EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 FATHER'S DAY

Each year on this day I get the feeling that I must be the only person on Facebook that didn’t have a perfect father. Oh, mine wasn’t imperfect, his personal radar simply picked up a few blips from time to time. Those made him more interesting than sinister, except when it came to punishment for my myriad transgressions.

Perhaps his most salient characteristic was that he worked. My Sainted Mother emphasized it once when I mentioned a girl with whom I thought for sure I was in love. “Love,” she said. “Let me tell you about love. When I married your daddy, I wasn’t in love. I married him because we all knew the von Tungelns worked. And I knew I would never have to go hungry again. His family didn’t even go hungry during the depression. Then we sharecropped together, butchered hogs together, and bought this store together. After a while, I woke up one morning and realized I worshipped the ground he walked on.”

That thought echoed back to me not long ago when I asked my bride of over 50 years why she married me. “Good looks? Nice personality? Intelligence? Wit?”

“You had a J-O-B,” she said. “That’s important around here.”

It was important in our house. That little country grocery store was open six days a week from before daylight until late evening. In the slow part of the day, my daddy would butcher meat for the store, or cut wood to be sold to folks for heating their homes. During one long period he spent after hours adding two rooms to our house which, incidentally, was attached to the store.

A fond memory involves the annual four-day vacation the family took to the beaches at Florida or Texas. It was on one of those that I learned to read a map. Daddy showed me how. I considered it a minor miracle that one could follow those little lines and know what city was coming up next. I don’t guess the kids today will ever experience that miracle. Too bad.

I guess it was the reputation he and Sainted Mother bestowed on the family that I remember best. On a couple of occasions I managed to find myself under the questioning eye of a police officer who would have been delighted to arrest a careless teenager. Each time I was scolded and ordered home when I told them my name.

Things like that bring back memories as does a yellowed newspaper article I keep in a safe deposit box. It contains a piece written in our hometown newspaper after a deadly tornado tore through our area south of Pine Bluff in 1947. It tells how my father gave away things in our store to anyone who needed them after the damage, the righteousness bankrupting the little business. Another piece, a smaller one, reports how the little town of Lonsdale, Arkansas collected $45 and sent it to us after reading the first article. That would be almost $1,500 today.

So I don’t mind that he kept a cow for most of his life that he fed every night after the store closed or that he did so not for love of cattle but for love of the nightly nip of the Old Yellowstone he kept hidden in the hay.

Life’s radar needs a blip each day like Daddy needed that nip.

Regrets

Feeling old today. It happens sometimes. This week, an old friend in the urban planning profession died, unexpectedly they say. Ron Newman was his name, and he was an extraordinarily fine person. I happen to be blessed that way with friends and colleagues. Among other professional accomplishments, Ron was the director of the Capitol Zoning District office. It enforced a state law designed to protect the Arkansas State Capitol grounds and the Governor’s Mansion from being overwhelmed by tall, tawdry buildings and incompatible, i.e. crappy, land uses. That law was passed back when lawmakers cared about such things.

I served on the Mansion Area advisory committee, so Ron and I worked closely for a number of years. It’s good to work with good people. Ron and his wife moved to Colorado years ago and I’ve only seen him once, I think, since. Hearing of his death made me feel sad, old, and mortal. I'm glad I knew him, and regret I didn't see him more often.

Speaking of feeling old, you should have seen me yesterday. Once a year or so, I have to climb a ladder and remove leaves and debris from the gutters on a shop building at our farm. The cornice is 12 feet off the ground and it takes a few steps to get within reach of the gutters. The building is 60 feet long and I have a total reach of about a “phantom.” That’s about six nautical feet, or the length of a fathom according to my beloved United States Navy.

If my “gazintas” and “timeses” bear trusting, that’s about 10 trips up and down the ladder. I know that my wife and others think that I’m just turning 50, but that’s not true. My muscles and joints can attest to that this morning with perfect certainty.

I did buy a new ladder this year. It’s fiberglass, aluminum, rustproof, and much more stable than the relic I used previously. It’s one heavy summich, though. My shoulders can testify.

Oh well. As long as I’m climbing ladders, I’m on the right side of the grass, so they say. My Sainted Mother always said, “a little hard work never hurt nobody.” She well knew about hard work. She once told me how, as a young girl, she would pick to the end of a cotton row and sneak a short break while nobody was looking. While “being excused,” she would dream of finding a shiny new lady’s wristwatch lying on the grass.

I guess regrets are just nature’s way of telling us things are going to be okay as long as you have hope.

R.I.P old friend.
 The world is a better
place because
 you were here.

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.

In the Jailhouse Now ...

Fiction Friday: Actually, that's a bit of a lie. I know you can't believe that of me, but this is a truthful account of a bad day in my life. I enjoyed reading it on Tales From the South a few years ago.

My Short Life of Crime

By Jimmie von Tungeln

My father decided, the year I turned fifteen, that a summer job would provide just the catalyst through which to redirect me from a life of idle languor to one of resolute achievement. He was, he assured me, there to help. Little did he know that his efforts would nearly veer me into a life of crime.

It happened this way. Daddy procured for me a job at a “filling station” in downtown Pine Bluff, Arkansas. It was during the late 1950s and life was slow and predictable, particularly in the summer months. The station employed two full-time attendants plus me and a college student, the son of a multi-millionaire cotton farmer, a father who also saw work as curative. The college kid arrived at work each morning in a brand new Corvette Stingray that probably cost more than the annual salary of one of the regular workers. My sister dropped me off on her way to work at a bank in the family car, an old purple Pontiac my classmates dubbed “The Purple People-eater.” Life can be sorrowful for a high school kid with a color-blind father.

Social disparity aside, we were a happy crew. When we weren’t serving customers, we washed cars, the college kid and I. When there were no cars to wash, we greased vehicles that were hoisted on racks like kings on their thrones. When there were no cars to grease, we learned things that would, the older guys assured us, stand us in good stead in later life—like shooting craps, doing card tricks, and learning how to spot girls who lived “on the spicy side of life.” What, one might ask, could go wrong?

