball, the hapless outfielder moved to California and became a banker. He bought a ranch. The citizens of Oxnard elected him mayor. But still, when he died in 1974—62 years after that fateful World Series game—the New York Times headline blared: “Fred Snodgrass, 86, Dead; Ball Player Muffed 1912 Fly.”

Well now, that’s having your entire life defined by only five seconds of it, isn’t it? I think I’ll just settle for being known as the young man who caught Brenda Cole’s eye one pleasant evening years ago in a lifetime far away.

A new day comes.