Sometimes visiting places from where your roots grew is like taking a calming dip in a pool of warm memories. It was for my sister, brother, and me yesterday.

 We started out from our home place, a site much altered from our youth. It once contained a small country grocery store with a home attached to it. Our parents bought it and opened for business on January 1, 1940. They reared the three of us there. It disappeared long ago with all the other country stores. To date, no politician is promising to bring them back along with the employment they provided.

 Driving south into what is lovingly referred to as “L.A.,” or Lower Arkansas, we passed a site where, in a small shack in 1918, a frail woman was struggling for her life after giving birth, somewhat prematurely, to her eighth child, a girl. The woman was so near death that the doctor laid the infant aside to die, and concentrated on saving the woman with, among another tools, Vick’s Salve, the WD-40 of the medical world at that time. It worked, lucky for us.

 The woman was our grandmother and the infant was our mother. This, and much of our family history, was provided by her oldest sister, Hallie Harris Harden, the matriarch of our clan, and a character of great enjoyment until her death at near 100 years of age. I thought of her as we passed a small country church, for I remembered the time I was driving her around and she pointed at it and announced, “There’s where Jesus saved me from going to hell, and your Uncle Carl saved me from being an old maid.” I’m not sure about the timing of the first event but the second occurred when she was 15 years old.

 Three years after my mother survived childbirth, her father died. My grandmother was left alone in a harsh rural environment with no means of support, and three young children in hand. Mother never talked much about those awful days except to relate the story of when the local church members acquired new curtains for its windows. My grandmother begged the castoffs from them and made underpants for the girls. My mother never forgot the day she fell on the playground and that embarrassing secret was revealed to a group of cruel schoolchildren. The horrible mask of poverty forms many faces.

 Life goes on. Not long after, the kids' older brother married the daughter of a widower whose wife had given birth to 13 children, and then died. The couple carried messages back and forth, and my grandmother ended up marrying the widower and caring for his children that were still at home. The son of one of those children is now Mayor of Mansfield, Arkansas and I see him from time to time. He never fails to say, almost with tears in his eyes, that my grandmother was the only grandmother he ever knew.

 We visited the gravesites where our grandparents are buried, near their fathers, one a veteran of the Confederacy and the other a veteran of the Union. The unit of the latter saved my hometown, Pine Bluff, from a Rebel assault and the city erected a small monument to it. The obituary of the former stated that he was a “good man who never took part in any of the neighborhood brawls.”

Don’t ask.

 It was a good day. One final surprise caused me to chuckle. Now first understand, my sister started out in her professional life punching data cards for the state’s electrical utility in the basement of a building in Pine Bluff. She ended it in an office near the top of a high-rise office building in Little Rock running a major department for that same company. She is a serious person, and highly respected as a professional by her former colleagues. She is considered a good person by all, and I doubt she would ever take part in a neighborhood brawl, if they have those where she lives. Did I mention that she is a serious person? We lovingly call her “The General.”

 Imagine my amusement when, as we passed over a railroad track near our old neighborhood, she began telling me how she and her girlfriends used to put bags on sticks, walk down those tracks, and pretend they were hoboes. What an image. Times reserved for memories are full of surprises like that.

 Overall, the day ended on a happy note to be filed in the “Ps” under “pleasant.”

 But … my sister a hobo? That still cracks me up. It really does.

 July 12, 2017

The Old Homeplace, gone forever.

Balance

Do things ever ooze into your head and refuse to leave? For me, it often relates to folk music. There was quite a craze about it in my developing youth. I’m talking about real folk music, not the stuff we sometimes call it these days. As explained in a Library of Congress publication:

“Traditional ballads are narrative folksongs - simply put, they are folksongs that tell stories. They tell all kinds of stories, including histories, legends, fairy tales, animal fables, jokes, and tales of outlaws and star-crossed lovers. ("Ballad" is a term also used in the recording industry for slow, romantic songs, but these should not be confused with traditional or folk ballads.)”