It had to do with the FBI.

Two Special Agents, both bachelors (I think maybe all the agents were then) roomed in a boarding house two blocks from the station. It was our privilege to maintain their vehicle, a powerful Ford, in peak condition from which to fight crime, ferret out the Communists lurking in Pine Bluff, and keep the region safe.

The agents left that car in one of our vehicle bays at night and that is where the trouble started.

During the day, the car sat on the street, ready for action in the event of a Communist uprising or a chase after known criminals. It came to pass that it was my lot one hot summer afternoon to move the vehicle from the daytime spot to the vehicle bay. Like a good scout, I backed the car into the bay, left the key in the ignition as I had been taught to do and, having been told not to forget to close the bay door, followed that instruction. Then I was careful to lock the bay from the inside.

By exhibiting such a high level of professionalism, I could already visualize being accepted as a Special Agent myself, with all the glory that such a life promised. Certainly I would achieve a grander post than a sleepy Southern town, maybe New York. Just wait.

What no one had told me was that, due to a lack of criminal activity and the sleepy nature of our city, the station owner had agreed that the vehicle bay door wouldn’t be locked at night, just closed. This presupposed that nobody would be stupid enough to prowl around where an FBI vehicle was parked.

Wouldn’t you know it? That night, the only bank robbery that I remember occurring during my entire time of growing up occurred. It was in a little farming town with a branch bank some thirty or so miles away.

I knew nothing about this until I slammed the door on “Old Purple” next morning, ending some argument with my sister, and walked into the station.

Somber can’t describe it. All three of my comrades were leaning against a counter looking at me as if I were carrying a violin case and a copy of Das Kapital. I nodded but not a single one of them nodded back. They just stared. Finally the one we called Boss spoke.

“Where were you last night?”

“Me? At home.”

“Can anyone prove that?”

I knitted my brow. What business was that of his? “Sure, the family. Why?”

“What time did they go to bed?”

He knew what time my parents went to bed: “with the chickens,” as they say down South.

“Your sister there?”

“No, she was on a date.”

“Hmm,” he said. “You better get your story straight.”

“My story?”

“Your story.”

“What,” I said, “on earth are you talking about?”

“Somebody robbed the bank at Sherrill last night, just as they were closing.”

“Really?”

“Really. Guess what else happened?”

“What?”

“Somebody locked the FBI car in the bay here and the FBI guys had to walk all the way back home and get the key or they might have gotten over there in time to catch the robbers.”

The weight of the world began to lower on me like one of our fully loaded vehicle hoists. I said nothing.

“Don’t leave,” Boss said.

“What do you mean, don’t leave?”

“The agents want to take you in for questioning when they get back.”

“Questioning? Why?”

He looked at me as if I had just asked where sunlight originated. “Because you are the one who locked the FBI car in the bay.”

I couldn’t speak. I tried but my vocal chords just made a little squeaking sound like a screen door being opened on a hot summer day.

“They are pretty sure,” Boss said, “that you were in on it.”

Robinson Crusoe, on first reaching shore, could not have felt more abandoned and alone than I did at that moment.

“Don’t worry,” the college kid said. “We won’t get to listen to them.”

I finally found my voice. “Listen to them what?” I said, a half tone below “High-C.”

“Interrogate you,” he said in a grave voice honed by years of hazing fraternity pledges. “They are going to take you to the Police Station. That way they can just go ahead and lock you up if they decide to.”

“Lock me up for what?”

Boss said, “Aiding in a bank job is a pretty serious offense.” He told me that he had assured the agents that all his employees knew not to lock the bay at night. Mine was clearly a renegade action. With that, they all found something to do that didn’t include me. I moseyed around, bumping into things, until I finally found a quiet place to sit and await my doom.

Maybe prison wasn’t so bad, I thought. Maybe I could learn to sing there. Elvis did in some movie. Or maybe I could escape. As the minutes evaporated, so did my options, until only dark despair remained. Then I heard the sound.

It was the dark rumble of the FBI car’s powerful engine. The car came into view, lumbered alongside a gas pump, and stopped. It didn’t occur to me to attend it until I looked around and saw nobody else in sight. I was alone. The agent driving honked and it evoked the sound of a large creaking door closing on my life. I wandered out.

The driver rolled down the window and smiled. “Hey sport,” he said. “We drove this old gal a piece today so fill her up.”

“Fill her up?”

“Fill her up, and check the oil.”

“Yes sir,” I said. “Anything else?” I would get this thing over with, once and for all.

“Windshield’s dusty,” he said. “Oh…” Here it came. I froze. “They forgot to tell you but you don’t lock that bay door at night. Saves us some time and trouble.” With that, he turned to the other agent and began to compare notes. I moved to the gas pump.

As the pump hummed to life, my life hummed afresh. I even whistled. Then I saw three heads peer from the back of the station, laughing like they might never have another chance. I squeezed the pump handle like it was the hand of a lover, took in the smell of gasoline as if were the scent of roses, smiled at the three guys, and nodded. That was a good one, all right.

Somehow, we make it to adulthood.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 34 (Cont._3)

Somewhere about this time, I had the honor to meet Brenda’s Uncle Roy Bennett from Saint Louis, a bachelor and fascinating human. He actually lived in University City, a place well known to urban planners. It had passed the first “rental inspection” program in the state, maybe the country. It aimed at stopping the spread of blight as families sold their homes to slum landlords before moving away from the city core. Other cities have enacted similar programs that are still strongly resisted by a real estate profession that adopts the adage “if it’ll rent, it’s good enough.”

Roy was the youngest of two sons. Brenda’s mother Hazel had insisted that he leave the hardscrabble farm on which he was raised. After a stint in the Navy, he had hitched a ride to St. Louis after word got out that McDonald-Douglass, the aero-space giant was hiring. He got a job, slept in a friend’s car for a while, and entered into a long and fascinating career.

