Sweet Gifts of Recall

The Ken Burns documentary Country Music was great again last evening. I noticed a couple of tidbits. In one segment concerning Patsy Cline, there was a brief snap of a recording session and down in the left corner sat Hank Garland. Yes, the legendary Hank Garland. He was a star session guitarist turned soloist who was also setting the jazz world on fire just as a tragic automobile accident disabled and silenced him Here’s one of few clips of him, here playing a song developed from a fingering exercise that he turned into “Sugarfoot Rag,” earning him the nickname Hank “Sugarfoot” Garland. Somewhere along the line, they put words to it and Red Foley turned it into a big hit.

Next, here’s a few miscellaneous scenes, including a session with a Patsy Cline. Finally a recording featuring some shots of him as an older man. They say that, late in life and years after his accident, he could play some once more. Check out Jazz Winds in a New Direction for an album that was setting the music world afire in 1961 just as his music stopped.

The other quick segment mentioned Merle Travis. I’m sure they’ll return to him. If they don’t, the whole effort will suffer. They mentioned that he was a West Coast session player. What they they didn’t mention was his stint with Gene Autry. Here’s one of my favorite bits as Merle lights up an old standard, Dixie Cannonball, (usually performed at a maddeningly slow tempo). Not here though.

You might gather that the show is causing me to remember things. Music does that. When my late mother-in-law was in the latter stages of severe dementia and couldn’t remember even how to walk, she would immediately recognize this one. What I say is … let’s have more Willie and less war.

Oh my …

Music and Memories

Watched the first episode of the Ken Burns documentary Country Music last evening. It surely brought back some memories. In my youth, they kept our little country store open on Saturday nights until the last customer left, sometimes near one o’clock in the morning. Having spent the day in Pine Bluff, folks would stop on the way home to stock up on groceries for the week. They bought on credit mostly, waiting until payday or the day that Social Security or what they called back then “Old-aged Pension Checks” back then came.

Anyhow, crowds would gather and folks would visit on the front porch of the store while my parents filled orders. The kids would play and The Grand Ole Opry would blast from a little Philco radio. We’d vow to stay up until the store closed but sleep always won. I can’t count the number of times I fell asleep with Uncle Pen on the radio, performed by Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys.

One night, while we were still outside playing, a disagreement occurred between two women over some man, wouldn’t you figure? Before anyone knew it, a straight razor gashed an arm open and the Sheriff had to be summoned. I didn’t see the incident, but I caught a glimpse of the result when the Sheriff opened the door of the pickup truck where the woman sat. She was overweight, and the gash didn’t get through the fat, it seemed. But is sure made a mess.

Two or three of us kids stood around, awestruck, until they chased us away. I don’t think they did anything but send the perpetrator home and the victim to the hospital. The law didn’t get too involved in “cuttin’ scrapes” in those days when the participants weren’t white.

If the future episodes of Country Music are as good as the first, we are in for a treat, and I’m in for a lot more memories.

Armies for God or Armies for Good?

“A riot is an ugly thing. But I think it is just about time that we had one!” That’s just a line from a 1974 film by Mel Brooks. What on earth does it have to do with the Sermon on the Mount?

Nothing probably. But in a strange way of thinking, maybe the Galilean was suggesting a riot, not a violent mob-led wave of destruction, oh no. Perhaps what he had in mind was a “riot of righteousness.” Now wouldn’t that be a hoot, these days?

Notice how he uses some of his most sensory metaphors for urging his listeners, including his disciples, to follow him and do good things?

He evokes a sense taste when he says, in Matthew 5:13 “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ah yes, without the salt of righteousness, we shall be stomped into the ground.” (KJV)

How about a sense of sight? “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” (5:14-16)

Doesn’t he then extol the crowd to use their sense of hearing and gift of speech for righteousness sake? “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (5:19)

Surely the bit about the pearls and the pigs can stir our senses of touch and smell.

Oh yes. I don’t think he was merely preaching that day, as the scriptures present him. He was raising an army, an army of the righteous. Wouldn’t it be nice if Americans heeded his words today? We need them in a time in which our social-reward system is so heavily oriented toward greed, avarice, cruelty, force, power, hatred, falsehood, and disrespect of others.

Wow. What would Franklin Graham and the other harbingers of hate think if they say an army of Americans coming toward them with stone copies of the The Beatitudes in their hands?

The Galilean foresaw this when he said, “For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (5:20)

You know, that’s why “The Sermon” obsesses me so. Whether one is “born again,” a cultural Christion, a doubter, a disbeliever, or simply a “goodness-seeker,” the Galilean’s words serve as a universal guide to a good life and a powerful warning against a bad one.

We seem to be so divided these days in our country. Divisiveness and the reward system described above seem destined to destroy us. A powerful group thinks guns will save us. Another powerful group thinks that unbridled license is the answer. Another powerful group thinks that better access to drugs will serve as our salvation. Then comes the “Thought Control Police.” Of course, there are those who trust Twitter, cell phones, more cars, bigger houses, social insulation, racial purity, war, or wealth.

I think maybe reading the words ascribed to the Galilean from on that lonely Judean hill each morning before setting forth might be worth a try. At the very least, it would scare hell out of the pharisees.

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 ?