My Redacted Life; Sunday Break

As a young man, well relatively young, in the summer of 1972, waiting to be married, I thought of lots of things. I imagined trials, conflicts, disputes, differences of opinions, mutual aggravations, the effects of being “just plain sorry” on my part, and the general trials of living with someone who was basically a stranger. There would be major trials, like finances. There would be day to day trials like what food we liked. There would be trivial trials, like how to squeeze a tube of toothpaste. Most couples know of these.

And they all came to pass, as I had imagined them.

One thing happened, that I neither imagined nor resolved about my bride-to-be. That was just how much I would miss her when we were apart.

Thinking the same things?

My Redacted Life: Chapter 34 (Cont._4)

Things moved smoothly in the summer of 1972. I was to be married soon. Brenda was working on her wedding gown. I couldn't see it, though. No problem. I would see it soon enough.

I was learning new things every day, like if we just built enough traffic arteries, and they were wide enough, one day there would be no traffic congestion. Population projections proved our existing cities would grow forever. They all possessed the same opportunity. The federal government would maintain a fiduciary relationship with cities and counties in order to make sure that the important inner workings of our country would remain strong. The head and body would function in harmony. Reason would rule if we only planned carefully enough.

Well, yeah, not everything I was learning would prove out to be true. What would prove true was that our country’s role in the Vietnam War would end eventually, not “with a bang, but a whimper,” along with the bodies of students on the campus of Kent State University. Had war not proven so profitable to some, it might have ended our forays into civil wars halfway around the world. That was all in the future, though. For the time being, I was safe away from it all.

Right now, I had to get ready for the wedding. I knew my role by heart, and I had the money to get our wedding rings out of layaway. My bride-to-be was growing more beautiful every day, although she seemed to spend a great deal of time with her two co-conspirators. Sometimes, before knocking on her door, I could hear them inside laughing. They always stopped when I came and never let me in on the jokes. They were being nicer to me, though. I suppose they had come to realize that they couldn’t have this wedding without me. They even let me in on some of the planning.

Things were looking great. We would stay in my apartment until we had enough money to purchase a house. I would be able to get financing through the GI bill. Currently, that meant no down payment and a 7.5 percent interest rate, lower than the market. Our combined incomes suggested a home in the $20,000 to $25,000 range. (I found out later that housing purchases were best based on a single income, but that was in the future.) That seemed fairly grandiose and was enough to attract the interest of real estate sales people, all men. Later, women would come to dominate the profession. We weren’t ready yet, but give us time to study things. Things were running on a fast track. All we had to do was to hang on.

The bosses at work were already looking at a purchase of land for our next private development. It lay in the southwestern part of the county, just outside the city limits at the time. They had set the boundaries and Jack was already on the job, flourishing his magic markers over thin, semi-transparent sheets of thin paper known as “yellow-flimsy.” This development would include a community center, tennis courts, and a swimming pool. We planned for it to be the pride of central Arkansas. Who better to plan future developments than a group of talented urban planners? Indeed. It mattered little that the oldest of us was about to turn 30. All things would come to pass as planned.

 Those were glorious days. I’m glad we had them, Brenda and I. We would have others, many others, but there is something about the joy of living during times when you haven’t yet had to face reality.

I'd come a long ways.

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 34 (Cont._2)

 The days leading up to the wedding passed by like gray horses filing through a morning mist. I was apprehensive. Brenda was busy. Friends were inquisitive. I’d never attended a church wedding so I didn’t know what to expect. Ours would be a simple affair by modern standards but an affordable and accessible one. I still harbored a fear of speaking before a group, but I wouldn’t have a lot to say.

Besides, the three harpies had made me go over my lines do many times that I knew I couldn’t fail. The pressure seemed to make Brenda grow prettier every day. I don’t know exactly why. She wasn’t landing the catch of the century or anything. I was overweight from the eating binge that had accompanied my successful decision to quit smoking. I wasn’t above drinking too much. I could summon up a temper when I wished. I still felt I was four years behind my peers who had successfully avoided the draft.

But she stood by me, a trait that would continue.

My neighbor wasn’t so kind. She constantly reminded me that my bride-to-be could have “had her pick of men.” I should, therefore, consider myself lucky and do exactly as I was told. Hadn’t I been to boot camp?

“Well, yeah.”

“Just consider this another boot camp. One for wedding preparations.”

“Now one is not helpless simply because one is a man,” I said. “I have a good job, I served honorably in the military, People are starting to show a great deal of respect for my work and my opinion. I don’t have to stand for being treated like a two-year-old.”

“Shut up and listen,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. She had caught me going to my apartment and stopped me in front of her door. She fastened the top button on her blouse and pinched each side of her bra through the material with her fingers. She tugged it back and forth until she was satisfied with the fit and stuck a finger toward me.

