Old Times

I've only had one piece published in our statewide newspaper. Here it is for anyone who may have missed it. Published as a guest editorial in Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 2005

            Viet Nam Vets Have Long Awaited Reunion.

            The years, 37 of them, melt away in seconds.

            By Jim von Tungeln

            Sometimes a simple twist of fate can put a person in the strangest situation. I couldn’t help think this recently as I found a good spot just clear of airport security and waited for my old navy buddy and his wife. My wife was with me and we didn’t know what to expect. After all, 37 years is a long time.

            I had taken a sign to the airport, the kind you see people holding when they are meeting strangers. This one didn’t have a name, however, just a mounted photograph of two sailors in jungle fatigues mugging for the camera somewhere south of Da Nang, Viet Nam in 1968.

            We were just a couple of young bloods, goofing off and waiting for the time when we could sport our “short-timers’ chains” and start counting the off the days before we left. We were pals. His name was Wayne Pfirrman and he was from up north in Cincinnati. I was from Arkansas via a stint in the Haight-Ashbury. The only thing we had in common was that we were both stuck in that place for a year.

We lost touch after our tours ended. Although I had thought of him—thought of him many times—I had neither seen nor heard from him. My wife, Brenda, knew him from the photographs. His wife, Rose, knew me in the same fashion. Now we were all going to meet one another and answer a lot of questions.

 How did we reconnect?

            Bless the Internet. We had each stumbled across a website called “wardogs.com.” It attracts veterans who served in the I-Corps area; so we both signed the on-line guestbook.

I can’t describe the feeling when I received an e-mail from him one morning. I responded and we soon had a lively correspondence, trading memories and photographs, talking about swapping visits.

            From this, I gathered he hadn’t changed that much in either outlook or personality. I figured we would have fun catching up. Still, it had been long time, so I was nervous as we waited at the end of the concourse at Little Rock National. I couldn’t believe it.

            We had exchanged current photographs; there would be no problem recognizing one another. More as a prank than anything, I had made the welcome sign. I labeled it the “Choi Oi Reunion” using a Vietnamese word meaning “golly gee” or just about anything the speaker wants it to.

            I held the sign and waited. A security guard came up and demanded to know what was on it. I showed her and pointedly declined to explain. She sniffed and waddled away and I began wondering if we had ever really accomplished anything. Then I saw them.

            Actually, he saw me first, before I even had time to raise the sign. And then, there I was: a 61 year old man hugging and meeting and sniffling and introducing and making a spectacle, all in the middle of a crowded airport. My friend didn’t seem to mind, though. If he did, he didn’t mention it.

            A few more hugs and photographs later, we were in the car and headed for our home in downtown Little Rock. When we reached MacArthur Park, I realized that all four of us had been talking at once since we left the airport. The years and distances disappeared and we were instant friends. I knew it would be great weekend.

            And it was. Little Rock shows well and we showed it off. We filled in a lot of blanks that had occurred since 1968. And we marveled that we had ever met one another, much less become friends.

We had been the products of a high-level Navy decision that it was waste of good Marines (who should be at Khe San getting blown up) to have them guard naval facilities in the I-Corps Area. So they figured to train a group of sailors in weaponry and such and let them do the guarding and perform perimeter security. What they really produced was a group of rowdies who would just as soon fight one another as the Viet Cong  and who contributed greatly to Naval folklore and the local economy in ways sometimes permissible and sometimes not. After all, sailors were sailors back then.

            But that was long ago. Wayne completed college after the Navy and pulled a 20-year hitch with the Cincinnati Police Department. He met Rose along the way and they raised four fine children.

            I entered the field of urban planning, married well above my qualifications, and wound up somewhat respectable.

So we told one another about these things, between Margaritas and Corona beers and Nick’s Barbecue and the Flying Fish and watching the sun go down over the prettiest city in this part of the world. It was a lot like old times, except the female company was of a much higher class. When I left Wayne and Rose at the airport Monday morning, I “teared up” a little. Maybe he did too.