We hit it off immediately. We shared an interest in photography. He proudly showed me his Nikon F, the Holy Grail of amateur photography. Actually, he was interested in everything, from electronics to music. I would say that he was the most fascinated person I’ve ever known. Brenda adored him. The feeling was mutual.

His father had bequeathed the family farm to him in order that it would remain intact. His lifelong plan included returning there after retirement and perfecting the profession of piddling. To that end, he, over the years, hauled countless items of possible or potential value in piddling. Some of it still remains. I would never figure out how one man was able to haul it.

He shared the bass voice typical of that side of Brenda’s family, one she didn’t share. Like me, he loved to pick a guitar but never got very good at it. That didn’t dampen his enthusiasm a bit. That’s an attribute of perpetually fascinated people, or so I have found. They don’t have to be good at something as long as it fascinates them.

I quickly decided that I wouldn’t regret marrying into a family that produced a man like Roy.

Late in his career, he was assigned to the United States Space Program. There he worked on top-secret things, witnessed many historic events, and came to know, personally, some of the astronauts. Sometimes I can still recall his deep voice reciting some of their personal quirks.

For now, he had his trusty Nikon ready to photograph the wedding. We talked about it. I always thought he liked me. I surely hope so. As I say, he looked so forward to entering a second career of idle tinkering on the “postage stamp of native soil” where he grew up. I’m sure he would have entered the Piddling Hall of Fame.

It wasn’t to be. He would die from a massive heart attack just months away from retirement. At his funeral, a long-time neighbor described him as “always walking around whistling, with a tool in his hand, thinking of some project he was planning.”

That’s about as good a statement on a person’s life as I have ever heard.

We still miss him, a lot.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 19 (Cont._2)

 The Redhead had agreed to ride in my new sports car. I was to wait. She disappeared up the stairs. I went to my apartment and brushed my teeth. I also brushed through my hair. It had grown since I separated from the Navy. Most people didn’t even suspect I had been a veteran, a good thing back in those days.

After the longest 20 minutes of my life, I went up to the apartment she shared with my neighbor’s sister. Speaking of whom, movement caught my eye from the parking lot and the two girls, returning from somewhere, had gotten out of their car, and were watching me. My neighbor gave me a “thumbs-up” sign. Her sister made a swooning motion like Rhett Butler sweeping Scarlett off her feet. I waved them away. They laughed and went to Rita’s apartment. I knocked on the door.

It opened, and there she stood, not smiling but not looking unhappy either. She wielded a sort of “Well what the hell are we waiting on?” look. She had tied the red hair into a bun. It had never dawned on me that someone wouldn’t want their long hair blowing wildly in a convertible. Yeah, I was that stupid.

I escorted her to the car, opened the door for her, and held her elbow while she slid in, no way that precious young thing could have made that maneuver unassisted. I pulled the safety belt across and helped her buckle it, being careful not to let a hand brush against anything. She gave me a sharp look anywat and said, “Thanks, I think I can manage from here.” I smiled a goofy look and went to my side of the car.

Being careful to make sure the Green Angel was in first gear, in order to impress the Red-haired Angel with my driving skills, I eased the car down the drive and turned on to Cantrell. So far so good.

Not far to the west, just past where the Burger Chef sat, a street veers off to the right and leads to Rebsamen Park Road. It leads along the river to one of the lock-and-dam facilities constructed during the 1960s. The willow trees along the road gave off a pleasant smell and I kept the car just below stalling speed so I could prolong my joy.

She looked consummately bored, moving only to touch her hair to make sure it was still securely fashioned. I finally said something trite, like, “I understand you teach school.”

“Secrets do get out, don’t they?” She said.

I raked my brain for something more stupid to say. Succeeded. “Have you ever ridden in a convertible before?”

This caused her to turn her head and I glanced at that perfect, oval face, framed by red hair, ruddy, like that of an Irish Princess watching the wild sea. The sight made my breath catch. “Once or twice,” she said.

It continued that way until we reached the parking lot by the lock and dam. I stopped the car, but left it running, not wanting to give the impression of stopping for improper reasons. “I went through that lock on an excursion boat,” I said. “It’s interesting.”

“I’ll bet,” she said, showing some interest for the first time.

“Doesn’t take as long as you think it would,” I said. “You tie up on one side, they let you down, or bring you up, whichever is proper, and you leave out the other side. They reverse the process coming back.”

“How do they pump the water in?”

“They don’t. The flow of the river does the job.”

“Hmm.”

My chance to impress: “I drove boats in the Navy,” I said. “Even coxswained for an admiral.”

“What does that mean?”

“I drove his official boat, called a ‘barge’ in the Navy.”

“Like that one?” She pointed to two long barges being pushed from the lock. “That’s impressive.”

“No,” I said, “It was just a 30-foot power boat. They call it ‘a barge’ though.” I remembered Rita telling me that she was “her daddy’s girl,” and that he was in World War Two. I decided to take a major risk. It could go either way back in those days. “Before that, I was in Vietnam, naval security.”

She turned toward me and looked. “Did you ever get shot?”

My Irish Princess?

“Uh, no,”

“My old boyfriend did. He was a Marine.”

I decided it was time to go back. I eased the Green Angel back onto Rebsamen Park Road, and soon we were flanked once more by the smell of the willows. My mind was racing, and I didn’t say much. The veteran thing didn’t turn out too well, but it didn’t turn out too badly. She didn’t call me a “baby killer.”

Easing back onto Cantrell, I increased the speed and kept trying to think. I was thinking so hard that I had to brake a little faster than normal at the entrance to the apartment, to wait for an oncoming car to pass. “To hell with it. It’s now or never,” I thought.

“Would you like to go out sometime?” I said. “On a date I mean.”

