Adrift on strange waters.

 A great tragedy has befallen our state and it must trouble any thinking person. It occurs at a time when the powers that govern us believe less in progressive policy than at any time in my adult life. Education is scorned. Science lies abandoned. The belief that government can be a positive force for humankind is denigrated as a doctrine.

But the floodwaters keep rising. And the rain keeps coming. And government grows less able to meet the dangers each day. We now find that running from them isn’t the answer. Mother Nature can find us even in homogeneous communities where everyone thinks and looks like us. She follows a Biblical paradigm and spreads her waters on the just and unjust alike.

Things are changing. They will continue to change. Who knows how that will affect Americans? I know change scares us. Americans seem to spend a great deal of time and resources protecting themselves and their children from change, strangers, and the different. Sometimes it just doesn’t work.

There was a time when I thought I had it made. I was young, educated, healthy, and living in the most exciting city in America at the time, San Francisco, California. A mass exodus of the young and ambitious from my state resulted in quite a band of expatriates living there, so I lacked not for friends.

I was invincible, bulletproof, and untouchable. Each day was a new adventure and each night a new discovery. Nothing could spoil this blessed life.

The Draft Board though, was like Mother Nature. It followed the sage teachings of the country hymn, “There’s no hiding place down here.”

A year after finishing a long ordeal of working my way through college, and setting forth to reap the rewards in this wonderful place, things changed. I found myself sitting, instead of “on a dock of the Bay,” atop a bunker outside Da Nang, South Vietnam, cradling an M-16 assault rifle on loan from the United States Navy.

Stuff happens. Things change. Life veers from its course. We find ourselves facing a world so different from what we expected, that we don’t recognize it. We find ourselves adrift on a sea upon which we never expected to sail. We can be “helicopter parents,” or “bulldozer parents," neither nature nor fate cares. Trust me.

In one of the wisest decisions of my life, I made the situation into a blessing. One morning, I took a long walk around Monterey Bay and contemplated my current orders. Looking out on the Great Tide Pool, I decided that, from that moment on, I would not base my happiness upon where I lived, who my neighbors were, or how protected I was from life’s vicissitudes. I would strive, each day, to make the most of what “little postage stamp of native soil,” I happened to stand. (Apologies to William Faulkner.)

I survived the war, survived a storm at sea, and survived a tepid, sometimes chilly reception from my fellow Americans, best expressed by a personnel officer of the telephone company in my home town. He informed me that there were no jobs in his organization that fit my qualifications, but did offer the suggestion that, in future applications to other employers, I keep my military service to myself.

Many friends and fellow Arkansans now face a ship of life on which the anchor finds no bottom. To be adrift upon a cruel and heartless sea is a lonely life, one whose only solace lies not in the promise of a distant harbor, but upon peace within our own heart.

Sailing on. ... not always easy.

The Storms of Life

Just what we needed: more rain. It happens I suppose. It sure happened in 1927. I’ve heard old-timers say that flooding was what made the Arkansas Delta so fertile, all those nutrients being deposited, as the floodwaters receded. Does that mean something positive may come from all this? I don’t know.

What I hope may come from it is the awaking of an understanding that we need adults in charge of government. A slow dismantling of state government, for example, hardly prepares us for facing a catastrophe like we are experiencing.

I can remember as a lad when a bad storm would hit. My Sainted Mother tended to go into hysterics, one of the few signs of weaknesses I ever observed in her … well, that and snakes. She wasn’t, I will admit through the fog of time, above elevating the histrionics a bit for the pure delight of garnering attention.

Anyway, it scared the hell out of my sister, my brother, and me.

Know what though? We made it through those violent electrical storms (and they did seem more violent back then) because of one thing. Our daddy was there. There was an adult of legendary proportions who wasn’t about to let a puny little thunderstorm threaten his family. Why he would walk outside and seem to taunt it. We knew we were safe.

It used to be like that in our politics. When disaster hit, we knew we had adults there to protect us. We, as a country, might stumble, but we couldn’t fall. We feared no evil when we had the likes of James Lee Witt in charge of FEMA.