            We—Wayne and I and all the others—never had division reunions like the WW II veterans. I don’t remember any parades, either. It would have been nice. But, like most Viet Nam vets, we simply went about our business and were, on the whole, more successful, healthy, stable, and faithful than a randomly selected group of Americans, or so I have read.

            We always wondered – perhaps with just a tad of grumpiness - why the press gave so much attention to those misfits who claimed to represent us. It annoyed us when it later became clear that many of the misfits weren’t even veterans at all, and few, if any, had spent time “in-country” as we used to call it. But we didn’t have much time for grousing.

            Time goes by much too fast, 37 years for Wayne and me. We remember the good parts and credit youth with seeing us through the rest: the heat, the mosquitoes, the monsoons, the warm Ba Moui Ba (33) Beer, and even a typhoon. Oh yes, we shouldn’t forget the Tet Offensive and those little men who wanted us out of their country so badly that they were willing to kill us.

We wish this current band of brothers and sisters the best and can only hope that someday each one can share a few memories with a comrade who, like Wayne or me, will appreciate the words of the Viet Nam Veterans National Anthem: “We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do.”

These days, though, we are the relics we used think the old men were who sat on the front porch and talked about crossing the Ruhr River. We feel more comfortable with the words of the folksinger Eric Bogle: “It’s almost over now, and now I’m easy.”

Somewhere near Da Nang-1968

Little Rock-2005

Old homes. Old friends.

If you’ve ever tried restoring an old home in your spare time, you know about some things. For example, you know about being halfway through a business meeting and realizing that your suit coat has as streak of plaster dust on it. You know how hard it is to do drafting with a thumb that had been assaulted by a hammer the night before. You know the anxiety of wondering if yesterday’s patch job will hold for the day, or will you find it on the floor that evening.

We learned all those things, Brenda and I, at 2107 South Broadway in Little Rock, Arkansas back in the 1970s. What a time.

Perhaps the most comforting thing was to know that your new friends, your neighbors, were going, or had gone through, the same thing. Ah … the neighbors. There weren’t enough “different drummers” for them all to hear. They danced to tunes normal mortals couldn’t fathom. They saw things in their heads that would “make the horses bolt.” They shared two things, though. They all cared very much about old houses and very little about what the world thought of them. They were the types that would never belong to a country club or a “young ladies league.” They were the types that shunned society’s mandates like cats shun baths. If their neighbors were different, they dropped anchor instead of sailing to paler ports. They were the ones who got stared at during family reunions.

We fit right in.

Our home backed onto an alley, a leftover from when cities were designed properly. It was our connecting nerve, the spine that made us neighbors. I won’t describe our new friends individually, as some have evolved by now into what could be classified as specters of respectability. Some, unfortunately, succumbed to the short life span we enjoyed with one another—face-to-face—ere the “cell-phone” era separated folks prematurely. Some moved away and a few became somewhat prominent. The last thing resembling a reunion occurred years ago when our resident “neo-hippie” died and several of us gathered once more at a small apartment in “The Quarter” to rejoice in having known him. His ashes rested in his daughter's car, awaiting transport north while we drank wine and laughed a lot, the way best to remember a departed friend.

We recounted memories. Some talked of his artistry. Someone mentioned his hundreds of phonograph records and his joy at filling the neighborhood with their “wonderfulness” on Saturday mornings. Some recalled the young women from the Arkansas Art Center who would cycle (dual meaning here) through his life in a steady procession. Some recalled his gentle ways and generous manners. Some remembered his simple and complex soul.

I recalled the time I was sitting on the front porch of his house with him. His hair and beard made him look like a happy gnome who had just walked up Masonic and turned west onto Haight, headed for Ashbury instead of enjoying the view of Spring Street in Little Rock. Up the street lived a professional musician who looked more like Charles Manson than did Charles Manson. Across the street was the neighborhood’s elderly grandma who enjoyed sweeping her sidewalks of a morning in her housecoat, never bothering with the inconvenience of buttoning the front. Down the street lived the block’s junk collector and hoarder who kept the alley cleaned of any semi-useful object that had been discarded. There was a halfway house for the "functionally different" near, the neatest and quietest property in the area.