“Sure,” she said, “as long as you don’t kill us both first,” referring back to the fast braking.

Sweet success. But she was quite the feisty one.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 18

To tell the truth, I blamed it on the Navy. First, they had gotten me to smoking three packs of Marlboros a day, depending on which watches I stood. Then they transferred me to a ship where I didn’t know a soul. I ran out of cigarettes on my first midwatch, found I had left a half pack of smokes in my locker, and didn’t know anyone to bum one from. So I just quit. It was December 7, 1968, Pearl Harbor Day on the year of the Tet Offensive.

It wasn’t easy. I kept that half-pack for a month, fearing a backslide. Then, I gave it away, along with my Zippo lighter and a carton missing one pack. The carton had cost me $2.10 in the ship’s store, or 21 cents a pack. I think the price went up later.

That wasn’t all. They—the Navy—used to serve four meals per day. If a person stayed up until midnight, he could have a meal along with the guys going on the Midwatch.

Yeah, I formed a habit of that after I quit smoking. Worse still, they opened a “Geedunk Stand” up for a couple of hours in the morning.

To put it mildly, I was eating like a pot addict by the time I left the sea.

I had ballooned up to 230 pounds, but was enjoying this fantasy that one of the world’s premier goddess might look at me. Not likely. I’d see myself in the mirror and think, “Who are you kidding?”

Beautiful, sexy women judged the outside of a man, not the inside. Or so I thought. I waddled around the apartment complex, watching for the Redhead, or even her twin sister. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of flowing red hair entering or leaving that pale red Impala. Sometimes I saw her and her friend walk by my window going to my next-door neighbor’s house.

I just watched.

Oh, and speaking of my neighbor, she caught me once coming back from the dumpster. Isn’t it interesting about lines of communication? Ours was the dumpster. If you wanted to catch up on gossip, learn the history of a stranger, or find out where the nearest washeteria was, jut hang out by the dumpster. Help was always available.

It was around 7:00 p.m. one Friday when my neighbor caught me. “Hey,” she said from inside the screen door, “do you like Scotch?”

I looked. She was more or less dressed. She wore a pair of shorts and a man’s shirt, much too small for her. She had buttoned it across her bosom and the buttons were hanging on for dear life. The bottom halves of the shirt flared outwards, revealing a charming navel. This was "fully dressed" in her world.

Someone had given her boss an expensive bottle of scotch whiskey. He gave it to her. “Treat your boyfriend to some actual 12-year old single-malt,” he had said. She didn’t know what that meant and, having no boyfriend, she thought of me.

I said, “Sure,” but I had no idea what the product was either.

“Meet me on the patio,” she said.

I went out on my patio, then around the partition to hers. She had a table set with a Coke for her and the bottle of scotch and a jelly glass for me. I sat and we talked. “I hear you ran into Brenda at the Burger Chef,” she said.

“How do you know that?”

“Not much gets by me around here,” she said. “Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want passed along the ‘Dumpster-Graph,’ or you’ll regret it.” She sipped her Coke. I took a drink of whiskey and swallowed. It was so smooth that I had to stop and make sure I had.

“Did you ask her out?”

 

Brenda or Brendhilda:
both on the feisty side. 
Which one for me?

“No,” I said. “It was in the middle of the Burger Chef and she looked … well, different,” I drained the glass and poured another two fingers.

“What are we going to do with you?” she said. She pointed at the bottle. “Drink that,” she said. “I can’t stand the smell. It must have spoiled being so old and all.”

I drained another glass. The world seemed to be getting level and I was growing more handsome by the minute.

“Here I am,” she said, “the apartment match-maker and I can’t even get this idiot to ask the girl of his dreams for a date.” She threw her arms out in a motion of despair. “Give me patience,” she said. She widened her arms as if in supplication. A button on her shirt popped and sailed into the lawn.

“Okay, okay,” I said, the scotch filling me with self-assurance. “I’ll ask Miss Brenda out. But which one?” 

Chapter 17 (Cont._4)

Strange, that’s the only way I can remember it. Friday came, and that evening George Owen and I picked until late in the evening. We weren’t all that good, but we didn’t care. He was trying to learn the banjo and I was still pestering the guitar. It was harmless fun, augmented by more than a few beers.

I slept late the next morning. On arising, I made some coffee and opened the sliding door in the bedroom. I walked onto the patio. The spring sun was casting nice shadows along the river and I pulled up a chair. I must have made a noise, for someone spoke from the adjacent patio.

“Did we finally wake up?” a familiar voice said.

I walked to the partition and peeked around. My neighbor was in a deck chair with a book in her hand. She wore shorts and a loose blouse, partially buttoned and revealing the fact that she hadn’t bothered with a bra this morning. She looked quite content. I tried not to stare.

“Morning,” I said.

“Nearer to afternoon,” she said.

“Aren’t weekends for sleeping late?”

“For whatever. How are you making out with your would-be girlfriend?”

“Would that be your sister’s friend, what’s her name?”

“Well it wouldn’t be Elizabeth Taylor. Stick around, she’ll be here this afternoon.”

We discussed life for a while, then I went back inside, showered and dressed in an old pair of Seafarer Jeans, a green t-shirt, and tennis shoes, all left over from my Navy days.

Back then, there was a fast-food called Burger Chef a mile or so up Cantrell in an area known as “Riverdale.” In addition to the fast-food, there was a large drive-in cinema where, it was rumored, a significant portion of the Baby-Boomers then living in Little Rock had begun their worldly existence.

I parked and went inside the fast-food. I purchased a cheeseburger, fries, and a large Coke, my cure for a mild hangover. As I weeded past the partially occupied tables, toward the door, a figure stopped me, placing a hand on my arm. It was a woman, dressed fit to kill and smiling. “Morning,” she said.

My mind raced. I looked at her. As I say, she was stunningly attractive but not my type. She had short gray-tinted hair, bright eyes, and a heavily made-up oval face augmented with sparkling lipstick. She wore a severe black outfit that must have been fitted on her while she was standing. A white blouse with a large collar softened the effect from severe to sensual.

