The Charleston

By Jimmie von Tungeln

The younger girl held the matchbox steady as the older bored through one side and out the other an inch or so from the front. Using a rusted ice pick, she carefully pierced the cardboard without caving in the side. Her eyes narrowed from the concentration and her tongue curled against her upper lip. Together, they repeated the process at the rear and the girl held it up for inspection. “Now for the axles,” she said.

The younger picked up two slender twigs whittled to a near cylindrical shape and handed them to her sister. She stuck the twigs from side to side through the box. “Wheels,” she said. The other reached into her dress pocket and handed her four large buttons retrieved from a discarded coat. Taking them, she held them to the sky for inspection. There were four holes in each button, pre-cut for accepting thread. In the center, the girls had bored a single, larger hole. Through this hole, she pushed one of the buttons, then the rest, onto the sticks protruding from the sides of the box.

“Won’t be long, now,” the girl said. As she positioned each wheel, she stuck straight pins adjacent to the sides of the buttons to hold them in place. Finished, she held the completed apparatus up for inspection and then rolled it along the ground. The younger girl watched in admiration.

“Works good Essie,” she said. “Works real good.”

“We got us a wagon, Mabel,” the other said. She rolled the toy along the ground twice more and then held it up. “Now we’ll work on the tongue.”

“Let’s check on the team,” Mabel said.

“Let’s,” said Essie as she rose from her squatting position. She placed the toy wagon against a great oak tree rising from the front yard. She took the younger girl’s hand and they ran to a place under the porch of the house. There they had built a small lean-to a foot-square in the shade.

A woman in her mid-forties sat on the porch in an aged rocking chair watching the girls and moving in slow rhythm as she fanned herself with a fan that proudly announced its source as The Buie Funeral Home, Rison, Arkansas. The house was a modest structure of maybe 20 feet in width. Like many others of its type, it had three rooms, one behind the other with a back door leading to a well in the back yard for drawing water. Other than the rocking chair, the only embellishments visible on the front porch were a piece of broken mirror hanging from a string and a calendar by the door outlining the year 1924.

The woman stopped her rocking and fanning long enough to bend toward where the girls were crouched. “I’m a’tellin’ you girls them baby rats ain’t gonna live the day out so you moughts well bury them now.”

Neither girl replied. The had removed a piece of filthy blanket covering a small nest of hay and twigs that furnished the bed for four recently born rats. The tiny pink things were curled into tight balls and quivered as the air hit them.

“How long afore they’s big enough to pull the wagon?” asked Mabel.

“Couple of weeks, I reckon.”

“Hot damn.”

“I heard that,” the woman yelled from the porch. “Now y’all quit tormentin’ them babies or I’m gonna whup somebody’s ass.”

Essie giggled and covered the babies. “When we get the axles and tongue finished, we’ll start on the harnesses.”

“You still got them shoe laces?”

“All we’ll need.”

The girls withdrew from under the porch and stretched in the morning sun. Both were thin. Essie was six inches taller than the younger girl with jet-black hair that contrasted with the auburn hair of her sister. Both had bobbed coiffures, apparently fashioned at home. They each wore thin, simple dresses that draped over their bodies like clothes hanging from a line. Neither wore shoes.

“Mama, you said Uncle Frank used to make wagons out of match boxes and hook them up to rats. Why you fussin’ at us?” Essie said.

“Them rats was growed. He didn’t use no baby rats.”

“Ours gonna be growed in a couple of weeks if you give us some milk to feed them.”

The woman rocked back. “Now you girls shut up and come on around here. We got some washin’ to do.”

“Aw Mama. Can’t we play awhile?” Mabel said.

“You can play when I tell you to,” she said, but the girls didn’t hear. Their attention had centered on a distant sound, one unusual but familiar. They both walked to the edge of the cleared area that served as a front yard.

“Hear that?” Essie said nudging Mabel. “It’s car, and it’s headed this way.”

Mabel didn’t answer. She turned to look at her mother for confirmation. The woman had heard the sound as well. She raised a hand to her mouth and Mabel could see concern on her face. “Mama, somebody’s …,” she began but the woman motioned for her to be quiet.

“You girls come up here,” she said.

The girls obeyed and stood by their mother as the automobile came closer. They heard a rattling sound that seemed to echo from the large oaks that ringed the house. Had it not been for the fact that only one road led by their home, Mabel thought that it would have been hard to tell from which direction the sound came. It just came, that was all, growing louder until they could hear, among the sounds of the engine, the squeaking of the car’s body as it labored along the ruts and crevasse making up the dirt road.

“Reckon who it is, Mama?” Essie said.

“Hush now. You girls be quiet.”

Then there was a flash as sunlight bounced off glass and the girls could see snatches of a dark form moving through the woods like an animal on the prowl. The two moved closer to their mother.

The form then burst from the darkness of the woods and a complete automobile emerged. A faded black shape marked with large rings of rust and dents bounced into view and headed straight for the house.

Instinctively, the mother shooed her daughters behind her, ready to absorb the first shock if the shape didn’t stop before it reached them.

It swerved, though, just as it reached the edge of the front yard and came to a sudden stop parallel to the front porch. The front end dipped twice as if bowing in deference and then the entire apparatus was still.

Essie peered from behind her mother. “Look, Mama, it’s Carl and Fred.” She laughed at the thought of their being frightened. “It’s just Carl and Fred. They done got themselves a car.”

Those on the porch couldn’t see them well, but to the right of each of the men sat others who appeared to be female.

“How you, Mama?” Fred yelled.

The woman didn’t answer. She looked at the car and its occupants as if they had dropped into her yard from another world.

“We come by to see you,” the man said. “How you like my car?”

The woman looked the car over from end to end. “What you boys up to?” she said.

“I done told you, Mama,” Fred said. “We come by to see you.”

“Why ain’t you boys workin’?”

The man in the rear spoke to the other who replied and then turned to face his mother again. “We off today.”

“Who’s that in the car with you?” she said as if noticing them for the first time.

“They’s some friends Mama.” He turned to the passengers and said, “You girls git out and meet our mama.”

He turned to this mother again and opened the door of the car. “They comin’ around to meet you, Mama.”

With that, those in the car emerged one by one, straightening their clothes and slapping away the dust that had covered them. As the women came around the car, the girls stepped from behind their mother and stared.