Then there was me, no doubt a psycho from the late war, living with a woman who treated Elm trees for disease with needles, rubber tubes, a strange liquid from Sweden, and a bicycle tire pump.

At that moment, as we enjoyed coffee that my friend ordered back then from some small company in Seattle, a young police officer walked up.

“Have you,” he asked, “seen any strange characters walking the neighborhood?”

“Those were the days, my friends.

We thought they’d never end.”

- Gene Raskin

Good neighbor.
Good friend.

Old friends

I knew I was really back for another conference of the Arkansas Municipal League when a hand grabbed my shoulder and said, "Hello Jim. Good to see you again." It was Jeremy.

Jeremy, and I'm tempted to call him a young man but he's not so young now, works at the convention center where they hold these summer conferences. I first saw him nearly 22 years ago when the center was part of the Excelsior Hotel, then the Peabody, now the Marriott. He was 16 years old then. He'd catch your eye because he worked so hard, amidst all the confusion of attending to over a thousand attendees. His job wasn't one that usually entailed a long career.

But years passed and he showed up just as I did, like clockwork. Then one day I commented on the fact that he had been on the job a good while. We talked about it and this pleased him quite a bit. I don't think anyone else had ever noticed. Soon, we began to joke about it at each new conference. "Good to see you again. We made it another year. How's it going?" It was probably against the rules, talking to the guests, but we didn't care.

Now it's moved to a handshake and hug. We've each gotten older, maybe a little bigger. But greeting one another is sort of a milestone, a little continuity in a world in which instability is the only stable element which one can expect.

You don't find folks staying at the same job for 20 years these days. Moreover, you don't find people staying that long and seeming to enjoy it.

It's nice knowing Jeremy, just a person I see once a year, sometimes twice. It's nice knowing there are things in this world you can count on, even if it's only a friendly face. It's just nice, that's all.

Morning Thoughts: March 11, 2018

Had lunch yesterday with some good friends, most fellow vets of the same age. We don’t think much of the upcoming “Honor the Vets” bash. Too late, much too late for us, and we accept no responsibility for assuaging anyone’s guilt. We’re all fine. Stick you medal where … oh, never mind.

We had fun swapping tales, though. Dining with friends is one of the great leveling exercises of life. In addition to other shared interests, we all have a fondness for woodworking. They are all serious and accomplished, I’m a “wannabe.” They accept me though, and I learn much from them, some of it even useful.

In addition to bringing joy, woodworking helps hone many life-skills. For example, there are mandatory rules.

Rule One: Measure twice, cut once.

Rule Two: Measure twice again before cutting.

Optional but Recommended Rule Three: Measure again. It never hurts.

Other mandates include

Think before you act. Hmm. This might be useful for other endeavors.

Don’t do complicated maneuvers late in the afternoon or before sunrise.

Copious amounts of alcohol are forbidden before or during. Afterwards: it makes anyone’s work look better and major mistakes seem as if they occurred long ago in a woodshop far away.

More and better tools always help, but not always in productive ways. In the procurement process, it sometimes helps to tell a spouse that all your friends have (whatever). Be aware, though, that they teach the “Jump Off The Cliff Rule” at Wife’s School.

If your best and dearest friend tells you something will work, measure anyhow. If doing so appears to hurt their feelings, measure again.

If you create something really nice, send it to a professional for finishing.

Fast spinning pieces of steel will cut your goddam fingers off.

Woodworking is best at making you use language of which your Sainted Mother would not approve.

If you have the skills to be a concert violist, take up scrapbooking, not woodworking, as a hobby.

Always remember that the people who do this on TV can do “re-takes” and you won’t know it. Those smug looks are taught, not earned.

You can trim a piece of wood but you can’t stretch it. (They also teach this at Wife’s School, but in a different context).

Revel in goof-ups. There’s no better way to learn. Well, maybe there is, but woodworkers prefer the hard way.

