My Redacted Life: Sunday Break

As the month of August grew near, I contemplated our upcoming marriage. Appearances indicated success, but who could tell? I grew increasingly fond of Brenda’s parents, particularly her dad.

Robert Julius Cole grew up in the rich farmland country of the Arkansas Delta, the oldest boy of three and brother to three girls, one a half-sister who was born before her mother was widowed at age 16. By the time Julius was nine, he was managing a mule as it plowed the dark soil.

Having made it through the Great Depression, his generation saw the world head directly into World War Two. Although, as the eldest son on a family farm, he could have claimed an exemption from military service, he took the place of a younger brother and went into the army.

He found himself assigned to the 313^th Regiment of the 79^th Infantry Division. The unit had come ashore at Normandy on D-Day plus seven. By the time Julius joined it they were well into France and headed for Belgium and Germany by way of the Battle of the Bulge.

Some of my favorite memories involve sitting around the supper table and listening to his stories about the war. I’ve always felt that the supper table helped produce so many fine writers from the South. Kids learned the art of story-telling from master craftsmen. Julius was one of those. One time he would tell about when, during the last days of the war, as the Germans were listlessly expending the last of their artillery shells, and his company was lined up for chow, a random shell killed the shortest soldier in his company.

Another time, he might tell about the time he told a young French girl that she had a nice puppy, whereupon she disappeared and returned holding a roll of toilet paper. He might tell about his comrades, after the war while on leave in Rome “Itley,” placing prophylactics on the statues of naked men in the plazas.

“Many of our guys got killed by our own artillery,” he would recount. “Most of those killed were new kids who would freeze during an artillery barrage and not move out when they told us to.” Or, “I spent one night in a fox hole with a dead German boy. As soon as I jumped in, the fleas left him and crawled on me.” Or, “Jimmie, you would say just let me live one more second. Just one more.”

“Wounded by artillery shrapnel, he survived the war in Europe. They disbanded the 79^th Division and shipped him to another unit. It would be the First Infantry Division, the “Big Red One.” Had the war moved to the invasion of Japan, it would no doubt have led the way as it had at Normandy. The war ended, though, and he spent a year in Germany before rotating home.

There, he never, as far as I know, bothered another living soul. I still catch myself, from time to time, pitying those who never had the honor of knowing him.

A photo copied from the  Internet that
 may include Private Robert Julius Cole.

My Reacted Life: Chapter 33

Some things were simpler for a planning and engineering firm in 1972. Some weren’t. Take an interesting project at a Little Rock landmark. It unfolded like this.

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission had decided to move its staff operations from the Capitol grounds to site adjacent to the new I-430 bypass in West Little Rock. It was to be part of a large campus to be called the Natural Resources Complex or something like that. Since it would also house state agencies like the Plant Board and Crime Laboratory, the architect for the Game and Fish boys thought some advanced site planning would help. Jack Castin was the perfect choice for the assignment.

There was another reason that site planning from an outside source would come in handy. Jack would find out about that later.

Everyone was in a hurry, a big hurry. Jack needed an accurate topographical map and a professional surveyor would need time to prepare one. Nope. We had to get started. The U.S. Geological maps had general topo lines, but their accuracy was unknown and the scale was unusable.

Ron McConnell and I put our heads together. Through an elaborate scheme that involved putting an accurate and measured line on the small drawing, and having our old friend Bob Wilson photograph and enlarge it to another semi-precise length, we produced a fair representation of a topo map at a workable scale. It would serve until the surveyor had prepared a more accurate version. We prided ourselves. The boss smiled. The architect okayed it. Jack went to work.

Then he learned the news.

Not being from Little Rock, he didn’t know that the plot of land they handed him contained the bodies of inmates who had died, with neither resources nor family, while housed in the state mental hospital. In those days, the government cared for the mentally disabled in public institutions rather than medicating them and turning them out alone to fend for themselves. That’s a topic for another day.

What we faced now was a site irreverently known to generations of Little Rock natives as “Crazy Graveyard.” It lay right in the middle of the property. It served, in addition to incarcerating the indigent, as a favorite “parking” spot for teenagers, young boys hoping that fear of the “undead” might serve as an aphrodisiac, and young girls willing to go along for one ride too many. Adding extra spice to the experience was a long-standing legend that the bodies therein were buried in a vertical position to conserve space. That allowed their ghosts quicker access to the real world.

