My Redacted Life: Chapter 17 (Cont._2)

School was out. Teachers were off for the summer. The Redhead would be around the apartment a lot I supposed, although she had evidenced no interest that I might be. All I knew about her feelings was a haughty “in your dreams, sucker,” look that she delivered so well.

I worked on the final stages of the Hope grant application, the place where nothing seemed to fit and things were always missing. As I struggled with this, amidst much swearing, a talent honed during my four years as “Barnacle Bill the Sailor,” the company prepared to go into the land development business. A bank had helped procure an option on a nice tract of land between two growing cities and Jack Castin had worked his magic in designing a wonderful modern subdivision.

Watching Jack work was as treat in itself. He was left-handed, in fact he once held the left-hand golf championship title for the State of Oklahoma. He would take pen in hand and, with great flowing arcs, streets and lots would appear, along with landscaped areas. Soon, a wonderful image peered back from what had been a blank sheet.

The women in the office thought he was wonderful as well. Drawing too many stares, and with such talent, he sailed unsuspecting into a sea of jealousy that was bound to erupt later. Stay tuned.

As for me, I had to go out of town to gather some data. That didn’t make my socks roll up and down, as they say. I imagined all sorts of things: parties to which I wouldn’t have been invited; my Redhead leaving on a date with a big tall basketball coach, her arm in his and her head resting lovingly on his shoulder, those wonderful eyes peering up adoringly from a circle of red hair; or an engagement notice in the paper.

I thought maybe I’d better forget about it and concentrate on what I was doing. The company wasn’t paying me to moon over a girl that had already promised herself to some fool. They were paying me to photograph wonderful old buildings, slated to be demolished in the name of progress. I was righteous, after all.

One evening after I finished the day’s work, I did drive to Texarkana, Texas and look up my old friends Gary and Dianna Toler. I found them living in a converted chicken house behind Dianna’s childhood home with a young daughter.

We visited and they sang for me, not the old songs, though. After several drug-filled adventures that had led them hitchhiking to New York City—where Gary had almost sold a song—and back, they had gotten into religion, the one where you go around knocking on doors on Saturday. They claimed it had saved their lives, recommending it highly. It had led to a child and a stable home, albeit a chicken house. It changed their music, and not necessarily for the worse. We got along fine, a good diversion from my miseries.

Talking to Toler always helped
to ease my troubled mind.

Seeing how content they were, I decided “to hell with the Redhead.” She may have gotten married while I was gone. Good enough for her. She could just go on learning the difference between a foul shot and a layup. I didn’t care if she chose bleacher-splinters over fun and excitement, her loss, not mine.

I pulled into the apartment building’s parking lot after dark when I arrived home. I grabbed my old sea bag full of dirty clothes from the car and started to my apartment. My neighbor stood behind her screen door watching me.

For a moment, I didn’t think she was wearing anything at all. I averted my gaze and headed for my door.

“Hey sailor.” Her voice caught me. Oh well, one little look wouldn’t hurt. Besides, both my affections and my attention were free to roam now.

I looked.

She wasn’t fully exposed. She wore her faithful peignoir. The backlighting had produced the initial effect. I tried to look her directly in the eyes. Gravity fought me like a demon.

“You just missed her.”

My heart succumbed to gravity as well.

“She asked about you.”

Gravity dissipated.

“Oh? Who?”

That laugh and that wink. “She said she hadn’t had anyone stare at her hind-end all week.”

“Oh,” I said, “you mean your sister’s friend.”

“No, I meant the Queen of England,” she said, then added, “You’ve really got a case of it, don’t you?”

“How old is she?”

How old is she? Couldn’t I have thought of anything more stupid to say?

“Old enough,” she said, laughing. “Take it from your friend here. Old enough.” She turned to close the door. The combination of light and sheerness of material gave me a quick glimpse of what I thought Heaven must be like. “Good night,” she said. “Sleep tight.”

I turned to my own door, thinking, “I’m not in Vietnam anymore.”

My Redacted Life: Chapter Nine (Cont._3)

It was funny that they never questioned. I guess centuries of subjugation had prepared them for anything. Even losing their homes. Richard Nixon occupied the White House and the Urban Renewal Program was scheduled for extinction. Pine Bluff was to be one of the last recipients and we were preparing the plans.