And, finally, if like our group, you served in some miserable little “f-up” of a war thought up by arms manufacturers and politicians, you’ve been living on borrowed time for fifty years anyway, so screw it all and head for the shop. There’s only so much time left. Use it wisely.

Tell Senator Cotton to “make sawdust, not war.” You need to teach your grandchildren how to create things, not blow them up.

Sometimes, despite your best efforts,
things turn out okay … sort of.

Morning Thoughts: December 29, 2017

I knew this fellow once. His name was Ralph, and he was of a melancholy nature. We were in the Navy. Neither of us particularly wanted to be. But we were stationed in Monterey, California on temporary duty whether it pleased us or not. He was from Berkeley and had a car, so we spent weekends in the bay area, or exploring Highway One. I enjoyed his company a good bit.

He looked like one of those dark Italian actors, say a young Andy Garcia. He had a girlfriend in Berkeley who seemed to love him dearly. She was beautiful, resembling a petite Joan Baez with hints of freckles about her nose. She was attending UC Berkeley. He had a master’s degree from there.

That wasn’t unusual in those days: enlisted men with college degrees or even advanced degrees. Unless one was rich, sickly, prone to criminal behavior, or all three, you had to serve your country somewhere. A stint in the Navy seemed to offer a safer berth than a platoon leader in Vietnam. Ralph had enlisted and was waiting his time in Monterey, making the best of it, as we all were. I was in my “lost and wandering” phase, glad for any show of friendship. Ralph was a good shipmate and a fine companion. He was generous and kind, never passing up a hitchhiker, of whom there were many along the coast in those days.

He was also slowly going insane.

The world sort of did that to a person in those days. He explained his viewpoint as follows. “You see, when you are born, they give you a bucket. From than day forward, you have to carry it with you at all times. As you go through life, they fill it with shit. It never goes away and the bucket never gets full, just heavier. Finished school? Here’s a spoonful. No jobs? Here’s another. A nice little war? Have one on us. It goes on and on. And we carry our buckets without complaint.”

I didn’t agree, at least  not fully. Nonetheless, in those days it made a little sense. To me, it was a cautionary tale. To Ralph, it was as true and inevitable as the sun going down each evening over Monterey Bay.

During successive trips to Berkeley, I watched Ralph’s girlfriend trying her best to free him from his demons. Nothing worked. I was only an observer, but would have given up everything to sail into a Pacific sunset with someone like her. Ralph looked through her and saw nothing but the walls of his self-made prison beyond. It was my first introduction to mental illness.

He got worse. We would take walks through Cannery Row, then a deserted avenue of empty buildings covered with every imaginable material. We would sit on the curb in front of the very building that had housed the “Pacific Biological Laboratories,” once operated by Ed Ricketts, John Steinbeck’s friend and inspiration for the character “Doc” in Cannery Row.

Contemplating Cannery Row only strengthened Ralph’s belief in the fickle cruelties of life. “This place once roared with life,” he said. Thousands of people lived or worked here, each— whether whore, boss, worker, or bum—carrying his own bucket, with it getting heavier each day.”

His moods became tiresome to me and debilitating to himself. Our excursions became rare, then stopped. We changed barracks and I saw him less and less.

My orders came for security duty in, of all places, the I-Corps area of Vietnam. That occupied my thoughts until one day I received a phone call in the graphics lab where I was temporarily assigned. I assumed it was some directive, maybe news that a horrible mistake had been made and that I would stay in Monterey for my entire enlistment, or maybe spend it at a small base in Key West.

Instead, I heard a voice that I recognized immediately. Yes, It was Ralph, sounding happier than I had heard him in ages. After mutual recognitions, I asked where he was. The answer shocked, but didn’t surprise me.

I’m in the ‘nut-ward’ at Treasure Island,” he said. “It’s great.”

“What did you do to get there?” I asked with some haste when I saw my supervisor giving me “the look” for taking a personal phone call on government time.”

“It was easy,” he said. “I just gave my bucket of shit to the Navy and said I didn’t want to carry it anymore.” I heard agitated voices and he was gone.