Then it started, this dismantling of government, this cancerous belief that public service had no meaningful role to play in our lives. We fist elected those who denounced government. Then we elected those who distrusted government. It's finally led to electing those who hate government. Somewhere, in a lonely place, we left the adults. It’s like if our little group of pirates that made my childhood so memorable suddenly quit listening to our adult, Boogie Shannon, and made Nicky Bohannon quit picking his nose and take over as our leader.

It’s like if the crew of the USS Hunley, (AS 31), on which I served, were to decide that we would vote our beloved Captain Anders out of office before we reached that storm down in “the Devil’s Triangle” and put SA Dewayne Puttephat in the Captain’s seat.

It’s like if some insidious force had, one day, put me in charge of our household.

I make light of it now, but it’s painful, very painful, to watch people who don’t believe in government try and tell us what we, as a state and nation, are going to do to face our current crisis. So far, they've mumbled platitudes, as the floodwaters devour home after home. Very painful. Very sad. Maybe the more fertile seeds of understanding will enrich us if the floodwaters ever recede. We may even find the adults waiting for us there.

Some think better times are ahead.

Day off …

Off yesterday earning. Spent the day in Searcy, AR. Some agitation there over two students finding a body in a thickly wooded area next to a school. They think the body may been there as long as two years.

I've no doubt the police will figure it all out. They have a fine department there and the Mayor is a former Police Chief. Most of us don't realize how lucky we are to have folks who look after our safety. I'm not sure we always treat them fairly. We give them less than a second to make a life-altering situation and then spend six months debating as to whether they did it right. I dunno.

I sat in the patio at the Lonoke house yesterday and watched a crew installing new sewer pipes. I'm not sure we all understand what happens when we flush our toilets. We take so much for granted and if it doesn't appear on our little cell phone screen, we lose interest.

Heard an elected official the other day say he was going to vote against a badly needed project. He thought it was a good idea, and that his cities needed it badly. But he had decided it was a "new tax" and he had promised Grover Norquist  that he would never vote for anything that involved taxes.

Say what?

I wish we still taught Civics in school and that there was a universal draft for young folks in America.

The most dangerous law

When teaching Intro to Public Administration, or training municipal officials, I always stress that one of the greatest threats to the enlightened administration of government is “The Law of Unintended Consequences.” While resting for a few minutes recently, I flicked the TV remote and it hit the Ken Burns/ Lynn Novick documentary “The Vietnam War.”

It hit me then. I understood why I think the law I mentioned, as nebulous as it is, is so important.

What better example of history veering off the intended path can we imagine? It may not be the greatest example in our history. Intelligent and intuitive people, including Lyndon Johnson, foresaw that our military involvement in Indochina was a rocky path to follow. Politics demanded otherwise. Our involvement would defeat Communism once and for all. America would be the hero of the world. Any resisting politician was a traitor like Harry Truman, who had lost China. (Yes, losing a nation with 541 million people was quite a trick).

We struck out joyously.

What followed was failure, global humiliation, a deeply divided country, millions killed or wounded, a national cynicism, antipathy toward veterans, and more than 58,000 of their names carved into a black-granite mourning wall in Washington D.C.

I could fill pages with examples of how “The Law” has defeated good intentions. In our state, HUD decided, one year, to reward cities that would pass a stringent fair housing ordinance. What could be more proper or fitting? African Americans would benefit from inspired insight. Let us press forward. It was a another brick of good intentions paving the road to Hell.

Problem was, cities with large minority populations would not even discuss passing something as politically explosive as a fair housing ordinance with teeth. Yes, it was political cowardice, racially tinged, and untoward. Many political decisions are, unfortunately.

Cities with no minorities said, “Why the hell not? It won’t bother us.”

What happened? As we might guess, HUD money intended to help the poor, heavily represented by minorities, one year went to “Sundown Cities.”

Now we have a political independent who chooses to run for President of the United States, not as an independent, but by attaching himself to one of the two national parties. It’s his second try. His first, and indications are he was helped by a foreign enemy, resulted in the exact opposite of what his followers sought, which was a more equitable government, voter fairness, a leveling of income disparities, and love and health care for all.