“Would you look at that?” Mabel said.

“You girls hush,” their mother said.

The women did present a spectacle for two young girls in the backwoods. Both wore similar dresses that hung straight from their shoulders and ended midways between their hips and knees and were joined by a row of fringe that ended six inches above the knee. The girls watched entranced as the fringe jiggled as the women walked toward the front porch, each on the arms of one of the men.

Fred and his companion stopped halfway across the yard. Carl took an extra step as he and his bumped the other two from behind. Recovering, they all stood at attention as if on review before those on the porch.

“Mama,” Fred began.

“Where’d you git that car?” His mother interrupted him and glared.

“Hit’s mine,” Fred said. “I bought it last week. Now Mama,” he began. “Where’d you git the money?” she said.

“I hauled some hogs for old man Atkins,” he said. “Now Mama …”

“Hit must have been one big load of hogs.”

“Mama, this here is Adele,” Fred said, proud of his persistence. “And back ‘air is Bobbie June. They’s friends of ours.”

“Why ain’t y’all haulin’ some more hogs if’n it’s yore day off? Can’t you use some extra money? I know we could.”

“Now Mama,” Carl said from behind Fred. “That’s what we need to talk to you about.”

“Shut up, Carl,” Fred said. “Mama, can we come in and talk to you a minute?”

The woman deliberated, still ignoring the two other women. Finally, she turned to the door, “Come on in, then. You girls stay out here.” She didn’t specify which girls so the two younger ones remained on the porch staring at the two women. They heard a door slam in the back of the house and the Mabel knew they had gone all the way to the kitchen to talk. It must be serious.

“What’s your name, sweetie?” the one named Adele said to Essie.

“Esther Mae,” she replied.

“That’s a right pretty name,” Adele said. “And what’s yours?” she said, turning to Mabel.

Mabel didn’t speak. She just turned toward Essie who nodded. “Mabel,” she said, finally.

“Well I’ll swan. Ain’t you the cutest two girls in Cleveland County?”

Before they could respond, loud voices roared from behind the closed door. The girls could only make out a word or two but they could tell it had something to do with liquor. Before they could hear more, the woman named Bobbie June spoke in a loud voice.

“Hey girls, come down here and let us show you something.”

They looked at one another. Again, Essie nodded and the two descended from the porch, one behind the other.

When they reached the two women, the one named Adele placed her hand on Mabel’s shoulder. She started to speak but sounds of loud voices from the back of the house attracted their attention. Mabel only caught the phrase “comin’ in here drunk” in the mixed confusion.

Suddenly Adele spoke. “I bet you girls don’t know how to do the Charleston, do you?”

Essie and Mabel both looked at her. “The what?” Essie said.

“The Charleston,” Adele said. “It’s the latest dance. You do know how to dance don’t you?”

“No ma’am,” said Essie. “We ain’t allowed to.”

“Not allowed to?” said Bobbie June, moving to draw their attention away from the house. “Why, you should, and I bet we can teach you in a sec.”

“You bet,” said Adele. “We been all the way to Dallas, Texas to learn it. You know where Dallas is?”

“No ma’am,” said Essie.

“Well, it’s a long way from Cleveland County, I’ll tell you that. Come here and look.”

She led the girls a few steps farther from the house and then turned to Bobbie June. “Let’s teach these girls a thing or two,” she said.

Bobbie June began to clap her hands in rhythm and, much to the delight of the girls, sang in a husky voice.

“Five foot two…

Eyes of blue..

But oh, what those five feet could do…”

They giggled when Adele began to move forward and backward in pace with singing, placing one foot in front of the other and then in back of it with arms swinging in perfect rhythm.

“Turned up nose…

Turned down hose…

Never had no other beaus…”

“Now come on, you do it do,” said Adele, grabbing Essie’s arm.

When Essie drew away, Adele said, “Don’t be afraid. It’s easy. Give it a try.”

She continued to dance and motioned for the other two to join her.

“See, just put one foot here, one foot there.”

Bobby June was joining her now, continuing to sing.

“Now if you run into…”

Suddenly Adele cried. “Look at that child.”

Three of them turned to watch Mabel who was now beginning to move in perfect imitation of Adele. She stumbled once, missed a beat, but soon was bouncing on her feet in complete harmony with the music.

“Look at that bearcat go. Kick them gams, you darb you,” said Adele. She stopped herself and joined Adele in singing and clapping as Mabel began to move in frenzied ecstasy. He eyes grew wide and her face contorted from concentration. Essie looked at her in amazement.

“But could she love…

Could she woo…

Could she, could she, could she coo?”

Bobbie June stopped singing then. Mabel continued do pour every bit of energy into dancing though there was no more music. The two women had turned toward the house when Carl came quick-stepping through front door toward the steps. As Mabel raged forwards and backwards, sounds of broken glass flew from the house and Fred came running out, dodging blows from a broom wielded by his mother. He crashed into Carl, who was halfway down the steps and the two went flying together into the four standing in the yard.

Mabel stopped dancing.

“And take them whores with you,” her mother shouted.

She needn’t have worried. The two women were already in car by then and before anyone else could move, Fred had joined them. Carl was already in front of the car violently spinning a starting crank. The engine started immediately and he ran to the back door, crank in hand, and dove in as the car began to move. In a moment, they were gone.

Mabel and Essie didn’t move. They had seen storms before and knew that the best defense was no defense at all. Essie simply looked a Mabel in amazement. Without changing expression, Mabel winked at her.

“You girls start gettin’ ready,” their mother said. “We got to go pick up Mizz Reed’s washin’.”

The girls walked back to the house holding hands. Without speaking to one another, they walked to the spot under the porch where they had left the baby rats. Essie squatted and removed the cover. She watched the babies for a minute or so, it seemed to Mabel. The she poked them with a finger.

“Mama, I think our babies died,” she said.

“I done told you they would. Now you girls git rid of them and git ready to go.” She turned and, broom in hand, went back into the house.

“Bring me our wagon,” Essie said.

Mabel turned without a word and went to the base of the tree where the matchbox wagon lay. She picked it up and returned with it to where Essie still squatted quietly. She handed the box to her sister.