Did I mention that she was quite beautiful? She was, but the exact opposite of my free-spirited dream girl, the Redhead. She gave off a slightly familiar aura, but as hard as I racked my brain, I couldn’t remember her. I thought, “Please don’t let her be a client’s wife or daughter.”

She smiled and her hazel eyes flashed. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

I said nothing, but thought, “No, who the hell are you?”

“The last time you saw me, I had long red hair.”

Jumpin’ Jehosaphat! I was talking to my goddess, or her worldly twin sister.

“It was the wig, wasn’t it?” she said, tilting her head in fun.

 

Oh dear.

I said nothing.

“Maybe the suit? I hate to wear them.”

An attempt to respond just produced a raspy whisper.

“I’ve been to a funeral.”

“Hello.”

“I played the piano.”

“That’s nice.”

“Thought I’d grab a bite on the way back to the apartment.”

“Me too. I mean I drove down for lunch.” I held up my purchase as if to prove it. “I live alone and don’t cook.”

What on Earth was coming over me? Was I incapable of making sense?

“I need to get out of this dress and this wig,” she said.

“That would be nice.” Lord, it was getting worse.

“Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“I hope so.” At last, a brief flash of non-stupid. I started to move. She touched my arm again and a shock shot through my body, stopping me in mid-stride.”

She tilted her face up toward mine. She wasn’t as tall as I. “Rita tells me,” she said, “that you do urban planning.”

“No. I mean yes. I mean I’m learning the business. I mean yes, that’s right.”

“Then do something about this traffic on Cantrell, won’t you? It’s a pain in the ass trying to get out in the morning.”

With that, and before I could answer, she eased around me and headed toward the counter. I turned toward her.

Even though she would have found it difficult to sashay in that outfit, every man in the place was watching her.

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 17

 Back to work on Monday, now just past the middle of May in 1972. I was working on the final budget figures for the Hope project. It was a monumental affair, the application was. When we eventually finished, it would comprise nearly two inches of legal-size paper set in a flip-over binder. I was now working on the budget.

Theoretically, I assume, I was supposed to research costs, verify them, and add them all into subtotals by category and a final total for the entire project.

I thought of a better way.

We knew, see, what the maximum amount of the final budget would be. Why on earth go to the trouble of assembling cost figures that would add up to more than the budget would allow?

Hell, I just worked backwards. Thank goodness for algebra. It, and deceit, would get me through “many dangers, toils, and snares” over a colorful career and a miscreant life.

That evening, I skipped the “happy-hour” movie and went home directly after work. I entertained no thoughts of seeing my mysterious redhead. She taught school some 20 miles away and only stayed with her old college friend on weekends. I would have to wait three more days at least. That morning, I had seen my next-door neighbor leaving for work and we had exchanged pleasantries. I had been pleased to see that she was fully dressed. I gathered that the prospect of going to her job tended to focus her mind.

As we expressed mutual disdain for Mondays, I had resisted the temptation to ask directly about her sister. She was a bright, intelligent woman and would have recognized that as a disguised ploy to seek additional information on her sister’s friend.

Did I mention that I was learning to be deceitful in the assembling of information? When Rita asked if I had a pleasant evening, I lied.

“Oh, spent most of it talking to a woman I’ve been dating,” I said. “We were talking about making a trip up to Fayetteville some weekend.”

She ignored me. As I say, she was bright and intelligent and would remain a dear friend for life. She sure wasn’t about to buy into any fiction that I was Little Rock’s answer to Paul Newman. She gave me that wink she employed so well. The one that said, simultaneously, “Give it your best shot,” and “bullshit artist,” and “lots of luck.” Then she was off to Downtown and her job.

I trudged off to mine, and now I had returned. I changed clothes, had a beer, and listened to Isaac Hayes do his 19-minute version of By the Time I Get To Phoenix. Then it was off to the stores. On Mondays there were few, if any public meetings, so I reserved it for stocking up on food and liquor.

That was as close to an ordered life as I was ever to achieve.

Back from the mission, I had retrieved a sack of wine from the back seat and turned toward the apartment when they were right on me, less that ten yards away. Yep, it was the redhead and her friend. They wore simple T-shirts with no written messages, but that screamed out “Lookee here.” They each wore short skirts, more aptly described as six-inch strips of material with pockets.

I gasped, panicked, and nodded, nearly slamming the car door on my hand. They giggled, arched their eyebrows, and sashayed on by as if I had been nothing more than a cop standing on a street corner in Palookaville. I turned and watched them heading for a red-tinted late-model Chevrolet Impala. It was the same color as the long hair that swayed to and fro over hips that would have made a preacher want to dance the Tango. The long hair rocked and mocked me with a whispery voice that seemed to say, “What the hell are you looking at?”

It got worse. My neighbor was standing in her doorway watching as I arrived at the apartment building. She had, evidently, started undressing when movement in the parking lot caught her eye. She still wore her business dress. She wore nothing else but but hosiery and a cream-colored bra of fine weave and dotted with bright pink rosettes. A dainty band of lace ringed the cups. A small bow tie below, and between the cups, covered a clasp that seemed barely able to achieve its assigned task.

But I didn’t notice. Instead, I nodded toward the parking lot. “I thought she taught school and only came here on weekends,” I said.

That wink again. “School’s out sport,” she said. “Ain’t you the lucky one?”

Were you talking to me?

My Redacted Life: Sunday Break

Sunday came and still no sight of the Redhead, the farmer's daughter. That morning, I carried a jug of wine over behind the church, sat on the "Big Rock" outcrop, watched the river flow, and listened to the Sunday morning music. Yeah, it took me back and all. When the service was over I went back to my apartment and spent most of the rest of the day on the patio reading Steinbeck and sipping wine.

