My Redacted LIfe: Chapter Six (Cont._5)

As the deadline of April, 1971 neared, our office fell into somewhat of a routine. I still walked to work, my Navy raincoat assisting at times. I still read at night and was teaching myself touch-typing. Having finished my research on the Hot Springs office market, Tom let me try my hand at writing the report. I bought myself a brand-new BIC pen and went to work.

On this project, I first encountered a mental process that has blessed, plagued, and tormented me nearly 50 years. I often feel I can do anything, if I just set my mind to it. As this feeling now embedded itself into my psyche, I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. Beautiful stuff it seemed to me. I would make the profession proud. I wrote some more. Was there a Pulitzer Prize for planning reports?

With the gleam of self-satisfaction in my eyes, I handed my finished work to the typist and returned to supervising. A couple of days later, she handed the draft back for review.

It was awful, terrible, and filled with flowery claptrap, more a cheap imitation of Daphne du Maurier than a technical piece. I think Tom left one sentence intact, the rest died under a blood-like film of red ink. Would that I had kept the edited copy. It could occupy a spot in the museum they may build someday in my honor.

It did make me appreciate both humility and simple, declarative sentences. Perhaps life flourishes best in the invigorating and nutritional mixture of failure and re-trying. I still lack writing skills, but I did learn to distrust adverbs. That’s a good start.

Anyway, we continued to finish project after project and the bosses were happy. What else could I ask for in life?

On morning, I arrived at work early and finished my “Bear Claw” and coffee well before time for the others to arrive. I had perused most of the morning paper and decided to address a personal failure that had eluded me since I was 11 or 12 years old: solving the daily cryptoquote in the Arkansas Gazette.

This morning, something nudged a dormant set of cognitive genes and I felt a rush of insight. I had been going at it all wrong. The solution lay in patterns and forms rather than formula. As my heart pounded, the words, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far – Theodore Roosevelt,” appeared in pencil notes and erasure marks above the lines of gibberish.

Hot damn!

It began a lifetime of returning, from time to time, to attacking the daily offering, still carried in the dailies, particularly when I feel my mind needs exercise. I mention the event here only because it taught me that any success, no matter how small or trivial, builds a successful attitude. And boy, did I have one at that point in my life. Cocky I was. Lessons to learn I faced.

That day, though, we applied some extra enthusiasm and completed two more of the projects. Tom came by late in the afternoon, saw the progress, and called me into his office.

Having bade me sit, he formed his fingers and make a tent and stared at them. After a moment, he looked up. “Looks like,” he said, “we may accomplish something that, quite frankly, I never thought would happen.”

I smiled and said nothing.

He smiled back and said, “I think we’ll raise your salary another hundred dollars a month.”

“Thank you.”

“But don’t expect a raise every month in the future.”

“I won’t.”

Like hell I wouldn’t.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Six (Cont._4)

The winter of 1971 was nearing a close and there was no discontent on my part. I even bought a couple of new shirts. Jimmie was in tall cotton, as they say.

I had expanded the project check list to include a list of key accomplishments that had to be made on each. Since we knew which steps were time-consuming, we could avoid getting caught unawares. If all proceeded according to plans, we felt, as John Agar used to say in the monster movies of the 1950s, “It just might work.”

Since I now had some free time while the drafters were preparing maps, the bosses sent me to Hot Springs for several days. We had been hired by a bank to research the market for office space in the downtown area. All I had to do was contact the owners of existing office space, lie that my firm was considering a move to the city, and take notes on the existing inventory. Since lying was pretty much second-nature to me, the assignment posed no problems.

The thing I remember most about this venture was lunchtime. There was a deli in downtown Hot Springs called Mollie's and there they made what was probably the best corned beef sandwich ever produced on American soil. Their pastries were even better. It was a small treasure added to a city that was already, and still is, a treasure for our state, one of its finest.

There was an atmosphere and an ambiance that combined with the food in this hallowed venue. Family owned and operated, it had pleased customers for years. The air inside fairly crackled with the spirit of history. It was a magic place. Sadly, it burned years later and the family moved it into former house just outside the downtown area.

Know what? The food never tasted the same there. There were the same cooks, same waitresses, same owners, but not the same taste. You can’t replicate the value-adding blessings and atmosphere of history.

The same is true in a way of urban planning. We tore down, or allowed to deteriorate, burn, or collapse many old buildings, only to see them replaced by monstrosities that appeared to be made from the same plastic used in Mattel shipbuilding kits. A little of our national pride is scraped away each time this happens.

Fortunately, Hot Springs has held on to most of their old structures. It is a peaceful city. Ancient Native-Americans from different tribes used to put aside their differences and trade there in harmony. Gangster declared it a neutral zone, and famous figures such as Al Capone gathered for the baths and for rest. At the time, I lacked the experience and background to appreciate how fortunate I was to be assigned to such a wonderful place. In fact, I didn’t know much about anything urban, least of all what I was doing.