“We ain’t got time to bury them now,” Essie said. She folded the rag that covered the tiny creatures and placed it in the box as a liner. Then she picked up the tiny objects one by one and placed them in a row upon the cloth. She rose slowly and showed the box to Mabel who simply nodded.

Holding the box in front of her, Essie started walking to a copse of trees just beyond the edge of the front yard, in the direction from which the car had appeared. That now seemed like years ago to Mabel. As they moved from the clearing, the trees made shadows cross their forms and then they were in the cool darkness out of sight from the house.

Essie began to sing as they walked, and after a few more steps, Mabel began to sway with the music. Now Essie did the same, still holding the matchbox coffin before her as they walked farther into the cool, dark woods.

“Five foot two…

Eyes of blue…”

ASPIRATIONS

 One statement that has impacted me more than most this year, was from a pundit on the news: “We don’t elect aspirational voices anymore.” How true. We elect voices that feed our niche. We elect voices that hate the same people we do. We elect voices that support what got us here, not what will get us out of here. We elect voices that promise to reduce rights for our enemies. We elect voices that promise to increase the likelihood of religious wars. We elect voices that feed our prejudices.

I live in a state that ranks at or near the bottom in every socioeconomic measurement of success. Our governor just announced  the good news that the state is experiencing a revenue surplus.

Will he have a “Cassidy Hutchinson Moment" and turn from the Dark Side?

Will he announce investment of funds for the impoverished Arkansas Delta?

Will he announce new measures to confront the drug crisis that is crippling our families and communities?

Will he move surplus funds into an improvement of education?

Will he work address crime and violence caused by our love of guns?

Well, no to all of these.

He plans to ask the legislature to cut taxes.

Friendship

 Each day I resolve not to be abrasive. Then I see utterances from people I once knew to be kind, generous, educated, and thoughtful. Somewhere, something or someone flipped a switch and a horrible transmogrification took place. I Don’t know how to respond. Let me just say this.

If your cult has convinced you to hate Dr. Anthony Fauci and love Kyle Rittenhouse, your soul needs a greater level of forgiveness than I can provide.

If your cult teaches you that slavery was okay but committed love between two people of the same sex is not, your sense of morality needs a greater level of support than I can provide.

If your cult makes you believe that only white Americans deserve the right to vote, your sense of America needs a greater level of education that I can provide.

If your cult convinces you that women only have the rights conferred upon them by men, your understanding of democracy requires a new meaning of community than I can provide.

In the words of the immortal Woody Guthrie, “So long, it’s been good to know you.”

Feelings

 Today I awoke with the news pundits expressing the total annihilation of the political party that my family supported for, oh, two generations. The third one back was from Illinois, and the local wisdom back then was to support the political party in office, or likely to be in office, due to job patronage considerations. Politische Partei nicht Mann. Oh, and not all of my family. Some now embrace nihilism for odd reasons. Anyhow …

 I’m in a strained position. I still earn some money on small jobs for organizations I love and for work I enjoy. My continued success is important. It keeps me doing paying work in urban planning which I love and for which I get paid instead of doing farm work which I abhor and for which I don’t get paid. I need to understand all viewpoints.

 My first reaction on reading this morning’s news was to begin imagining how I would feel when I heard the boxcar’s scraping metal doors opening. and a voice yelling, “Raus raus und anstellen.” Oops, sorry, “Out, out and line up.”

 Then I started thinking. While the dreadful direction in which our country is headed primarily rests upon the shoulders of one political party, I’ve landed in “a plague on both your houses” paradigm. If our country doesn’t get back nearer the center, we are doomed.

 For the left, it prevailed somewhat in the last election. Despite the usage of the worst choice of a political slogan in my lifetime, i.e. “defund the police,” it managed victories. How many millions voted for the other party because of that one statement is beyond imagining. Sadly, they are keeping it up.

 Now, for a political minefield. Whether we “progressives” wish to admit it or not, such an issue as that involving transgender persons frightens some people. Wait wait. Educated people such as you and I understand that it is a biological phenomenon and should be treated as such. We reason that as taxpayers, do we prefer acceptance and understanding, or are we willing to face the costs of mental care? That was the choice upon which the U.S. Military based its decision. That decision finally came out well, by the way.

 On the other hand, we must try to understand that for some of our brothers and sisters, the prospect of having a young daughter enter a restroom where the sex of others within it is flexible is not a prospect easily accommodated from an emotional viewpoint for many. Cursing and reviling them for their feelings is not productive.

Now that I’ve read all the hate mail, one recurring theme is, “You think you are so [insert adjective of choice] smart, and you think you are never wrong.”

Allow me to disabuse you of that notion. Back when the long-time minority political party of our state became the majority party, they first elected some of what I considered the worst miscreants imaginable to office. My soothing thought was, “Once they are in power and realize the complexity and potential good of government, they will elect better people.”

There. I was dead-assed wrong. Enjoy your gloat.

Accountability

 Odd thought of the day:

In our state, the group that brays the loudest about how "gubmint" should be run like a "bidness" share a common trait, other than being elected officials of state government. No, the trait is that if government shared the same strictures and liabilities as private corporations, many of those most adamant about how it should be run would be in federal court defending themselves of charges of fraud. 

Actually, taking the dilemma of Covid-19 into account, the charges might be more severe. 

 They were there, had we only looked: bigotry, prejudice, and racism, the monsters of our psyche, writhing and slobbering like a den of 1950s science fiction monsters.

 They were not dead, as we had hoped and dreamed. They were not even moribund. They were simply submerged, like Godzilla, or a giant spider, just waiting to be freed by a shock of super-seismic proportions. What would it take to release them upon an unsuspecting public?

 It took nothing more than the election of a president of the United States born of a white mother and African father, the very model of a modern African-American.

 That’s all it took. The “monsters from the id,” as they called them in the 1956 film, The Forbidden Planet, took control of the minds of otherwise decent people. Things changed overnight. Old friends began to greet you with, “How do you like our n****r president?” Hatemongers on the internet devised the acronym “SOS” to describe the elected leader of the United States of America. Photoshopped images of watermelon patches on the White House lawn appeared on social media. The man’s family members attracted descriptions as “gorillas” or worse. Sentiments and language that had been shoved to the bottom of our cultural sea and buried were fashionable again. Hate groups flourished and became more emboldened, as did hate media. A sense of shame settled over us.

