Retribution

Sometimes I wonder if, in some bizarre case of cosmic retribution, America isn't getting what she deserves.

In my lifetime, I’ve seen us allow the tragic effects of the Jim Crow bigotry to exert catastrophe after catastrophe upon the lives of decent Americans.

I’ve seen (been victimized myself) us invade a country that had done us no discernable harm and wage a seemingly never-ending war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. For nothing.

I’ve seen us wage wars for profit that have de-stabilized large segments of the planet.

I’ve seen us make great strides in destroying the planet that succors us. Signs suggest that the next few months threaten a drought that might make water more precious than diamonds.

And now we choose to be ruled by international oligarchs using a mindset similar to what ruled the American South in 1861. They want to take over and rule us our country that once held such promise.

And they are doing a damned good job of it.

Coincidences?

Maybe. Or maybe there is a great spirit in the sky observing and controlling our destinies. If so, I’m guessing she’s pretty put out with us.

War Games

Sundown in zion

Chapter forty

            “Permission granted to come aboard,” Sheriff Love said as Nelson entered his office Monday morning. “Which Gideon Nelson do we have the honor of seeing today: avenging angel, secret agent, horny sailor, or dedicated deputy?”

            Nelson laughed and pretended to think as he took his seat. “Maybe a little of each,” he said. “And what Sheriff Love do we have: jaded politician, former marine, star crime-fighter, or benevolent boss?”

            “Just a tired old asshole,” the Sheriff said, “but I have something for you.” Nelson looked surprised as the sheriff opened a side drawer in his desk and retrieved a small white box. “Here,” he said, pitching it to Nelson. “Never let it be said that I wasn’t willing to spend money on you.”

            Nelson opened the box to find and slid out an inner one filled with small cards. He fingered one from the pack, slid it out, held it before his face and read, “Gideon Nelson, Special Deputy.” The address of the Sheriff’s Office and phone numbers followed. He looked at Sheriff Love, his face registering a question.

            “Nice to leave around with folks,” the sheriff said. “Just in case they remember something they may have neglected to tell you.” He leaned backward in his chair and smiled. “Now please tell me you know things.”

            “I know things,” Nelson said, closing the box and placing it on his lap. He proceeded to relate the results of his efforts of the previous week, including the news on Clifton Sikes. “And the rest of the weekend was devoted to personal things. Don’t ask.”

            “I know they didn’t include your most fervent admirer in Armistead,” he said. “I saw her at noon yesterday, dining alone in the Cotton Bowl. Her chin was hanging so low that you could have cleared a minefield with it. The rest of her looked shipshape, though.” He stared into space. “Shipshape.”

            “As long as we’re using military analogies,” Nelson said, ignoring the message behind the Sheriff’s comment, “maybe we should talk war.”

            “I’ve fought mine,” the sheriff said. “Let these entitlement-laden assholes take care of the next one. It would do them good—might make them think twice before they vote.”

            “No doubt,” Nelson said, “but I’m talking about using military tactics to aid in our local crime fighting endeavors.”

            “You have my attention,” the sheriff said.

            “Things are too quiet and bottled up right now,” Nelson said. “Maybe we need to shake things up a bit … disrupt the homeostasis … make the rats run out from their hiding places.”

            The sheriff leaned back and thought. Then he leaned forward, opened his top desk drawer, withdrew a toothpick, placed it in his mouth and leaned back again. After another moment’s thought, he withdrew the toothpick and said in a slow voice, “If, by that, you mean let’s fuck with the bad guys, I’m all for it.”

            “That’s exactly what I mean,” Nelson said. “Any ideas?”

            Sheriff Gladson Love moved mentally back into battle fatigues, wilting heat, and the sour smell of rotting jungle. He nodded his head. “I don’t suppose,” he said, “that you ever did this, because you guys don’t stay in one place that long. But after we had been pretty much surrounded long enough, we jarheads tried a technique sent down from topside and borrowed from army airborne.”

            “Army airborne?”

            “A little thing called ‘mad-minute,’ designed to keep our foes off balance while we were encamped.”

            “And it worked how?”

            “We only practiced it when they knew where we were dug in and it wouldn’t have given away our position. At a secret time, between sunset and sunrise, usually on the mid-watch, the entire garrison would suddenly open fire on the jungle and maintain it for a full minute, supposedly keeping our enemy in a state of honest apprehension.”

            “Did it work?”

            “Does anything that the military thinks up ever work?”

            “Only when they seek the input of those who must actually carry out the mission,” Nelson said. “Tragically, they are almost always to hell and gone from the Pentagon.”

            “You are unusually perceptive for a sailor.”

            “So the mad-minute was a failure?”

            “It woke us all up.” The sheriff looked away to some distant place. “‘It worked once, sort of. The company commander had it set for 0137, after a new watch had been on for a while. There was this new kid in the company. Just been in-country for a couple of weeks. They “choppered” him out to our unit the day before. We had set listening posts that night, but had notified them to ease back into the perimeter in time to enjoy the fireworks ... all except for the new kid. We totally forgot about him. When we started firing, he panicked, and instead of flattening out on the ground, he started firing too. All anyone could see was his muzzle flash. We had no way of knowing the direction of fire.”

He paused and it took over a minute to compose himself. “We stopped counting the bullet holes in him next morning at 32. Seems he panicked after the first couple nicked him and started running back toward the compound.” He sniffed once, then again. “Nobody else wanted to know who he was, and the name on his blouse was obliterated. But I looked at his dog tags. Later, I found his name on the wall in Washington,” he said. “They didn’t put an asterisk after his name. I’m glad to say.”