Abroad, there was a Southeast Asian country once that was being overrun by a reptile species labeled in taxological terms as Ophiophagus Hannah known as the “King Cobra.” According to the late Edward C. Morgan, PhD, it is one of the most dangerous snakes in the world. While not the most poisonous, it is smart and mean, the only poisonous snake that will stalk and attack people just for the pure hell of it.

The government decided to address the problem by offering a bounty, let’s say $50.00, for each dead snake delivered.

Fine. Seemed like a good idea. It was, until the supply ran low. Then inspired villagers began breeding the things. Poor planning and inadequate enclosures produced runaways. The country ended up with more King Cobras than ever by the time officials ended the program.

Politics evades the thinking ability of zealous cult members. Ronald Reagan once said, for example, that “Facts are stupid things.” It was a slogan that apparently stuck with, and formed a chief weapon of his party, one that has stuck with his followers to this date.   

Sadly, he had intended the famous quote by John Adams, “Facts are stubborn things.”

Let us hope that President Adams, not President Reagan was right.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 38

Life rocked on. Brenda began teaching her second year of school, carpooling with a colleague. I was working on projects and continuing to study. Once a month, Tom and I would motor from Little Rock to Blytheville, Arkansas to attend the planning commission. Author John Grisham had been born there in 1955. By then 17 years of age and living in Mississippi, he was no doubt trying to decide whether to starve as a writer or grow rich from studying the law.

I had settled on urban planning, and was learning a lot about it. For example, cities in Arkansas weren’t required to plan at all. Those who chose to, however, all followed the same process as defined by state statutes. Arkansas existed as a so-called “Dillon’s Rule” state, a descriptor named after an old judge somewhere, named, aptly enough, Dillon. He opined that cities were creatures of the state and had no inherent powers, only those granted by the state. That was news to me, and it complicated things.

The secret was in the plan. If cities chose to make plans, they were to protect the health, safety, welfare and morals of the community. The plans set policy rather than law. In order to carry them out, the cities could enact zoning and subdivision regulations which did constitute municipal law.

Most people didn’t, and many still don’t, understand the difference. In reality, many cities simply adopted plans, then went about business as if those plans didn’t exist. Planning was important primarily (to many cities) because it made them eligible for certain grants.

It closely resembled the way our new household was forming. As the husband, and, by the power granted by no less than the Apostle Paul himself, I was head of the household. As such, I set both policy and law. The wife, in this case my new bride Brenda, was to adore me quietly and diligently while setting about to help me carry out my policies and enact my rules. Smooth is as smooth does, so to speak. I think that may be in the Scriptures somewhere.

Here’s how it really worked. I could set all the plans and policies I chose. No problem. Then it departed from standard doctrine. The rules we lived by had nothing to do with my plans or policies. A set of rules, rules that Herself enacted and enforced, governed our day-to-day activities.

It worked more peacefully that way. In similarity to the benefits of urban planning, compliance qualified me for benefits not available to the recalcitrant. As with any fledgling form of government, it took a number of years for the doctrine fully to establish itself as governing methodology, but it would finally settle into a standard process of “plan and ignore.”

That’s urban planning in a nutshell. Marriage is, after all, a metaphor for many aspects of modern life. That’s why it is fitting and proper that it be available to all.

Oh wow! This marriage thing
 isn't so bad, after all. Is it?
Women can rule. Neat.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 14 (Cont._4)

The last of the winter snow came in 1972 and things were as normal as they would ever get again. Technology had reached its peak. There wasn’t much more that could be done. They had introduced something called a “handheld calculator,” the HP-35. We couldn’t think of much use for it. Imagine people walking around distracted adding numbers from something in their hands. It would be both dangerous and a waste of time. Besides, it cost $395. It was nuts.

Yep. Technology had peaked, no doubt about that.

I encountered my first case of being what I call “neighborhood filicide.” It wouldn’t be my last. It happened, by chance, in one of our major cities. The powers had finally decided that neighborhood preservation was a superior concept to neighborhood demolition. I can’t imagine why it took them so long.

