What we value

 If things work out, I hope to have a few good years left as an urban planner. Continuing to work at it remains more fulfilling than, say, trying to learn to play golf. I’m afraid, though, that I’m beginning to be known as a bit of an old curmudgeon. I’ve even developed a rep as hating the latest fad in my profession: vehicular roundabouts. May I set the record straight?

I don’t hate them. I think they work well. I think they meet their purpose in an excellent fashion. They are fine devices for moving traffic, if that’s the reason that urban planners were placed on Earth.

So, what’s the rub?

 I’m just tired of our spending so much public money to feed the insatiable demands of the automobile. If history tells us one thing, it’s that the demands of the automobile can never be met, nor can that monster ever be satiated. Someday we will know that. Drive slowly and sneak a look next time you cross over Interstate 40. What you’ll see now is the scene of a variety of cars sandwiched in between miles of 18-wheelers, resembling long trains with rubber wheels on concrete tracks.

What you’ll see in maybe five more years is a parking lot stretching from Wilmington, North Carolina to Barstow, California. Our state highway department will then tell us that it needs several trillions of dollars to fix the problem. Oh, and they won’t have a cent left for those kids I see sometimes walking several miles in the summer heat to their first job at a fast-food franchise.

I’m hoping our cities will decide to spend more on their people and less on cars. I don’t really care if someone gets their car from point A to point B faster. What I care about is how fast we can get that kid in dirty diapers off the front porch of that shack in the Arkansas Delta and into an education, a decent home, and a life with a future. He’s waiting for us to help, while his mother is inside earning enough for the next meal or the next hit of methamphetamine, whichever she needs first. Our fundamentalist “Christian” friends say, “Hey, no problem. He’s born now so all is well. Don’t worry, be happy, and just hope he doesn’t decide to be gay.”

Yesterday I visited the site of a memorial to a beloved niece whom I hired for her first job as a grant writer and grant administrator. After a long career, and a losing bout with cancer, she received, posthumously, a monument for procuring a grant to help a city build a splash pad for its youth. It stands as a fitting and well-deserved honor.

What she should receive a monument for, although she won’t, is for the many hot summer evenings she spent in small, frame, often unpainted, churches in the Arkansas Delta, one of the most neglected sections of our country. She’d be meeting, in the stifling heat and the hordes of mosquitoes with a group of poverty-stricken brothers and sisters trying to secure safe drinking water for their families, just drinking water is all.

It’s all a matter of priorities. Our priorities. It reminds me of a call I received in the late 1990s. I was enjoying a limited, but not particularly lucrative, success as a planning consultant. A friend, an attorney with whom I had done some work, was the caller. He had left his job in Little Rock and moved to Northwest Arkansas, a region richly blessed by the whims of modern history.

“You need to move up here,” he said. “There’s money to be made.”

I supposed that there was, but said, “No, I’ll stay down here.”

“Why? Don’t you want to be where the action is happening?”

I thought for a moment. “No,” I said again.

“Why?” he said again.

“Oh,” I said, “I think the Galilean would have me stay where the action isn’t happening.”

The Libertarian Roundabout

A Peaceful Wildness

Fiction Friday: First part of an early effort based on stories I heard in my family's country grocery.

AFTER THE STORM

By Jimmie von Tungeln

           The men all laughed. Thomas Hyatt was telling about the Donaldson girl and her version of the storm. They had heard it before, but it was worth listening again just to hear Thomas tell it. He leaned back until they thought the nail keg would slide from under him, and, throwing his face into a surprised circle, mimicked a young girl.

           "And do you know what Daddy? While the house was up in the air and I could feel it a'turnin' around, I seen that mule of our'n."

           "Honey, how could you see the mule with him on the ground and you in the house and the house up in the air and it turnin' around and you probly scairt' to death anyhow?"

           Thomas stopped for effect, brought the nail keg up straight again and reduced his face from large to small again.

           "That mule wadn't on the ground Daddy. He was up in the air too, cause I see'd him right outside the winder."

           Thomas slapped his leg while the rest laughed in unison. "And they fount that mule clean over on the Darkis place, I'm tellin' you. At's five miles from Armistead and the Donaldson place ain't more'n a mile from town."

           "Next thang you be tellin' us they back plowin' with him," said Odell Rogers.

