Old friends

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Redacted Life: Chapter 19

Come Wednesday afternoon I wasn’t in a good mood. Things seemed to be a mini-second off two-four time, a typical “hump-day.”

At work, the engineer was showing his ass, to put it bluntly. He was insisting that we move our printing and supply trade to a company where a friend of his worked. This meant leaving the company where Bob French and Bob Wilson worked. If one remembers, these two had guided me through the trying days of multiple deadlines when I had only the scantest idea of what I was doing.

My protests escalated until my original bosses reminded me that the company had changed its name to that of the four owners. In fact, those names were now on the front door. They invited me to check, whereupon I would confirm that my name wasn’t included.

Message and smirk delivered simultaneously.

I walked over to see the two Bobs during the lunch hour. They understood. I was grateful but still aggravated at the thought that it might take me up to a month of careful deceit and treachery to straighten the mess out so we could return to normal. In actuality, it took only a week and a half. I was getting to be that good.

I saved two friendships and escaped any blame whatsoever.

But back to the Wednesday. I drove home with the intention of enjoying the last “two-fingers” of the single-malt my neighbor had given me. I carried a briefcase with me that my Sainted Mother had given me for Christmas. I didn’t plan to do any work, but a successful businessman carried a briefcase everywhere back in those days, even if one had to put a book in it to make it appear loaded.

Before leaving my parking spot at work, I had removed and stored the top of the car, expecting to tool around town later, the epitome of cool. When I arrived home, I parked facing away from the apartment building. Before I could move, the radio began to play the old Johnny Cash hit, written by Kris Kristofferson, “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” I sat and listened to it.

When it finished, I backed out of the Porsche like a crawdad, straightened up, did an “about face” and looked. There, standing like they were guarding the sacred fire in the shrine of Vesta, stood my neighbor, her sister, and the Redhead. They were lined up in formation, staring past me at the car.

All three were wearing jeans, but my neighbor had neglected to zip hers and a flash of pink underwear fought its way through. She spoke first, “Get us a new car, did we?”

“Nice,” her sister said.

“What in the world is that?” the Redhead said.

“It’s a mini-Porsche,” I said. “A 914.”

None of the three spoke. I suppose I became emboldened out of shear boredom. I looked at the three standing there like celestial judges and said, “Anyone want to take a ride?”

“Can’t,” my neighbor said. “Just had my hair done.” True, it looked like she had been hooked up to an electrical current.”

“Maybe next time,” her sister said. Then, as an afterthought, she flashed a grin. “Why don’t you take Brenda?”

Was I going to impress her,
or what?

I looked at the Redhead. She pursed her lips. “Maybe later.”

It was “in for a penny, in for a pound” time. “How much later?” I asked, startled inwardly at my spunk.

She looked at the horizon and thought. “Give me 20 minutes,” she said. “Just knock on the door.”

Oh … my … God.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Nine (Cont._2)

As 1971progressed at the consulting firms, life became somewhat normal. I recall some interesting vignettes, but the telling of them wouldn’t past the Political Correctness Police today.

For example, the assistant drafter was a quite attractive woman with a knockout figure and a bit of a strange sense of humor. She was the kind of woman who, when she walked past a man on the sidewalk, would cause him to seem to remember something he had forgotten, swivel about, and stare at her until she moved out of sight, just imagining things. She knew it too, and wasn’t above adding a little extra “sway and strut” at such times to spice up the torment.

Pantsuits were then a popular attire for women in the marketplace, having only recently been approved by a hegemonic male power structure. The drafter had a beautiful black one suitable for both the workplace and a funeral parlor visitation. She wore it periodically and looked sharp in it.

Sometimes, though, the head drafter would take an opportunity to give her a hard time over some detail or other. You could then set your watch.

Next day, the assistant would waltz into the drafting room wearing the top of the pantsuit as a mini-skirt. That day would not be one suitable for precise work demanding a steady hand at the drafting pen, or whatever. The head drafter would spend the day babbling and trying to stop his hand from shaking. And the outfit lost its appropriateness for the funeral parlor. One look and the deceased, if male, would surely arise from the dead.