These ballads moved from place to place, even from continent to continent. Sometimes wandering minstrels altered them to fit local traditions.

Anyway, there is a type of folk music referred to, if I remember right, as “recognition ballads.” The protagonist wanders off one day, or is impressed to sea, or lured away, or simply forgets about things as men still do. He’s gone for years and, upon return, his true love doesn’t recognize him. Nobody does. His true love may have married, may have killed herself from lovelornness, may have lost interest, may not believe him, or suffered from a lack of ardor. There are countless combinations permutations. Sometimes, he reveals the truth and the listener imagines what occurs after the denouement.

These were songs from olden times. I don’t recall hearing one in which the long-suffering true love welcomes the wanderer in and introduces him to her wife, Sally Ann. That would have spiced up the old minstrel’s life, eh?

These were also times before cameras or video phones. How the hell is a poor girl, whose true love left to go a’whoreing 20 years ago, supposed to remember how he looked.

It’s interesting to think about such anonymity. You could just disappear. Click off. Đi-đi mau Vamoose, Geh weg. Nobody would know a thing about you. Or care.

It’s a lot different now. For example. I was just thinking of a two-inch Forstner bit I need for a little project I’m doing for a friend. Having said that, by the time I visit social media again, I promise you that there will be a dozen ads for the bit on my computer screen.

I don’t think I could slip out and come back as a mysterious stranger. It seems that the universe demands balance. We give up our privacy but gain ease of spending money on things. We sleep in a warm room on a full stomach but worry about water damage each time it rains. We use individual motorized vehicle for even small journeys but our eyes sting, and the Earth melts from the pollution they cause. We can keep up with the news constantly, but we find it harder and more frustrating each day to know the truth. Here's an old Carter Family song of hope based on the recognition theme and performed by Doc Watson and family.

It’s pleasant to think I still can recognize my wife, and that she recognizes me when she wishes. Wait here while I go wake her up and find out for sure.

Music and Memories

Watched the first episode of the Ken Burns documentary Country Music last evening. It surely brought back some memories. In my youth, they kept our little country store open on Saturday nights until the last customer left, sometimes near one o’clock in the morning. Having spent the day in Pine Bluff, folks would stop on the way home to stock up on groceries for the week. They bought on credit mostly, waiting until payday or the day that Social Security or what they called back then “Old-aged Pension Checks” back then came.

Anyhow, crowds would gather and folks would visit on the front porch of the store while my parents filled orders. The kids would play and The Grand Ole Opry would blast from a little Philco radio. We’d vow to stay up until the store closed but sleep always won. I can’t count the number of times I fell asleep with Uncle Pen on the radio, performed by Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys.

One night, while we were still outside playing, a disagreement occurred between two women over some man, wouldn’t you figure? Before anyone knew it, a straight razor gashed an arm open and the Sheriff had to be summoned. I didn’t see the incident, but I caught a glimpse of the result when the Sheriff opened the door of the pickup truck where the woman sat. She was overweight, and the gash didn’t get through the fat, it seemed. But is sure made a mess.

Two or three of us kids stood around, awestruck, until they chased us away. I don’t think they did anything but send the perpetrator home and the victim to the hospital. The law didn’t get too involved in “cuttin’ scrapes” in those days when the participants weren’t white.

If the future episodes of Country Music are as good as the first, we are in for a treat, and I’m in for a lot more memories.

My Redacted Life: Sunday Break

As the month of August grew near, I contemplated our upcoming marriage. Appearances indicated success, but who could tell? I grew increasingly fond of Brenda’s parents, particularly her dad.

Robert Julius Cole grew up in the rich farmland country of the Arkansas Delta, the oldest boy of three and brother to three girls, one a half-sister who was born before her mother was widowed at age 16. By the time Julius was nine, he was managing a mule as it plowed the dark soil.

Having made it through the Great Depression, his generation saw the world head directly into World War Two. Although, as the eldest son on a family farm, he could have claimed an exemption from military service, he took the place of a younger brother and went into the army.