I never heard from him again. A lot of water has flowed back and forth through the Golden Gate since then, and many of life's tides have risen and fallen. Life has gone on. I have survived, but I still think of Ralph from time to time.

Happier days in front of "Doc's Lab"

Morning Thoughts: October 30, 2017

Friendships are funny. Some emerge instantaneously. Others become monuments built one brick at a time. Off on a Road Trip with one of those today.

The upcoming trip and a severe case of "baseball fatigue" caused me to miss what purports to be one of the most exciting games in baseball history. Oh well.

Back to the friend. I met him somewhere during the early 1970s. We were in the same profession; urban planning. I remember a twinge of jealousy at first. He had a master's degree at the time and I didn't. Also, his father was one of the most respected men to ever practice urban planning in Arkansas. That gave him a good entree into the planning community.

I always assumed Robert Middleton III, was one of those people who went through life on a charmed and glitch-free path. Fooie on him.

Then I heard from a mutual acquaintance that he had served in Vietnam. "An officer, I'll bet," I remember thinking. "Twelve and a wake-up in a soft admin slot."

Then, our professions brought us in contact and we actually began to talk. No officer. Drafted while in graduate school and recently married, he served with the grunts, earned the coveted Combat Infantry Badge, and came home with a Bronze Star to complete his education.

We talked some more, much more over the years. We both suffered our share of setbacks, betrayals, and bad timing. Both of us ended up among the contented self-employed. We shared questions, suggestions, tips, and warnings. The tower of friendship grew and we're now share a close bond in  our senior years. Oh, and he's becoming a master woodworker and grandfather as well. His only drawback, one he shares with me, is that, as I may have mentioned previously, he over-married slightly.

Another friend of mine once coined the phrase "Trip to California Test." Simply stated, one should ask before making large plans, "Would you want to ride to California from Arkansas with this person?" Ernest Hemingway, in "A Movable Feast" stated it another way, "Never go on long trips with someone you don't love." I expand that to include respect, admire, trust, and enjoy, among other things.

Rob and I plan trips together and look forward to them with great anticipation, so I guess that says it all.

Growing Up Southern: September 22, 2017

I jokingly called the group “The Quapaw Quarter Old-Time Running Club.” We mostly lived in Little Rock’s Quapaw Quarter area, you see. We were part of a crazy group of oddballs who poured our energies, money, and time into black holes known as historic homes. It was back in the 1980s, a simpler time in many ways.

The group of joggers, except for one, lived within a few blocks of one another. Joe White, a PhD at UALR lived in what is known as the “Upper Heights.” I think he was educated up North somewhere. I seem to remember that he taught something associated with literature. When I became interested in mythology, he briefed me on some Scandinavian motifs, such as “the forbidden door.” Nice guy. He and I jogged about the same speed, really a fast waddle, so we spent some time together, talking while the others ran ahead.

Scott Stafford is a Harvard educated lawyer and former law school professor. He also served as group historian. One of the faster runners, he could set a blistering pace while reciting a detailed history of the Battle of Majuba Hill without missing a beat.

Cleve May has a PhD from, I think, North Carolina. He was the only one actually born in Little Rock and the only one who could keep up with Scott.

Robert Johnston was a marvel of a man. From my hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, he played football at Rice University and could have gone pro had he not received a Rhodes Scholarship to study in England. With a PhD from Columbia, he returned to Arkansas, headed the Political Science Department at UALR, became a state representative, and later ran the state’s Public Service Commission. Somewhere along the way he became an Army Ranger.

Then, there I stood amongst them. Enough said.

We had fun in those days. We’d often meet at the University and use one of its locker rooms to prepare for our runs. The students probably called us “old farts” but we sure felt young and invincible. Oh, the stories we could tell.

Robert died yesterday, reportedly while jogging the streets of Little Rock. I just found out about it. I had seen him a couple of times in the past year, but we hadn’t stayed close in years. I expect his obit will be expansive, as he accomplished a lot, and people thought highly of him.

As far as I know, the rest of the group is still alive. Another occasional member, John Woodruff, died several years ago after a long battle with cancer. He had been a beat reporter for the old Arkansas Gazette, and loved to tell of getting his “piece” ready by deadline and relaxing while the building began to shake from the startup of the presses. As H.L. Mencken said, it was a hell of a life.