“I’m a little confused,” Nelson said. “You say the technique didn’t work but you sounded just now as if you wanted to try it.”

“Just because something hasn’t worked doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea,” the sheriff said. “We’re not surrounded here, where all you can do is wait to see what happens. In fact, we should be the aggressors. Besides, there isn’t a bad guy in Armistead County who is as smart as the average NVA warrior.”

Nelson put a finger to his cheek and nodded in thought. So?”

“I’ll call some of those punks from that church in Connorville in and lay down some harassing fire,” he said. “You start spreading some bullshit. That’s something sailors are good at.” He smiled. “In the meantime, I’ll ask old Weasel, that police chief in Connorville, if he can be prepared to join us an a large-scale joint operation, but that I can’t tell him yet what it is. That will spread like a cosmic shit-storm. And don’t you have some suck with the press around here? Oh, and we’ll sweat a few meth-heads for good measure. We’ll do it all at once and see what happens.”

“That reminds me,” Nelson said. “Is meth a big problem around here?”

“Meth is a big problem in every rural county in America,” the sheriff said. “Ours seems to be centralized around the south-central part of the county. I’d love to take a look inside that so-called ‘hunting-club’ the gun nuts hang out at.”

“Is that the one where the Soul Warriors go?’

“The very one,” the sheriff said. “I just can’t get anything on it to justify a search warrant.”

“Did they build it?”

“Oh hell no. They don’t build things. They just destroy things, by shooting them. A bunch of rich men in Connorville built the club. Used to go there and gamble, drink, and run in whores. About 15 years ago the wives got agitated about it when one of them brought it up at the country club only to find out they were all equally pissed.”

“So they made their husbands sell it?”

            “Better than that. They ‘borrowed’ a trailer one night, one used to transport a diesel tank—most of the men were farmers, you know, and had all kinds of equipment.  They, the women, loaded on several five-gallon buckets of oil along with the diesel, then hauled it all over to a big wooden bridge on the only road into or out of the club. Got there about two o’clock in the morning.”

            “I think I see where this is going,” Nelson said.

            “They say you could see the flames all the way to North Little Rock,” Nelson said. “Took them three days to boat the last asshole out. Some of the whores may still be there as far as I know. Like I say, I can’t get a search warrant.”

            “They sold it then?”

            “Transferred the ownership to some legal entity or other. I think they lease it to this new breed of assholes.”

            “Did they replace the bridge?”

            “Oh yes. You can still get in right from the state highway, if you have a key to the gate.”

            “I thought the entrance was from a county road.”

            “That’s the new entrance,” the sheriff said. “They just keep the old one for an escape route, in my opinion.”

            “So meth is a problem and you think the hunting club is connected.”

            “Wouldn’t be surprised, but meth isn’t our only problem.” He smiled.

            “Oh?”

            “No. ‘Stuff’ causes us a lot of problems.”

            Nelson looked confused. “Stuff?”

            “Stuff … poontang, pussy, trim, cooter, snatch …”

            “Stop,” Nelson said. “I get the picture.”

            “Hiding the salami,” the sheriff said. He then yelled toward the closed door. “Now get back to work, Miss Manners, before I include some of your favorites.”

            There was a rustle from beyond the door. “Stuff,” the sheriff said, “The destroyer of kingdoms, fortunes, and power, plus the downfall of weak-willed men throughout history. Five of our last six murders were over stuff, including the man whose wife burned him alive in a house trailer, along with his girlfriend, a quality-checker from the ammo plant out on the Interstate. That’s where they both worked. She had been filching samples for some time and bringing them home. She had hidden them under her bed, so we had to wait until they quit going off before even attempting a rescue. By then they had both been plugged numerous times. It nearly drove the medical examiner crazy.” He shook his head. “Stuff,” he said. “The defense attorney got the wife off by claiming there would only have been minor burns without the accidental discharge of all that fire power.”

            Sheriff Love started scratching notes on a pad. After a moment, he looked up. “But I interrupted you. Why did you ask about meth?”-

            “I’m not supposed to know about this, much less repeat it, but I have it on good authority that the punk who killed himself driving too fast the other say had all sorts of meth traces on him?’

            “As in high on it?”

            “No, that’s the odd part. Just in his clothes.”

            “Like he had been involved in production?”

            ‘Big time.”

            “Holy hymn book,” the sheriff said. “When I get that report, I may be one step closer to a search warrant. That might be where the ephedrine is stored.”

            “The what?”

            “Ephedrine, actually pseudoephedrine, a main ingredient of both cough medication and methamphetamine, but highly regulated now. We can’t seem to find out where they are getting and storing it. Our federal friends are helping but they are stumped too.”

            Nelson was silent.

            “But,” the sheriff said. “Drugs are my problem, and I don’t have enough money to make you work on that problem for free, too.” He leaned back and smiled a broad smile, his dark eyes dancing. “’Anyway,” he said, “I’ve already wasted your time getting you off balance with a tirade about the dangers of stuff.”

            “Quite the contrary,” Nelson said. “And, as a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking about the same subject myself. What say we go stir up some shit?”

 

Don't get me started ...

It never seems to stop. Some days just make me sad. Rainy days make me think of sitting on a bunker with an M-16 on my lap, staring at the jungle during a steady downpour that has gone on for more than a week.