Those plans included the demolition of a functioning African-American neighborhood, albeit one with definite signs of blight. Once demolished, the area would be rebuilt along the lines of a modern subdivision. This meant that the functioning system of lots and blocks would disappear. In its place would be an illogical pattern of cul-de-sacs and winding street patterns resembling a handful of spaghetti thrown on the floor , prohibiting any degree of social cohesion and logical traffic flow.

There were two teams of us, most hired as temporary "social cassocks" whose job it was to evaluate each house, and determined its fitness to survive. That was a cruel joke. None would survive. Things just didn't work that way. The old ways were out and new ones in.

The owners didn't complain about the intrusion. What would have been the use? This was 1971 and what were still often called "coloreds" were used to being held harmless from the planning of their lives. If any of them saw what might be coming, they didn't say. But, had they listened, they would have heard the "federal bulldozer" warming its engine.

Richard Nixon, for all his other problems of being on the wrong side of history, saved their neighborhood. He ended the program.

Jean's Addition in Pine Bluff still exists as a neighborhood, quite a beloved one, I was to find out much later. It has new problems now, serious problems, but the federal bulldozer is not one of them.

I was beginning to learn that my profession was one of great complexity. If you wanted to do right, you'd better first make sure you weren't doing wrong.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Seven (Cont._2)

On Mondays, I would arrive at the office ready to kick some serious ass, as they say. We were doing quite a bit of work for my home town, so I began taking trips there, first with Tom Hodges, then with Jim Vines. It wasn’t long, during one of those trips, that I learned an interesting fact.

The two of them had labored under the mistaken assumption that I was related to Charles Rush, the director of the city’s Urban Renewal Agency and for whom we were working. Yes, he’s the one who gave me their names and who recommended that I go to Little Rock and visit with them. I was actually related to another department head in the city, a cousin named Troy Harden, who had introduced me to Mr. Rush.

I never ascertained how much the mistaken idea of kinship contributed to my hiring. I often think about it though, when I hear people say—particularly of African-Americans—that “they should rely on hard work and initiative to get ahead, just like I did.”

Pine Bluff was scheduled for an urban renewal project. Urban renewal is another phenomenon that has gained a solid seat of honor in the Planning Hall of Infamy. As with many misguided efforts, it was conceived with the best of intentions. Government would cleanse blighted portions of a city and replace the blight with shining examples of commercial enterprise and affordable housing.

The evil serpent known as “The Law of Unintended Consequences” slithered on the scene like a vulture during a battle, and soon took over. The definition of “blighted neighborhood” soon became “any neighborhood occupied by the powerless and non-white.” Tenants who had lived in a functioning neighborhood for decades came home from work one day to find a note on their door giving them only days to vacate their building which was slated for demolition as a part of the revival of the area.

There were some productive results of the program. Mostly though, the results were best described in the 1964 book The Federal Bulldozer by Martin Anderson, and the later classic The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, by Robert Caro. Urban renewal gained the sobriquet,which lingers still, of "Urban Removal."

By 1971, most of the most destructive elements of the program had disappeared. The emphasis turned from demolition to rehabilitation and residents were compensated for relocation expenses which, unfortunately did not reflect the cost of leaving the neighborhood in which one’s grandparents had lived.

The saddest part, as I contemplate the history, is that, in many instances, these were the only neighborhoods in which the affected families had been allow to live.

I didn’t think of such things back then. Don’t ask me why. Systemic indoctrination is a powerful tool when applied at an early age.

The area of Pine Bluff scheduled for “renewal” comprised a portion of an area known as “Jean’s Addition.” It was, as I was to learn over the years, a beloved African-American neighborhood arrayed around the state’s only black college. Though neglected, it had persevered. It still does, having been saved from benign intrusion by the unlikeliest person, Richard Nixon. He ended the Urban Renewal Program, which was known as a “categorical grant,” and replaced it, and others, with “block grants,” which allowed cities to apply help to neighborhood on a case by case basis.

We were also performing some city-wide planning work for the city. This would lead to the most traumatic experience in my planning career. I shall attempt to summon the courage to recount it later, perhaps in the next chapter.

For the time being, though, I was, as they say, “On a roll.”

My beloved cousin Troy Harden,
to whom I owe my career.