 Campaigning against candidates of the Democratic Party in our state became simple. All one had to do was request it from East Coast PACs and they would deliver boatloads of brochures, simple ones with just a photo of their opponent facing a photo of President Obama. The stated message would be, “he/she is with him.” The hidden message would be “the n****rs are coming for your women and he/she is going to help them.”

 It worked like magic, even among citizens of our state who are alive today because of the Barack Obama’s efforts toward universal health care. The illogic of that could make a healthy person nauseated. Our state will suffer for decades.

 Now don’t get me wrong. I strongly support the rights of Americans to vote for the candidates of their choice. My only wish is that we would all vote for candidates on the basis of the principles of good government, as we see it, and not the principles of the KKK.

 Meanwhile, can’t we work toward eliminating the monster born of bigotry and racism? Unchallenged, it will destroy us as a unified nation as surely as a giant lizard could destroy a city. The Galilean’s admonition for us to “love one another” might be that best hope for us. As they used to say in the aforementioned films of the 1950s: “It just might work!”

 It becomes more obvious every day that such healing will not come from the highest offices of government. It must begin at the citizen level.

 I’ll try. That’s what I think on July 4, 2017.

Urban Planning Taboos

 There are taboos in my profession, topics for which you don’t share any cynical apprehensions. One topic concerns the concept of “the homeless.” We progress under the shibboleth that all those unfortunates who live under overpasses, dig through restaurant dumpsters, and wander the street in miserable, disheveled condition are there for several justifiable reasons, all of which are directly our fault, certainly not theirs.

 Most are there, we understand, because they lost a good paying job and, next, their home.

 Others are there because they mistakenly joined the military and came out too traumatized to fit into society in any meaningful way. Of course, the Vietnam vets are the worst, notwithstanding the fact that they are getting a little “long in the tooth” to wander the streets, sleep on the frozen ground, and frighten the righteous as we, uh they, have done for half a century. Military veterans, often grouped under the subset, “homeless veterans,” seem to add a bit of patriotic cache to appeals for money. Everyone loves a vet, or so they say.

 It is this latter group which prompted me to examine the matter of homelessness in more detail, risking much alienation and approbation from liberal friends and professional colleagues.

 It started when a friend from northwest Arkansas came to Little Rock for a meeting and invited me to lunch. I met him at a downtown diner and found that he had brought another person. He introduced her as a homeless advocate, and we sat to dine. The talk soon turned to her advocacy. She proudly related how her efforts were aiding the poor and unfortunate up in what some call “Walmartia.”

 Interjection of a Generalizaion_1: The only poor and unfortunate people in northwest Arkansas are there by choice and not by fortune.

 Interjection of a Generalization_2: All generalizations are specious, even the previous one.

 Anyway.

 She proceeded to set off a hidden bomb that I had been harboring for nearly 50 years. She just had to go and mention all the self-satisfying work she was doing for the homeless veterans in northwest Arkansas.

 Homeless veterans in northwest Arkansas? Now don’t get me started. Oh, you already have, you say. Oh well.

 To make a long story bearable, I calmly asked a question that had been smoldering within me like a lit fuse headed for a store of dynamite. “How do you go about determining veteran status?” I asked. “Do you require a DD214?"

 I’ll swear on my Sainted Mother’s grave that she forked a bit of salad in her mouth, chewed, and calmly said, “What’s a DD214?”

 I took a deep breath and thought of rose gardens and Martha Lou Shomier from high school. I exhaled, managing to keep my cool. “Only the proof that those people you are calling ‘homeless veterans’ have actually ever served in the military.”

 “Oh,” she said, obviously relived that it wasn’t a requirement that had to do with grant proposals. “I do suppose we have some that may ‘assume the persona,’ I really don’t know.”

 “Assume the persona?” Was I hearing correctly? She did say, “Assume the persona” and not the more military-related, “Assume the position,” didn’t she?

 I turned to my friend. “Have you ever actually known a homeless veteran?” He pretended that he had been so busy enjoying his meal that he had missed the conversation. Of course he hadn’t known any homeless veterans. He had, in all likelihood, only known a handful of veterans in his life.

 Just then, fate interviewed. I caught a glimpse of a friend from high school enjoying a meal with colleagues, all in their finest “litigatin’ suits.” Judging from their raucous comradery, they were probably on opposite sides of the same lawsuit.

 “See that man?” I said. “He spent a year as an enlisted man in an artillery unit in Vietnam. He’s now a partner in one of the most prestigious law firms in Arkansas. And, oh by the way, he’s not homeless, not weighted down with any false persona, and is more representative of the military veterans that I know, than any of your so-called ‘poor homeless vets.’ So you can take your ‘persona’ and shove it.”

 I didn’t finish my meal, but I did, I’m afraid, end a friendship.

 Next: Searching for a definition.

 

The Ride: Part Three

 We all stood real quiet, nobody wanting to go on this adventure, but no one wanting to dispute Furlow. We looked at our feet, then at one another. Nobody chose to look at Furlow. The silence didn’t dampen his resolve, though. He just looked at us shook his head. Across the wooden fence, the young bull calf looked at us, and I’ll swear he had a grin on his face.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Furlow said. “We’ll herd him into that chute and then I’ll tie this rope around him like us cowboys do.” He made a motion describing the action in case we couldn’t understand words. “Then,” he said, “I’ll get on and ya’ll will let him out.” He smiled. “I’ll show him who’s boss.”

Before we could act, he climbed over the fence and was in the pen with the calf, who had quit smiling.

I don’t know who moved first, maybe it was T-Boy. He always stood up for his race. I saw him one time beat Teddy Ratliff over half the county for calling him a, well I won’t say what he called him but it got Teddy’s rear end kicked over half the county. I’m pretty sure he followed Furlow first so as to plant a flag for bravery. Anyway, first thing you know, we were all in the pen and closing in on the calf, who looked for one second like he was going to charge us and the next like he was going to break the fence down and run. He chose and just stood there waiting.

The chute Furlow mentioned ran near the side of the barn at the far end of the pen. Mister General Lee had fixed two wide boards at the far end so that if you ran a cow or calf down the chute and it stuck its head between the two boards you could pull the one that pivoted with an attached rope and catch the creature’s head so you could give it a worm pill or whatever. The outside of the chute at that point consisted of a gate that could be swung open and, after the cow’s head was released, you could let it out into the pen.