They make me think of the young Navy Corpsmen in a wrinkled, soiled uniform, but with a chest full of ribbons, sitting alone on a bench at the Da Nang airbase, waiting to go home but staring into space with vacant eyes, unable to talk, and I remember wondering how long it might be before the demons left him

They make me think of how we, I and the guys on the plane with me, thought we had survived it all when we first saw nothing but the South China Sea below us. How we did clap and cheer.

They make me think of maybe a fourth of my comrades on that plane who would be denied, because of the color of their skin, the basic dignities of life when they disembarked onto American soil, and how not a few of my brothers and sisters would be hated and harmed, even until today, because of the body nature provided them.

They make me think of the woman in the San Bernardino airport who shielded her young child from me when she saw the service ribbons on my uniform.

They make me think of the personnel manager at the telephone company office in my home town, where I had filled out an employment application just to pass the time, telling me that the telephone company didn’t need veterans. It needed smart young grads.

They make me think of the “liberal” woman at a party years later who, when a friend told her that I was Vietnam Veteran, looked me over and said, “You don’t seem crazy like the rest of them.”

They make me think of how many movies, even still, include the ubiquitous character of a dope-fiend sociopath stalking the innocent because of his military service in that long-ago war.

They make me think of how those of us who thought we had survived, now a half-century later, awake each morning knowing that we may be carrying a final liability foisted upon us back then by people who thought we could kill more of their enemies if jungle hiding places became defoliated. As our former colleagues die or become disabled, one by one, we think more and more about the idiocy of war.

They make me think of the draft-dodging sons-of-bitches who would send young men and women to war, then say that it’s not worth taxing the immeasurably rich to provide care for the poor and the poor in spirit, many of my comrades among them.

They make me think of the sorry bastards who mock those comrades in public.

Finally, they just make me think, and wonder, that’s all. It places a sadness in my heart for all those who served and then become forgotten. I’ll get over it, if the ancient seeds planted by evil men don’t get me first.

A Need For Healing

What amazes me about the current state of our country is not the hatred. White Americans have hated Native Americans since the Vikings banged ashore. White Americans have hated black and brown Americans since they first found they couldn’t exist without them. White politicians have hated since they first found that hatred produces votes. Others just find hatred sexually arousing and a good substitute for performance.

No, what amazes me is deeper than that, much deeper. I know folks who normally appear as those whom the Galilean would call his “brothers and sisters in grace.” They are kind, generous, delightful to talk to, pleasant in all outward aspects and ready to help with the flash of an eye. They can even quote scriptures with ease, particularly the “letters” or the Old Testament. Unashamedly, they specialize in “thoughts and prayers.”

Then, they click on social media. The Galilean weeps.

They post the most hateful, vicious, hideously false, divisive messages that one can imagine. Stuff, much of which must emanate from the Russian Meme Factory, as hideous as one can imagine. Posts that aren’t intended to express a debatable idea, but only to guarantee their hatred bona fides, much of it directed at those whom the Galilean loved the most.

What is wrong here?

I don’t think they are bad people in general. Rather, I think it simply indicates that, somewhere, there is an abscess on their soul. Let us all hope (or pray if we choose) for a great healing. That would make the Galilean smile.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 38 (Cont._4)

Here is what happened with regard to our company’s first development project, a charming subdivision in a thriving community. It started out well, four lots pre-claimed. We couldn’t sell lots until the Final Plat gained approval, signifying that we had completed all improvements. Ron McConnel and I went down of a Saturday morning and secured a sign to a timber wall at the entrance, announcing Wellington Heights. All appeared ready.

The city planning commission approved the plats and final closings took place on four lots, only 40 more or so to go and we would be in the pink. Interest was high. Building materials appeared on two of the lots. This would be the finest small subdivision in south Arkansas.

Then in happened. An African-American family purchased the fifth lot. The man worked for the local railroad line, a good job that assured his ability to pay for the lot and finance a nice home. Somehow word of the purchase got out, no doubt passed around by a local competitor.

Next day, four “For Sale” signs went up. Did I mention that this was south Arkansas? Everything stopped. Realtors in the area quit accepting phone calls or answering messages. The subdivision sat as deserted as a Jewish cemetery in Nazi Germany. We sat as dumbstruck as a deserted lover. What happened?

We didn’t know. There was some talk of sabotage by local developers. There were some snickers from those who knew secrets of land development of which we were unaware. Some hinted at a plot by a local advocacy group seeking to “universalize” human rights. What cheek.

The truth? I’ve always believed that it was an honest effort by an honest man to provide a decent home in a decent location for his family in a land, and at a time, that we didn’t tolerate such presumption.

Perhaps the man had survived the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, and felt that entitled him to respect.

Perhaps he had led an honest and productive life and felt that earned him a place in society.

Perhaps he just felt that his god blessed all people equally.

I never knew. The entire operation went into “top-secret mode” at that point and little news filtered down. What I did know was that no further action occurred in the subdivision until much later when the development was sold to a group of local African-American business men for pennies on the dollar. The financiers of the development absorbed the loss, and life moved on.

At home, I contended with my own struggles, albeit small ones. I was learning. One thing was that heaven help the man who woke my young “trophy-wife” up of a Saturday morning while she was enjoying her day off by sleeping late. Brenda looked like the very picture of a modern precious angel as she enjoyed her leisure moments. I knew though, from my brief experience, that her fractious sister Brendhilda lurked ever so slightly beneath that angelic face. She was, no doubt, ready to pounce upon the perpetrator of the slightest transgression.

