Sunday Break

Dear Readers: It's the day I take a break and watch the services at Pulaski Heights Methodist Church. That inspired me to post for you a short story I wrote some time ago based on an incident my Sainted Mother told me. She swore it was true. Decide for yourself.

Memories

By Jimmie von Tungeln

Mama used to say us girls picked on Eula Faye or else egged her on, but I can tell you that she gave about as good as she got. Like the time we stole her Bible verse. We all had a good laugh out of it at the time but we didn’t get ahead of her. No sir. Not at all.

Now there are those who wouldn’t think this little episode was important. They have never lived out at the end of the world where everybody you knew was either direct-kin or step-kin, or sometimes both. It didn’t take much to create a story that would last forever. Particularly if you were as poor as we were.

After Daddy died, Mama raised us as best she could. While she didn’t hold out much for preaching, or churches in general—I think it had something to do with the hardness of her life—she did send us off to church when we got to aggravating her.

Ever third Sunday Brother Elmer Tisdale would ride out from the Pansy community with his old mare pulling his wagon and hold services in Pleasant Grove Church. I guess this must have been about 1930. I couldn’t have been over twelve or thirteen, I reckon since I was married and gone by the time I was sixteen.

The church was nothing but a little frame building set off from a cemetery that went way back past the civil war. My granddaddy had been a charter member but he had died young so Mama could barely remember him. The church building rested under the shade of three enormous oak trees. We kids called them “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” but not around any grown-ups for they had no sense of humor whatsoever about religion.

We would gather up around nine-thirty in the morning and have an hour of Sunday School before the services began. So, Mama made us leave early to get there to serve the complete sentence. Naturally she didn’t trust us as far as she could spit and I can still see her on the porch as we took off, threatening to cut a switch and wear us out if we didn’t get there in time. We always did, mostly.

The older ones were gone by then and it was just Sister and Jim and me had to go. Mama made us because she said it wouldn’t do us any harm and might do us some good. She was welcome to her opinion. We had our own, but we went just like she told us to.

We dawdled around as much as we could. Jim would usually cut us off some grapevines to smoke on the way and we would make up all sorts of imaginary trips that we were really going on. None of them included a church house. Hog Eye Ben Creek would be the River Nile and a clump of oak trees would be a pyramid. We used clouds for the Alps and the road we were on was the main street through Paris. For a bunch of country kids, we weren’t bad at making things up.

Anyway, Hattie Ruth Turner taught school at Woodlawn so they had her teach Sunday School to the girls on preaching day. There were about seven or eight of us. Eula Faye was distant kin and her daddy had a pension from World War One. They also owned a grocery store out on the state highway, so they was about the richest family in the community. She was a round-faced thing with freckles ever place they had a spot to be in. Her mamma kept her hair done up in curls so tight I bet you could have played music on them. She kind of had this little bounce when she walked and we would giggle that someday she might just bounce off like a rubber ball. She would hear us and say that rich women in the city walked like that. We liked her okay, I reckon. We didn’t mistreat her. It was just that she would sometimes create the opportunity for a laugh or two.

All the girls had to have a Bible verse memorized to recite first thing in Sunday School. This was supposed to help us into Heaven in some way, but it wasn’t real clear to us how. Anyway, we didn’t care much for it. It might have been due to the lack of scriptural resources available to a bunch of little country kids. Some of those girls were from families that couldn’t even afford a Bible. We had one but our step-daddy wouldn’t hardly let us touch it. We were in a constant of agitation about it. It sure wasn’t our favorite part of this whole salvation thing.

Miss Hattie, since she was a regular school teacher too, had to remember what side her bread was buttered on so she would always let Eula Faye go first. We would start to snicker even before she stood up. We met in the back of the church house and the boys in front. Eula Faye would make sure the boys were watching her and then when the room got real quiet, she would brush a hand across her hair and say it just like some movie actress.

“Jesus wept, John 11:35”

She got away with it ever Sunday.

Then we would have to stand up and quote some regular verse. And you weren’t allowed to repeat someone else’s choice. It got to where it played on our nerves.

Well this one Sunday, we fixed it up so Sister held Eula Faye up outside the door on some pretense and she hadn’t come in when we started. So Eloise Covington jumped up and asked if she could go first. What could Miss Hattie say?