Old timers say it worked as a love nest, Crazy Graveyard did. Who knows how many successful citizens of today might trace their origins to the site?

Anyway, the situation led to a great deal of consternation. What to do with the location of so many unclaimed and unknown bodies? The boys at Game and Fish didn’t care much one way or another. Truth be known, the architects didn’t either. Jack, being Catholic, wanted a resolution. Questions only produced a great deal of embarrassment and cover-up from state officials. Turns out that there had never been a state employee who had been the least bit involved in disposing of those bodies.

“What bodies?” they explained.

Eventually, some portion of the site remained a memorial. Jack did a masterful job of planning the site, as always. The architects were happy. The boys at Game and Fish were relieved, and the world continued to rotate on its axis.

Oh, and what about the makeshift topo map Ron and I came up with? It proved incredibly accurate as it turned out. Our technique came in handy, although later what took us three days would only take a few strokes of a keyboard.

I don’t know what they do with the bodies of mentally deficient paupers these days. They don’t keep many of them in public institutions, I am told, long enough to expire. They die on the streets and become somebody else’s problem.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 32 (Cont._4)

With marriage looming, we began to consider finances carefully. The state begrudgingly paid teachers around $400 to $500 per month, some two to three thousand a month less than the school superintendent in Little Rock paid his secretary, A distant dream was to purchase a house after we were married. Wasn’t that what a young married couple was supposed to do?

We began, based on our anticipated income, to determine how much house we could afford. The answer was staggering. Millionaires, my father insisted, lived in $20,000 homes and only the sorriest wastrels lived in homes built entirely by someone else. People in the know said “Buy a little more house than you could afford and, as your income increased, you would “grow into it.”

I’ve thought about this a lot since. Back then, I just fretted about it.

At the same time, I was dealing with the financial condition of our cities. They faced a different set of problems. A young couple running short of money could always work harder or get a higher paying job. Cities faced a finite revenue source. Property taxes paid a paltry amount of fees and revenue streams from utilities paid some. State turnback from fuel taxes helped with streets. As mentioned in an earlier segment, places like Conway Country, Arkansas, produced funds from their speed trap enterprises. How much of those funds went to pay for public services is anybody’s guess.

Cities relied on two or three sources for large capital projects. They are allowed to issue General Obligation bonds based on a defined increase in property taxes as the source of payment. Utility revenue streams could also create projects to be undertaken through bond issues. Then there were massive grant programs through the federal government for specified categories of projects. Local sales tax options were years away.

Cities managed somehow. Plans were based on predicted growth patterns. Oddly, predictions almost always matched the population needed to create enough revenue to carry out the plan or to fund an individual project. Fancy methods of prediction used birth rates, death rates, migration patterns, and the ability of specific cohorts to propagate. Nobody really understood the methodology. I suppose that was the intent.

Sadly, there would be only one major generator of population growth or decline among our cities in the coming years. Like an earth tremor awakening a sleeping monster, the cause was slowly winding through the federal court system on its way to the Supreme Court. It would have very little to do with quality of life, economic development, public administration, or good planning.

It would have everything to do with which way school buses ran.

I couldn't help but wonder
where this was all headed.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 32 (Cont._3)

Seeing as how I enjoyed no place in the planning of the Wedding of the Century, I concentrated on work. That came with a nice surprise. Tom called me into his office one day and asked, if he wasn’t getting too personal, what plans we had made for a honeymoon.

I said that plans were now resting between a jaunt to the Gulf Coast and a trip to Chicago to see relatives and the largest collection of important American architecture that existed in any single place in the country.

He nodded with approval. “Don’t let me interrupt plans that you might be looking forward to,” he said, “but how would you like and all-expense paid honeymoon in Denver, Colorado and then up to Aspen?”

“Aspen?”

“Not much skiing there in August,” he said, “but they’re beginning to attract a year-round tourist trade. It’s a charming place any time of year.”

“Aspen? Why Aspen?”