“This is going to be one of the most important nights of her life,” she said. “It’s up to you to help make it happen.”

“I plan to.”

“What are you going to wear?”

“A suit?”

“Not a tuxedo?”

“She said I didn’t have to.”

“I’ll verify that,” she said. “You’d better not be lying.”

“She said we didn’t need any extra extravagances.”

“That sounds like her, but I’ll check anyway.”

"You do that."

“I will. Who’s going to be the best man?”

“My brother.”

“Will he be sober?”

“I suppose so.”

“You’d better know so.”

It went on like this for a while. I became confused. Weren’t weddings supposed to be about love? If so, would not wedding preparations also be about love? I was feeling more like a Marine recruit that a soon-to-be husband. She broke my reverie.

“You know I’m doing this for your own good, don’t you?”

Before I could answer, she continued. “We think an awfully lot of that girl.”

“I do too.”

“Then you’d better pay attention and carry it off like it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to you.” With that, she opened the door to her apartment, went in, and disappeared. I didn’t know what the hell to do next. I was thinking that I wasn’t going to put up with this crap from a bunch of women much longer. I was the man in the group and damned sure ought to let them know who was in charge. It surely wasn’t this neighbor with her lack of attention to dressing skills. We'd get this straightened out. Still, I didn’t move.

She had neglected to dismiss me.

This marriage thing wasn't
going to be as easy as I thought.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 34

August neared and the wedding date loomed on the horizon. I was busy working during the day, trying to ignore the jokes and jibes. Was I the first person who had ever planned to marry?

Oh well, Brenda was busy sewing, in addition to her own wedding dress, those for her mother, her bridesmaid, and the bridesmaid’s sister.

Some evenings she would take a break and we would drive out old Highway 70 along Hill’s Lake, find a quiet spot, open a bottle of Boone’s Farm Wine, and talk about the future. We would lean our heads together and count our blessings until the sun went down or the mosquitoes overtook us. Here I was, fulfilling a dream. I had a sports car convertible and a lover with long flowing red hair to ride next to me in it. I had come a long way.

At the office, the partners had asked if I wanted something called “a bachelor’s party.” I had no idea what that was. They didn’t have those in the old United States Navy. They explained that it was a party for men only where they got the husband-to-be drunk, acted silly, and talked dirty.

“Talk dirty?”

“Yeah, you know … filthy jokes and all.”

“That’s all you do?”

“Well, we get you drunk. It’s like one last super-blast before you get married.”

“You just get drunk, talk dirty, and make insulting jokes about being married?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Sounds like fun to me.”

I didn’t mention it to Brenda on any of our evening rides. Once though, I parked at the edge of a large field of soybeans stretching far into the horizon, with a band of clouds and thunderheads at its end.

“Isn’t this land wonderful?” she said.

I studied the soft curve of her back contrasted against the long straight furrows. The silence unnerved me and I said, “It’s okay here.” She didn’t respond so I added. “I guess next to the sea, I like the mountains best.”

She turned and looked at me the way a teacher would look at a student who had failed to solve the easiest problem of the day. “That’s just it,” she announced as if announcing the solution.

“What?” I said.

She smiled and the smile completely unmanned me, a trick of hers I had learned to dread.

“You see, here you create your own mountains.”

“Your own mountains?”

“Yes,” she said and her eagerness and certitude kept me unbalanced. “That way, you don’t suffer constraint.”

“Constraint?”

“Yes, constraint. Your mountains can be as big as you want or as small. They can be covered with snow or even have a giant cherry on top like that one there.” She pointed to a thunderhead on the horizon, topped by a round black cloud that did indeed seem to radiate a red hue in the late afternoon sky.

I held her hand. We studied the field, spread out before us like a chart drawn to illustrate perspective.

“How do they plow them so straight, the rows?” I asked.

“They have a marker on an arm of the tractor that they use to measure from the last row plowed,” she said. “Like this land itself―each generation is built upon the values of the last.” She paused and then added, “Daddy’s been doing it so long, though, he really doesn’t need a marker.”

I looked back at the fields and felt a breeze that swept me forward for a fraction of a second—not really long enough to register fully— and I saw the tedium of, year after year, coaxing life from this fecund land. Her voice jerked me back the way a young calf is jerked as he comes to the end of the roper’s lariat.

“It would be truly sad, wouldn’t it?”

I focused on her and processed what I thought I heard her say.

“Sad?” I said.

“It would be so sad to know that you had actually to be where the mountains were in order to have them. That you couldn’t just do it whenever or wherever you chose.”

I failed to find a response. Instead, I looked at the distant clouds as they transformed themselves into snow-clad mountains of heart-piercing peace and beauty.

Was I about to marry a sorceress?