Eloise was in on it, see? She stumbled around until she saw Eula Faye come in then Eloise shouted out loud enough for the whole church to hear: “Jesus wept, John 11:35”

You could just about see the color drain out of Eula Faye’s face when she took her seat. We swallowed our giggles until our stomachs started to swell, expecting to see Eula Faye have a nervous breakdown. But she didn’t miss a beat when Miss Hattie called on her. She stood up and took a deep breath. The boys knew something was up and had all stopped talking and were watching like a bunch of hounds at hog dressing time. She nodded to them as if they were her audience and then gave us her best “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet” look. Then she announced to the world, as if she might be telling the Red Sea to part.

“Moses crept, John 3:15.”

She said it real loud and then just set back and smiled the same as if she had just recited some long-winded psalm. We all broke up laughing until Miss Hattie stared it out of us. The boys didn’t know a Bible verse from horse-collar so they mostly just stared with their mouths all open. Then it was all over and we re-commenced our recitation period. Miss Hattie never let on like anything unusual happened at all.

That was the day we knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get something by Eula Faye. But Sister and I laughed all the way home over it anyway. Jim just smoked a grapevine and stayed puzzled over the whole thing.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 36 (Cont._2)

I opened one eye when someone hurled a bolt of fiery lightening through it. Then they did the other. Despite piercing pain, I opened both eyes wide. What I saw scared and confused me. I saw bright curtains of a flaming yellow background covered with pink flowers. A noxious serpent slid from my mouth, felt the heat, and crawled in again. I was on a bed, best I could figure, a short one. My foot hung over a foot from the end. Moving my head, I saw a dresser with a Southern Belle doll spread atop it. Was this Heaven or Hell?

Confusion reigned. A loud thundering in my head had awakened me as it slammed against nerve endings in what had to be what was left of my brain. I looked and saw that I was fully dressed. Then the thunder roared again and a voice echoed loudly enough to shatter my thoughts. “Hey lover boy. Coffee’s on.” I blinked and the movement shot pain through me like an electric shock. I had to figure this all out and it wasn’t going to be easy.

Rolling as gently as I could, I gained the edge of the bed and threw my legs over a spread festooned with clown heads. Normally, that would have frightened me, but I was beyond all that.

Then the door open and I saw Tom’s face. “Are we up?” it said.

I nodded, more from an attempt to escape further interrogation than to provide an informed reply.

“Are we okay?”

I said nothing.

“We thought you might ought not to drive, so I brought you home. I moved the girls into one room and let you have your own bunk for the night. Let’s have coffee and get you home.”

Home. Memory oozed into my mind like sewage flowing into a pond. Home. That’s where I had left from the night before, before I had met Tom and the others somewhere. Somewhere. That must be where my car was. That’s all I could recall.

“Remember? We played a game and you won,” Tom said.

“A game?”

“Yeah, one called, ‘weirder things I have ever done than getting married.’ Winner had to chug a beer each time. You tromped us, all of us, by fair voting.”

I said nothing. He said, “Was that one about setting your guard tower on fire really true?”

“The fireworks show?”

“Yeah. How much gunpowder did that take?”

“A bunch, but we had six hours to prepare,” I said, omitting the fact that it was actually Rick Beaton, and not I, who had overplayed his hand that night on the midwatch. I had performed well, albeit without the unfortunate after effects. But what’s a little prevarication from a condemned man? That’s what they kept calling me, “a condemned man.” A thought floated to the surface of my brain like a bit of matter rising in a septic tank. Wasn’t it John Steinbeck who said, “… a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen?”

“Come on, Champ,” Tom said.

He led me to a hall bathroom and waited. When I came out, he took me into his dining room and bade me sit for coffee. From there I could see into the kitchen where two young girls, all dressed for a day of excitement and fun at the country club pool sat at a breakfast table eating cereal. One was about seven years of age, and she looked at me with a mixture of curiosity and disdain that only those born for the manor can express so well. The other girl was younger, maybe five. Her look communicated pure disgust. It must have been her bedroom that I polluted. Tom’s wife never came out to greet us and I never asked why.

The ordeal didn’t last long. I refused a sweet roll and, as coffee began to roil in my stomach, I nodded that I was ready to leave. Tom drove me to my car. I rode in silence, concentrating on taming my stomach until we reached “the scene of the crime.” There sat the Green Angel with a disapproving look on her grill. As I emerged from his car, Tom said. “You only get married once … maybe twice … oh hell, who knows how many times? It’s good to have one good time before the shackles snap.” With that, he closed his window and off he drove. I stood on the parking lot with the rest of my life spread out before me, like a clown laughing from on a bedspread.