“We’re being hired to do a feasibility study for some folks who want to develop a learning and convention center in Arkansas,” he said. “They want to use the Aspen Institute as a model. It attracts an international clientele.”

I nodded. He continued. “We’ll pay for you to take your bride there and enjoy yourself for a few days if you’ll simply tour the facility, find out as much as you can about it, and bring back a report. You can spend the rest of the time as you please.”

“I’ve been to Denver once,” I said. “It’s an interesting place, the Mile-High City.”

“Spend some time there too,” he said. “What do you think?”

“I think I’ll check with Brenda,” I said. “But it sounds nice.”

I caught her in good mood while she was sewing her mother’s dress for the wedding. She expressed some caution. “What do I do while you tour the facility?” she said.

“Whatever,” I said. “Sleep, go site-seeing, shop, read. I can’t imagine that it would take more than a couple of hours.”

“Could we rent a car?”

“Already checked on it. Yes. We’ll drive farther up into the mountains and enjoy the vistas.”

Her eyes took on a misty look. “Did I ever tell you about the couple I knew growing up? Childhood sweethearts and all. Poor as church mice. Both raised up in sharecropper families. He was just a few notches up from functionally retarded, but got a job at the rice dryer when he got out of high school. Two of the sweetest people I ever knew. We were all so happy when we heard they were getting married.”

“I don’t remember your telling me about them.”

“They had their engagement picture in the local weekly. He wore his cowboy hat and she wore the cutest, most adoring smile you’ve ever seen. Some friends had chipped in and had her hair styled.”

“That’s nice,” I said.

“The paper included a little write-up about their plans. Guess where they were going for their honeymoon?”

“I have no idea.”

“To the Ritz Motel in Prothro Junction, less than 20 miles away, said so right there in the paper. It nearly made all of us cry.”

It nearly did me too.

“So,” she said. “I guess Aspen, Colorado isn’t that bad for a honeymoon, even if it is a business trip.”

“Whatever happened to your friends?”

“Still married and happy as can be. They have two sweet young kids and they are one of the most beloved families in the county. I'm inviting them to the wedding.”

“So, Aspen it is?”

“Why not?”

With no further discussion, She agreed to let the company fund our honeymoon and for it to be a “business trip,” as she put it. She said no more about it at the time.

I suspected that she did, though, file it away, should she ever find a use for it.

I dunno. Seemed like
a good idea to me.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 32 (Cont._2)

A new era dawned about the time I planned to be married in August of 1972. Many men simply observed that, “Women are getting uppity.” Out in the rural churches, the men went further and pointed out that women were busy preparing themselves a special spot in the warmest corner of Hell.

The Apostle Paul was, they pointed out, pretty clear about it. Women, like children, were to be seen and not heard. They talked a lot about the scriptural strictures supporting male hegemony. I think they were a little shortsighted as usual. Men planned on obedience. Women planned on subterfuge and revenge. The gods planned on a rollicking good show.

The women in my life paid no attention to all that, as I’ve pointed out before. They sat me down, night after night and drilled into me my proper place in the wedding: when I was to arrive, what I was to wear how I was to act, and what I was supposed to say, and to whom. Even my Sainted Mother took their side. "A girl wants a nice wedding," she said. "So you mind them."

The were laying it on good and hard at the moment. "You okay so far?" one asked.

“Shouldn’t I,” I said rather weakly, “have some say in all this?”

They looked at me as if I had just suggested marrying them all and starting a harem.

“What would you like to say about it?” one asked, I think it was my neighbor, Vernell’s sister.

“Well, … , .”

All three burst into laughter. “She was kidding,” Brenda said. “Now shut up and listen.”

“Oh look,” Vernell said, in a wicked, mocking, tone, “he’s gonna start crying.”

They all three laughed at me.

“Now listen,” Vernell said. “You’re going to come in with your best man right off. You’ll be the first people on stage and you mustn’t foul it up. See?”

“I see,” I said, attempting some degree of defiance, “I have been to college, you know. And I’m a veteran of a foreign war.”

“You’re going to be a veteran of a hand up-side your head if you don’t shut up and listen,” My neighbor said, closing the zipper on a pair of jeans she had put on with some apparent bit of haste.