At any rate, we had gotten a grant approved for funds to reconstruct a street in a large minority neighborhood spreading out around a major neighborhood school. The street scheduled for reconstruction connected the school and the local city park, still partially segregated but much used by the neighborhood.

It was a good project, a simple one, much needed, particularly the sidewalks planned to replace the open, trash-filled ditches that the kids had to navigate daily. A group of neighborhood activists had helped gather data for, and complete, the grant application.

As I say, it was a good project, eagerly awaited. That’s why there was such a surprise when all hell broke loose.

It seemed, all of a sudden, that this wasn’t the street the neighborhood wanted upgraded. Folks wanted one a block over fixed instead.

This was odd, because the street a block over didn’t connect anything. It made no sense to change the plan. Grant approval had relied on the benefits to the entire neighborhood. A tempest was beginning to rage, though.  The situation called for a public hearing.

That turned out to be, as many public hearings are, a fiasco. A local “leader” dominated the hearing with loud denunciations of a city that, for reasons only known to the white power structure and its neighborhood pawns, sought to destroy a long-standing and vibrant community. This was racial genocide at its worst, he implied.

Other leaders of the neighborhood, who had helped with the grant, and who had come to the hearing to support the original plan, sat in thunderous silence with heads downcast.

Oddly, it turned into my first professional encounter in which opinions grew from feelings and not from facts, a situation that works better in religion than in government.

What caused the debacle? The reason turned out to be simple one, one that would be repeated in my career multiple times in varied situations. The issue wasn’t neighborhood revitalization. It wasn’t racial. It was economic. Guess who owned three or four shabby rent houses on the “preferred” street? Guess who gained the most trust and prevailed?

Today, there is a crumbling street, with weed-choked sidewalks, serving nothing but a couple derelict houses in a minority neighborhood in our state. A block over, kids still walk along, through, and over, ditches filled with broken bottles, needles, and less appetizing trash, to get to the city park.

Sometimes, those who knowingly do harm to our neighborhoods and other institutions, are the ones who should love them the most.

Morning Thoughts: April 6, 2018

When we don't know anything about a subject, we tend not to worry about its destruction. Our thought is "If I ain't involved, I vote to dissolve."

I fear that this attitude is why so many Americans think it is "cute" for a sitting president to act like a damn fool on camera as he goes about destroying the basic structure of an America that helped defeat Nazism, then was instrumental in the rebuilding of much of Europe, ended polio, sent someone to the moon, and did so many other wonderful things.

If I ain't involved, I vote to dissolve.

An example: I once asked a very bright group of my students, (senior level Intro to Public Administration) to take a moment and consider whether local sales taxes should apply to internet sales.

They thought, discussed, and gave a unanimous, "NO."

If I ain't involved, I vote to dissolve.

Okay then. How would you describe the concept of "reasonable expectations."

They did a pretty fair job, so I followed.

Do you think a person driving a delivery truck to bring an internet purchase to you has a reasonable expectation that a passable street allows the delivery to your house?

- That a police force is there to see that thugs don't empty the van before it reaches you?

- That firefighters are available to come in case the van with your purchase catches fire?

- That an ambulance is available should a drunken person slam into the delivery van?

- That medical aid is available in case someone sprays poison on your package?

Well yes, they decided, those expectations are reasonable.

Would it cost anything to provide services to meet those expect ions?

Yes. If it involves me, it can't be free.

Would it be fair for the city or county where you live to charge the delivery companies a delivery charge for each package delivered to your house? The brick and mortar companies pay a tax to allow you to come and pick things up yourself.

There was a dead silence, broken only by a collective whisper of "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind that tree."

But, they reconsidered, did some cipherin', took another vote, and chose the sales tax.

We look for reasons why Americans did such a foolishly destructive thing as electing a man like Donald Trump as president.

"Oh," you say, "it's because so many of us think it is funny to see government run as a professional wrestling show."

Maybe. Maybe the trouble began when we quit teaching civics in our high schools.

Ever hear the story about the father
who was able to indulge his son's
interest in computers because that
father received an education through
the GI Bill, a tax-supported benefit?