Maybe Keats had it right.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 33 (Cont._3)

Attending a lot of planning commission and city council meetings in those days, I began to notice a lack of young folks on the boards. In fact, some planning commission meetings resembled “war-story-time” at the old-folks home. Most commissioners were white men, although an obligatory African-American would show up occasionally in cities with a large minority population.

Women would show up later.

Young folks didn’t appear for years. It was like the old guys were hanging on and weren’t ready to pass the torch. Or maybe the young guys were busy getting started in life and didn’t have the time or energy. Whatever, one still sees the results of a lack of youthful vision in many cities.

More often than not, those in power didn't care much for policies or plans. Those things tended to lock them into specious decisions which they made anyway.

Then there was the night a commissioner had stayed a little too long at Happy Hour. He was ready to protect his city at all costs. A developer proposed to redevelop a large area of homes he held “under contract.” This was a common occurrence in cities wherein homes were sold to families who couldn’t have applied for a mortgage. They paid a monthly payment, absent a mortgage that might build equity. After paying for years, they might miss a payment and find themselves on the street while another family moved into their previous home under a new contract.

The men who operated these scams invariably posted a “man of the year” plaque in their offices. Often, they were deacons of their church or the equivalent.

This night, there was a little grumbling about destroying so many homes, mostly from minority spectators living in the subject neighborhood. Our intrepid planning commissioner came to the rescue, as he saw it, of his businessman friend.

“Look folks,” he began—so far so good. Now “everbiddy” knows that this area ain’t nothing but a collection of rundown [adjective deleted] shacks and the whole area would be a lot better off if they were all bulldozed down.”

A long silence filled the room. Faces dropped. The other planning commissioners suddenly found something fascinating among their papers. People in the audience fidgeted. I closed my eyes and silently began to count to a hundred. The commissioner making the remark simply stared ahead as if he had announced a recipe for world peace.

This was the small-town South where I began my career. There were times when, had it not been for meeting Brenda, I wished I had stayed in the Navy.

What? Oh yes. The commission approved the development.

What the ...?

My Redacted Life: Chapter 33 (Cont._2)

Urban planning requires a lot of public hearings. Some are useful, some not. Some are entertaining, some not. Most are interesting. I attended a few during the summer of 1972 while I waited for my wedding day. I remember one in particular in my home town.

The way public hearings were conducted in those days was pretty standard, in most cases. Once the major decisions had been made, the city invited the public in to make comments or ask questions. After enduring what often turned into an ordeal, the city went ahead and carried out its original proposal. Planners would change the approach as years went by, but this was years ago, remember. One might say that we were, back then, approaching the twilight years of the good-old-boy days.

I don’t really remember what the public hearing in question involved exactly. I remember that it had to do with housing, and the room was full. I also remember that major actors in town favored a positive outcome. I remember that some people in the room didn’t.

The first speaker was a young architect whose firm was designing the project. I felt a little sorry for him since nothing in his experience or training had prepared him to deal with hostile audiences. They generally train architects to assume that they know best and to behave accordingly. There were emerging factions in the 1970s that didn’t buy into that. They called them “neo-hippies” and worse things. A group of them were in attendance that night, to the discomfiture of the architect.

They pulled his chain from every direction imaginable. They made him mad when they questioned his judgment. They made him defensive when they suggested revisions. They even made him go red-faced and almost cry when they questioned his motives. Flustered, he introduced the developers. They would know how to handle a crowd of people.

Speaking of the crowd, it wasn’t uniformly hostile. The proponents of the project had assembled a goodly throng of adherents: real estate folks, tradesmen, bankers, wholesalers and others who stood to profit from the project. All in all, it proved a rollicking good time. I felt that way since I had no vested interest. I simply drove down and attended to further my education.

It finally came to the point where a young activist was questioning the primary developer of the project about its possible impact on an adjacent low-income neighborhood. She wore a long, flowing gown-dress, sandals, love-beads, and a flower in her hair. She looked as if she belonged more in Candlestick Park than Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Her questioning concerned the lack of open space in the project and whether the housing couldn’t be built “up more than out.”

The developer answered her in the tone of a parent explaining to a four-year-old why the sun doesn’t shine when it rains. The design followed the demands of maximum economic efficiency. The design would provide maximum housing for minimum expenditures. Any other design wouldn’t be profitably feasible. Were there any more questions?

The woman said something then that produced a wave of laughter from the proponents of the project, as well as from the planning commissioners.

She said, “I don’t happen to believe that one should profit from providing a basic human need.”

The developer chuckled at her in response. The Chairman called the public hearing at an end and a vote hurriedly followed. As the men stood congratulating themselves, the activists marched defiantly from the room. The whole thing made me think.

Her comment sure sounded ludicrous at the time. With each passing year, it sounds less so.