I left the front window shades open in the living room and would drift in periodically and look across the parking lot. There was not much stirring. It was as if we were all observing a siesta. It would be back to work tomorrow and no time to think about women. For the first time since January 4, 1972, I didn't look forward to going to work of a  Monday morning.

My next-door neighbor, and information source, went out once to the trash bin. She was wearing white shorts and either a bikini top or a blue bra. Normally I would have ventured out to verify, but I couldn't think of anything to say to her. I felt empty, unjustified and unfulfilled.

I took out my old Gibson guitar and tried to emulated the fine picking I had heard from the church, but I couldn't concentrate. My mind kept drifting, trying to recall her face: the Redhead's face. It wouldn't stay in focus. I was almost on the verge of feeling awful. Wine didn't even help. What a pitiful excuse for a man.

What had gotten into me?

Was I under a spell, or what?

My Redacted Life: Chapter 16 (Cont._3)

Saturday came and I became more convinced that 1972 might prove to be a pivotal year in my life. Don’t ask me why. I didn’t see the redhead. I looked, believe me I looked. I went to the office for half a day and hurried back to scour the scene. No redhead. Neither did I see her pal Vernell. I hung out in the parking lot using every excuse imaginable. I saw almost every other tenant save Vernell.

Crap.

When I could stand it no longer, I thought up an excuse to knock on the door of my next-door neighbor and pal, Rita, Vernell’s sister. She answered wearing her favorite garment, a flowing peignoir decorated with gorgeous floral designs, sheer, and extending almost to her knees. It fit her perfectly, but no one, it seems, had ever told her that you could see right through it when the light hit a certain way.

I didn’t feel it was my place to tell her.

She answered my question while I stared. The question concerned something about the management of the condo to which I already knew the answer. For a couple of reasons, I stayed and attempted to carry on a more extended conversation.

“Big plans for the weekend?” That was an imaginative conversation-starter, right?

“Doing it,” she said waving her arms to illustrate a relaxed and casual plan of action. She made the peignoir flow like a silk sheet in the wind and I forgot what I was going to say next. I thought of it finally and mumbled, “You and Vernell aren’t going to visit the parents?”

“Vernell and her friend Brenda went to see Brenda’s folks. Won’t be back until tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

Rita gave me that that cute, mysterious smile that she used so well. “She wanted to know who you were, too.”

Be still my beating heart. “Who wanted to know?”

“You know who. I told her you were on a work-release program.”

“You what?”

“Just kidding. I told her you were a rising star in the urban planning business.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.”

“Did that impress her?”

“Not really. She wanted to know what the ‘urban planning business’ amounted to.”

“Oh.”

“You really need to rescue her,” she said, “from all this,” she waved her arms with a grand gesture and I saw what was either the gardens of paradise or the pathways of hell flourish before me. Take your pick.

“From, … from what?”

“Well,” she said, “from that basketball coach for one thing.”

“She doesn’t like him?”

“Oh, she’s very fond of him and he’s a terribly nice man, a good one, too.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that she hates basketball.”

“Oh.”

“She says that in order to sit through a game on, as she puts it, ‘those hard-assed wooden bleachers,’ she has to pretend the pirates are torturing her and Sean Connery is coming to the rescue.”

“Oh.”

“She’s even calculated the number of games she would have to sit through if she married him and he had a successful career.” She waved an arm again. “Hundreds,” she said, and the peignoir beckoned me once more into the chasms of sin.

“I see.” Oh did I see. Plenty.

“She plays the piano, you know.”

“I don’t know anything about her.”

“Time to learn,” she said, flashing a semi-lewd grin.

I could only nod.

“Go for it, Sport,” she said, closing the door. My final view of her standing there in her casual weekend attire inspired me to spend the rest of the day picking guitar, drinking beer, and imagining all sorts of things.

Rescue this precious thing?
Well, if someone had to ...

My Redacted Life: Chapter 16

Life would sort of hit me from out of nowhere sometime in the early spring of 1972. I sure wasn’t looking for it. I was concentrating on work, wanting to go further and higher. I knew what I wanted and I knew how to get it.

While going about my business, I had been observing friends with whom I had attended college. Since I had wondered in the wilderness for, not 40 but at least four, years, they all had a head start on me.

I was catching up fast, though, and I had come upon a secret. The ones who were in the fast lane weren’t always the best and brightest. In fact, some of the best and brightest seemed stuck back in the pack. No, many of the ones who were getting ahead had been at the top of the class, but probably in the second tier of gifted students, solid but not flashy.

What I noticed was that they were the personable ones, the ones who got along well with others. They were the ones you couldn’t help liking. In other words, they would be able to go out and bring in work as well as having the ability to get it done. That’s where the path to success lay.

It was a lesson that I never forgot.

Another thing that I noticed was that I had returned to a state with two noticeable characteristics. First, it was a state that was on the move for the first time after suffering for years under the governance of a shady and bigoted opportunist who had now been exiled to a much-deserved oblivion. The state was enjoying its second progressive governor in a row, a trend that would continue for years with some slight bumps along the way.

Second, it soon appeared to me that I had also returned to a state with great opportunity for a young man hungering for fame and fortune. The level of educational achievement was still very low. In addition, there had been a massive outflow of talent during the dark years. Some of it was trickling back, but it was still a state in which “cream rose to the top” very quickly. This was a phenomenon with which I was familiar as it was true of the state of military service as well. It was like coming home in a way.

I was determined to be on the right side of history this time. That’s why I had turned my back on Riverside Drive and moved a little farther up the hill. Thankful I was. I had a good job in an honorable profession. I worked with high-caliber people like Tom Hodges, Jim Vines, and Ron McConnell, as well as a new administrative assistant named Christie Porter, another gifted and highly intelligent associate. She was a recently assigned single-mother whom life tried on every occasion, unsuccessfully I’m happy to say, to beat down and dispirit. Hers was another professional friendship I would enjoy for years.