Sunrise With Schubert

For years, I’ve used the simple four-way traffic stop as an amateur “game-play” example of rulemaking in public administrations. No, now stay with me here.

Think about it. It is a perfectly fair, non-discriminatory, self-policing phenomenon that requires little, if any regulatory framework. We don’t need an entire bureaucratic apparatus writing volumes about how to maneuver through a four-way stop.

Ever who gets there first, goes next. Gee, that’s simple.

Oh, there are other considerations maybe. There are oddly designed intersections that can cause confusion. And there is the tendency of “control freaks” to motion for you go ahead, not realizing that their deeply tinted windshields prevent your processing their generosity.

And police departments do demand their overuse on streets that should move traffic. Sadly. In the age of so-called “helicopter parents,” police in suburban cities had rather hold up the traffic flow for everyone than face a two-hour cursing from a parent whose “precious innocent” had been ticketed for speeding.

All in all, though, four-ways have served us well.

Yes, I had often used the four-way stop as a lesson in self-regulation. I also used the example of Ebay and others in maintaining honesty through a voluntary rating system. Then, there is the notion, so hated by regulatory purists, called “nudging.” That is a process of governing that rewards and makes life simpler for those doing the things considered proper.

But back to four-way stops as an ethical and moral lesson. I would, in the past, proclaim, to whomever, that in all my years of driving, I had only seen two flagrant examples of perfidy at intersections governed by four-way stops. One was nearly fifty years ago when they were first introduced in my home town. An elderly matron in the “high-rent” district, totally unused to restrictive rules, sailed through one as she had sailed through most events of her life.

The second was ten years or so by a teenager driving a pickup truck on a street near a school in one of our state’s “white-flight” cities. The driver embellished that action with a hand gesture and the facts speak for themselves.

As long as it can affect them personally, though, Americans love fairness, and will abide fair restrictions.

That all may have changed now. In the last week, I’ve witnessed two additional and flagrant violations of the “first come, first through” behavioral contract.

I fear that this signals a new social paradigm, and, if I’m right, I will blame politics. We are drifting off into a lawless world in which educated people are increasingly skeptical of rules of social interaction. We even have a small, but scary, political party dedicated to the sophomoric concept of libertarianism (the style of non-government that works so well in Somalia).

Whether it be denying a sitting United States president the right to nominate someone to fill a Supreme Court vacancy or developing laws to restrict citizens' right to vote, we daily witness a departure from civilized behavior.

The best example I can give is a society in which any behavior is allowed as long as the referee doesn’t see it. Concomitantly, aberrant behavior is allowed even if the ref sees it but is powerless to do anything about it. The increasing acceptance of that as an allowable form of government simply scares the hell out of me.

The problem is, as I see it, that an abandonment of social norms—at least those properly dedicated to the health, safety, and welfare of us all—may not lead to less social restrictions, it may lead to greater and more tragic social restrictions. At least that’s how I think the victims of the French, German, and Russian revolutions would see it.

I increasingly fail to understand how we would make America great “again” by abandoning any cultural foundation-block that ever served to make America great. I’ll keep trying, although I’ll have to disregard slavery, Jim Crow, the Great Depression, Vietnam, and Iraq. Yes, that narrows the window.

In the meantime, be wary of four-way stops. They may not be safe in this era of “government as professional wrestling.”

The Libertarian Dream

Morning Thoughts: January 20, 2107

On mornings like this, expressing one’s feelings is difficult. Finding solace takes some digging unless you’re a libertarian. They’re happy. No government in our country is, after all, their lifelong dream. Talk about “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” We’ll re-visit them when our rivers start burning again.

I guess some members of our president’s political party are happy. I’m not sure all of them are, but they could have prevented his train wreck at any time. I suspect the party’s radical fringe has the more thoughtful members locked into behavior-prisons from which they would just soon escape. Perhaps, several “Thomas Becket Moments,” “Saul of Tarsus Transformations,” or “John Newton Transfigurations” might have saved us.

Too late now, though.