Are you beginning to get picture?

Good. It didn’t us long to herd the bull calf into the chute and down to its end. He didn’t resist much. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying it. Furlow had climbed up and had one foot on each side of the chute when the calf reached the end.

“Now pass that rope through,” he said to the  two on either side of the chute and direct them to handle the ends as he drew them up and drew them up so he could hold them in one hand like you’ve seen the cowboys do. He lowered himself down until he settled down on the calf’s back in a rider’s position and pulled the ends of the rope together and held them tight in his right hand. He relaxed, took a breath, and motioned, just like a real rodeo star, for Boogy to open the gate.

Some say he made two bounds. Some say three, but it sure wasn’t more than that before the calf’s butt went straight up the air and Furlow went horizontal over where the calf’s head had been a second before but which had led a sharp turn that allowed Furlow’s body to land in a vacant spot two feet away and bounce before it settled into a dusty heap. We all ran over.

We were happy to see Furlow lift himself up chest first and bounce to his feet. “Was that a full eight seconds? he asked. Nobody spoke. “I don’t think I quite made it, he said. He looked at the calf who was standing ten feet away with the biggest smirk on his face you ever saw.

We all looked at one another, glad for the adventure to be over and for Furlow still standing. “That was some ride,” someone said.

Run that sonofabitch back in there,” Furlow said. “And somebody get that other piece of  rope.”

Next week: Conclusion, or how much damage can one person on a crazy bull calf do.

Dark Waters

While rational people in America breath a sigh of relief, I’m struggling with this uneasy feeling. I fear that the next week may be the most dangerous for this country since the first half of April, 1861. We have a huge number of elected officials of the Trump Party, including three from our state, who have decided to abandon the oath they took to protect the Constitution of the United States of America and follow the whims of their leader. In past times, we would have considered this the bottom. I fear, though, that there is no bottom for the followers of this deluded megalomaniac. There is always a next step lower for this man. Will, “Boys get your guns,” be next? Four things give me hope, on an otherwise cloud-foreboding day.

1.     The “boys” he would be talking to are a group of overweight, marginally functional, cowardly, irresponsible nitwits who would end up shooting one another more frequently than they would others.

2.     We have a military composed of fine women and men who took the same oath I did and still, as I do, honor it. It is much easier to abandon that oath as a politician without scruples than as a warrior whose comrades, as well as their country, depend on shared honor and the duty for which it calls. They are there to protect us.

3.     There is what I call “The Thomas Beckett Syndrome” in which people, like Saul on the road to Damascus, or John Newton on the decks of a slave ship, turn from evil and embrace a better life.

4.     I don’t think the political party of Winthrop Rockefeller, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Theodore Roosevelt will continue to sink into this mire.

If I have given offense, I can’t apologize. It’s that oath I mentioned. One can’t take an oath to protect his country and then forebear standing up to those who have either never taken the oath, and thus disparage it, or, worse, have taken and abandoned it. If we disagree on the facts of governing a country, you are still my brothers and sisters. I still love you. We can talk. I’m just asking that we stop this dangerous foolishness. We can save our country if we hold fast.

Equity

 Sundays I think of the Galilean, not from religious fervor, but because I was trained to do so as a youth and things stick. Lately, I’ve been concerned, since I don’t have to worry constantly about paying bills, with the theoretical aspects of urban planning. Now what would He (with a capital “h”) have to say about urban planning? I don’t know.

He did say, we are told, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.” According to another source, he just said, "Blessed are the poor." I sort of like the first since I've know some pretty rich people who were awfully poor in spirit, even people who have buildings named after them.

This hit home to me a number of years ago while working on a project involving a working-class neighborhood in decline. I had attended a workshop by the then current “guru of planning” who had assured the crowd that the type planning pioneered by him and his wife would cure everything from ugly neighborhoods to socio-economic inequity to the “low-down blues.” He was an engaging speaker, much in demand, and charismatic. He enthralled the crowd with his speech and all the slides, pictures, and pronouncements.

I was still hyped when an activist introduced me to a woman who lived in the neighborhood in question. She was talkative. That encouraged me. I just had to ask her about interaction with her neighbors. (The guru had assured us that was a sign of the righteousness of his planning model).

She turned stone cold when I asked. “Mr.,” she said, “I’m a single-mother of two boys whose father ran off with another woman and doesn’t provide a penny for support. I hold down two jobs so I can feed them and provide a place to live. When I’m at my second job, I lock my boys in the house so they don’t get killed by stray bullets. I don’t know who my neighbors are and, quite frankly, don’t care.”

Since then, I’ve not been so sure that streetscapes, bike paths, and inspired urban design are the answers to what our cities face.

Primal Fear

Fear is an odd thing. Webster defines it as “an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.” The genetic condition of fear must have been helpful to our ancestors who lived on the Savanah alongside predatory creatures. I remember it from dark nights in a foreign land.

American neurologist and physiologist Walter Bradford Cannon added, in the early 1900s, a condition known as “flight or fight response.” It describes a response to an acute threat to survival that is marked by physical changes, including nervous and endocrine changes. It may prepare a human or an animal to react or to retreat.” This one I remember well from an encounter on a winter’s night with a stranger who stopped me on a city street and placed a hand inside his coat. To my relief he produced a note with an address, and asked directions.

The most fascinating member of the family of fears, to me, is called “primal fear.’ This is the highest level of fear that most people do not experience, usually related to the feeling of impending doom. Anyone raised in a rural protestant church knows this as evidenced by the lifelong and unshakeable terror that their precious body may burn in an everlasting fire for eternity upon their death. I personally consider this as a form of child abuse but will save that thought for another day.

Today, it is the “Gotterdammerung” facing the country I love and have tried to serve faithfully during my adult life that darkens my hope. I see it now as a great ship headed directly into an iceberg as friendly passengers dance around me. It is my tragic and primal fear that we may lose America as we know it in two more days.

How did this happen? Better minds than mine wrestle this question daily. Unbelievably to me, the country may re-elect a man whom I believe, based on my upbringing, education, experience, and reflection, to be the most evil and degenerate president in American history.