He found himself assigned to the 313^th Regiment of the 79^th Infantry Division. The unit had come ashore at Normandy on D-Day plus seven. By the time Julius joined it they were well into France and headed for Belgium and Germany by way of the Battle of the Bulge.

Some of my favorite memories involve sitting around the supper table and listening to his stories about the war. I’ve always felt that the supper table helped produce so many fine writers from the South. Kids learned the art of story-telling from master craftsmen. Julius was one of those. One time he would tell about when, during the last days of the war, as the Germans were listlessly expending the last of their artillery shells, and his company was lined up for chow, a random shell killed the shortest soldier in his company.

Another time, he might tell about the time he told a young French girl that she had a nice puppy, whereupon she disappeared and returned holding a roll of toilet paper. He might tell about his comrades, after the war while on leave in Rome “Itley,” placing prophylactics on the statues of naked men in the plazas.

“Many of our guys got killed by our own artillery,” he would recount. “Most of those killed were new kids who would freeze during an artillery barrage and not move out when they told us to.” Or, “I spent one night in a fox hole with a dead German boy. As soon as I jumped in, the fleas left him and crawled on me.” Or, “Jimmie, you would say just let me live one more second. Just one more.”

“Wounded by artillery shrapnel, he survived the war in Europe. They disbanded the 79^th Division and shipped him to another unit. It would be the First Infantry Division, the “Big Red One.” Had the war moved to the invasion of Japan, it would no doubt have led the way as it had at Normandy. The war ended, though, and he spent a year in Germany before rotating home.

There, he never, as far as I know, bothered another living soul. I still catch myself, from time to time, pitying those who never had the honor of knowing him.

A photo copied from the  Internet that
 may include Private Robert Julius Cole.

I took the Lady Hazel for a walk around the park yesterday. It’s the first time she had been outdoors for any length of time in a while. I think she enjoyed it even though, anymore, she can’t express such feelings easily.

We now have a “quiet home” in the city of Lonoke, Arkansas, a particularly pretty town on the edge of the Arkansas Delta. It offers a much different view of life than does our downtown condo in Little Rock. Back there they call me “hey.” Small town folks call me “Mr. Jim.” Like the character in my favorite film, I hardly know where I am until I hear someone call me.

There is a park in the center of Lonoke, and that’s where we took our stroll. I gave her my veteran’s cap to wear so her hair wouldn’t blow. She has her own, as does Brenda. I’ll bring it for her to wear next time. Theirs represent the 313^th Regiment of the 79^th Infantry Division, given the descriptor of “a fighting unit” in WWII, and in which the late husband/father, Julius Cole, served. One of the few things Hazel can still communicate his how much she misses him.

It was a beautiful day, yesterday, in our postage-stamp corner of small town America. It was one of those days, perhaps a tad chilly to her, when it was much better to be outdoors in the sunshine than indoors watching the news. Much better.

We strolled along, and by, streets that she once knew like the back of her hand. We weren’t far from the former office of the local doctor where she had worked for over thirty years. At one time, there was hardly a soul in the city, maybe the whole county, who didn’t know “Miss Hazel.” When we could still take her to gatherings, folks would line up in front of her to hug and say hello. She was as close to royalty as the town has ever known, in my opinion.

A few blocks north of the park still stands the building where she, barely out of her teens and laden with an unborn, had climbed the stairs to the then-doctor’s office to give birth to her only child. Her husband was late for having stopped to watch a truck burning in a field somewhere along the way. You won’t be able to understand such things if you aren’t from the rural South.

Yesterday, Hazel couldn’t have climbed those stairs at all, but she could still wave at folks in the park as I pushed her wheelchair around the encircling track. She complained a bit about bumps, but otherwise took it in stride. I’m sure she once knew the occupants of every house in view, their names, occupations, and family trees. Not many of the old acquaintances remain. They left, along with her memories of them. But the park was filled with young children, many of whom waved back at her. Life goes on.