Me? I’m just happy I don’t have to explain our country to my cousins in Germany. I’m sure that some of their ancestors felt the same way in 1936.

And,

I’m happy that the sun will rise in a few moments and the intemperate weather has subsided to the point where I can walk outside and enjoy the rebirth of “… my own little postage stamp of native soil,” as William Faulkner described his own world years ago.

I’m happy that YouTube still has posts of David Oistrakh playing Sibelius.

I’m happy that Joseph Conrad was born.

I’m happy that a person of African-American descent in our country can dine in restaurants, attend movies, pursue an education, and become President.

I’m happy Jonas Salk discovered a way to prevent polio and chose not to, in the ways “Big Pharma,” file a patent, so it would be available to the “least of those among us.”

I’m happy that it only took our planet 3.5 billion years to produce a Vincent van Gough from single-celled prokaryotic cells.

I’m happy that our American political system was blessed by the (much too brief) participation of a Barbara Jordan.

I’m happy that John Lewis survived Pettus Bridge.

I’m happy that Bob Dylan has lived a long life.

I’m happy that my best friend is sleeping in the next room and hasn’t grown tired of me.

I’m happy that I can still breath, think, and walk.

I’m happy that my cadre of close friends are, to a person, some of the finest people our country has ever produced, and that I will never have to apologize for the actions of any of them.

I’m happy that I served my country, albeit that I didn’t particularly want to at the time. Now, though, it scares some, pisses off some, and impresses a few, not a bad tally.

Finally, I guess that I’m happy in a way that I probably won’t be around to see our planet take its last gasp, that is to say unless those younger than I decide to take control. That doesn’t appear likely this morning, but I’m happy that the great pendulum of history swings fore and aft, that there hasn’t been a ship of state drop anchor for an extended length of time since the Egyptians, and that, as Lewis Mumford said, “trend is not destiny.”

Morning Thoughts: January 17, 2018

One of the things that cause me despair these days has to do with my college education. I decided at first to study architecture. The only problem there was it took talent, and I had none. I ended up in urban planning, a more fitting, and surprisingly well-paid career. I flourished, but never regretted my efforts in architecture. They proved most fruitful in both my professional and public lives.

See, they taught me that problems exist to be solved, and that solving them is one of life’s noble callings. Further, it taught that difficult problems can be addressed with a combination of facts, analysis, education, study, application, and cooperation.

Does it always work? No. Is there a better way of solving problems? Not that I know of. Then what is causing me despair?

Simply this: at our higher levels of government, I see no effort to solve some of the most serious, dangerous, and emotionally-charged problems that our country faces. This unwillingness to collaborate on addressing problems appears is chipping away at the fundamental tenants of a democracy that once was a shining light for the world. That democracy is now becoming a world-wide laughing stock.

When solutions are proposed in Washington, or many state capitols, they are the most potentially disruptive, cruelest, polarizing and mean-spirited ones that can be devised. Is there an alternative? Maybe.

Some years ago, the federal legislature passed, and the president signed into law a bill very favorable to religious and other institutions but not so for public bodies, including cities. One of the provisions of the act stated that solutions proposed by those public entities had to be the “least restrictive possible.” That’s not a bad stricture for many issues—perhaps not for pandemics, but for most things. Current proposals by the federal government, however, tend to verge on the most restrictive and, as I say, disruptive solutions possible. One feels obligated to say, “physician, heal thyself.”

As for the poor, the disadvantaged, the forgotten, strangers from another land, or those whom nature didn’t produce as a Caucasian heterosexual, the attacks are particularly heinous and the neglect most heartbreaking. The most terrifying and confusing aspect of all this is that the very worst of the persecutors are the ones who most loudly claim direct guidance from The Galilean.

Is either political party blameless? No. But as the actual or cultural descendants of those who froze in the Ardennes, suffered for a woman’s right to vote, ended slavery, or hung from trees as “Strange Fruit” in our American South, we have the right to an elected president who seeks to unite, not divide us. If that individual refuses to do so, we have the right to demand that the political party represented take action for Americans and not for party.