One can imagine, therefore, my consternation when I slipped out of bed one Saturday morning to go into work to address a deadline that beckoned like a child needing a visit to the toilet. With a change of clothes in hand, I quietly entered the small bathroom in our apartment to witness a sight I had never, even the darkest days of my military service, encountered. There, hanging across the shower rod was a still damp pair of pantyhose.

What was a man to do? I chose circumspection and prudence. I needed to prepare for work, but feared unauthorized tampering. Seeking guidance was out of the question. Following a Methodist rather than Baptist approach, I chose sprinkling over full immersion and left the dangling garment in place to be attended later by the adult of the family.

After leaving a note, off to work I went, as refreshed as common sense allowed. On the way, I told myself that I was learning a lot about the world that might come in handy in the future.

And it did.

"Lord help the mister,
Who comes between me
And my sister." - Irving Berlin

My Redacted Life: Chapter 38 (Cont._3)

We started looking in earnest for a house a month or so after we married. We had advantages, of course, being Caucasian. Also, the GI Bill offered me a lowered interest rate and a no-down payment loan. Friends gave us a lot of advice, some good and some bad. One said, “buy more house than you can afford and you’ll grow into it as your income rises. That sounded to me like the cowboy who bought a horse he couldn’t ride because it might quit bucking someday.

The best advice simply said buy the least expensive home in a stable and popular location. The value of the more expensive homes will exert an upward influence on the value of yours. Also, buy a home you could conceivably pay for with one salary. Life is unpredictable. Some advice is ageless.

The generation before us had settled, when the war ended, for modest frame homes, some no larger than 800 square feet. Their sons and daughters would settle for no less than a three-bedroom, two-bath, brick structure as a “starter home.” That was to be one of many differences between the so-called “Greatest Generation,” and the Baby Boomers.

It also confounded the “trickle-down” theory taught for so long in planning schools. The older generation was supposed to move from their “starter homes” into more expensive ones, freeing cheaper units for purchase by the younger set. It didn’t quite work out that way. Nobody wanted the cheaper houses and they quickly converted to rental properties, with no provision for upkeep.

The only thing that trickled down was rain flowing through rotted roofs.

About this time in America, the purchase of a home began to represent, for many families, the best way of amassing wealth. This would require a steady rise in housing values over decades, much like a company’s stock that never stopped rising. It would also generate substantial benefits for homeowners that didn’t accrue to renters. We had no idea at the time how much this trend would change our country.

My non-white comrades who had served alongside me in the military faced different challenges in taking advantages of the GI Bill’s housing benefits. They faced few choices in housing location at that time. An urban renewal project in Little Rock had cleared a slum neighborhood and converted it into a spacious subdivision of mini-mansions for the wealthy and elite African-American families: physicians, attorneys, business owners, and, once, a star of the Harlem Globetrotters.

Less affluent brothers and sisters were relegated to racially acceptable neighborhoods. One can easily understand what that meant.

There wasn’t anything equitable about it. That’s just the way things were. Life rolled on. We, as a family, were about to take advantage of the inequity. We, as a company, were about to learn how rocky the underlying racial prejudice in our country could make the road of life. At the time, we were foolish enough to think that prejudice might dissipate someday, become gone with the wind, so to speak. The most wondrous dreams can sometimes be the most foolish.

We plan on buying a house.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 32 (Cont._4)

With marriage looming, we began to consider finances carefully. The state begrudgingly paid teachers around $400 to $500 per month, some two to three thousand a month less than the school superintendent in Little Rock paid his secretary, A distant dream was to purchase a house after we were married. Wasn’t that what a young married couple was supposed to do?

We began, based on our anticipated income, to determine how much house we could afford. The answer was staggering. Millionaires, my father insisted, lived in $20,000 homes and only the sorriest wastrels lived in homes built entirely by someone else. People in the know said “Buy a little more house than you could afford and, as your income increased, you would “grow into it.”

I’ve thought about this a lot since. Back then, I just fretted about it.

At the same time, I was dealing with the financial condition of our cities. They faced a different set of problems. A young couple running short of money could always work harder or get a higher paying job. Cities faced a finite revenue source. Property taxes paid a paltry amount of fees and revenue streams from utilities paid some. State turnback from fuel taxes helped with streets. As mentioned in an earlier segment, places like Conway Country, Arkansas, produced funds from their speed trap enterprises. How much of those funds went to pay for public services is anybody’s guess.

Cities relied on two or three sources for large capital projects. They are allowed to issue General Obligation bonds based on a defined increase in property taxes as the source of payment. Utility revenue streams could also create projects to be undertaken through bond issues. Then there were massive grant programs through the federal government for specified categories of projects. Local sales tax options were years away.

Cities managed somehow. Plans were based on predicted growth patterns. Oddly, predictions almost always matched the population needed to create enough revenue to carry out the plan or to fund an individual project. Fancy methods of prediction used birth rates, death rates, migration patterns, and the ability of specific cohorts to propagate. Nobody really understood the methodology. I suppose that was the intent.

Sadly, there would be only one major generator of population growth or decline among our cities in the coming years. Like an earth tremor awakening a sleeping monster, the cause was slowly winding through the federal court system on its way to the Supreme Court. It would have very little to do with quality of life, economic development, public administration, or good planning.

It would have everything to do with which way school buses ran.

I couldn't help but wonder
where this was all headed.

My Redacted Life

Next day, a Sunday, would become one of the most memorable in my life. It’s funny how some of the little things in life can do that to you. Perhaps by now, the Redhead and I were becoming a number. My neighbor caught me Sunday morning early coming from the dumpster.

