something wicked this way comes
with unhurried and deceitful feet
camouflaged with righteousness, smirking with weaponized ignorance
flame heats but also burns
love amplifies but brings stagnation
comfort stills us yet closes doors
silence is not peace, no more than lightning is the thunder
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This picture was taken 29 years ago, 10,592 days. Almost half a life ago, a fulcrum that seems impossible at this point. It was supposed to happen on Halloween that year, but logistics conspired to make that difficult.
Most of us like to imagine going back and being able to look forward, seeing the relentless incremental changes that we choose or are foisted on us. The acceleration of change that’s almost invisible while we’re experiecing it. Can you imagine reliving the moments as instantaneous bullets of laughter, agony, and experience? Most of us would choose it, even if it’s a roller coaster that leaves us lying on the pavement, asking ourselves why we got back on the ride, knowing how it would end.
Every cell of our bodies has changed, but the memories remain – if we’re lucky. I took a moment to fling open the door early this morning, remembering, and then bolted it shut afterward.
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I know I drone on and on sometimes about the difference in colors during the vampire hours. It’s twice as pronounced after a rainy day like yesterday. No matter how high my heart rate got at the top of some of the hills this morning, each time I reached a crest, the blustery wind quickly and insistently reminded me that the cold approaches. This type of beautiful October morning is a warning for anybody trying to keep their hair straight.
I found some beautiful Halloween decorations. There were houses more ornately adorned than that of the picture I’m sharing. But none surpassed the amazing saffron glow emitted by the house in the picture. I could see it from quite a distance. It does not razzle dazzle with complexity but passersby will strain their necks to determine the origin of the beautiful lights.
The picture I took from one of the hilltops is a failure. I love the way it looks, though. Taking pictures like that is drunk poetry. A lot of mumbling, and sometimes a random truth coherently stated.
Yesterday, I made a ginormous pot of homemade chili, using five different types of beans. Coincidentally, I think I solved our energy problem, but decorum inhibits me from further explanation.
I forgot to mention that I got dragged into the hunt for a fugitive last week. This is one of those things that initially sounds like I’m kidding. I wasn’t worried about my safety. Fugitives tend to try to keep a low profile, unlike people who have recently discovered a low carb diet, pilates, or a social/political issue they know nothing about.
As I wandered around this morning, I took note of all the vehicles crammed into unusual places due to the football game. A lot of my neighbors don’t know there is a small police impound for cars right across the street. There were two extra long flat tow trucks blaring their horns constantly as they dropped off vehicles. It was an annoying series of drop-offs. Because I am comedically inclined, I will point out that the security system consists of one singular camera pointed at the gate. I was originally going to post a picture of the gate, but I don’t want to encourage thievery. Anyone who needs money should do it the old fashioned way and become a congressman. Why steal a $10,000 car when you can become a millionaire without accountability?
“Learning without thinking is labor lost and thinking without learning is perilous.” Confucius warned us about the futility of unanchored ideas. But then again, his name suggests he was always a little confused. His real name was Kong Qui, which reminds me of the name of an algebraic equation. Also, while Confucius emphasized family life and values, he was divorced. I bet his wife wouldn’t stop nagging him to do the dishes.
Deja Vu View
I’m not one prone to superstition. But I do love glitches in the matrix, déjà vu, or those weird moments that have an explanation but seem sublime at the time.
I walked a massive loop so that I could traverse 112 in the dark. To hear the horses answer me as I called, because they want to be petted even at 3:00 a.m. To stand in the middle of the darkness and be blanketed by the thunder of insects.
Coming back, I didn’t realize I overshot the connecting road back to my apartment. I turned down Sycamore heading east as I admired the beautiful brick inlay crosswalk. A man on a three-wheeled bicycle startled me just as much as I startled him. He wasn’t there a second before and he certainly seemed surprised for me to appear in front of him. On the back of his bicycle was a stack of bread rolls. It’s not something you see every day, a man on a three-wheeled bicycle with a cart in the back, holding bread rolls that early in the morning.