I only knew that I didn’t have to carry a rifle to do it and that those corned beef sandwiches were damn good.

Could life get any better?

Hot Springs National Park , Arkansas
Still one of our greatest treasures.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Six (Cont._3)

At work, the projects were progressing. We might make the April deadline after all. The rancor had subsided, replaced by a raw sense of purpose.

They had quit making sly little comments about my being a 26-year-old bachelor. I think they had decided that I really might be gay. I let them harbor whatever thoughts they chose. It didn’t matter to me. Well … being the “devil may care” charming joker that I am, I may have affected some occasional mannerisms to torment them and, more likely, to throw them off. It kept them from trying to line me up with their 400-pound cousins.

I know. I’ll pay for things like that if there really is ever a judgement day. In the meantime, I held on to my standards. I would wait for a woman who had secrets, knew how to use them, and knew how to keep them. What else could you want in a soulmate?

But, back to my fledgling career as an urban planner. They proceeded with plans to tear up Capitol Avenue, just below our office window, and make it into an ersatz replica of a modern mall. Since they had not asked my opinion, I decided to let them proceed with the insanity.

At home evenings, I had found my old copy of Design With Nature, by the immortal Ian McHarg. Today, they often refer to him as the “father of GIS.” His approach, the use of polygon overlays, forms the basis of many complex analyses and reports performed with Geographic Information Systems. His use of those overlays to solve urban design challenges formed the basis for many modern approaches to planning.

I had actually seen the man speak at Fayetteville. His strong Scottish brogue and highly elevated thoughts created a tough cognitive shield, but a little of his wisdom had sneaked its way into my psyche. Now I wish that it had for others as well. I seem to recall that he used the term "low-grade urban smear," once to describe our settlement patterns.

At the time of which I write, he was a voice in the wilderness and he once got me into a lot of trouble with a man named Paul Greenberg. I will dutifully relate the experience further down the line. I noticed back then that his writings bore no resemblance to the things my bosses had given me to read. It was a matter of controlling and conquering our natural environment, or designing human habitation in harmony with nature as a co-equal but governing partner.

You guessed it. The other side won and our planet may burn itself to a crisp as a result.

Allow me a short break. How did I go from women to urban planning to direful warning of the coming apocalypse? Oh, it may be that the wisdom of women, a turn to the sequential thinking of planning our environment, and the electing of better leaders may be our only hope as a species. Don’t hold your breath, though.

As I was contemplating these things, a short and spritely woman with one of those highly educated minds was sashaying her way through the final days of her college experience. No doubt she would have taken one look at me and said, “Who the hell are you?”

Maybe I would grow on the job and make myself more worthy. After all, I had my Gibson guitar and my copies of Design With Nature, The Wasteland, and The Golden Bough. With those in hand, Isaac Hayes on the phonograph, and a bottle of sweet white wine nearby, I could get better.

I would get better. I was determined. As great person once said, “The height of our life’s mountain is based on the solidness of a foundation formed by bitterly learned lessons and bravely fought struggles.”

On no, that wasn’t from a great person. Not at all. I said that.

Ian said that. A little harsh? Read the headlines.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Six (Cont._2)

My social life soon expanded. I discovered that old friend and fellow vet Mike Dunkum was on his second attempt at obtaining a college degree at Fayetteville. His first attempt had been foiled by inertia. It seemed to attack most fiercely at test time or when papers were due

A combination of academic failure and lust for adventure had sent him to the Army recruiting office where he met a persuasive man named Sergeant Goforth.

I’m not making this up.

The good Sergeant convinced Mike that the life of a Green Beret officer was the thing, and so it happened.

After Vietnam, Captain Dunkum and other officers returning from the war zone encountered some tough news from the Army. They were sent to a hell-hole in Texas called Camp Hood and confronted with three army policies. They couldn’t be promoted. They couldn’t stay in. They couldn’t get out until their current time was up. In short, our country was through with them.

And that was among the better treatment afforded returning Vietnam veterans.

Now, though, I found out that Mike was in Fayetteville and I began to drive up on Saturdays after we knocked off work. The best time had was staying up until midnight Saturdays and watching “Dr. Mazeppa Pompazoidi’s Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting.” It emanated from Tulsa, and starred a young Gailard Sartain as Mazeppa and a young Gary Bussey as his sidekick Teddy Jack Eddy.

It was best viewed with the aid of medicinal smoking aids.

Those were fun days, and I’m glad Mike had them. These days there is a good chance that he suffers from the effects of Agent Orange. That’s the last gift that General Westmorland, et al, left us, the gift that keeps on giving.