It was just a short walk, but I enjoyed it and will go to my grave hoping she did.

A precious lady on a precious day.

Sunrise Memories: March 16, 2018

It only takes a small step of kindness to make an impact on a person’s life. I thought about that yesterday for some reason. Maybe it was Elvis.

We visited our loved one at the respite home, and guess what? Elvis came there to sing for the residents, and they loved him. Some even danced, as best they could. One was good at it, a man they call “The Colonel.” Actually, he is a retired sergeant from the United States Air Force. He says he once played saxophone in a band, and he still has the steps.

“Elvis” was a Little Rock firefighter who sings for fun at such gatherings. He was good singer and a good man who does small acts of kindness for others.

But it wasn’t Elvis I was thinking about. How’s that for a “buried lead” Dixie Land and Sonny Rhodes? (They are actual dear journalist friends of mine).

Anyway, I was thinking of Linda Vines. The wife of the late Jim Vines, one of the two bosses at my first professional job in Little Rock. He died some years ago after suffering for over 30 years with a slow but progressive case of MS.

It happened this way. Day before yesterday I attended a conference of the Arkansas Chapter of the American Planning Association. It was the first one I had attended in a few years as I am more than a bit retired from active duty. I saw, and visited with, some dear old friends, and met a few new ones. They all greeted me kindly.

What happened was that it made me think of the first one I attended, those many years ago. I was just out of the Navy and knew only the two guys I worked for and their spouses. The professionals were all old friends, many having attended grad school together in the recent past. The Chapter had rented an excursion boat for an evening trip up the Arkansas River. I felt like a newly released convict at a Sunday School picnic and there was no escape.

No one paid me the least bit of attention. Even had they, I didn’t know enough to talk sensibly about the profession and it didn’t appear to be a crowd that would have been interested in sea stories. It was worse than standing watch alone in some godforsaken place. Here, I was alone but had to watch others having fun.

I was standing alone on the deck, watching my new home city roll by when someone walked up and asked me something or other about where I was from or what I had been doing lately. It was Linda Vines. Before long we were identifying people whom we both knew and she was entertaining me with stories about their graduate school days. The evening passed smoothly and I have rarely, in my entire life, been more thankful to another human being.

Several years ago, a few before Jim died, I sat one day and wrote Linda a letter reminding her of that evening and how thankful I was for her willingness to make a stranger feel less alone. I then told her how the incident helped form a lifetime commitment on my part always to try and make newcomers to a gathering feel welcome, and how small acts of kindness can grow.

Jim called me a week or so later. Without any small talk, he informed me, “You made my wife cry.”

I waited.

“Thank you,” he said. “That was a great act of kindness.”

Yep.

Morning Thoughts: January 8, 2018

It’s raining this morning. I stood in it for a few moments feeling the sun rise. It’s not a spring rain by any stretch. It’s still chilly outside. But it was soft, and welcoming, a pleasant friend after the bone-chilling days and nights we have had. It made me remember a girl I once knew whose hair would make an almost audible sound while springing into curls from a sudden shower, and I smiled.

Then it made me remember sitting next to a young wife with long straight hair, on the porch of our first home, drinking wine, and watching puddles form in the street, and I counted the years.

It’s important to notice and appreciate moments and places, no matter when or where. Life has a tendency to change those for us, laughing with glee at our puny plans. We adapt to the new plans, or they will watch us wither.

Once, I thought I had it made. I had worked my way though college and was living in one of America’s most exciting cities at one of its most exciting times. I had lots of friends, good and true ones, I thought. I earned enough to do as I pleased. Blessings, not rain, poured on me.

A year later I was sitting on a bunker in the middle of the night, feeling the monsoon slowly soaking every square inch of my body. Those friends? They couldn’t force themselves to abide one who participated in an evil and unjust war. I couldn’t really blame them, but I had made my choices and they had made theirs. They still sat in warm circles playing music and … whatever. I sat cold, wet, and friendless, alone on the other side of the world from anyone who still did love me. So much for planning our lives.