           "No sir, his plowin' days is done but he had one hell of a ride a'fore he re-tarred," said Thomas and the whole room roared.

           "At was one storm all right," said Rufus Chidester as the laughter died away. He said. "I 'spect that 1947 will be a year folks 'round here remember for a long time."

           "It took your barn didn't it?" said Odell.

           "Took my barn and the houses on both sides of mine but left mine standin'," Rufus answered.

           "I druther it took my house than my barn," said a small man named Chester Winstead. "I got ever thang I own tied up in that barn and all at's in the house is the old lady and two kids."

           "A good barn ain't easy to come by," said a voice in the group and they all nodded.

           "I reckon you heard about the Walker boy?" asked Rufus. Assuming they hadn't, he continued. "Him and some other boys was playin' in them woods over by the Bayou Bridge when it hit. He looked up and saw it comin'. There bein' no place to hide, well he just stood there watchin it comin'. It jumped over them kids somehow and kept goin'. They say they have to put him to bed now ever time a cloud comes up, it upset him so bad."

           "He's liable to end up like his Daddy," said Chester. He lit a cigarette from a wooden match and quickly took two drags. He stepped to the center of the group and kicked the latch on a large cast iron stove. When the door swung open, he flipped the burnt match inside, watched it flare for a second, and closed the door with his foot.

           "How many they counted so far?" he asked after he was back at his seat.

           "Somebody told me thirty-two," said Rufus. "At's countin' six bucks in that one house up by Ridgway Road. Shootin’ craps. That’s what I heard they were doing."

            “No,” said the Grocer, and everyone turned to hear him. He looked at Rufus. “They were at a club in that old school building on the hill. Earnest Tiggens got out of the pen a year ago and started a club for young boys on Sunday afternoon, teaching them how to box. That’s all they were doing. They found three of them across the highway, with Earnest. The rest were scattered around.”

           "Won't be no cotton choppers this summer," said Chester.

           "I don't know what people gonna do," said Odell. "They tell me it's the worst storm ever hit Arkansas."

           "I tell you what I'm fixin to do," said Thomas. "I'm fixin to wait for the government. They supposed to help people when something like this happens."

           "I didn't thank the storm hit your place," Chester said.

           "Hell, the government won't know that unless y'all tell 'em," he replied and they all laughed.

           Just then the door opened and the laughter stopped. A large figure stopped briefly in the door and nodded across the room at the group. The room fell silent except for the shuffling of feet and the scraping sound of seats being slid across the wood floor to make room for the newcomer. "John," someone finally said. "Come set."

           "Fellers," the man said as he crossed the room to sit upon an empty keg nearest the stove. The heavy silence still lay over the group and no one spoke for several minutes. "Your family all right?" Odell finally asked.

           "They's all right," the man answered. "Took ever thang I had but we got in the cellar afore it hit. They's over at Little Rock at the wife's sister's. I been stayin' in town at night. I go out there during the day. Don't hardly seem like the same place with ever thing gone." He stopped and reached over to pick a long sliver of wood from the box beside the stove. Then he began to study it intently. The room got quiet again.

           "Anybody need anything while I'm up?" The Grocer had come from behind the counter and walked over to the group. "How you, John?" he asked the newcomer.

           "All right," said John. "I need twenty feet of well-rope if you got any."

           "I got a little. Let me look out back," he said as he moved toward the front door. "You fellers keep Thomas out of the cold-drink box."

           "Brang some wood back when you come." Thomas said. "It's a gonna git cold in here fore long."

           "What you been doin' lately, Thomas?" asked the newcomer. "Last I heard you was drivin' a truck for old man Whitaker."

           Nobody spoke. Thomas leaned over from his seat and pulled a poker from beneath the stove. He didn't say anything as he pecked the latch open on the firebox door. He pulled the door open with the crook of the poker and jabbed at the glowing fire. The flames rose and he pushed the door shut slowly and placed the poker beneath the stove again.

           "That was a while back. I been doin' a little of this and a little of that."

           "Tell him what you was doin' before the storm hit," said Odell.

           "Oh, I tried preachin' for awhile down in Cleveland County. Got pretty good at it, I reckon. Liked it too. Bout the best job I ever had.” Faces in the group nodded.

           "Tell him why you quit," Odell persisted.

           "Well, to tell you the truth," Thomas stopped looked at each of the men in the group, "The son of a bitches just wouldn't pay me."