Monday, it was back to work. The sins of my weekend, like so many other previous sins, lay buried on the back streets of Fayetteville, far from the view of my now more professional colleagues.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Six

Back at work, I spent spare time during lunch break watching Capitol Avenue. Something was going on. Something bad. Really bad.

Each day at noon, there was a show going on at the intersection of Capitol and Main streets. I finally asked someone what was happening.

“Preparing to save Downtown,” someone said.

“Getting ready to make Main and Broadway into a downtown mall,” another said.

Had I been a prophet, had power, and had courage to act, perhaps I could have stopped them, but I doubt it. Americans are a hard-headed bunch at times. They believed in “downtown malls,” And American cities all over, including Little Rock, were about to make one of the biggest mistakes in the history of urban planning.

Downtowns across the country experienced many problems back then. We blamed their decline on all sorts of issues, mainly centered around the idiotic presumption that malls were the main problem, and by using what Sir James Frazer called, “Imitative Magic,” the solution would prove simple.

Yeah, I know. It was like the bull entering the bull ring, going into “analysis mode,” concluding that his main problem is the red cape, and making what he thinks is the right decision. As we all know from the first, the red cape wasn’t his problem after all.

In the happy, happy Land of Hindsight and Retrospection, the main enemy in the fall of the central business as the primary retail center of commerce may have been something as simple as the Law of Gravity, and its antithesis.

That’s what formed downtowns in the first place: gravity. With townsfolk relying on travel by foot, public transportation, and slow-moving wagons, there was a great motivation to concentrate commercial activity in as small a place as possible, often around the train station or the intersection of other major traffic arteries.

The actual shops for the conduct of retail crammed themselves into an even smaller area, as near as possible to the “100 percent corner.” That would be at Capitol and Main in Little Rock. Cities located the warehousing of goods for the shops a short distance away in an area set aside for the purpose. In fact, one of the first zoning attempts involved the desire to prevent New York City’s garment district from getting too close to the ritzy shops and high-class clientele concentrated in the city center.

All worked fine until the automobile became a staple of the American family, and General Motors began buying public transit systems throughout the country and either closing them down or allowing them to deteriorate into such a state of filth and unsightliness that an unremovable stigma clings, in America, until this day, upon their use.

Then, “anti-gravity,” what we sometimes call “centrifugal force,” took over. Why should retail costumers fight their way all the way to Downtown when they could jump in the family car, drive a short distance, and buy things? The things they bought would become increasingly cheaper as national firms cornered what had been a free-market retail phenomenon in so many ways. As residential suburbs proliferated, centrifugal force slung retail businesses out toward them, away from Downtown.

At any rate, the future of Downtown as the dominant retail center faced inevitable doom. Turning it into a mall with few customers, and little of the necessary parking required, wasn’t going to change that. If a city didn’t have a suburban mall, a neighboring city did. We wept and wailed, and threw money at the issue. It didn’t work. Shopping centers and strip-centers ruled commerce, and the subterranean monsters we now call “big-boxes” hadn’t even yet been released from their noxious lairs.

The big-boxes would later take care of neighborhood businesses and now face their own “economic matadors,” but those are stories for another day.

Downtowns would have to evolve in order to survive. Given the vast number of Americans who refuse to accept the realities of natural evolution, it’s not surprising how many would refuse to accept a concept involving urban evolution. As I say, Americans are a stubborn folk, clinging to images in crumbling stones .

The evolution of the central business district was a solution that would grow into an inspiration only in recent times. During the interim, many downtowns would crumble and fall, despite the benign, but devasting, efforts of a long line of urban planners and urban designers who yearned for immortality,

Back in the day, I stared through the window at Capitol Avenue and was quite willing to play my part in the carnage.

Somehow,  central cities survive
our best efforts to destroy them.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Five (Cont._4)

After a couple of months on a new job in a new city my social life began to improve. I actually had a date, fixed up by Tom Hodges. It didn’t amount to much. It was a woman with whom I had attended college. She was divorced and had four children. We had a nice time but nothing came of it except for a lingering wonderment on my part on how a couple could make four children before deciding they couldn’t live together.

I guess I had a lot to learn about the new world to which I had returned.

A more lasting event occurred one evening while I was practicing guitar of a Friday evening. I had purchased an old Gibson sunburst from a sailor aboard the Hunley and had become intimate friends with it. As I tried my hand at fingerpicking a tune, I heard lumbering footsteps ascending the stairway. When they turned toward my apartment, I laid the guitar aside and went to the door.

I opened it and there stood a close friend from my college days, a man named George M. Owen. He clutched a six-pack of cold beer in his arms, so I knew he had come with no evil intent in mind. I welcomed him in with enthusiasm and he handed me the beer, a late housewarming gift. I bade him sit, removed two beers, handed him one, and took the rest to the refrigerator.