“I guess she found out where you had been,” she said. I didn’t tell her that the flip-flops she wore didn’t match. She stood in her doorway attempting a seductive image and I didn’t want to spoil it for her.

“Yeah,” I said. “I told her I was out of town working.”

She said, “I told her I thought you had reenlisted.” She laughed. “I think she believed me for a while. Got real upset. What y’all got on for today? Church and then a pot luck?”

“Thought we’d ride out and maybe take some photographs,” I said.

“Nudes?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”

“Just looking for something to print the in Daily Tattler,” she said. She closed the screen and faded back inside. I saw her later and she still hadn’t figured out that her shoes didn’t match.

Meanwhile, we, Brenda and I, went for coffee at the Burger Chef. She was casually dressed in jeans and a yellow pullover, the yellow setting off her hair perfectly, I thought. It was mid-May and she was counting the weeks until school started. She said it would be at the end of August and she wasn’t happy about it. Since her thoughts made her grouchy, I sought to change the subject.

“Let’s go for a ride,” I said. “I’ll pack us some wine and stuff and maybe we can find a place for a picnic.”

“A picnic? You mean like on the ground? With all the creepy-crawly things and animal crap?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Let’s eat here and just go for a ride.”

We did. After crossing the Arkansas River, we turned east through North Little Rock and followed Broadway. She pointed out the western store B.F. Smith and Sons, where her father had outfitted her for riding horses. I pointed out Fischer’s Restaurant where the bus carrying Elvis Presley and his fellow recruits had stopped for lunch on their way to Fort Chafee and the United States Army. We noted an old sign, still standing, that had fronted a “Colored Motel,” back in older times.

We enjoyed ourselves. Somehow entertainment is both simpler and sweeter when you are falling in love.

We passed Hill’s Lake and continued toward Lonoke. She pointed out where one would turn to go to her childhood home. “It’s a gravel road or I’d show you,” she said. That was a relief to me. I was still a little apprehensive about things.

Instead, she directed me through the city to the north through the center of the town, which was a pretty place, with massive oaks shading the streets. We passed what appeared to be a public swimming pool, but maybe not. The kids enjoying the pool were all white, while young black kids hung on the tall chain-link fence watching.

When I asked about it, she reddened. “It was a public pool until it appeared they would have to integrate it. Then somebody thought it would be a great idea to sell it to the Optimist Club. It’s a private pool now and let’s, please, not talk about it.”

We didn’t. She directed me like a trained tour guide and soon we were well out of town. Some ten miles or so to the north, she pointed me east onto a narrow state highway. “This is where my mother was raised, she said, pointing south toward Lonoke as we passed small graveled lane. “Down at the end of the lane.” Then, “Turn here.”

She directed me down a well-maintained county road maybe half-a-mile or so before having me pull over to the left and stop before a metal gate. “Daddy rents this place for pasture,” she said, adding, “And he keeps some of his cows here.” She looked to me. “Want to see them?”

What could I say? She bounded from the car, loosened a chain holding the gate, swung it open and motioned me through. Then she closed and chained the gate.

The Farmer's Daughter

She directed me along a barely visible drive past a vacant farmhouse. We then wound around fence rows as she told me that the property belonged to families that had once lived here but had all moved away. “Through that gap,” she said, interrupting the history lesson.

We entered a large open field with a stock pond in its southwestern corner. A small herd of cattle and a pinto pony stood near it. “Get out," she directed. I obeyed. She took my hand and we walked the field, dodging manure piles as she told me details about the raising of cattle. She told how much her father loved it because he didn’t have to share any money gained from it with his family as he did with the row crops.

I had her stand beside a rustic section of fence and took her photograph.

We must have lost track of time. Before we reached the pond, we turned to see a white pickup truck bouncing across the field toward the Porsche. “That’s my daddy,” she said. “He’s going to beat you up for being in his pasture.”

Wasn’t that nice?

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.

My Redacted Live: Chapter Nine (Cont._4)

In 1971, the Great Society Program was drawing to a close. It marked the end of a massive effort to address America’s problems with money. Some would say it was a great failure. Some would say it was a great but errant humanitarian effort to help the “least of those among us.”

A Truman-era bureaucrat named Rufus Miles perhaps stated it best in an observation that would become known as Miles’s Law: “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” The poor are just poor, some would argue, nothing we can do about it. They deserve it. Over the years, though, I would find that it is easy to denounce our poor “from a warm room on a full stomach,” as Alistair Cook described the source of H.L. Mencken’s acerbic writing.

At any rate, I was learning to write grants. This is a procedure, as best I can describe it, that involves a highly sophisticated and literary begging technique. The trick isn’t to procure funds for a need, but to convince the dispensers of succor that history would judge them wise and proper for the grants they chose to issue.

At any rate, it would send me into some of the poorest and neediest neighborhoods in our state. I would spend many an evening in a small, white frame church building in the middle of an Arkansas Delta summer. There would be no air-conditioning and the mosquitoes would be flying through open windows in formation, like squadrons of the 8^th Air Force over Berlin. From time to time, one would accidentally hit the makeshift podium and knock in over. You had to watch out for them. There is a legend that one once carried off a baby, but I don’t think this is true. I heard it was just a small puppy.

Amway, I would be the only white face in the crowd of earnest folks in desperate need of a source of clean water or some other human need. It would be one of many communities in our state that history was passing over in the new age.

You can’t see those places from the towers of Manhattan or the fancy homes in Georgetown.