The question is not how nearly one-half of Americans support what may occur. Over half of that percentage contains the group of Americans, almost a reliable percentage, who believed Elvis was alive 20 years after his death and that professional wrestling is conducted under strict rules. This segment contains the ones who would be dead today if it were not for the Affordable Care Act pushed through by an African-American president. (Not the term they use.) This segment is largely immune to reason or factual data.

Of the remaining 20 percent of Americans are the “single-issue voters” who would vote for Charles Manson, brought from the dead, for president if he promised to make abortion illegal, allow citizens to use bazookas to settle arguments, or banished anyone to whom nature had provided a different genetic makeup. They may be educated but have used their education merely to sharpen their weapons of bigotry.

We can shave off another ten percent of those who believe that unlimited wealth and no restrictions placed on how to obtain it will produce a perfect society. This society would be, one must suppose, much like, the American South of the 1850s. Some use their education to create false doctrines supporting this goal.

Then there is a layer of supporters who somehow believe their profession is best protected by a liar and false prophet. Some are educated and some are not. All reject any internal logic that doesn’t support their need for self-preservation. They are loyal to a man who thinks loyalty is a one-way trait.

That leaves the remaining sliver of supporters who augment the primal fear that haunts my sole and interrupts my sleep. These include many old friends who are educated, some highly so. They don’t carry any apparent burdens that would tarnish their thoughts. In a crowd they would appear normal. Individually, they appear fully capable of critical thinking, until the subject of politics emerges. What logic have they neglected?

Some may have even read William Shirer’s masterpiece The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Some, I know, have seen the film Schindler’s List.

A few may have read It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis.

A few have attended the Holocaust Museum in our nation’s capitol.

Some attend church and worship the man who told us to love another and not to judge.

Some have read The Grapes of Wrath. I know this for they attended college.

Almost all know the words to This Land is Your Land.

In short, and in conclusion, these friends matured under the same conditions as I but have developed diametrically opposed beliefs as to what is right and what is wrong. I may be guilty of illogic. They might be.

That’s what scares the living hell out of me.

Answers

 

Sundown In Zion

CHAPTER fifty-one

            They all took Sunday off. Sheriff Love explained that they each enjoyed enough excitement on Saturday to last a lifetime. “Besides,” he said, “I have to take my wife to church on Sunday. We haven’t missed a service in over 47 years and we’re not going to start now.”

            Charlie was at Angela’s house. Nelson tried all that morning to reach Tina, but she didn’t answer her phone at home. He also tried her office with no luck. He read for an hour after breakfast and then fired up his computer to make notes for his report.

            The first thing that appeared on his screen was notice of an email from Tina. He clicked to it. It read.

            Forgive me, but please don’t try to contact me again. It is all over, through no fault of yours, only mine. I do not love you and will never love you. For better or worse, love is a one-time thing with me. Sex is a relief from the pain of loss, but only a temporary one. I thought perhaps you were different, but no. I loved the sex, but each time we finished, and you lay beside me, I was filled with disgust. Not only with you, but with myself mostly and with the thought of dishonoring the memory of my husband. See, I didn’t love him when we married. He represented an end to a student’s poverty and a little physical fun, that’s all. Then something strange happened as we faced life together and overcame its petty struggles. I woke up one morning and realized that I worshipped the ground on which he walked. Every time I took a breath, that feeling grew stronger. May you share it someday. Being loved can generate love, that’s not from a sociologist, but from a life’s partner of a wonderful person. When we meet on campus, let’s meet as friends. You can even take my class if you wish. Friends, that’s all. I need all of them I can find. Take care.

Tina

Nelson closed the email. He spent the afternoon making notes of his remembrances, and the evening thinking, with a glass of Jack Daniels close by.

The next morning, he walked into the sheriff’s office to find him in an expansive mood. “Come in my nautical friend. Get some coffee and sit. When they both had settled comfortably, he said, “Know what our preacher preached on yesterday?”

Nelson shook his head.

“Handling life’s surprises with the help of God,” he said. “Now ain’t that a fucking hoot? What you want to know about first?”? He stopped and spoke loudly toward the door. “Mrs. M, you’ll know all about everything when you type my report. Right now, you’ll just have to wait.” There was a familiar scuffling sound from the other side of the door. He waited.

“Now,” he said. “You’ll first want to know about Brother Dale Underhill, as he is known, right?

Nelson nodded.

“When he figured the jig was up,” the sheriff said, “he started singing. Not hymns either but a sad and tragic story. Seems greed-envy overtook him the way inertia overtakes many of our county residents. He saw those TV evangelists with their private jets and mansions, and it gnawed on him like glory gnaws on people like us.” They both smiled. “Then he read a book about those fundamentalist Mormon men out west. He and Bully spent way too much time talking about it and they hatched a plan.”

“Let me guess,” Nelson said. “It involved the Ransom Center.”

“Bingo. He used some secret network that preachers have and found this huge market for brainwashed young starlets and the two of them sprang into action.”

“Brigette said they appraised her at fifty grand.”

“That’s a discounted price,” he said, “because she was so hardheaded and difficult to train. She’s also a little old. They like them no older than 14, as a rule. Anyway,” he said. “A few sales financed their entry into a more lucrative, although riskier, field. Greed overcame caution and here we are. He says they were quitting all of their businesses after Bridgette and that delivery we intercepted. You were making things too warm for them and they all had their nests made anyway. It was off to the Caribbean after that final load.”

“Speaking of that,” Nelson said, “how did Don Dillahunty fit in?

“Seems he came to Brother Dale complaining that his wives, both former and present, were bankrupting him and he didn’t know what to do.”

“And?”

“Just so happened that the meth-gang needed a way to smuggle hard-to-get ingredients in and Don imported a lot of furniture from the Vietnamese. They, the Vietnamese ain’t above stuffing such furniture creatively. Don ask why. They are still pissed off about the war, if you ask me. Anyway, as Brother Dale put it, in that charming way of his, ‘It was a marriage made in Heaven’ and the rest is history.”

Bridgette’s mother is happy?”

“Look up the word in the dictionary and you’ll see her picture there.”

“Will they keep Martin out of the news?”

“Now there is another shocking development. I trust you didn’t fail to see a little more than rescuer and rescuee attraction during our little get together?

