Holidays: 2016

Notes on the beginning of the holiday season, 2016:

I wasn’t in America for most of 1968. I only read about what was happening in “Stars and Stripes.” It sounded bad. Seemed like each week there was a new assassination or a new round of riots or a new recruiting office bombed. My employer—the United States Navy—and my shipmates and I had to deal with the internal tensions created by the mess back home in addition to carrying out our mission. In the midst of it all, an African-American sailor in my unit, the Naval Security Force in Da Nang, was found stabbed to death in a guard tower during the midwatch. I remember thinking, “How tragic, how utterly senseless, cruel, and monumentally tragic, to be sent home in a body bag at the hands of your own shipmate.

After days of lockdown and growing tensions, NCIS apprehended the killer. The murder had resulted from a personal feud between two members of the same ethnic group. A mother met her son’s body at the airport as the result of a disagreement between two Americans. A name is on the wall in Washington, instilled forever in cold black, granite, because one American killed another American during an attack of rage and hatred.

Despite all that, I remember the moment when the sight of land disappeared from beneath the airplane taking us home and seeing, below, nothing but the South China Sea. In an instant, those sparkling blue waters washed away all the fears, anxieties, and turmoils of the last year. We all cheered to be alive and going back to the United States. There were neither races nor colors on the plane at that moment, only Americans. What a great and wonderful feeling.

Maybe it would be a good day for us all to seek that feeling. Anyone tempted to post an incendiary note condemning an entire profession or ethnic group might pass on it for one day. Anyone tempted to fuel the fires of violent passions might just put aside the thought for a day. What a grand day it would be for us all mentally to fly back home to America.

Who knows what I was thinking?

Perhaps I recalled Matthew Arnold:

I, on men's impious uproar hurl'd, 

Think often, as I hear them rave, 

That peace has left the upper world 

And now keeps only in the grave.

Country Doctors

            They shut down one of the last country Doctor’s offices in the Delta a while back and we probably won’t see another. Health care is too tempting a target for the corporations. A kindly, caring, and brilliant fellow ran it for years, his body giving out before his mind. His name was Byron E. Holmes, M.D. and he was the closest thing to Marcus Welby, M.D. you could find in these parts. He died yesterday, a loss for us all.

            They say that back in the day he charged two dollars for an office visit. That usually took care of one’s problems. He was slow to forward you to Little Rock and have the young folks pass you around to their Med School buddies before cutting on you. "No," he would say, “Let’s watch it for a few days and see if it won’t heal itself.”

            Know what? It almost always did.

            The office was an old house on Front Street, the “main drag” of Lonoke, Arkansas. He required no appointments. Patients were seen on a “first come, first served” basis. When things were slow, he would make his rounds to the nursing homes. When the waiting room was crowded, he never hurried. As for myself, he rarely fussed at me for anything but my weight. Sometimes he wanted to talk about the world. It didn’t matter if I was in a hurry or if the waiting room was crowded. I listened. I think I was one of the few people that had never heard all of his stories. One time I remember well: we both enjoyed a few chuckles when I mentioned I had read a book about Little Rock's infamous "goat-gland doctor."

Dr. Holmes, right, receiving one
of many awards.

            His father was a Methodist minister and the legend goes that he told his son not to go into medicine. It was, as Joseph Conrad would put it, “… a command not obeyed.”

            We’re glad it wasn’t.  I’m glad I was fortunate enough to be in his care for nearly 40 years. “Better go let Dr. Holmes look at it” was the catch phrase that took care of everything. One never felt patronized, insulted, or condescended to in his office. And if he wasn’t the best at drawing blood I ever saw, that was a minor detail.

            They replaced his clinic with a corporate outfit from Dallas, Texas. They began business charging $196.00 for an office call. The old days and old ways are done for, I’m afraid.

The old office on Front Street, now empty.

We’ll miss the doctor. Fortunately for me, the UAMS Longevity Center and the VA take care of my modest medical needs. The care is excellent. Under it, I have lost 50 pounds and feel 20 years younger. If something should go wrong, I think they will do a good job of treating it.