They were all good lives in that group, and I’m glad to have been a part of it. Personal relationships form lasting memories, much more than cell phones ever could.

Cleve, Joe, Scott, Robert, and the author.

Growing Up Southern: September 9, 2017

 A good man died this week, not a close friend, but a good one, and he liked my first book. Fussed about my taking so long on the second. That was when I saw him for the last time. I’ll not finish it in time for him. Too bad.

He was of the class “Southern Farmer.” He worked all his life and was still working until just before he took sick for the last time. Robert Cole was his name, and he was Brenda’s cousin. He leaves behind his childhood sweetheart, Betty, whom he married in 1957.

He and Betty lived down the road, Cole Road they named it later, a few houses from where Brenda and her parents lived. When we first married, there were maybe a dozen families living on that road. Now there may be three. Many were related and they all shared memories, sadness, joy, and at times, farming equipment.

Before crops were laid by, you couldn’t travel the road without seeing men out on their tractors working the fields. At days end, some would simply stop the tractors and walk home. There were even enough families to support a small Methodist church where the gravel roads intersected back in the day.

The roads are paved now, but the church disappeared decades ago. As I say, few people live in the community anymore. The fields are empty most of the time, worked sporadically by corporate crews who come en masse, work for day or two, then move to another field. You don’t see men driving around on Sunday afternoons, as my daddy used to, just to see how the crops are doing.

And these days,  nobody parks equipment in the fields of an evening. They don’t always steal the whole tractor, sometimes they just steal the most hard-to-find parts, which is worse in some ways. Times have changed, many for the worse.

They won’t make men like Robert Cole anymore, men who lived in a square plot carved from their fields so they often looked out on them while they ate breakfast. That sort of connection between the land that gives us food and the men and women who bring it forth doesn’t exist around here anymore. Farming is just another corporate enterprise.

Robert and Betty loved life and I’m glad for the good times they had together. The hard times they lived through justified them. They even took up snow-skiing later in life. They left a good lesson for us all: work hard, but, as Robert would have said, “Dadgummit, stop and play every once in a while.”

So, I think I'll just do that.

Just thinking.

Buddies

His name was Troy and he was my cousin on my mother’s side. He died this year and I miss him every day. He went into the Army just at the end of World War Two and I guess we were buddies, as the photo indicates. When I received my military discharge years later, he was recovering from back surgery so we spent a lot of time together, just riding around and talking. Somehow, that never got boring. He introduced me to a man who helped me get my first real job after the Navy. It was the job that launched me into my professional career, but I’m not sure I ever thanked him enough.

He was the kind of person who, if you called him late at night and told him you had a flat tire and didn’t want to get your shirt dirty changing it, would come do it for you. He might tell about it for years, but he would come. Many country folks I’ve known in my life are like that. Goodness is more of a duty and a habit than a choice.

He was more like a son than a nephew to my daddy, who wouldn't ride in a fishing boat with anyone else. I'm not sure what that meant, but I am sure it meant something. He was also a person who would spend part of his "mustering-out" pay to buy a three-year old boy an army outfit during a period of history in which being a soldier was the grandest thing imaginable.

When his wife Charlene came down with Alzheimer’s way too early, he cared for her without complaint. He would dress and feed her then she would sit on the couch and stare into space, not saying a word. It was that way until she died.

I never went to see him enough. What dear friend can we ever name who we honestly think we went to see enough? I did stop to see him anytime I came to town to visit. Toward the end, he would sometimes tell my sister and me the same stories he had told the last time. We didn’t care. Many of them centered on how spoiled I was as a child and how perfect she was. But then, we were Army buddies so he put up with me.

The last time I saw him, he made me promise to be a pallbearer for him when the time came. Of course I said yes. At the time, he was a card-carrying member of the NRA, and I was a card-carrying member of the ACLU, but we never spoke about it. I suppose that’s what true friendship means.

All ready for Inspection.