           This time the laughter was sharp and hearty. The air about the room crackled as the men slapped their knees and winked at one another. The newcomer smiled and looked toward the door. "Thomas, you won't do," he said.

           Thomas looked past the others to make sure the Grocer hadn't returned and then said knowingly, "I can tell you this. If'n you need supplies, you'd better go on in to Armistead. That man has purt near gave away his store since the storm come through."

           "That's what I heard," the man said back to him. "I don't need much." Then he looked into the front of the stove again. "Can't afford much."

           "I 'spect you tell him that, why he'll give you anything he's got. And for free. He's been doin' it for white and colored alike," Thomas replied.

           "No, I'll pay him for what I get," John said.

           "Suit yourself," Thomas said as the Grocer opened the door leading into the store with a coil of heavy rope around his shoulders. He walked to the group around the stove and paused to remember who had sent him.

           "John, I got fifteen feet left if that will help," he said.

           "I can make do," John answered. "Just put it on the counter and I'll pay you when I leave."

           "Be glad to," the Grocer said. He looked the group over. "Any you boys need anything while I'm up?"

           No one replied and he started to leave, but then paused and turned around. "Is John the only one doin' any work this week?"

           "Ain't no use workin'. Ever thing's blowed away." Odell said. "The field hands even got blowed away. They houses is gone and they'll be headed for Detroit, follerin' the others. How's anybody gonna farm this year?"

           "I remember when people did their own farmin'," the Grocer said. "That's how I got this store."

           Thomas turned around to face him. "But now you done give it all away and you ought to be sittin' right down here with us."

           "Well I might as well at that. But if I set down with y'all, I might not ever get back up," he said and walked toward his perch.

           "Sounds like he might be gonna take up preachin' next," said Thomas and the men all laughed.

           The sounds died and the room turned quiet. Thomas told another story but there was no depth, no substance, this time and the men simply nodded. A languid peace settled upon the room. The only sound was the hum of the wood stove as the logs roared fiercely. Finally, Odell asked, "What was it like when you seen it coming, John?"

           John studied the stove for a minute and starting once to speak, waited until all eyes had circled the room and rested on him. "There's some things boys," he said, and paused again. "Some things that you can't make words fit the tellin'."

           A couple of the men nodded and he contiued. "I seen it a ways off and had time to git the family started to the cellar. They run down and before I went, I had a chance to look for myself. It was funny like. Sort of a peaceful wildness, far off like it was, and not seeming to move much at all, just whipping back and forth kinda soft like you was sweeping the yard with a willow limb."

           "How long did you watch it?" asked Odell.

           "Oh, not long. I seen it was getting closer and figgerd that there was gonna be hell to pay, and I closed the cellar door."
           "Speakin' of hell to pay, look comin' yonder," said Thomas..
(To be continued.)

The Sad Threads of Life

Yesterday, many Americans mentally relived the horrors of September 11, 2001, some more directly than others. It’s a game we humans play, called, “Where were you when … ? As, perhaps, our greatest American commented about another remembrance, “It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.” It would pose a sacrilege should we forget, or allow others to forget, the devastating legacy of 9-11.

Me? I took some quiet time to reflect. I looked up other events that shaped our country on this date in different years. Did you know, for example, that on September 11, 1965, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) began to arrive in South Vietnam, bringing U.S. troop strength there to more than 125,000. Before the year was out, one of its units, the U.S. Army 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment (yeah, Custer’s unit) defeated a much larger NVA force and America took over the war. The country would never again be the same.

 By the time of my paid vacation there in 1968, the number of US troops in that unfortunate country was an admitted (our military commander there had a slight problem with honesty) 549,500. The year was the most expensive in the Vietnam War with the American spending $77.4 billion ($557 billion in today’s dollars) on the war.

Yes, 1968 was a bad year. Trust me.

Of those United States troops, the war in Vietnam killed 16,592 that year alone, and wounded 87,388 more.

The war killed 27,915 South Vietnamese troops and wounded 172,512 more.

Although figures remain unreliable, the North Vietnamese records state that the war killed 44,842 and wounded, perhaps, another 66,464.

Why bring this up now? I simply believe that we must, if we are to survive as a species, understand how facts are related. Did, somehow, our nearly 20-year misadventure in that sad country, a nation that had never harmed or threatened us in any way—in fact had allied with us in defeating the Japanese— bear on the thinking of the 911 murderers?