Good times? Multiple marriages? Multiple bachelor parties? Not for me. Anything requiring an event that made me feel the way I felt that morning was for one time and one time only.

What am I going to tell the girls?
Nothing, That's what.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 36

The week of the wedding finally arrived. I retrieved our wedding rings from layaway and double-checked the honeymoon reservations. Brenda finished her gown as well as the dresses for her mother and her two friends. I washed and waxed the Green Angel, then put out the warning against any disfigurement as part of the ceremony. I made sure my folks knew the way to Lonoke and the church. The girls checked the invitation list, but … what the hell … anybody in Arkansas assumed they were welcome. Things were as complete as we could make them.

The bosses had planned the “bachelor party” for Tuesday. It wasn’t to be as much a party as a gagfest designed to send me off in proper fashion. I can’t even remember the proposed location. It was somewhere in what we would now call “midtown” although it was considered “out west” at the time. I remained a bit dubious, not knowing exactly what was expected of me. But cavorting with one’s bosses was never a bad idea if one minded one’s manners. I decided to make the best of it, succumbing to tradition and all.

My wedding attire lay in readiness. I had bought a new suit for the affair. I might have considered tying the knot in my full Naval regalia, complete with my service ribbons and my beloved bosun’s pipe on a bright white lanyard. Alas, I had given most of my attire away upon separation, assuming that, in the case of a “call back,” it would be Canada for me and no use for uniforms. Anyway, I had also purchased, in a fit of apparent insanity, the ugliest pair of shoes ever placed on the open market. Men wore neckties that matched their clothing in those days, so I checked and determined that I was ready. Bring it on.

We covered the final details. Brenda notified her old boyfriend(s) about what was going to transpire. I had no old girlfriends to notify. I did let some college buddies know and a couple planned to attend. Brenda had her hair styled. I didn’t. I’d had enough of haircuts over the past few years. The girls ran me through the details again. I should have a gift ready for the minister and they specified the exact amount. They designated me to drive, in her car, Brenda to the airport to pick up her Aunt “Pill” and daughter, expected from Chicago the day before the wedding. That about covered it.

Taking the week off I busied myself with chores to keep my mind away from the coming change to my life. I even cleaned the apartment. That’s where we would spend the wedding night before departing for Aspen the next day. Then I made sure I had packed for the trip. The destination rested at 8,000 feet elevation, so attire suitable for August in Arkansas might not suffice. My beloved Pentax Spotmatic camera lay waiting, loaded with film. That still left me with me long days to brood. What had I gotten myself into? I found myself running out of things to keep me busy, so I struggled to maintain equilibrium.

Seeking to redirect my thinking, I began to read a copy Flaubert’s Madam Bovary that I found in a closet. Before long, I decided that wasn’t a good idea so I just stared at the ceiling and thought. I was about to get married and my life was going to change. Oh my.

Then there was this thing coming up on Tuesday evening.

Oh well. We'll
always have Aspen.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 35 (Con._4)

A growing movement started in Little Rock as I waited for my wedding date. A small but dedicated group of young couples, crazy by most standards, were buying homes, in of all places, the old section of Little Rock known as the Quapaw Quarter. They could buy one of the old mansions for a cheap price. Who wanted them, after all? Many served as apartments, having been divided by their estates to provide some income while the structures deteriorated. Couples with some cash and lots of energy saw something. What?

I learned much about it from working with our architect-on-loan, Charles Witsell. He had become a part of the pioneering group of couples who descended on the area, purchasing historic structures and dedicating a portion of their lives to saving those structures. He and his artist wife, Becky, owned the so-called “Hanger House” on Scott Street and filled their spare time loving and restoring it. He became a legendary expert on the history of the area.

It wasn’t always easy for those dedicated to historic preservation. Many lending institutions had “redlined” the historic area, along with minority neighborhoods, as not the best places to lend their depositors’ money. Also, powerful forces in the real estate community had decided, for example, that South Broadway no longer served the most useful purpose as residential and should convert to a commercial corridor. In most cities in Arkansas, that would have spelled the end of the fledgling movement. This time, though, the young pioneers stood their ground.