Even so, I always felt a little more confident when Byron E. Holmes, M.D. would say it would be all right in a few days. It always was.

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people. - Orson Welles

Country Doctors

            They shut down one of the last country Doctor’s offices in the Delta a while back and we probably won’t see another. Health care is too tempting a target for the corporations. A kindly, caring, and brilliant fellow ran it for years, his body giving out before his mind. His name was Byron E. Holmes, M.D. and he was the closest thing to Marcus Welby, M.D. you could find in these parts. He died yesterday, a loss for us all.

            They say that back in the day he charged two dollars for an office visit. That usually took care of one’s problems. He was slow to forward you to Little Rock and have the young folks pass you around to their Med School buddies before cutting on you. "No," he would say, “Let’s watch it for a few days and see if it won’t heal itself.”

            Know what? It almost always did.

            The office was an old house on Front Street, the “main drag” of Lonoke, Arkansas. He required no appointments. Patients were seen on a “first come, first served” basis. When things were slow, he would make his rounds to the nursing homes. When the waiting room was crowded, he never hurried. As for myself, he rarely fussed at me for anything but my weight. Sometimes he wanted to talk about the world. It didn’t matter if I was in a hurry or if the waiting room was crowded. I listened. I think I was one of the few people that had never heard all of his stories. One time I remember well: we both enjoyed a few chuckles when I mentioned I had read a book about Little Rock's infamous "goat-gland doctor."

Dr. Holmes, right, receiving one
of many awards.

            His father was a Methodist minister and the legend goes that he told his son not to go into medicine. It was, as Joseph Conrad would put it, “… a command not obeyed.”

            We’re glad it wasn’t.  I’m glad I was fortunate enough to be in his care for nearly 40 years. “Better go let Dr. Holmes look at it” was the catch phrase that took care of everything. One never felt patronized, insulted, or condescended to in his office. And if he wasn’t the best at drawing blood I ever saw, that was a minor detail.

            They replaced his clinic with a corporate outfit from Dallas, Texas. They began business charging $196.00 for an office call. The old days and old ways are done for, I’m afraid.

The old office on Front Street, now empty.

We’ll miss the doctor. Fortunately for me, the UAMS Longevity Center and the VA take care of my modest medical needs. The care is excellent. Under it, I have lost 50 pounds and feel 20 years younger. If something should go wrong, I think they will do a good job of treating it.

Even so, I always felt a little more confident when Byron E. Holmes, M.D. would say it would be all right in a few days. It always was.

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people. - Orson Welles

Photographers and History

Thought I would share some things I found just surfing the internet early in the morning.

Carl Mydans (born 1907) was an American photojournalist. He worked briefly for the Farm Security Administration during the 1930s documenting rural American life. In 1936 he joined the newly formed LIFE magazine where he became well known for his photographic coverage of World War II. He continued as a war photographer through the early 1970s.

Here is a photo of the daughter of migratory workers in the lower Rio Grande, in Texas.  Source: International Center of Photography.

Here is one closer to home, a cabin in the Missouri Ozarks that housed six people. Source: International Center of Photography.

One of my favorites is simply called, “Old Age.” Source: International Center of Photography.

He is known for this shot, uncropped here, of General Douglas MacArthur landing on Lingayen as US forces re-take the Philippines from Japan in WWII. Source: International Center of Photography.

And here is the one that got me started on this journey, a privy near the federal offices in Washington, D.C. in 1935. Note the water pump a few feet away. It served the house behind the privy and aptly demonstrates how far we have come in health standards in our country. Source: Library of Congress

Hope you enjoyed these. For more, see this collection at the International Center of Photography.

See also:

www. wattensawpress.com

www.cwblogsite.com

www.allhatnocattle.net

Memorial Day 2016

Let me first say that I didn’t know the man. In fact, my only experience involving him was casual and accidental, although our ages were only two years apart. Our lives were different though. Mine has been long and lucky. His was short and tragic.