As I say, she had a strange sense of humor. Other times, she appeared on the verge of tears. When I asked her one such day if something was the matter, her eyes filled and she informed me that her husband had left the day before for his two-week summer outing with the state’s national guard.

When I, apparently, failed to show the proper degree of commiseration, she informed me that I had no idea what it was like to have a loved one away in the military.

I nodded understanding and we never broached the subject again. In fact, we got on very well. Once, she even accompanied me to a “Happy Hour” movie: McCabe and Mrs. Miller. It turned out that Warren Beatty, even though just on screen, had the power to give her a real case of the vapors. Since Julie Christie caused a concomitant male effect on me, we were well-suited for the outing.

As the movie progressed, and some horrific scenes (by the standards of that time) began to flash, she would grab my hand and hold it.

As Sainted Mother would have put it, that just scared the “pure-dee” hell out of me. We both forgot it, I suppose, as the ending credits began to roll, but I never invited her to the movies again.

When I related the experience to my friend Jackie, from down the street, she snorted, laughed, and winked. Then she said, “You’re a goddam naïve fool, but I’ll be your friend anyway.” Then she began to sing in her wonderfully melodic voice, “I feel the earth move under my feet.”

I was beginning to discover that life was more complicated out in the free world. 

             

My Redacted Life: Chapter Nine

Things settled down for my planning career as 1971 moved along. Warm weather and the scheduled demolition of my apartment building had necessitated a move to another apartment, this one on Carpetbagger Hill, overlooking the Arkansas river. It was an old place, but it suited my purposes. It was furnished, clean, and large enough for my possessions and me. Best of all, it had an air conditioner.

On its east was another apartment building owned and managed by the same company. It was newer, unfurnished, and more expensive. I wasn’t quite there yet, financially, and far from one of the fancy places with a swimming pool.

I was happy, but I did have to drive to work. It was close enough to Downtown that I could walk on a nice crisp fall day, but I had to find a to place to park on most of the time. I chose a lot on East Sixth Street where a person could park for 25 cents a day. It was six or seven blocks from the office, but I didn’t mind. I procured a couple of rolls of quarters and was in business.

Actually, I enjoyed the walk. On morning, as I stood at the traffic light at Main and Fifth Streets, a man taking the morning air joined me, both of us waiting for the light to change. I looked over at him and my breath caught.

It was Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. He was one of the few senators who had expressed concern about escalating the war in Vietnam. He also enjoyed the reputation of a true statesman, having initiated the Fulbright scholarship program that awarded thousands of scholarships to American and International students each year, designed to promote international relations. He was the longest serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

And he was standing alongside me, just another benefit of walking the streets of a great city. I mumbled a hello. He nodded toward the two new high-rise office buildings and said, “This is a becoming a nice city, isn’t it?”

I agreed as the light changed. “It’s an honor to see you, sir,” I mumbled, so much for making a great impression. He took off in a slow “fast-walk” and faded into the urban fabric, a giant among Americans. We mourn the increasing dearth of his type.

On a more entertaining scale, I was walking on another day when an old, beat-up car painted in the historic fashion of an Arkansas State Trooper vehicle pulled up to a traffic signal. As its hood bounced on long-dead springs, I looked inside. There, to my amazement, were actors Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty, along with Dinah Shore, who was the then-girlfriend of Reynolds.

Odd? Not really. I knew they were in town for the filming of the movie, White Lightening. Still, it made a morning walk more interesting.

Time passed. As I continued to learn my craft, a young, newly-graduated young woman with long red hair and a royal smile was undertaking her first year as a teacher in her hometown of Lonoke, Arkansas, about 20 miles from where I lived.

As for me, as the year rolled by, I was keeping the sometime company of an odd-featured woman who could sing like Carol King, drink beer like a sailor, and wasn’t above providing additional benefits to special friends if and when she chose. She lived nearby, on a small and notorious strip of neglected street that led west from our apartment past a small white church, then past a row of modest but charming rental houses, eventually curving back to where Lincoln Boulevard transitioned into Cantrell Road.

Riverside Drive I think they called it, a strange place out of the view of prying eyes, maybe four or five hundred feet in total length, and strangely populated. It would play a minor, but nostalgia-producing part in my life.

J. William Fulbright
We won't see his likes
again anytime soon.