Even though I was heading east toward home, I realized I had turned south on Lawson. I started getting that weird vibe. So instead of turning back, I kept going. I hadn’t been to the next block in a few weeks. They’re building some beautiful residences along there.
When I hit the corner of Lawson and Oakland, I was astonished to see a fully finished two-story building on the corner. I couldn’t believe the building appeared in an empty lot so quickly. A white four-door sedan was too close to the corner. I noticed it because the overhead street light illuminated the interior of the car. I noticed no one was in the car, even though it felt like I was going to see someone behind the wheel. I also took a moment to smell the scent of wood smoke from somewhere nearby. It’s too early in the year to smell it, but it was a welcome preface to the October just around the corner.
After a block, I turned to head back around to home. Even though I wanted to, I knew I couldn’t walk forever. I’d already forgotten about my astonishment at seeing the new construction being finished on the corner.
Walking back along the same street from the other direction, I noticed the huge vertical stack of wooden pallets next to the street sign. The light coming through them made a really interesting pattern. I took out my phone to take a picture.
That’s when the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I was standing at the corner of Oakland and Lawson, the same corner where I’d experienced the surprise of seeing the building appear so quickly since the last time I went through.
The corner doesn’t have a building on it. It’s just foundations. And of course there was no white four-door sedan under the street light.
I had a cup of coffee before I started my long walk, and even though I had walked a couple of hours, tiredness didn’t explain the hallucination of seeing the completed building or the car parked under the steet light.
All I could do was laugh at the absurdity of attributing it to my overactive imagination or unexpected deja vu.
If I come back to Oakland and Lawson in a few months, I expect to see two-story buildings on the corner. They’ll be dark blue or dark gray with the windows trimmed in white. And maybe there will be a white four-door car under the street light.
I didn’t capture the stack of pallets that would be on the right side of the picture. It took quite a bit for the feeling of deja vu to disappear. I finally gave in to the urge to look at my watch to see that it was really the 27th of September. I would not have been surprised if the date wasn’t what I expected.
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As for this morning’s long walk, it was interspersed with too many people suffering from yesterday’s choices and last night’s anger. The contradiction of one of the last summer mornings cool breeze and moisture-laden air. The distant lightning flashing like old memories. I will wager that all of the people I witnessed suffering from their inability to take a chill pill and go to sleep will one day think back and wonder what made everything feel so urgent and dramatic. That’s what age gives you; a recognition that one of the ways to try to be happier is to remember all the times It felt like everything was an emergency, or that your feelings that seemed so monumental will soon be forgotten. Replaced by new emergencies.
When I passed the two beautiful young people arguing relentlessly on the curb along Leverett, I wanted to stop instead of passing by without comment. I wanted to tell them that they had youth, beauty, and the luxury of a good education. And maybe it would be better for them to stop opening bottles until they had control of their emotions. I didn’t, of course. Almost a block away, the strong wind carried their fruitless words to me. They might as well have been shouting into the wind instead of each other.
I took a few pictures, but none was so eerie as that of the forgotten streetside vehicle. In a good world, I wouldn’t hesitate to check the doors in order to save somebody the surprise of a dead battery. After checking to ensure that no one was passed out inside, I took a long exposure to illuminate the incredibly dark neighborhood, one in which the railside and gentrified beautiful houses sit quietly.
“I couldn’t be around them. They all had smoke on their tongues. You know who I mean. The energy vampires who you never catch being encouraging. The ones who complain just eloquently enough to make you forget they are problem-oriented. They don’t look for glimmers or things to be happy about. Nah, they search for proof that they are right to be unhappy and cynical. And guess what? They find them around every corner. You might not be wise enough to recognize it yet, but they’re trying to recruit you. Misery loves company and it is always trying to find ways to get you to sign up.”
-The Book Of Experience
The weirdest moment this morning was another one of those slow creeping realizations. Wearing Bose headphones that were given to me, I wasn’t listening to anything. I was only about thirty minutes into my long walk, heading toward the terminus of Leverett. Some kind of small animal darted out of the forgotten brush of Narnia a foot in front of me. I’m glad it wasn’t a dinosaur because I had no warning. I dropped my phone as my heart raced.