The case that brought things to the attention of the public involved plans to remove a grand old historic home at 18^th and Broadway and replace it with a 7-11 Store. A group calling itself the Broadway Neighborhood Association formed a resistance movement. In order to destroy the home for commercial development, the developers had to convince the city to change the zoning. The young folks came to the planning commission hearing with their Battle Flags hoisted. Why destroy the heritage of a city, disrupt an improving neighborhood, and lose a beautiful structure to satisfy the commercial needs of the traveling public? The case made good newspaper copy.

The BNA lost the battle, but started a movement that would lead to partial victory in a war that still rages at times. Old, monied interests assured the planning commission, and later the city board, that there was no historic value to the neighborhood and that commercial development always translated directly into progress for a city. If these young fools wanted to waste their time, energy, and money, that was fine, but don’t encourage them by stopping progress. The young folks spoke their minds, argued, lost, and went home.

By that time, the phone calls had started. A family, enjoying an evening in their beloved old home would receive a phone call. The mortgage company didn’t appreciate their actions. More attempts at interfering with economic development might cause a re-evaluation of their loan, just some information they should know. It was time for his historic preservation silliness to stop. Don’t make them call again.

It proved too late, though. The publicity had awakened a dormant dream. More young couples considered a life of historic involvement and sweat-equity. More older couples decided to stay where they were, despite the despicable efforts by thugs to initiate a tactic known as “block-busting. The public began driving through Little Rock’s Quapaw Quarter District to see what the fuss was all about. A group started a real estate company designed specifically to promote the sale and rehabilitation of historic home in Little Rock. The bullies retreated, as bullies often do.

Weekends, Brenda and I would join the sightseers. We wondered what it might be like to tackle the job of restoring one of these old classics.

Little did we know.

South Broadway before the Arkansas
Highway Department noticed.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 35 (Cont._3)

Things were moving along in the summer of 1972. Work had started on our firm’s first development project, a small but elegant subdivision in south-central Arkansas. Numerous delays had slowed its start, but it was now progressing smoothly. The bosses and local realtors were taking bets on how long it would take to sell it out. Folks recalled legendary subdivisions in Little Rock in which demand was so great that the developers held lotteries to spread the sale of lots equally. Those were heady times.

We were about to unleash the fury of modern urban planning on the unsuspecting City of Hope. A project similar to the one we proposed there had gotten underway in Downtown Little Rock. Segments of Main Street and Capitol Avenue were disappearing, bulldozed to make way for a mall-like area in which pedestrians were free to roam and shop unmolested by vehicles. It was one of the most popular planning ideas of the time. Across the country, urban designers extolled the genius of the approach to addressing the loss of downtown retail to suburban malls. Americans could fix things, right? That’s what we were best at.

The girls about had the wedding planned. The church was set. A local woman with an exceptionally beautiful voice agreed to sing Brenda and me into the world of holy matrimony. Young cousins of the bride-to-be prepared to spread flowers and deliver the ring. Older men stood ready to escort guests and chaperone the mothers. Vernell would serve as Maid of Honor while her sister would manage the reception line. Vernell agreed to perform the additional task of inspecting her sister prior to the festivities for any misplaced articles of clothing, unsecured snaps or buttons, and untoward revelations resulting from thin or missing apparel. It was to be a model of a tasteful, modest, and modern public wedding.

I tingled in anticipation. The girls only suggested again and again that I’d best not screw up. On occasion, after a couple of glasses of wine, they weren’t above expressing the admonition in more earthy terms. At any rate, I got the message. Arrive sober. Stay focused. Leave in apparent ecstasy. Those represented the simplest of tasks, after all. The thought of it kept me awake at night.

Oh, and the bachelor party. It really wasn’t to be a party, was it? No, just a few beers with the bosses before I signed on to marital subjugation as had they. No strippers? No what? You know, strippers, women that remover their clothes for men in a suggestive fashion. Really? Strippers? They have such people in Little Rock? Oh, be serious. If we hear of strippers, you will account for it. Did men really do such things before they married some sweet young thing? I hadn’t seen a stripper since the USO shows they used to bring into the enlisted men’s club at Camp Tien Sha. Those shows certainly didn’t represent a proper introduction into the world of matrimony. Strippers? Really? No, just a few beers among friends

So it went as the day drew close.

The past slowly disappears.
The future is cloudy.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 35 (Cont._2)

What does a young man who is to be married in a few weeks think about? Oh yeah, there’s that, but I don’t remember much else about those days. I do remember that my old friend George Owen, a native of Crossett, Arkansas called one night to see if was busy. “I have something to show you,’ he said. “Does your record player work?”