It all turned out fine. But I stood outside at daybreak today, while the rain talked to me about it all. I had read a piece in Sunday’s paper about the best and most exciting places in the world to visit this year. We won’t be seeing any of them. Once again, we have made our choices. There are more fulfilling things than having, or even pretending to have, fun, in life. Life can narrow your field of vision, and one fares better after accepting it.

There will be soft rains, though. There will be days when a person in your care suddenly remembers something you thought had died in their memory long ago. There will be, if we’re lucky, the first sight of a young corn plant peaking from the soaked earth. There will be the warming sight of a small herd of deer drifting into our pasture at sundown because they know it is a safe place. There will be the feel of a soft hand clutching yours in the night, the first sound of the geese in late winter, the smell of freshly plowed earth in the spring, and the first taste of food grown by your own hands. And there will be songs to learn and books to read. None of these things require a tour of Tuscany. We will tend those in our care and be observant to life. Isn't that enough?

I hear people say, “I’ll be happy once I move to (wherever)." I worry that many will only face disappointment. Then I hear my late father-in-law, on the bitterest day of the year, saying “It’ll be spring before you know it,” and I think to myself, “He was almost always happy, I think.”

In addition to our lives, I worry that all Americans face some dreadfully unforeseen changes soon. I may be wrong, but signs alarm me. We have a powerful coalition that seems bent on changing the most basic character of our lands, our country, and our society. Why? I don’t know. I’m not even sure those in the coalition know, or would agree upon the motivation.

It goes beyond political differences. It appears, in all respects, to be a coalition based on hate, greed, the illogical, and a strong dose of nihilism, much of that resulting from a religion that abhors the concept of a “social gospel,” and favors either a gospel of greed or an apocalypse based on mythological prophecy.

That will bring change to us all. Those who end up with everything will be faced with having to see if “all is enough.” Those who end up with nothing will, for the first time in their lives, be forced to understand that decisions bear consequences. Those who find themselves on the wrong side of history will simply lie.

I will be hysterically happy if I’m wrong. But, as for me and my family, we’ll just live once more to see our earth, “… breeding lilacs out of a dead land.”

Or maybe just corn.

Growing Up Southern: November 25, 2017

Vacations created much excitement in our family. I can practically remember every one we took. The first was a week-end jaunt to Harrison, Arkansas.  My younger brother had not become fully toilet-trained, but was sufficiently “toilet-aware” to risk such a journey. We headed north. Lawzee. Believe it or not, none of us, save my dad, had ever seen a mountain. The ones we saw weren’t the Rockies, but we didn’t care. They were sure something.

Setting a pattern that would last for years, we joined an aunt and uncle and two cousins on the trip. I can’t remember how my uncle Raymond got us to quit singing “She’ll be coming ‘round the mountain.” I think it included a threat to leave my cousin JoAnn and me on the side of the road to be picked up on the way back.

It proved a memorable trip, with both simple and majestic wonders. I remember a coin-operated radio in a place called the “Log Cabin Inn.” For two-bits, you got maybe 30 minutes of music. We listened in awe until the grownups ran out of quarters. Next day we visited an attraction long-since closed: Diamond Cave, near Jasper, Arkansas. Oh, it was magnificent! I can still recall how the guide told us how to differentiate between stalagmites and stalactites. The wonder. The wonder.

We thus initiated annual vacations. Both my dad and my Uncle ran grocery stores, so we would leave on Thursdays and return by Sunday. Once a year. That was it. They knew that such short vacations, with five kids to keep corralled didn’t offer much rest, but they both agreed that it “beat the hell out of chopping cotton.”

Believing that diversity was a strong foundation-stone of life, we alternated destinations. One year we would go to Galveston, Texas, and the next to somewhere in what is now known as the “Redneck Riviera.” There are still old songs that pop up occasionally … popular at some moment in history, that bring back an instant memory, sometimes accompanied by the smell of salt air and the screeching of sea gulls.