One can see where my mind was. As with Orwell’s horse, I just needed to work harder and keep my head down. There would be time for fun later, maybe even romance someday. I needed to concentrate on polishing my skills. Top on the list was overcoming my fear of public speaking. Next stood education. I read, and also took a graduate correspondence course from Berkeley, doing well on it. I just needed to make professional progress each day and stay away from both trouble and distractions. Easy, or so I imagined.

That’s why, one can see, I was so unprepared for the ambush that awaited. A well-armed intruder had been preparing for me for years.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 15

Things didn’t always go smoothly as I continued my adventures as an urban planning consultant. Take my second trip to Malvern, for example. It still smarts.

There was pretty much a routine case on the agenda. A developer wanted to build a cheap apartment building smack dab in the middle of a middle-class African-American neighborhood. There wasn’t any way to “pretty this one up.” I received numerous calls from the concerned neighbors, and three or four letters expressing dismay at the prospect. They all promised to be at the planning commission meeting.

I included the letters in my report and mentioned the calls. I included some statements on neighborhood stability. My thoughts were pretty clear.

Unfortunately.

I arrived on time and took my place with the commissioners at the head of the table. There was only this one item on the addenda. I was surprised, to say the least, to see that none of the neighbors involved in the case showed for the hearing.

There were four men in the audience. Three I didn’t know. The forth owned the largest reality company in town and one of the banks. I knew he had a mean streak. He had once killed a major development for the city through his influence with the utility commission. Seems that the land sale was going to a rival firm.

He was the stereotype small town businessman who would receive a Rotary award at lunch, evict a family buying a house on contract from him at noon for missing their first payment in years, and take a neighboring widow a sack of tomatoes from his garden that evening.

It was a not-too-well-kept secret around town that he was a mean one. And I posed a target for his wrath.

After the Chairman opened the hearing for discussion, he ambled to the podium, took a deep breath, and turned to me.

“It seems,” he said, “that the only person in the room who is against this project is this young man from Little Rock. I don’t know how they do things in Little Rock. I don’t live there. Never wanted to. I like Malvern. This young man doesn’t.”

He continued in this vein, listing my inadequacies until he began to approach his regard of my Sainted Mother and her child-raising abilities. As I started to rise, the Chairman shut things down and called for a vote. I’m sure I don’t have mention how it turned out.

On the way home that night, I resolved to abandon this sill dream the next day. I wasn’t going to stand abuse like that. No one could treat me that way. I could go back into the Navy, or go on to California. To hell with this racket. It wasn't the last time I would form this resolve.

Dawn rose. I rose. I went to work with the conviction that I would leave the business if and when I damned-well chose. No two-bit hustler would chase me away. I don’t have to tell you how that turned out. I would prevail and, as the story goes, there are always obituaries that don’t make me cry. In short, I prevailed.

I would become a little more diligent about learning whose bank was going to finance projects in the future and which banks held mortgages. And I would respect the stance of others. Later, I ran into the man who had been the most vocal neighbor before the hearing.

When I asked what happened to him and the others, he looked at the ground. “Nothing,” he said. “We just all have mortgages along with jobs that were hard to come by and can be hard to keep.”

They don’t teach case studies like this in graduate school. I always figured it was worth a couple of hours of credit. I learned to survive and to keep on keeping on.

Oh, and the asshole in question got his second “Man of the Year,” award a few years later, I seem to remember.

The treacherous will be with us always.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Thirteen (Cont._4)

Weekends were nice as 1972 sped along, though I often put in half-days at the office on Saturdays. Sainted Mother wanted me home, always, on the weekends. She couldn’t imagine a scenario in which a young man wouldn’t want to spend the entire weekend with his mother.

They are like that, mothers are, particularly southern ones. Of course mine never met my friend Jackie, or some of the others who tempted me away from the comforts of home. Secrets enrich, after all.

Some Sundays, I would go fishing with my father on his only day off. We had fun, but he took it a bit more seriously than I did. I’ll always remember talking to him long-distance during our years apart and hearing of a fruitless fishing trip. “Didn’t catch much, and we fished hard,” with emphasis on the word “hard.”

I always took the position that if a fisherman fished “hard,” he was missing the point.

They were good folks, though, my mother and father. He had made enough money working at a CCC camp during the Depression to come back to Arkansas and marry Mother. They had sharecropped until my sister came. Then a stroke of luck put them in possession of a hog, which Daddy butchered. He peddled the meat in Pine Bluff to old customers of his daddy. One thing led to another and they saved enough to purchase an old grocery store just south of the city.

He ran that store six days a week for 40 years, so I didn’t see a lot of hardship in working some Saturdays. I think I developed a reputation for being a hard worker, though at times a short-tempered one. Nobody’s perfect, I suppose, though I often regret not being as even-tempered as some I knew.

Oh well. Things were changing. We had a new secretary/receptionist/typist named Christie Porter. She would prove to be one of the most capable people I’ve ever known, a Master of Production. In fact, with her arrival, the firm was about to begin a record of hiring unusually talented and gifted people, a record unmatched in professional circles. Some are still making marks on the city and state.

I’d like to think I had some part in hiring them, but I didn’t. It was pure luck. If anything, a slight ability to spot a better class of people may have contributed a modicum of assistance.

Anyway, our firm would be blessed with high-level personnel, over and over again through the years. Our state and our cities would reap the blessings as well.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Thirteen

The year 1972 sort of eased in. I didn’t make a commotion, fearing I might wake up from a dream standing behind a bunker, rifle in hand, and staring into the jungle.

We were working on a number of planning projects. I spent most of my time working on a major project for the city of Hope in southwest Arkansas. Part of the project would be righteous endeavor, providing rehabilitation assistance to homeowners in a low-income section of the city.