And, sad as it must be to contemplate, how germane, on September 11, 2001, was the fact that the American CIA and the United Kingdom's MI6 orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh, the 35th prime minister of Iran in 1953? Is it true what they say about Iranians respecting America, before that event, our country for its record on human rights?

How important will it be in our future that the warmonger who helped push America into the invasion of Iraq in 2003, leading to further destabilization of the Middle East, was removed from national office day before yesterday, but remains at large?

I mention all this because of the fact that all day yesterday, I heard or read about all sorts of things Americans were doing to commemorate the tragedy of that sacred day in 2001. Mostly, they were performing acts that they enjoyed doing in the first place, riding motorcycles, climbing steps in a stadium, singing, etc. I condemn them not. We must mourn, each of us, in our own way.

It’s odd though, isn’t it, that I heard not a soul say that, in honor of the victims of such a tragedy, and the lost or damaged lives of those who tried to save them, “I pledge to turn off social media, Fox ‘news,’ and my cell phone while I read a book of history and think about why such tragedies occur?”

Connections

Let me tell you about yesterday. You know by now how I try to connect all things. I think it comes from two sources. The first was a line from a Walt Whitman poem I read in the 11^th grade: “There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day . . . . or for many years or stretching cycles of years.”

Another reason came up in a conversation last week with an old friend. I mentioned my long-standing love-hate relationship with my military service. (As I get older, it tends more toward the love.) The point I made to my friend, though, was that I learned one great lesson in dealing with said military service. That is that you had best decide, early in life, that you will try to be happy wherever you are, no matter the location or circumstances. Life has a habit of testing you, out of pure orneriness, and you’d best be ready.

Yesterday proved my point. My pal, roommate, partner, and caretaker and I spent an afternoon in the hot August (it waited until September this year) sun mowing pastures and yards at her farm. Then we made a dump-run to finish the day. (Yeah, she’s cheap date.) Pretty much hot, exhausted, and cranky, we stopped at “big-box-orama” and purchased a couple of salads for supper. Now for relaxed evening with a nice drink and the last episode of the first season of Goliath, the one where Billy Bob tries to slay the Giant.

Yeah well. We noticed some slightly darker clouds hanging over our “small-town” residence. “Going to get a little shower,” she predicted. I shrugged. For the umpteenth and yet still futile time, I hoped she’d be wrong. Nope. The rain came as if following orders.

We parked and she went into the house. “Lights are out,” she yelled. That’s Southern talk for “the electricity is not working.”

Well crap.

We sat in the dark for a spell. It was dark in the house. What to do? Wait it out. That’s all we could do. We tried that for a spell and it didn’t make “our socks roll up and down,” as they say.

Then she went outside. The rain had stopped. “It’s nice out here,” she said. Indeed, the sun had “crossed over the yard arm,” but it was till light outdoors.

You know what happened next. We dried the chairs, sat on our patio, enjoyed the lower temperature, observed Happy Hour, told whoppers, and feasted on our store-bought salads. I’ll swear, the misty sundown made her look like the 20-year old I’d married 47 years ago.

It was a magic time, and I wouldn’t have taken a thousand dollars for it.

During breaks, she checked messages on her cell phone. People were apoplectic about the outage. Ideas for revenge against the power company ranged from strongly-worded letters to: “a riot is an ugly thing but I think that it’s just about time that we had one.”

Me? I puffed a cigar and thought about what a miracle it is that puny homo sapiens could devise, through the seemingly outdated concepts of education and science, a system of powering a society in such a manner as we have. My wonder was not why the service was out, but how, and by what body of knowledge, it stays on so reliably most times.

We live in an age selected entitlements, don’t we? While we are all entitled to lights coming on whenever and wherever we flip a switch, we don’t seem to want to expand that entitlement to health care or human comfort to what the Galilean called, “the least of those among us.” Nor do we wish to expand it to provide fresh air upon which our gasping planet depends. And of course, some of our most treasured entitlements, especially the right to vote for politicians of our choice, stand in the path of complete extinction, like our planet.

It’s all connected and a little frightening, n'est-ce pas ?

Is how we see what we see?