As I say, some aspects weren’t as pleasant for my dad as they were for us. He didn’t particularly like to drive, and he certainly didn’t enjoy long periods marked by prolonged close contact with bratty children. Further there were spots along the way, like the passage through Mobile, Alabama—including its frightening and mocking tunnel—that he knew in his heart were created by the Dark One to punish him for previous sins. Not a man to be distracted from a goal, I was always certain that he would not have detoured off our stated route a half-mile to witness The Second Coming. Thus, I never saw the Vicksburg Civil War Park until I was a grown man and could take myself there if I chose.

The women let the men have a few beers on these trips. That took “some of the swelling out” for them. They actually could get pretty funny at times, especially when they had snuck around and exceeded the quota. As for the kids, nobody needed to tell us how to have fun. Even the normally demure and taciturn women donned what I’m sure were considered sexy bathing suites at the time. Oh, it was glorious.

Time passed. The older kids dropped out. My older cousin decided he liked fast cars and girls who were attracted to them. My sister stayed home next year. She blamed it on work, but we all knew she had just settled on a new boyfriend, thus making a choice that would comfort her for over 50 years. The annual trips faded away without a formal declaration of cessation.

 I can still remember them, though, whenever I wish, and I do often, very often.

Growing Up Southern: October 24, 2017

My folks ran a grocery store six days a week, so I had few outings alone with my father. There was this one, however. Yeah, there was one.

Oh, he would take me with him on occasion when he drove around on Sunday afternoons to look at how the crops were doing. He would be looking though, and not in the mood for talking to me. But he might see a man he knew, and he would pull in and talk to him for an hour while I fidgeted in the car. Those were hardly father-son outings designed to “red-line the old fun meter.” I think they were generated by my sainted mother who needed a break.

This one time, though, wasn’t like that, not at all. He suddenly, late one afternoon, and it was on a weekday—a Thursday if I remember right—up and asked me if I’d like to go and see a baseball game. “A baseball game?” I said. “Boy hidee, yes I would!” I was eleven years old and life couldn’t have taken a better turn, absent meeting Roy Rogers in person, maybe.

Whatever possessed him I’ll never know, but it wasn’t long before he and I were headed uptown to Taylor Field, over on the East-side where the “Pine Bluff Judges” played.

See, back in those days, even small towns like ours, (population 37,162 when I graduated from high school and don’t ask why I remember that) had farm teams from the major leagues. Ours was, of course, associated with the St. Louis Cardinals. They played in what was called “The Cotton States League.”

We went that night and wouldn’t you know it, I don’t think we saw a play. Before we arrived, the manager, a man named Frank Lucchesi, was hit by a ball and the play was delayed. He recovered and later went on to a long career with the majors. Read about him here.

Anyway, it was going to be late before play resumed, so we missed the action.

It didn’t matter. The atmosphere was both electric and addictive. I was about as thrilled as a young boy could be, absent meeting Sky King’s Penny in person, maybe. Our entire family became fans and regulars. We knew all the players. My heroes were catcher Dan Gatta and first-baseman Cliff Mansfield. We could stand behind the fence and talk to them in the bullpen. Neither made it to “The Dance,” but Gatta let me try on his catcher’s mitt one time, and Mansfield gave me a baseball before a game. I think my brother traded it away for something while I was off at college.

It doesn’t take much to create lasting memories.

Our lives expanded in other ways. We began to take trips to other cities in the League on Sundays, including: Meridian, MS, Monroe, LA, and Hot Springs and El Dorado within our own state.

I can remember the hubbub as one of the teams in the League put the first African-American on its roster. The “Judges” did the same a little later and I remember the crowd that showed up for his first appearance, just to stare—stare—nothing more.