I assured him that it did, and he showed up some 30 minutes later with a double phonograph album with a busy black and white cover. He showed it to me and asked if I had heard it? No.

It was an album put together by a group called “The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.” The cover read “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” and promised performances by a wide range of famous musicians, including Merle Travis, Jimmy Martin, and Mother Maybelle Carter. Yep, it was Bluegrass-oriented, not the kind of music Brenda liked at all. Maybe this would pay her back for A Clockwork Orange. I was all ears. I knew the “Dirt Band” from a couple of popular hits. Some names I had heard of. For others, a profound surprise awaited me.

I heard, for the first time (I’m ashamed to say) Doc Watson and his son Merle. Oh my. Then the magic kept coming. The producers kept the mikes running during the recordings and the listener enjoyed gems of dialogue like the first meeting between Don Watson and Merle Travis. Merle played and sang “IAm A Pilgrim,” and I almost fainted. Doc and his son did “Way Downtown,” and I began to consider places where I could burn my guitars. Earle Scruggs performed and I resolved someday to learn to play the banjo. Then Roy Acuff sang. We sat and listened, as we enjoyed a beer, to the old, the new, and the curiously arranged.

We sat, not moving, for what seemed like hours and grew more mellow by the minute. The experience would change my life. I finally turned to George with something like “Whatever this is, it’s the most of it ever made.” He agreed. We reached the final ensemble production of the title song, written in 1907 by Ada R. Habershon with music by Charles H. Gabriel. The Carter Family immortalized it later and it still stands as a beacon in Bluegrass gospel circles. It had previously stirred some psychic fear in me due to a woman who used to corner me after church services and, pointing out that my parents weren’t there, hoped aloud that our family circle in Heaven would be unbroken. That all changed that night George played the album for me. It was just music, after all, and music should soothe, not cause despair.

And what did that have to do with me? Maybe it sounds trivial, but for one evening I forgot that in a few weeks I was going to have to stand in front of a church full of people and say “With this ring, I thee wed,” to an angel I had known for less than a year, who was upstairs at the moment sewing her wedding dress. Feeling more relaxed than I had in weeks, I went to bed singing to myself

“I am a pilgrim and a stranger

Traveling through this wearisome land

And I've got a home in that yonder city, good Lord

And it's not (good Lordy it's not) not made by hand.”

Still a classic
after all these years.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 35

As I was about to be married and settle into a career as an urban planner, I had no doubts of success in either endeavor. Marriage was an accepted social mainstay. Likewise, my career involved an old and interesting field of study.

Learning about marriage was easy. All I had to do was look around and see how happy couples dealt with it. Most of them seemed happy. They owned new cars, had produced children, and were buying or building houses. I knew many of them from college and remembered when they had started dating. All I had to do was pick up points and note what led to a satisfied union. Emulation was the key to success.

My fiancée seemed to respond well to this approach. As long as I emulated her father and respected her mother, our union would be sound. She shared my distaste for social pressure, country clubs, parties, and the thought of most sports, save fishing. Sometimes we sat on my apartment patio and talked of the future. We agreed on almost everything except the quality of her favorite book and movie, A Clockwork Orange. I remembered that happy couples embraced mutual idiosyncrasies and we never quarreled about it. This marriage thing was going to be easy.

I learned, along the way, more basic principles about urban planning. My bosses had learned them in graduate school and they taught them to me. The most prevalent was that neighborhood schools were the foundation building block of urban development. They were to exist within easy access to surrounding residential development and would serve as the magnet for community life. There was no principle more important.

Armed with this priceless guidance, I pressed on against whatever currents that might appear in my river of life.

Many strong ones lay in wait. Consider for example, the married couples I had chosen to emulate because of their apparent happiness and contentment. Within five years more than half would find themselves divorced and sharing custody of the young children produced by the apparent happy union. It would prove a shock.

Oh, and neighborhood schools? What about them? Well, given the systemic cultural basis on which our country had settled, one fact had hidden from consideration. Neighborhood schools tended to be segregated. They also suffered from unequal funding and attention. A federal court ruling waited on the horizon, a ruling that would shape urban development in America as no other phenomenon ever had. The concept of neighborhood schools would be the first victim of a wrenching realization that cities, like individuals, often experience what psychologists call the “flight or fight response.”

This ain't gonna be no big deal.