“Who could have missed it? That explains the portion of the letter her mom found.”
“It explains a lot of things,” the sheriff said, “not the least of which is why they took her

from the Ransom Center when they didn’t really need kidnap money anymore. They stop short of murdering for miscegenation now, these assholes. Besides, they had a better treatment.”

            “What about the crime scene?”

“They went yesterday and looked as best they could. A total wipeout. All they’ve identified so far was a section of a forearm with the letters “SW” tattooed on it, and a partial set of dentures.”

            “Believe it or not, those both belonged to Bully.”

            “Stands to reason,” the sheriff said. “I mean as far as the dentures. Man-fighting, meth, and Mountain Dew don’t make for a full set of choppers.

            “So,” Nelson said, “that about wraps in up?”

            Before the sheriff could answer, three knocks came at his door. “Ah,” he said, “Mrs. M’s secret code. This is important. “Enter.”

            The door opened and a voice said, “Agent Benson is here.”

            “Send ‘Little Jedgar’ in.”

            The door opened fully, and Tom Benson entered. He surveyed the room. “Gentlemen,” he said. He shook hands with Nelson. “I think I owe you an apology for thinking of you as a pest,” he said.

            “Oh?” Nelson said.

            “Yes. I think you’re going to get me transferred to the Beverley Hills office yet.” He turned and shook hands with the sheriff. He nodded back toward Nelson and said. “Just who the hell is this man? He got me credit for solving two interstate crimes in one night.”

            “Just a former sailor,” the sheriff said. He motioned toward an empty chair. “Sit.”

            “I don’t know much more than what I reported to you yesterday,” he said to the sheriff. “We’re getting ready to assemble all we can about Chief of Police Banks over in Connorville and his possible role in all this.”

            Sheriff Love said, “If I know the Weasel, he has covered his tracks pretty well.”

            “Our trackers look hard and deep,” Benson said. “We’ll see what his financial dealings tell us. Right now, I only have one disappointment.”

            Both men sat forward. “Oh?” said the sheriff. “A loose end? I thought all your suspects were all singing “Just as I am without one plea.”

            “They are, pretty much,” Benson said. “Except for one thing.”
            “What’s that?” Nelson asked.

            “They admitted killing Bonnie Sue Anderson. Seems she went to see Dale Underwood because there was something about Bridgette Thompson she hadn’t told anyone, something that could have stirred the pot pretty badly.”

            “Which was?” The sheriff was leaning more toward Benson now.

            “Underwood won’t say,” Benson said, “and she can’t. We may never know. But that’s not the main thing they won’t admit?”

            “What’s that?” the sheriff asked.

            Benson took a deep breath. “None of them will tell us shit about Abbey Stubblefield.”

            “Why?” the sheriff was getting agitated. Nelson showed no emotion.

            “Who knows? Maybe they think they have enough trouble without getting the NAACP on their case as well.”

            The sheriff leaned back and looked at Nelson. “Well now,” he said. Ain’t that a pisser, after all you did for us?”

            “Maybe,” said Nelson. “Just maybe they don’t know.”

            This time it was Benson who leaned forward, toward Nelson. “What do you mean?”

            Nelson shook his head and sorrow showed across it. “You fellas want to take a ride?”

 

 

I watched TV a lot yesterday and retired feeling better about things. A country that produced a man like John Lewis can change, and for the better.

 It reminded me of December 1968 when I returned from overseas. I was stranded in Dallas and my brother and Sainted Mother drove there to bring me home. On the way back, we stopped at a small café in southwest Arkansas for breakfast at a classic redneck “greasy spoon.” Burley men with ball caps on their heads and hardness in their eyes gave us a glance and continued eating. My blue Navy uniform with the four ribbons didn’t impress them at all.

 Just as the waitress served us, the door opened and a man in overhauls entered. Holy race riot! Had I survived a year in a war zone to be killed in a brawl in the American South? I searched for a place for us to dive, but the waitress turned and called the intruder by name. “Have a seat, I’ll be right with you. Your usual?” The man answered, “Yes,” nodded at the other men at the room, and took a seat.

 A relaxing warmth of relief and joy flowed through me. I had returned from the war to a different Arkansas. No breakfast has ever tasted as good, and I long to enjoy that feeling once more. Maybe, just maybe.

 Thank you, John Lewis.

Modern Living

Lately, I’ve been reading and thinking about affordable housing. Everyone seems obsessed with it. Nobody seems to be doing anything about it. One of the problems is that the places needing it most urgently are the places where the market, and many times other forces, resist it most fervently. Some of those cities that I call “Modern Boom Towns,” try to encourage construction of housing for the working class. They find though, that, upon construction, the market pushes rents or selling prices far out of the reach of those most in need. They must find transportation from places where affordable housing exists. The distances they must travel grow greater with each year of local regional prosperity.

One type of housing upon which the poor depended in years gone by exists largely in photographs of yesteryear, for example: 

These once dotted the rural landscape of the agricultural South. They provided homes for farm laborers and sharecroppers. I’m told that my parents lived in one of these after their marriage while sharecropping near the Ladd community south of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

 The homes consisted of three rooms in a row with a straight shot from the front door to the rear door, hence the name “shotgun houses,” as a weapon fired through the front door would go straight through the rear door.

 In certain areas, such homes consisted of an addition story or half-story. In cities they were lined side by side. As neighbors began to escape the bitterest of poverty, two of the homes might be connected to make one. This earned them the local moniker of “double-barreled shotgun houses.”

Photographer/writer Rian Dundon wrote in an essay in Timeline of the location of such home in urban areas: "The precise origins of the shotgun house are up for debate. Some scholars trace the style back to West Africa, where an early 19th century boom in New Orleans’ Afro-Haitian population introduced the distinctive structures. But the ubiquity of shotgun houses throughout the urban south can also be viewed as a variation on the typical one-room farm house—rotated 90 degrees for a better fit in the city’s narrow lots."

 In one of those cases of irony that tend to confuse us, the archetypal “shotgun house” has been adopted by a new and different breed of owner. The one below represents a head-turning case. The owner obtained it for free just before demolition, moved it, and “fixed it up” for $140,000 as a part time lodging place and part-time short-term rental ($350 per night). He then listed it for sale for just under a million dollars. No sharecroppers or service workers need apply.

Most examples in our state  have disappeared. One of the last stood for years just outside the Delta city of Marvell, Arkansas, a fixer-upper for certain had it been saved.