It’s too important that it doesn’t. How can America be great when some of her children died of hunger last night? When war profiteers are using their power to convince us to invade again. When those who have everything demand more? When there are sick and dying in America, lying alone in forlorn places with no medical care. When there are those who love America, and would become a part of her heritage if only their plight could be viewed with human compassion instead of retribution. When there are those who are not allowed to live in peace as nature made them. When young boys are imprisoned in a ghetto hovel awaiting the day they are given their first gun and sent forth as a drug runner.

The list goes on, and we tweet our thoughts instead of proposing actions. As for me, I think I’ll go look in the mirror at the face of one of the guilty.

Growing Up Southern: November 12, 2017

There’s a body of water near where I grew up that is of some local interest. It’s Bayou Bartholomew, the longest one in the world. They say it is, anyway. It runs from Pine Bluff, Arkansas all the way to South Louisiana. It’s the meat of legend and song.

I say “runs” with a fair degree of hyperbole, for bayous don’t really run. They merely slug along, catching and preserving whatever flows into them, much like the South itself. But anyway, what’s a Southerner without hyperbole? We feasted on the concept long before it reached the Borough of Queens, in New York. It matches the tendency of our minds to take sharp turns.

Our hyperbole, though, tends to favor the harmless variety. For example, our mosquitoes are so big that they can stand flat-footed and [have sex with] a turkey, or keep a person awake at night as they crack “hikker-nuts” (Hickory nuts) with their beaks. We have snakes that are so mean that one can kill a tree by coiling around it and stinging it with its tail. We had a banker once who was so crooked that it took three grave plots to bury him. And I personally knew a man whose cousin’s postman told him of a fallen woman so attracted to “group sessions,” that she had to buy thank-you notes by the case.

So what if we would, as William Faulkner observed, cut down a 100-year old oak tree to get at a squirrel’s nest? It would be like Joseph and Mary clearing a spot in the manger for the little Galilean baby, wouldn’t it? Well maybe not, but what’s a little exaggeration among friends? Can’t hurt anyone, can it?

What if we are tending more and more toward electing our politicians for their entertainment value rather than potential benefit to humankind? It allows us to say, “Did you hear the one about the one senator that was so mean the other senators started noticing it?” What about funerals? Would one of the Northern Tribesmen, when asked to say something grand about the deceased, ever stand and say, “Well, I always heard his brother was worse?” The South, after all, originated what the late columnist Richard Allin called the act of “filibustering the deceased into Heaven.”

Are there people anywhere other than the American South that are so “hard-featured” that their face would “make a freight train take a dirt road?” It might even be a face that closely resembled a “mule’s ass sewed up with a logging chain.” Such people thrive here, bigly.

But back to Bayou Bartholomew. It was once what they dumped raw sewage into, but they stopped that back in the 1950s, I think it was. We might expect them to start the practice again. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The tornado of 1947 generally followed the course of Bayou Bartholomew as it ravaged a huge area south of the city of Pine Bluff. There were, if I remember correctly, 32 people killed as a result of the damage. Six young men shooting craps of a Sunday afternoon died in the storm. This happened in an abandoned house less than two city blocks distance from our little country grocery store. To the East of us, an entire family died when their house was lifted, turned upside down, and deposited into Bayou Imbeau, a black-water body near Bayou Bartholomew.

The houses on both sides of our house and store were totally destroyed. The store was undamaged. My father gave away its entire inventory to survivors, asked no money, and went bankrupt. The local newspaper suggested erecting a monument to him. They never did. The small town of Lonsdale, Arkansas did send him a check for $45.00.

In 1957, the bayou flooded. I could watch it from our front porch rise a couple of feet above the highway. They built a major “big box” development at that location a few years ago. When it floods, if there is a functioning government then, we’ll all pay for the recovery. Such is life.

I guess one lesson is that the function of a responsible government, including disaster relief, is not a matter for humor, hyperbole, or political aggrandizement. The best we can hope for is to ooze along like a bayou, hope for the best, love our fellow humans, and be thankful when we aren’t targeted for destruction in the meantime. Peace.

There's not a huge demand for "Bayou-side Mansions,"
but it is possessed of a certain charm.