Alas, the other aspect of the project would involve a misguided attempt to follow the advice of internationally known architect Victor Gruen, born Viktor David Grünbaum. He was an Austrian-born architect best known as a pioneer in the design of shopping malls in the United States. Yes, shopping malls. Once he had facilitated the downfall of downtowns as dominant retail centers, he had a plan for their salvation.

He proposed simply turning Downtown into another shopping mall. He should have stuck to designing buildings.

At any rate, I was becoming intimately acquainted with this charming town not far from the Texas and Louisiana borders. I doubted if anything or anyone of significance would emerge from within its borders, but it was a nice place inhabited by nice people. It was also the first city in which I worked that placed a female on its planning commission, alongside an African-American male who had preceded her by nearly a year.

It was a pattern that repeated itself countless times over the years: first a person of color, next a person of the female gender. Change comes slowly sometimes. Planning proved no exception.

I was enjoying my current apartment, though it was old and hardly sparkled. The landlord was a man called “Smitty,” who managed my building and the newer one next door. He was friendly, attentive, and was always pleasant, even if you interrupted him during a meal with some minor complaint.

Work was both fun and fulfilling. The new partner—the engineer—and I didn’t, as they say down South, “gee and haw” too well together, but that really didn’t affect my career. I avoided him and he quickly expressed the feeling that I wasn’t of significant consequence to warrant his attention. He didn’t mind expressing his opinion of planners, and I didn’t mind expressing my opinion of people who, as he had, joined the National Guard. At that time in our country’s history (it would change drastically and tragically much later), it was a move back then designed to avoid actual military service.

That’s all I’ll say about that topic.

Let’s see … oh, lest I forget. As I went home each day, there was a young lady with luxurious long hair and eye-popping beauty, in a city some 20 miles away who had just finished teaching an unruly band of third-graders in her hometown. She had friends in the apartment building next door and visited there often. I knew nothing about it. That apartment was as step up, socially, from mine, so I stuck with my friends in the opposite direction on Riverside Drive. Class is class, but benefits are benefits, after all.

As with many young teachers working for minimal wages, this young lady was still wearing her college wardrobe while teaching.

Given the then-prevalent style of mini-skirts for well-formed young college ladies, and remembering my lingering infatuation with a third-grade teacher named Miss Roundtree, I can only imagine the fantasies created. Ah, but that had nothing to do with me.

Or did it?

Waiting in ambush?

My Redacted Life: Chapter Twelve: (Cont._3)

So 1971 drew to a close and I had survived. I had gained a year of experience both in urban planning and in dealing with civilian life. I can't truthfully say which was the most valuable. I had been running into some of my old acquaintances from college. Some of them didn't seem too happy. I met a few veterans such as myself. They were, to a person, well adjusted and pleased to be in the "free world."

That's why it has always amazed me that the press was able to build such myths about them. Oh well.

Christmas Day passed and worked resumed on Monday. The staff realized that all the bosses, including the new engineering partner, had planned the week off between Christmas and New Year's. We were on our own.

There began a tradition that exists, I imagine, to this day, best described by the old adage, "When the cat's away, the mice will play." We were enjoying the business equivalent of having "the crops laid by." There weren't any dire deadlines hanging over us like giant spider webs. We relaxed. It had been a trying year and we deserved it.

We discovered the benefit of the "designated answerer" in case one of the bosses called in. We made a list of errands that required staff to be absent and developed quite a skill at taking messages. Friday came and for the half-day that we were scheduled to work, some ingredients miraculously appeared that produced a gallon of Bloody Marys. This time we left the phone off the hook.

So ended that marvelous year in which I learned urban planning, responsibility, the benefits of study, deceit, trickery, and loyalty in equal measures, all that a "Young Turk" needed to get ahead.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Ten (Cont._3)

Things were taking a hard turn for consulting firms by the time I went to work in 1971. As part of the grant era, a devastating event occurred. The state, through much grant funding, had established planning agencies, economic agencies, and metro-planning agencies throughout the state. These were to provide planning services for free or for reduced fees for cities and counties. They would receive preferential treatment for planning grants under what was known then simply as the “701 Program.”

The result? The day I went to work there were six planning consulting firms in the Little Rock/North Little Rock metro area. By the end of 1971, there would be two. Those two would have to strive mightily for planning work in the future.

As a result of this, the owners of our firm made two fateful decisions. The first was to bring a professional engineer into the firm as a full partner. The second was to pursue the original dream of pursuing land development.

It all sounded good on paper.

I wasn’t concerned. At worst, I was learning a trade. As the year progressed, I spent most of my time working on two of the last urban renewal projects scheduled for the state. One would be funded, the other only partially and only after a massive reduction in scope.

These were gigantic undertakings requiring a grant application nearly two inches of legal-sized paper thick. They handed me an old application that had been funded and told me to modify and replicate one like it for a firm in southwest Arkansas, a place called Hope.

I spent my days number crunching, studying census reports, and directing the mapping required. Nights, I went to planning commission meetings when one happened to be scheduled. Other nights I would read, or sometimes wander down to some house on Riverside Drive where there might be music.

Weekends might find me going home to Pine Bluff or driving up to Fayetteville to party with friends. I didn’t have a care in the world.

This all beat the hell out of the Navy, though I sometimes missed its structured life where the future was fairly easy to predict and thoroughly controlled by higher powers.

The new engineering partner took a little getting used to, and that’s all I want to say on that subject.

We still had plenty of work, despite the cut in potential created by the planning and development districts. Further, it was about this time that I started being involved in one of the most heartbreaking phenomena known in the design services industry.

This involved writing and presenting proposals for jobs, not grants, but jobs. Oh my.

In the old days, cities and other public agencies simply hired who they wanted to do such work as planning, engineering, or architecture. This, of course, suited the old-time firms well. By the time I came along, some of the younger firms had raised enough hell that the selection process became more formalized. It seemed like a good idea and it sought to even the playing field. Additionally, though, it seemed to bring out the worst in some people.

More about that tomorrow.

A lesson
to be learned.