I

 

 

 

 

Power

“He didn’t really mean it. Didn’t mean it at all. Being sarcastic, you know.” That’s understandable from a high-school graduate who has never read a book and relies totally on Facebook for news of the world.

It’s another thing coming from a highly trained and competent professional associated with the president of the United States of America. We’ve seen it. The dude says something really stupid. Next day an expert in the field goes on national TV to claim that the statement was either not made or was misunderstood. It’s worse when one of them actually corrects the president and has to deliver a mea culpa next day. There the whole world watches while a decent human being backtracks “bigly” for speaking truth. You just wonder what caused the reversal.

Know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of an incident years and years ago when I first went out to serve as a consultant to a town of 10,000 people some 45 miles southwest of Little Rock. I was young, dumb and full of it back then. I had hoisted anchor, laid down my sword and shield, and was a (not quite yet) highly paid urban planner. Then I watched something that gave me quick and lasting lesson about life in America.

It happened this way. In this town lived a man. All towns had them, some more than one. He was a combination real estate broker, insurance agent, and banker. They grew like weeds in our state … were like weeds in fact. This one was a particularly mean old bastard. He was the kind who would kick a poor family out on the street in the morning for missing one payment in ten years while buying a home from him “on contract.” Then he would attend his Rotary Club meeting at lunch, check in at the bank, drop by the church with a donation, and go home. Later, he would take the widow next door some fresh tomatoes from his garden.

He came to a planning commission one night to announce plans for a project in the middle of the only decent neighborhood in the city for African-American families. The project would make him some money while exerting a devastating impact on the neighborhood, ruining the property values. It just needed a little of what we call “spot zoning.” In my ignorance, I advised against it, advice to which no one paid the least attention. It did elicit a blistering denouncement about “This kid from Little Rock, who probably hasn’t done a valuable day’s work in his life, coming here to tell us how to run the best town in Arkansas.”

I didn’t shrug it off. I did what I always do. I filed it away. I’ve found it all pays the same and revenge is, as they say, a dish best served cold. Trust me. That old account was settled long ago.

The planning commissioners did listen to a spokesperson from the neighborhood. He was an articulate man who held a professional job and was married to a school teacher. They were purchasing a nice home in the neighborhood and feared the impact of the project proposed by the businessman. The neighborhood was their only choice for decent, stable housing and their dreams could be shattered by the proposed project.  He presented such a reasoned argument that the commission tabled the proposal a month for further study.

Imagine my surprise the next month when the homeowner arose and announced that, upon further study, he now supported the project and, further, apologized to the banker for speaking out before he had examined all the facts. The inevitable then happened.

Later, I couldn’t resist asking the town’s city manager about the reversal of attitude. What had changed the man’s mind?

“Oh, he just got reminded who held the mortgage on his home, who was head of the School Board, and who was a fraternity brother of his boss.”

It’s always something, isn’t it?

A Trip Back Home

We decided, my wife and I, to take a “spur of the moment” trip to my hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas today so I could mow some pasture land my brother owns, a part of the old home place. He’s not enjoying good health at present and isn’t even able to put diesel in his tractor. I took him some, fueled the tractor, and mowed the field while he and Brenda sat in the shade and talked. I can only hope that it wasn’t all about me.

I wasn’t bored. A portion of the field I was mowing once boasted the best homemade baseball backstop ever built by boys under the age of fourteen. It comprised sweet gum saplings sunk in the ground and backed by burlap feed sacks stitched together. Since the lads were better builders than batters, it held up to a lot of hard use. Each time I passed the spot, I could hear the sound of a ball pounding into burlap, oh, and, on rare occasion, the crack of a bat.

I mowed alongside an old stock pond that probably saw more youthful recreation per square foot than any patch of ground in America. It was partly filled with debris now. But the sight of a young boy sitting with his grandmother and begging to “pish” just a little more still shines through the dim past.

Across the field, I mowed along a dirt road that lead no place geographically but to amazing places in the minds of young boys: cowboy hideouts, Indian camps, unseen spots for smoking pilfered cigarettes, and a gathering spot for bemoaning the vicissitudes of childhood and the unfathomable allure of girls for older boys.

The family home and grocery disappeared long ago. To a person growing up there, though, key markings remain. There’s my dad’s favorite tree, still bearing the signs of white paint left from a trick my brother played on our nephew. There’s the road to nowhere, originally named “King’s Road,” after an African-American man who lived toward the end of it. That name didn’t suit the 9-11 addressing crew, so it’s now named after my family, over the strenuous protests of Sainted Mother at the time.

She was a stickler for tradition and truth. I still recall her “aghastness” when a group of yuppies moved onto a road near where she grew up and made the County change the name. To mother, it had always been “Hog-eye Ben Road” and should have remained so.

There’s the house across the highway from our homeplace, standing in the exact shape as it did over 70 years ago. In my brother’s yard, if one looks closely, he can see the remnants of the pipe where our pump house once stood, From there, one can triangulate, using the painted tree, to the location of our chicken yard, barn, wash house, and even the privy.

I finished the mowing and we left, deciding to “drag Main,” and see what was happening. The old town has suffered in modern times. There’s nothing more fun for the residents of “Sundown Towns” than to laugh at the old girl and the troubles she’s seen. I suspect it’s better, though, to live in a town full of problems and people who are willing to work on them, than in a town full of bigoted assholes.

One final joy, the old Community Theater still stands intact. In fact, we enjoyed a conversation with two nice young men doing some repairs to the flooring. When I was a kid, if you were white and had a quarter, you could spend an entire afternoon there. You paid ten cents to get in, ten cents for a box of popcorn, and five cents for a cup of soda. For that, you got a double-feature and four cartoons. You had to be white, though.

Still a handsome city.
My great-grandfather's
Civil War unit once defended
this street from attack
by the Rebs.

Folks are now spending big money in the city for projects that are available to all citizens. They are even beginning work on restoring the old Pines Hotel on Main. There’s lots of new building going on, some near the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. A once distressed shopping center in our part of town now appears fully occupied. There are glimmers of hope everywhere.

Things change in this world, and they don’t change toward equity. It takes luck and hard work to provide livable and diverse communities. My hometown takes no back seat to any in terms of the latter.

Oh, and my brother was grateful for the help.