I was good at begging, and I was getting better at writing, so I enjoyed some success. I was still hitching rides to planning commission meetings with one or the other of my bosses. On free evenings, I was enjoying myself, mostly reading or picking guitar. Then there was my sometime friend Jackie with her wonderful singing voice and other special benefits.

Oh, and speaking of music, I was becoming a regular at the folk music gathering I mentioned before. This was the group called “The Rackensack Society,” a diverse group of amateur musicians ranging in quality from beginner to near-professional quality. They formed a jolly, welcoming, gracious group. After a few meetings, I even noticed something that struck me as strange.

Some background: There is a large Air Force base in Jacksonville, Arkansas, oddly named “The Little Rock Air Force Base.” There is an enduring legend that the state of Arkansas agreed to adopting modern city planning statutes only as a condition for its location, but that is a story for another day.

What struck me strange back then was that several airmen from that military base were regulars at the Rackensack meetings and that the other members welcomed them and treated them as equals.

Now one may wonder why I thought it strange that a social group of citizens would welcome military personnel into their midst. Just consider my background, particularly the fact that I spent the last portion of my enlistment at Charleston, South Carolina. Had I tried to join a social group there, I would have likely faced the wrath of the local police who hated African-Americans, servicemen, and non-tourist strangers in almost equal portions.

I was living in a new world and I was enjoying it. I had a good job, I felt I was doing some good things, I was making new friends, and Little Rock was a hell of a lot better place to live than Charleston.

I’ll get to the new friends later.  

Cool ... or what?

Growing Up Southern: January 6, 2018

There are things that we detest as adults because of childhood experiences, even though others love that very thing. I know. Believe me.

For example, I know someone from a wealthy family in a small town whose father made his children work a garden each year so folks could see that even kids born to comfort knew how to work. As adult, this individual wouldn’t have lifted a spade or planted a seed for anything in the world.

With me, it is wood. I mentioned before that my father sold fire-wood in addition to operating, along with my sainted mother, a small country grocery store. I may have made it sound like I enjoyed the loading of wood, along with driving around delivering and unloading it. It wasn’t too bad. I had much rather have been enjoying a game of “work-up” with my pals, but, since I had no choice in the matter, I made the best of it.

It wasn’t the hauling of firewood to poor folks that turned me away from the experience. It was just the opposite.

Once a year, you see, at Christmas time, my father would purchase loads of what we called “fireplace wood,” i.e. split logs suitable for use in rich folks’ fireplaces. All that had to be done was to load it, deliver it, unload it and stack it in a picturesque fashion for retrieval by some doctor, lawyer, banker, or, in one instance, the Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court whose daughter was among the most beautiful and adored girls of her class. Believe me. I know.

I would be during Christmas break as a pre-teen that my life would change. As I say, the wood was already split and cut to size. Daddy had a group of men, among them Amos Fletcher, Roedock Tiggins, and John Nathaniel who worked on occasion for him. John was slightly disabled as the result of an untimely glance at a young girl walking down Highway 15 while he was operating a saw, but they were all good men who tolerated me when in their presence while, I’m sure, bemoaning, in private, the fact that we occupied the planet simultaneously.

Anyway. The wood is loaded. The truck is ready. The hired-hands are in place. Things are in place for delivery of the wood to the wealthiest families in Pine Bluff. Where, you might ask, did I fit in? There were strong, grown men ready, willing, and able to do the job. I’m sure they would have found my help more of a nuisance than a benefit. My father trusted them implicitly.

It was simple, you see. None of them could read. Further, strange “colored” men talking to white people whom they didn’t know in those days was fraught with potential dangers. That’s where I came in.

It was my job to act as a 1950s version of a GPS system, and minor jefe. I was to find the addresses of our rich patrons, arrange the unloading, help with the unloading, and arrange an inspection when the work was all done. This I did while hoping to whatever gods might be that the patrons’ daughters, who were my classmates in another life, didn’t come out to take the air and ask me how I was enjoying the Christmas break.

Often, they did.

I think back about it and realize that I learned a lesson from all this. That lesson was that one should never be ashamed to be found in the presence or company of honest men who work for a living against greater odds than I could ever imagine. It is a lesson that I hope has molded my life for the better. It certainly is a lesson that taught me the benefits of my race, sex, upbringing, and social status, none of which I did a thing to deserve but which gave me a huge step up in life. I can only hope that somehow it helped me to understand that folks are “… not to be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Yes, it was a lesson well worth the learning.

I still don’t care to own a fireplace, though.

All things considered, I would have rather
been practicing climbing, or torturing
farm animals with pals Boogie Shannon
and Jim Fletcher, son of Amos.

Thoughts on a career: January 4, 2018

With my youthful demeanor and immature behavior, you’ll find this hard to believe, but on this day 46 years ago, I entered my profession. I had, somehow, landed a job with an urban planning consulting firm straight out of the military. Geez, I had hit the big time. Or so I thought.

The first planning commission I ever attended was in Hope, Arkansas, a fine community in Southwest Arkansas, the birthplace of President Bill Clinton. Last year, I attended a city board meeting in that very room. The furniture was arranged differently, but it was pretty much the same place. Tempus fugit and all that

Back in the day, planning commissioners all looked like me. That is to say they were all old fat white men. Lots of changes have occurred since that meeting in Hope. Along the line, African-American men and white women appeared on planning commissions, not in proportion to the local population, however. These days, African-American women and persons of Hispanic heritage are finding a place.

In one of those mental files I maintain under “interesting but I don’t know why,” I filed the fact that one saw African-American men appear first.