They created a special section for the African-American fans, who flocked to witness this small stirring of equality. This helped extend the life of the League, but, in 1954, it succumbed to changes in American lifestyles, particularly the proliferation of home TVs. Sadly, it shut down for good. I remember local efforts to garner contributions and save the team. There was even a big poster of a thermometer in the window display of a downtown store (Froug’s maybe) showing the rise in dollars contributed against dollars need.

The capillary representing the dollars donated never reached the top. Too bad.

But I’ll never forget the pride I felt, as a young boy watching a baseball game on TV narrated by Dizzy Dean. Filling in time between innings, he read off a list of teams in the Cardinal organization, and where they were playing that night.

Would you believe that great, that immortal, man stated on national television that the Pine Bluff Judges of the Cotton States League would be playing in my home town that night? A city couldn’t get better publicity than that, now could it? I ran to tell my dad about it and he was as proud as I was.

Morning Thoughts: October 19, 2017

Do you remember what I had for lunch this past Monday? Neither do I. I was thinking about that yesterday morning while driving to a paying job. I still do a few in order to make a little extra money for silly things, like guitars lessons, Four Roses sipping whiskey, and good cigars.

I was wondering if they would pay me money if they knew that I couldn’t recall recent meals.

Ah, but I can remember other things. As I drove, my mind drifted off to December 29, 1966 when I awoke to my first day of Navy Boot Camp. It was one of the most awful days of my life. Of course, I knew what I signed up for.

Actually, I didn’t. I thought I had signed up for four years of sailing into exotic ports aboard one of my country’s most prestigious warships. I signed up for feeling the sea rolling beneath my feet and of my channeling a Joseph Conrad character. I signed up for shore leave among the glorious capitals of the free world, the museums, the art galleries the … uh … entertainment venues, and the classic building and ruins I had studied in college. I had even eschewed seeking officer training or service schools in order to “sail the seven seas,” so to speak.

In retribution for making plans without official authorization (MPWOA), the United States Navy sent my sorry ass straight to Vietnam to perform a task it didn’t even have a rating (same-same MOS) for, thus assuring no promotions for a year.  We were trained for a month as “rent-a-grunts,” by real grunts, flown over, handed a rifle, and sent out on towers, bunkers, or patrols to act as targets. So much for knowing what you signed up for.

Anyway, back to boot camp. After they woke us up that first day in a most undignified manner, they pointed to a blackboard. They told us that every day there would be a nautical term on that board and the first thing following “reveille,” we should memorize that term and that a fate worse than any that Dante himself could have imagined awaited the seaman recruit who failed, that entire day, to repeat that definition if requested by one of his keepers.

Memories were important to the Navy.

So, here I stand. I can’t remember Monday’s meal, or the last movie I saw, or even the name, on occasion, of a favorite author. I forget my wife’s birthday. I forget to take out the trash. I play hell remembering a password to any account I own. Heaven help me if the police ever ask me what I was doing on any particular night of the last month. I’d be toast, although I vaguely remember what toast is.

Oh, but want to know what that first nautical term was that I had to memorize nearly fifty years ago? It was “athwartship,” or at right angles to the fore and aft centerline of the ship. I can still see myself in newly-issued skivvies staring at that blackboard with the others and thinking “athwartship?”

I can even remember a recruit from Cumming Georgia named Durant turning to me and saying, “What’s a right angle?”

That’s what I had signed up for.

Where did I get lost?

Sailing To Oblivium: July 12, 2017

Sometimes visiting places from where your roots grew is like taking a calming dip in a pool of warm memories. It was for my sister, brother, and me yesterday.

We started out from our home place, a site much altered from our youth. It once contained a small country grocery store with a home attached to it. Our parents bought it and opened for business on January 1, 1940. They reared the three of us there. It disappeared long ago with all the other country stores. To date, no politician is promising to bring them back along with the employment they provided.

Driving south into what is lovingly referred to as “L.A.,” or Lower Arkansas, we passed a site where, in a small shack in 1918, a frail woman was struggling for her life after giving birth, somewhat prematurely, to her eighth child, a girl. The woman was so near death that the doctor laid the infant aside to die, and concentrated on saving the woman with, among another tools, Vick’s Salve, the WD-40 of the medical world at that time. It worked, lucky for us.