One odd thing about the South always amazes me. It has to do with herpetology. Yeah, that’s the branch of zoology concerned with reptiles and amphibians. You might think that I’m not an expert. I did, though, room with two men accomplished in the field as a college undergraduate. One earned a PhD in the field. The other used his Master’s Degree in Zoology to gain entry into Med School. Both are deceased now, unfortunately, and can’t bear witness.

The two of them had a habit of keeping live reptiles in our apartment. Need I say more? My impressions of the field of study are most extant.

Oh, and once, while stranded on an isolated base of the United States Navy, and suffering from poverty caused by a records SNAFU, I gained solace in my square time by reading, at the small base library, the classic work The Reptiles of North America by Raymond Ditmars.

So you see, by social media standards I am three steps above the “Exalted Expert” classification on the topic of snakes, the reptilian kind at least.

Here stands my dilemma. The common, what we call, Cottonmouth snake, Agkistrodon piscivorus is, of course, a venomous viper, also bearing the name “Water Moccasin.” They don't bear messing with, as the old folks used to tell us. They don’t tend to grow too large, being thick with blunt tails. Overall, these snakes normally range from 2 to 4 feet in length, but may grow longer. They do hang out near water, but seem to avoid stock ponds, maybe because cows tend to step on them.

Now, according to my former roommates, these snakes are somewhat secretive, hanging out in underbrush near those bodies of water. The two roommates had a difficult time finding one on various expeditions, a fact that I found most comforting back in the day.

Consider next the yellow-bellied water snake, Nerodia erythrogaste. These reptiles represent both a common and gregarious species. They are found just about everywhere in our state where there is a bit of water. In mating season, they tend to gather up and form writhing balls, for the pure fun of it, I suppose.

Here comes the rub. I don’t think I know of an Arkansan who has ever seen a water snake. Gosh, they fish, swim, hike, and cut down forests near lakes, never encountering a Nerodia. Odd, isn’t it? It’s like living in rural Arkansas and never seeing a Confederate flag.

On the other hand, I’m entertained almost weekly by the accounts of Cottonmouths on every lake, stream, pond, and mud hole in Arkansas. Giant ones, averaging six feet or more in length. You can hardly walk without stepping on one. Isn’t that something?

Yes, taxonomy is a strange thing. We tend, don’t we, to organize and classify our acquaintances the same as we do reptiles? As an admitted devotee of progressive government and politics, people classify me as a liberal, pronounced here “lib-ral,” and I’m not to be near their children or attend the local cross-burnings for fear of morality contamination. As Jimmy Buffett would say, “My feet stink and I don’t love Jesus.”

On the other hand, I tend to view folks who attend churches where they forbid their women to speak aloud in services as a tad backwards in the modern world. They must hate females, all of them, each and every one, wouldn’t you say? Don’t they behave like Neanderthals living in a homo sapiens world?

Wow. It just occurred to me. Maybe they aren’t, not all of them anyway. Maybe we just think about people the way we program ourselves to, seeing danger where none exists. Maybe we see venom where there is nary a drop.

I need to go study on this awhile.

Reconciliation

You could chase away many modern Americans with a copy of Chapter 5, verses 25-26 from the subject of our study these last months. The King James version (yes, the one from the original English, so don’t get alarmed) quotes the words from The Sermon On The Mount simply as

25 Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.

26 Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

The passage is taken to refer to litigation before the court. Modern versions, such as the International Standard Version (ISV) are more specific, to wit:

25 Come to terms quickly with your opponent while you are on the way to court, or your opponent may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison.

26 I tell you with certainty, you will not get out of there until you pay back the last dollar!”

I maintain that a copy of these words would frighten many Americans today simply because we love to disagree, and are being taught through politics and social media to hate those with whom we disagree. As an old friend of mine used to say, “There are too many of us who would rather be right than win.”

The Galilean’s advice, as quoted above reads as a quite simple bit of advice. In fact, the two verses in today’s study (KJV) contain only 58 words. In contrast, consider this from the Law Library of Louisiana:

“Myra Clark Gaines' 19th century fight over an enormous inheritance is still the longest-running civil lawsuit in American history, taking over 60 years to finally find some kind of resolution. The United States Supreme Court called her case "the most remarkable in the records."