Those were interesting time. It was marking the end of the so-called “Great Society” era. That experience never achieved its lofty goals, to a large degree because too many important individuals and entities found that making war was either more profitable or more politically useful. I keep my thoughts about this in a file called “Tragedies.”

What the Great Society efforts did, in my observation, was to excite, like some charge applied to dormant electrons, a sense of social justice within a significant segment of the population. Leaders who staunchly declared there were no qualified minorities or women to fill upper-level jobs suddenly found some when they learned that the grant they sought required positive affirmative action.

Coupled with the monumentally heroic actions of people like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Lewis, the governmental emphasis on elevating those who were poor in spirit and who mourned, began, albeit slowly—and against much resistance—to loosen the stranglehold of the Jim Crow era.

Looking at urban plans from that era, one is struck by a sense of optimism, naïve perhaps, that we could wage a war-like crusade against bitter poverty and despair. Moreover, some whose grandparents had been counted as three-fifths human were themselves in positions to achieve, perhaps in their lifetimes, full citizenship.

What we didn’t know was that any action can have an opposite reaction. This emphasis on redressing past inequalities raised the hopes of some and soothed the consciences of others. For some, however, such progress only pushed racial hatred belowground. Like a monster from a 1950s sci-fi movie, it rested in dark, subterranean caverns, waiting for a catalyst, perhaps of nuclear strength, to open a path to the surface.

There was no nuclear-like source, just upheavals, one on top on one another. On April 20, 1971, the United States Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.

All hell broke loose, accompanied by a great “whooshing” sound as white parents fled cities whose school districts contained a significant black population. Racal composition became a significant element, in some cases the most significant element, in an area’s population growth.

Then a politician coined the term “silent majority,” as a code name for many who would see America return to the 1940s and 1950s, when African-American veterans, many who had been wounded in the service of their country, were denied equal access to the GI Bill. The term resonated with many who had become successful because they did receive full citizenship, but only credited their own hard work.

Next, a presidential hopeful chose to announce his candidacy in the Mississippi City in which three civil rights workers had been murdered for trying to register black voters. Seeing this as a message, the monsters began to slither upward. Recently, the Current Occupant declined to denounce the monsters' worst foot-soldiers, loosening them upon us with increased fury and confidence.

I don’t have to recount what else happened. But I’ve seen it all. My vantage point is from the courthouse square, an area often marked by vacant buildings and concrete slabs where buildings once stood. Retail business owners can’t afford political influence such as the coal industry can exert. I fear that they will disappear, in small-town America, in my lifetime.

And urban plans? They aren’t designed these days, in many cases, for optimism but for something called “branding,” whatever the hell that means. Many are simply drawings of how neighborhoods should look, a result that tells us much more about the personal tastes of the “planners,” than it does about the needs of the people who live within the city, either by choice or the restrictions placed upon them by a present emphasis on greed and selfishness.

Oh, and Hope, Arkansas? It’s managed today by a woman largely considered be one of the best city managers our state has ever produced.

I file that under “well, I’ll swan.”

Needing our love

Morning Thoughts: December 22, 2017

 It seems to me that, more and more, we’re doing it wrong, not only doing it wrong, but doing it dead wrong, and from the top down. I'm talking about achieving harmony. We’re never going to come back together as a nation until we fundamentally change our direction, or unless another country attacks us “Pearl Harbor” style. Oh, I guess the entire planet could be invaded by aliens. I doubt it. What would they want with us?

What happened was, I spent the early hours this morning reading about the psychology of racism. First, let me say that, having grown up rural Arkansas, I was raised to be as prejudiced against African-Americans as a person could be. For Jewish people, not so much. We knew a few, but not many. Catholics were fine, except they were all going to Hell of course. That’s back when they were called “Roman" Catholics, or “Catlicks.”

Yes, so-called “in-group bias” was imprinted within me as strongly as “follow Momma” is within a duckling. I have worked my whole life to overcome it, and hope that, in the final tally, it might be said that I was somewhat successful.

White people raised in the Jim Crow South will never overcome prejudice completely. Like any mythology-based belief, it is strong and lasting. That’s why I cringe when I hear one say, “I’m not prejudiced at all against blacks.” (Just a few years ago it was “coloreds”). Give me, anytime, the person who says, “I am prejudiced, but I work hard every day not to be.”

Where are we now? Each day, we are fed, at the highest levels of leadership and government, a diet of divisiveness with a hearty helping of hatred for anyone not in our group. That’s a stiff barrier to cross. Is there a solution? Perhaps.

Recently I read, for the first time, about the (apparently) famous “Robbers Cave Experiment” back in 1954. A large group of white teenage boys from a homogeneous background were involved in staged “camp” experiment in Oklahoma. They were divided into two groups, the Eagles and the Rattlers. They were then made to compete in games for scarce resources, i.e. trophies and rewards for the winning team but not for the losers. In a scenario straight from William Golding's Lord of the Flies, (published that same year, coincidentally) the groups established both cultural norms and enmity with one another. Fights and vandalism between camps soon appeared.

In the second phase, the two groups participated in achieving common goals, like pulling a stuck truck from the mud with the same rope previously used for “tug-of-war.”  After a few such exercises, guess what happened. Yep, the enmity disappeared, to be replaced by inter-group friendships. Harmony ruled the remainder of the experiment.

See a short documentary here.

I’m not sure the experiment would pass muster in this hyper-sensitive age, but it got my attention. Perhaps we could choose leaders that might take notice and act accordingly. That would be a good second step. The first would be to change ourselves.                                                                                                                                                                               

Look familiar?