I said nothing, assuming things might go better that way.

“Mama’s already afraid you might not show if we leave you alone,” Brenda said. “She wants Daddy to bring a couple of boys to get you to the church on time.” She laughed to herself and the other two giggled.

“I’ll be there on time,” I said. “Where else would I be?”

“Oh, we don’t know,” Vernell said. “Maybe in some bar working on your nerves.”

“Dammit look,” I said, “I’m the man here, after all.” I sat back, amazed at my show of strength.”

“Yeah,” my neighbor said, “that’s why we’re taking charge.”

And so it went. They called it any number of things later: “women’s lib, the sexual revolution, feminism, women’s rights, rise of the Feminazis …” Take your pick, but maybe be a little circumspect in how and where you enunciate it.

I just called it the same set of orders from a different source. (Had I still been in uniform, I would have called it something more colorful, but civilization had overtaken me.) For now, my extended career in the military and my short career in business had taught me that, that if you had no power, it was best to follow orders from any legal source.

That lesson, I was thinking, had led me through “many dangers, toils, and snares.” Marriage would just be one more. Then I remembered the first time I had seen that vision of beauty sashay by me. I smiled and tried to remember poetry.

“Is your mind wandering again?” my neighbor said.

Out of town earning today. I'll resume tomorrow with my tales of wandering along on the road to marital, uh, bliss.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 32

As I waited for August of 1972 to arrive, the firm was humming with activity. We were about to break ground on our first subdivision. It was a small, but elegant thing, based on the current thinking.

Urban planners had decided, for example, that such frivolities as sidewalks didn’t deserve a place in modern America. Who walked anymore? Where would one walk? Neighborhoods would no longer be connected. That might lead to the mingling of social classes and other urban ills.

The disappearance of neighborhood schools was making the motoring of kids more important than ever. Planners spent their leisure hours contemplating how, in the future, they would configure ways to make automobile travel more seamless, even if it meant sacrificing the pedestrian.

Then there was the growing preference for dead-end streets, called cul-de-sacs. Homeowners seemed to like them as they helped keep strangers off their street. Police weren’t so sure because it made patrolling neighborhoods more difficult. Firefighters worried about entire streets being stranded by downed trees or power lines. In large developments, property owners had to carry maps with them to navigate the development.

We called it progress and moved on.

There was also a new generation of home buyers entering the market, the so-called “Baby Boomers,” or those born in the post-World War Two procreation frenzy between 1946 and 1964, much of that time free from the nighttime distraction of television. At any rate, they represented some 20 percent of America’s population, the largest identifiable population cohort in America’s history, also one of the most spoiled, pampered, and selfish. They would impact the economy of the Untied States for decades.

To call them a schizophrenic would fall way short of the mark. As a measurable group, they supported the Vietnam War, but as that same measurable group, they chose, rather pointedly, not to participate in it. 

Their parents, the generation that had survived both the Great Depression and the Second World War, knew full well the meaning of sacrifice. To their credit, and perhaps our country’s detriment, they harbored the hope of protecting their children from trials such as they had endured. The fact that America enjoyed the only fully functioning economy among developed nations, made this possible.

Consequently, the Boomers were neither accustomed to, nor fond of, privation. The so-called “Greatest Generation” had rushed by the millions to purchase modest homes of 800 square feet or less, often in developments labelled as “splintervilles” or some such demeaning term by later wags.

The Boomers, on the other hand, demanded an entry-level purchase of a three-bedroom two-bath brick home, well beyond their level of purchasing power.

Because of such old-fashioned habits of saving and parsimony, parents of the Boomers stood on hand to help their kids purchase their dream homes, often larger and more expensive than those of the parents.

The GI Bill had helped World War Two veterans, who were of Caucasian descent, purchase decent, safe, and sanitary housing in areas where the housing was marketable, if not luxurious. Other veterans did the best they could. That’s where housing stood in my early career. A family’s home was destined to become, for the Boomers, the single greatest portion of their net worth. Choices of location were important, for those who could make them, a distant dream for those who couldn’t.

How did this all affect someone like me? We shall see.

Some neighborhoods were
more desirable than others.