Picking up my phone, I kept walking after looking around for the phantom animal. The light breeze shifted and became much stronger. When the sound started, I presumed it to be something connecting to my headphones. Traveling overhead like the Doppler effect, the high metallic twang raced from behind me overhead and flew past. I pulled my headphones down and stopped. Nothing happened as I stood motionless in the middle of the road. Two steps after I started walking, the twang came up fast behind me. This time, the lack of headphones not only confirmed it with real but that it was loud and traveling fast. The muscles in my back tensed because instinct made me want to duck.
Looking up, I expected to see a huge power surge or crackling line of static running along the huge high voltage power lines overhead. Nothing.
As I neared the literal end of the road, I expected the smell of ozone or burned arc lighting. Nothing again.
I stopped and took a picture. One of the things that makes vampire walks so beautiful is that all the lights seem both bright and indistinct at the same time. If you look at the upper portion of both sides of my picture, you can see anomalies.
I’m sure my lizard brain wasn’t dealing well with whatever stimulus had just happened. I walked really fast and made a left, leaving the area as quickly as I could without running.
112/Garland was stunningly quiet and beautiful. I circled the 8 acre Agri Park several times because I didn’t want to leave the thundering insects or the peaceful quiet that surrounded me there. Not to mention the absence of strange electrical zooming overhead.
The rain came at 5:32 a.m.
PS Did you know that you’re five times more likely to be incarcerated in the United States compared to China? A random fact that doesn’t seem possible.
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The summer afternoon baptism finally visited. A petrichor at first, followed by a gulley washer.
I made a wish, foolishly wishing for people to drink a big cup of live and let live. And to look out the window at the rain and realize that even though we are all seeing rain, it means different things to different people.
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“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” Amy Lammot
If my ex-wife calls me a jerk, she earned the right.
If the friend I let down thinks poorly of me for failing to step in when I could have, that’s his story to share.
If I tell violent stories about my dad, they’re just as true as humorous stories about him.
If you had a toxic boss who drove you to near insanity, he or she can’t fault you for expressing it.
Every time I share this quote, someone discovers it for the first time. It’s liberating. But it also can be terrifying for people who’ve lived outside the bounds of kindness.
The Golden Rule perfectly encapsulates what we should strive for. Yet, people are surprised when we sometimes appropriately repay unkindness with healthy criticism.
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Years ago, I doggedly started down the path of biographical discovery. Some of my family hated the idea. Although I suspected I knew why, years of intermittent discovery and revelation allowed me to piece together facts. Not innuendo or conjecture, nor the vague yet prideful assertions of some of my family.
It is true that behind reluctance, there is always truth. As an adult, I understand it. Who wants their dirty laundry floating around? On the other hand, open discussion of it with one’s children can be a learning experience – not to mention that acknowledging mistakes can be liberating.
I probably should have taken more care with this post. Finding another piece of the puzzle yesterday fascinated me, as the dots connected effortlessly.
Using both DNA and slipshod yet determined obstinacy, I peeled back layers. Not to malign or accuse people, especially if they were already gone. They could have just told me, or answered my questions, giving me a complex and informed view of the people who came before me. They largely chose misdirection and sometimes passive-aggressive hostility.
“Your family has a lot of damn secrets, X,” is something I’ve often heard. But what family doesn’t? A word of advice to those who choose secrecy? Be careful. There’s an idiot out there determined to find out. Curiosity has driven many people to morph from interested to detective.
One of my earliest memories is of standing in the back seat of a black or dark sedan. We were driving on a sun-filled day, heading to the water. My dad was driving. In the passenger seat was someone who should not have been. Years ago, my mom insisted that I couldn’t have remembered it. Then, she insisted it never happened. “Which is it? It didn’t happen or I couldn’t have remembered it.” Stunned recognition on her part that logically, she wasn’t making sense.