Reconciliation: Day Six

No attempt at reconciliation could succeed without a discussion of the intemperate language that has pervaded our society. One must look no further than a typical comment-stream on You Tube to witness the degradation of our ability to discuss even the most sublime Mozart sonata without resorting, within ten exchanges, to “MFs,” and worse.

What has happened to us? I don’t know. In my youth, knowing adults used the word “prejudice” to warn us against pre-judging others without beginning to understand the issues behind their life. There were no outright power dynamics involved, but prejudice was filled with the subterranean seeds from which could grow a stronger and more active predilection: bigotry.

We were quick to replace the word “prejudice” with “bigotry,” which implies not only discriminatory thought but behavior as well. Thus, those who grew up with unfounded impressions suddenly became bigots. Would the trials of carrying a name eventually affect behavior? Maybe.

It got worse. Both terms were replaced by “racism,” or the use of power to retain power over others by whatever means necessary. Soon, the mildest expression of negative thought toward a person of a different background was termed racism, and the accusations continue to fly until this very day. Reconciliation was tossed into the same linguistic bonfire as understanding, civility, good manners, and friendly discussion.

Why bring this up? To me, prejudice is a condition that one can work on and stifle in its infancy. Perhaps the first step is an admission that it exists. Any time I hear someone deny that they are at all prejudiced, warning bells go off. To doubt a person fully would be an act of prejudice itself, but warning bells are warning bells and useful at times.

Following self-awareness, a second step might involve an attempt at understanding, and a comparison of backgrounds. It happened this way with me. One day I realized that there was no way in the world I could fully comprehend the effect on me had I heard a 16-year old call my 45-year old father “boy.” Nor could I comprehend how it must have felt to see any depiction of my race in the movies as a “happy domestic slave” or a shiftless, stumbling idiot. As someone once remarked, it wasn’t the fact that Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, better known by the stage name “Stepin Fetchit,” consistently portrayed lazy, shiftless black men. The real tragedy was that he was so good at it.

We remain stuck with our prejudices, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “… boats against the current.” I must fight the inclination to regard the uneducated as slow-witted, although my own father, with an 8^th-grade rural education could work algebraic equations in his head without ever having studied algebra. Then there was my father-in-law, blessed with a similar educational background, who could construct an entire house without ever making a mark upon a sheet of paper. My sainted mother read my college books, including Dostoyevsky, while I was visiting home.

The list goes on, and includes the self-taught technician who can stand ten feet away from a malfunctioning automobile engine and diagnose its problem. What a wondrous and diverse world we live in, if we only stop to observe it without pre-judging. (Oh, that pesky Galilean keeps interfering).

My own promise today is to work on my prejudices, and hope, beyond hope, that they never progress into bigotry or racism. That will keep me busy enough that I shouldn’t have time to think ill of you. It should also keep me away from comment threads. I’ll try. In the meantime, I’ll follow the advice of my long-time hero, who said:

On Streets and Highways

One day this week, while heading west on Little Rock’s Ninth Street from our (other) home on East Ninth, I was caught by the traffic signal at Ninth and Broadway. As I looked west, a vision grabbed me. It was that of a vibrant commercial area, as depicted on the recent PBS documentary, “Dreamland.” The vision lingered within me, both powerful and stimulating.

When it cleared, I saw a lonely pedestrian cross Ninth and turn west. She was the only living thing in sight. The light changed, and I turned to continue west. You can’t do that on Ninth Street anymore. Years ago, we ended it a few blocks down to make way for the Wilbur Mills Expressway.

Sometimes, in the darkest part of night, sleep escapes me and I am forced to spend time thinking. One of those thoughts I can’t express professionally as an urban planner. I’ll do it here, though, if no one will report me.

I’m not altogether sure that the decision to build the interstate highway system, in the manner we chose, didn’t create the single greatest negative impact on our cities in America’s history. Some say it was racial prejudice instead, and that poses an argument difficult to refute. Truth is, when combined, the two forces were horribly, and lastingly, destructive. Witness West Ninth Street.

Could we have built the system differently? Germany did. Could we have resisted the destruction? The City of Memphis did. Could we have invested more creatively in our cities? San Francisco did. Could we have thought about the future of our cities more humanely? Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford did.

Would, one will ask, alternatives have reduced our mobility, curtailed our opportunities for travel, and imprisoned us within a more defined geographic area? Most certainly. But, I’ve learned a great lesson as a result of being forced, by family responsibilities, to limit mobility and travel. There are wonderful results to such a situation.

It gives one a chance more fully to explore, what William Faulkner called “my own little postage stamp of native soil.”

It gives one a chance more fully to enjoy a relationship with family and friends that a frenetic chasing of “The American Dream” may have curtailed.

It gives one a chance more fully to establish ties with this wonderful planet we seem so hell-bent on destroying.

It doesn’t require the engineers to destroy more neighborhoods in order to accommodate the automobile.

Most of all, it gives one a chance to read, contemplate, listen/play music, converse, and visualize a better world.

I’m thankful for that. I, for one, have even quit using the interstate highway system, except as a last resort. It takes more time, but you see such things. Did you know, that just outside Hazen, Arkansas, is a building still standing that once was a music venue for many groups headed from Nashville to Dallas, and is reputed to have been the model for the country and western bar in the movie “The Blues Brothers?” You won’t see it from the interstate.

We won't see the likes of this again.
See the following story about Ninth Street.