The woman was our grandmother and the infant was our mother. This, and much of our family history, was provided by her oldest sister, Hallie Harris Harden, the matriarch of our clan, and a character of great enjoyment until her death at near 100 years of age. I thought of her as we passed a small country church, for I remembered the time I was driving her around and she pointed at it and announced, “There’s where Jesus saved me from going to hell, and your Uncle Carl saved me from being an old maid.” I’m not sure about the timing of the first event but the second occurred when she was 15 years old.

Three years after my mother survived childbirth, her father died. My grandmother was left alone in a harsh rural environment with no means of support, and three young children in hand. Mother never talked much about those awful days except to relate the story of when the local church members acquired new curtains for its windows. My grandmother begged the castoffs from them and made underpants for the girls. My mother never forgot the day she fell on the playground and that embarrassing secret was revealed to a group of cruel schoolchildren. The horrible mask of poverty forms many faces.

Life goes on. Not long after, an older brother married the daughter of a widower whose wife had given birth to 13 children, and then died. The couple carried messages back and forth, and my grandmother ended up marrying the widower and caring for his children that were still at home. The son of one of those children is now Mayor of Mansfield, Arkansas and I see him from time to time. He never fails to say, almost with tears in his eyes, that my grandmother was the only grandmother he ever knew.

We visited the gravesites where our grandparents are buried, near their fathers—one a veteran of the Confederacy and the other of the Union. The unit of the latter saved my hometown, Pine Bluff, from a Rebel assault and the city erected a small monument to it. The obituary of the former stated that he was a “good man who never took part in any of the neighborhood brawls.” Don’t ask.

It was a good day. One final surprise caused me to chuckle. Now first understand, my sister started out in her professional life punching data cards for the state’s electrical utility in the basement of a building in Pine Bluff. She ended it in an office near the top of a high-rise office building in Little Rock running a major department for that same company. She is a serious person, and highly respected as a professional by her former colleagues. She is considered a good person by all, and I doubt she would ever take part in a neighborhood brawl, if they have those where she lives. Did I mention that she is a serious person? We lovingly call her “The General.”

Imagine my amusement when, as we passed over a railroad track near our old neighborhood, she began telling me how she and her girlfriends used to put bags on sticks, walk down those tracks, and pretend they were hoboes. What an image. Times reserved for memories are full of surprises like that.

Overall, the day ended on a happy note to be filed in the “Ps” under “pleasant.”

But … my sister a hobo? That still cracks me up. It really does.

Traveling Companions

Memories of a Drive

As I mentioned, I drove south on I-30 this week to Texarkana AR, past Malvern, Arkadelphia, Gurdon, and Hope, all other cities I have worked for over the years. There were times I made the trip weekly. There’s a spot between Malvern and Arkadelphia where the lanes split and form an interesting view. It always reminds me of the trip I made on my first day of work after my mother died. I recall the feeling I had that day. Why did all this running around trying to be successful seem so important when it really wasn’t? I still don’t have the answer but the question itself brings peace at times.

I also remember some of those with whom I had the pleasure of working with over the years. One of the most memorable was Mike Kelly, who owned a dress shop in Hope and ran the local housing authority. He was a man of short stature offset by a huge heart. He and his wife Marguerite never had children, but sort of adopted the city as their child.

Mike was a devout Catholic and his wife an equally devout Methodist. How did that work out? “On Sunday mornings, we went our separate ways, she hers and me mine. And we never spoke of it.”

Until Marguerite died, and later when Mike took sick, they had not missed a Razorback football game since 1947—anywhere. I picked up her brother in Little Rock and drove him to Hope for her funeral and he disclosed the most amazing thing, Marguerite didn’t like football at all. She followed because she loved Mike.

I pity our country when we stop producing people like that.