My oh my, did we have a lot to catch up on. Nearly five years had passed since I saw him last. We both looked that much older and possessed a great deal of information about the lost years. He was working for a local architect and had taken up the banjo. He told me of a group he had joined called The Rackensack Society. It was a bunch of folk music enthusiasts and entertainers that included amateurs, semi-professionals, and even some prominent names like legendary political cartoonist George Fisher.

The group met the first Monday of the month at the Arkansas Art Center and would welcome me with open arms. Me? Aside from family, no one had welcomed me with open arms in years. Was he sure? Yes. Actually, they did, and I stayed close to the group for years, until a work assignment took me away on meeting nights.

That evening, we finished the beer and began swapping tunes on the Gibson. I broke out a bottle of Gallo Sauterne I had been saving, and, in the words of our old and dear friend, songwriter Gary Toler from Texas:

The time it ran so slow,

Cause we had so much to say.

Singing slow and drinking sweet white wine,

We passed the time away.

Friend George had filled in an empty spot in his life. I was no longer alone in the big city. And time, we both felt assured then, would always be a soft loving breeze across our cheeks.

Back then: Gary Toler and I.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Five (Cont._3)

Things were going well at my new job until I ran into a primal fear situation. I don’t why I hadn’t anticipated it, but it happened.

It started on Thursday afternoon when Tom Hodges called me into his office. “Got any plans for Saturday?”

I didn’t and told him so.

“The planning association is having a meeting in Russellville on Saturday. We thought you might want to ride over with us and meet folks.”

Of course. I had no apprehension. Maybe I’m ready for the big time. What should I wear? Casuals were fine, a relief cause that’s all I had.

They picked me up early Saturday and we headed west. Russellville was nearly two hours away in those days. I-40 was only completed in stretches. We were to meet on a point overlooking Lake Dardanelle, which is basically an expansion of the Arkansas River. Land had been leased on the point for construction of a Ramada Inn and the group met in a conference room there.

Back then, the professional organization was the American Institute of Planning. The professional designation was “AIP,” They changed it years later when a far right-wing bunch of characters named themselves “The American Independent Party,” i.e. “AIP.”

As for then, we were still AIP. On the way up, they told me that they had signed me up as an associate member and explained what it would take to achieve full membership. Since I didn’t have a master’s degree, it would take five years experience followed by an oral exam. I had over a month in already, so that didn’t seem so bad.

When we got there was when it all went to hell. It started out okay. Most of the ones attending knew one another. Some had even attended school together. Tom and Jim were gracious in introducing me to the group. They bragged a bit about how fast I was picking things up.

Then the president of the group started the meeting. We all sat around a large table and waited. After a few preliminaries, he said. “I see lots of old faces and some new ones. Why don’t we go around and introduce ourselves? Give a little information about your background, what your experience has been, and what the association could do for you?" He waived an arm to his left.

Oh hell! Speak to a group of strangers in a public gathering? Christ almighty. I hadn’t spoken to a group since they made me take public speaking in college. I only survived then because a roommate was having a fling with the instructor. He passed me with a “C” and a wink.

The last time before college had been in the fourth grade when I gave a presentation about the planet Mars. I said it was a planet that could be seen by the naked eye. Reading from cribbed notes, I pronounced the word “naked” to rhyme with “snaked.”

The entire class laughed at me, including Penny Perdue, Nell Phillips, and Rita Rowell, three of the prettiest and most popular girls ever to attend Lakeside Elementary. I had avoided speaking in public since. I never considered a career in law because I assumed one had to speak to juries. Not me, you betcha.

The thought of public speaking was a white-knuckled, heart-pounding, dry-mouthed, knee-trembling fear that I avoided at all costs. And now, the roundabout was closing in on me.

One thing about most urban planners is that they love to hear themselves talk, so it took a while for the conversation to get around to me. Instead of allowing time to prepare, it only increased the terror.

My time came at last. I felt sure I wouldn’t be heard over the pounding of my heart. “Hello,” I said and stated my name. There followed a silence during which the entire Gettysburg Address could have been recited, then, “I’m new in the business and I am proud to be here.”

Man, did that portend greatness or what? I sat red-faced while the next speaker expounded for ten minutes about the subject of his master’s thesis.

The meeting ended and we went home. Tom and Jim mostly gossiped about the others who had attended and left me to my shame. I stared out the window, thinking about a career in the Merchant Marines.

This urban planning business wasn’t going to be so easy after all, and the Sea has forever been a seductress for souls adrift in human misery. Call me Mushmouth.

But, I thought at last, maybe things would look better on Monday. Hopeful optimism is better than the Balm of Gilead.

You want me to do what?