His name was Perry Lee Poole and he was a Lance Corporal in the United States Marines, First Platoon, G Company of the Second Battalion, First Marines. He was born on January 05, 1945 and died on October 16, 1966 from small arms fire during a mission in the Quang Nam province of Vietnam on October 02, 1966. His hometown is listed as Helena, Arkansas, although I think he may have attended school elsewhere. His name exists on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington at Panel 11E, Line 80.

That’s not a lot to know about a man, is it? How did I come to know that much? A few years ago I drove my wife and mother-in-law to the small town of Marvell, Arkansas in the state’s eastern delta, not far from the Mississippi River. They were searching for the grave site of relatives and this led us to the nearby community of Cypert, and the Cypert Cemetery where they located the grave sites they sought. While they searched, I wandered, and I stumbled upon the tombstone of Perry Lee Poole.

From the designation of the USMC and his rank, along with his date of death, I had no doubt as to how he ended up at this site. It was just one of more than 50,000 such places scattered throughout America. As a veteran of that tragic chapter in American history, I could only stand in silent gratitude that I had been one of the lucky ones.

I photographed the tombstone and, after filing the photo, decided to see if I could find out anything about this man who never lived to fulfill his potential. Finding the cold facts was easy. Finding about the man was harder. It was as if history had hidden him away, from shame, or sorrow, or both.

Once, I did find comments from a childhood friend left on a website for fallen veterans. It seems that Perry Lee might have been the very model of a young man growing up in rural Arkansas: loving the outdoors, loving his country, and believing the glory of war. He lived to fish and hunt according to his friend who recounted how it wasn’t unusual for Perry Lee to appear before sunrise to plot an adventure.

His friend also recounted sadder times. From the letters Perry Lee wrote from Vietnam, we learn that he had been wounded, sent to the Philippines to recover, and returned to service. His last letter stated a poignant reality, “War is not like they show it in the movies.”

Why does the fate of this man and the scant bit of information about him intrigue me so much? I don’t know, but I think it lies in the knowledge that he may have been as accurate a depiction of a type of young man coming of age during those trying times as one might find. Also, it serves us as a reminder of the real cruelty of war. Perhaps it might convince some of us that we should have no more of them. Somehow, I think Perry Lee would have agreed.

See also:

www.wattensawpress.com

www.travelswithanalien.blogspot.com

Back Doors

Early morning thoughts: While standing “Quarterdeck Duty” once on a Navy base, I was told to deliver a message to the Admiral’s home. I carried out my mission smartly, but was told by the butler, “Next time, you are to use the back door.” It wasn’t a big deal, but it did mark the first time that I, a Caucasian male of European descent, had ever been told to use anyone’s back door. Walking back, I remember thinking, “What if it wasn’t the Admiral’s house and I wasn’t in the military? What if every day of my life, my father’s life, and my grandfather’s life, my people had been told to use the back door? How would that have shaped my life? How would my father have felt at the end of a day of denigration, humiliation, and back doors when he came home to assume his part in the rearing of his children?

At the time this happened, the military had its doors open for people of all colors. If one didn’t enter willingly, the draft was applied without regard to race, creed or color. So a man forced into war against his will, who served his country, perhaps being damaged in process, was still relegated to back doors at the end of his service if he didn’t fit our standards of racial purity. This means that there are more than 7,400 names of men on the Vietnam Memorial who would not have been allowed to live in many cities of the American South had they survived the war. These are names of men whose parents would have been denied service in many restaurants on the day of their son’s death, a denial supported and defended by “strong religious beliefs.” A life of back doors still awaited those mourning families.

How dedicated would I have been in service to my country if that end result awaited me?

A few short years later, the owner of an apartment building would say to me when I called to inquire about a rental, “You’ll have to come by in person so I can check the color of your eyes.” I declined and thought again of that night I walked back to the headquarters building from the Admiral’s house.

 It made an impression on me and I still wonder how many Americans survived our country’s wars only to be denied a home in which they could rest and recover, or the right to marry the person they loved, or the privilege of living free of another person’s religious dogma. That is why I’m appalled that some elected leaders–not many, but enough to terrorize the rest—would have us return any of our precious brothers and sister to those awful “back door” days.
 