One of the most bizarre lines in modern television is frequently uttered by the main protagonist of a popular crime show who says, “Never apologize. It’s a sign of weakness.” It was, apparently borrowed from an old John Wayne western, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. In any event, it would possibly come as a hell of a shock to Robert E. Lee, who reportedly met the survivors of the suicidal assault on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg with a sobbing apology for the blunder he had just created.

But let’s leave Bobby Lee and return to a greater figure. Why was the Galilean so in favor of reconciliation that involves all of life, not just the "religious part?" He certainly seemed serious about such reconciliation—along with forgiveness, and mercy—as the path to righteous living.

Why are so many of our political leaders, and their supporters from the conservative fundamentalist congregations, so diametrically opposed in their thinking to that of our simple rabbi? Why do so many, otherwise kind and gentle, people follow such teachings with pitchforks, torches, and vitriol? What on Earth would our leader say?

Those are thoughts that will require greater minds than mine to untangle. Maybe he would just say, “How blessed are those who make peace.” Oh, I think he did say that.

          

Shame, oh shame. Where art thou?

Carol Lynley died this week. Not many people paid notice. That’s what happens many times to former film stars who gained fame in their youth and saw it fade away. It seems the press best remembered her for most for her sexy role in The Poseidon Adventure. Lots of people my age remember her as the co-star, with Brandon deWilde, in the 1959 film Blue Denim.

Yes, that’s the one where a bit of fooling around in the basement by a teen-aged couple led to an unforeseen pregnancy. What was the impact on the largely youthful audience that flocked to see it? Depends on who you ask.

The film evolved from the 1958 Broadway play by writer James Leo Herlihy. The play told the story a bit differently from the film version. In the play, the young protagonist obtained an abortion. Of course, movie censors of that time wouldn’t hear of that. The film showed the chastened and frightened couple boarding a bus to a secret location to face marriage, parenthood and the future.

Again, what impact did the film have on young folks? I’ve read where some young girls thought it was sexy. I don’t know. I know, from memory, that it scared the hell out of some of the boys. “What, me pay a price? I had nothing to do with it. Why screw up my life?” That male attitude probably wasn’t as strong in 1959 as it is now, but we see that the idea of males having no responsibility, no price to pay, no shame, and no retribution to face in the case of unwanted pregnancies has been with us for a long while. The attitude has gained a systemic and formidable position in American society. It will not, “… go gentle into that good night.”

Funny thing is, I don’t remember the causal act to be that sexy in the film. Bear in mind, though, that I last viewed it some years ago. In the key scene, all of the boy’s buddies have left the basement and the (uninvited) young girl remains to joke around a bit. In the next scene, he finds her in the library with a medical book turned to the pregnancy section. That leads to the most memorable line in the film.

“It doesn’t say how to stop it,” she says, with tears in eyes that stare into a bewildered face.

For a bit of bad-taste trivia, I’ve read that In Cold Blood murder victim Nancy Clutter wanted to see the film but never got to.

Why bring it up? I don’t know. It did represent a morality play of sorts. The young couple suffered from a life interrupted. We don’t know though, what might have happened. The marriage might have flourished and the boy might have grown to be a stock fund manager. On the other hand, he might have earned a spot on the black granite wall in Washington, “leaving a wife and child behind,” as they say. Or, it may have dawned on him that he could walk away scot-free and he did.

I heard a comedian say something yesterday to the tune of “shame is the first step to restoration.” I don’t know why so much truth about our national salvation is coming from comedians these days, but it is.

Shame. If that film generated a dread of shame in a few young children, I suppose it served a good purpose. I’m not sure that was endemic, though. There still remains the legend of a slightly older contemporary “rich kid” in my home town. After impregnating his girlfriend, he dutifully showed up at the wedding, played his role, and then drove the bride to her parents’ house and deposited her like a prom-night date, never to be bothered with “husband-hood,” or fatherhood, again.

Then there was a closer acquaintance who, at last count, had fathered two children from separate girls, never paying a price, due to the blessings of his parents’ money. Ironically, he became one of our strongest opponents of a girl’s making the “wrong choice” in such dilemmas. Yes. We live in a strange world.

Oh, and Miss Lynely? A short while after setting the young men of America mentally aflame with her role in The Poseidon Adventure, she did a nude gig in Playboy Magazine. We have no record of the counterbalancing number of “Honey, guess what?” surprises that act may have generated.

Life goes on. Maybe Brother Hunter S. Thompson was right. “Buy the ticket. Take the ride.”