Let us mourn for those who died without ever
 gaining the full rights of American Citizenship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also:

www.wattensawpress.com

www.travelswithanalien.blogspot.com

 

The Descent of a State

Sunday while resting for a few minutes, I caught a documentary on PBS about how the small town of Hoxie, Arkansas, in the mid-1950s, decided to integrate their school system, peacefully and with no court order. It would have been a model for our state on how to grant freedom to an oppressed people without creating civil disorder. We are rightfully proud of their efforts, but a not too funny thing happened.

Jim Johnson, a vicious white-supremacy attorney, rushed to the scene and, using the tired-old “They’re coming for your women,” ploy, embroiled the community in controversy, gaining notoriety that would push Orval Faubus into a staunchly segregationist stance and the state, eventually, into ridicule and disdain.

The rest is history. It proved to be one of Arkansas’s darkest hours.

It made me think of June, 1966, when I graduated from the University of Arkansas. Faubus had been in office for over ten years and had brought nothing but shame to the state during that time. The state had lost any prestige it might have once had, and was rapidly losing population.

Thus the “sucking sound” the next day following graduation, when so many who had no binding ties left the state. It was truly a mass exodus.

As for me, I went to San Francisco. In late 1966, there were so many ex-patriates from Arkansas living in the Bay Area that we would have get-togethers attended by 20 or 30 of my former classmates.

I never intended to return. As the Jack Nicholson character said, “I was just inches away from a clean getaway.”

Then the Draft Board came for me and I was  occupied for four years. During that time a funny thing happened. Winthrop Rockefeller became governor of Arkansas and I began to read accounts from home about how he was making a valiant attempt to bring Arkansas out of the morass into which it had wallowed for years, a morass that only the occasional success of its major college football team could brighten.

He was succeeded by Dale Bumpers, another enlightened soul. Then other funny things happened.

I was discharged and soon on my way back to California. I stopped in Arkansas to visit and met, through a family member, some young guys who had just started their own urban planning firm. I agreed to meet them before I “lit out for the territories.” I was that close to the “Little Rock Getaway” so to speak.

But, I found a job here. And I found a wife here. In short, I found a life here. Tall buildings were rising in my new city. A series of bright young politicians left their mark on the state: David Pryor, Bill Clinton, John Paul Hammerschmidt, Jim Guy Tucker, and Win Rockefeller. The state emerged from its dismal past and flourished. Women and people of color rose to prominence and more buildings rose to the sky. Northwest Arkansas, long a scene of poverty, began to emerge as one of the country’s leading economies.

Then a native son became President of the United States.

That’s when our progress, it seems to me, came under attack.

There were those who simply could not accept the fact that William Jefferson Clinton would be president for eight years, even though he presided over a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity marred, it is true, by personal lapses.

Today, I feel the state tilting backwards into that dark abyss once more. A state law that legalizes hatred becomes effective today, allowed by many who chose to ignore the “better angels of their nature.” The editorial page of the only statewide newspaper daily fans the feeling of disrespect toward our nation's President. Far too many churches have turned from preaching love and grace to encouraging the abhorrence of strangers. There is an outpouring of vitriol against non-Caucasians that hasn’t been this evident since the lynching of black people in our state at the height of the Jim Crow era. Those whose hatred is most uncontrollable are “agged on” as my mother would say, by those who should know better but who are deluded into believing that their right to own firearms is endangered. This is a most terrifying combination in my opinion. It is like a gas can resting alongside a stack of dynamite.

We’ve sunk too many roots to make a getaway at our ages. We might, if we don’t live past normal life-expectancy, survive since we descend from Northern European ancestry, the one truly protected category in our country. If we live too long, the haters may get around to the educated and progressive-minded, but we will be tired and ready to go by then.

In the meantime … my advice to a young person? “Run Dude, run!”

 

It seems that this action is now protected
by state law in Arkansas. Shame on us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also:

www.wattensawpress.com

www.travelswithanalien,blogspot.com