Over the years, I figured out we were driving to Clarendon to go to the water. As for the woman in the passenger seat, I’ll call her Susan. I grew up calling her Aunt Susan, even though she wasn’t my aunt. Aunt Susan was married to my mom’s half-sister’s sons.
son
In March of 1970, my dad was involved in a drunk-driving accident that killed Aunt Susan’s husband. Dad escaped accountability through what can only be described as “good old boy” connections.
He’d already been to prison in Indiana in the 60s. He swore he’d never leave Monroe County again. He moved to Indiana out of necessity after being a little wild for Monroe County. (Which is saying a lot.) He had cousins there, none of whom I grew up to know. That story was another one that required doggedness on my part to get to the bottom of. Just a few months ago, I finally got a little bit of my dad’s prison records. A couple of years before that, I went through thousands of pages of online news articles until I found news articles related to his crimes. The only reason I did it was because another member of my dad’s family indirectly acknowledged to me that they existed. That’s all it took to set me in motion. If she wouldn’t give them to me, I’d find them.
After Aunt Susan became a widow because of my dad, they started seeing each other. It was during that period that I had the memory of driving down a sunny road with them both. It would have taken place between late March of 1970 and before October of the following year.
I don’t know how it came up, but I had questions. Aunt Marylou knew everything. Whether she would repeat it or not was the question. After I started doing ancestry, I had a list of nine thousand questions. She answered many of them, including ones about Grandpa and Mom’s potential half-sister, who came about because of one of my Grandpa’s indiscretions.
One of my questions was about my memory of the summer day in the car with dad and Aunt Susan. “Oh, that was after your mom filed for divorce from your dad.” I was shocked. They obviously had not been divorced, at least not yet. She then went on to hit the high points of a little bit of the less-savory family lore that I was chasing.
Mom was livid. “None of that is true. None of it. It didn’t happen.”
I added the search for proof to my list years ago.
Later, a lot of it made sense. Mom invariably couldn’t resist ranting about past grievances. I do remember Mom drunkenly ranting about Aunt Susan. For reasons I didn’t understand, she didn’t want me to go to my Grandpa’s funeral. Some of that had to do with Aunt Susan. I’ll never know why now.
My brother Mike remembered much more of it than I did. He even recalled the night that Aunt Susan’s husband died as a result of the DWI incident with dad. His memory gave me the time frame we lived in the house right off of AR-39, something which had eluded me for years. That’s the same house we lived in when I almost killed myself pulling the trigger on one of dad’s hunting rifles. He’d left it on the bed unattended. (I’ve written about that incident before.) As a convicted felon, he wasn’t supposed to own guns, which is, of course, why he had dozens of them. Those laws were ignored back then, and especially in rural Arkansas.
My brother Mike also confirmed that my memories about living briefly in Wheatley were true. Of the scant memories I had of it, I remember having a picture of Jiminy Cricket on the bedroom wall, and of being deathly sick on Christmas when I was extremely young. That memory places us in Wheatley in December 1969. I would have been 2 and 3/4 years old. I FEEL like I have a bag of memories locked away. I can feel them floating around in my head.
Somewhere in the above time frame, we lived in another house in Brinkley. Mom went to bingo with her friend. Upon our return, the house had caught fire, allegedly due to an oven. I have strange, detached memories of that place too.
Mom lived in multiple houses that caught fire. My brother and I once calculated that we could remember living in at least a couple of dozen places by the time we graduated.
Off and on, I’ve been meticulously searching records online, often one dense page at a time, even in unindexed records.
It wasn’t until Saturday morning that I found the proof. Just one more click, and there it was. Proof that Mom had found out about another one of dad’s affairs, this time with one of the last people she could have expected. She filed for divorce in May and then dismissed it in October of the following year. I note with irony that the “number of children affected” is left blank.
Whether I should or not, I have to connect the dots. I now know the specific time frame that I lived with my grandma and grandpa. When I fell out of bed made of two chairs and stopped breathing. When some of my earliest and best memories were made. It took me years to learn that it was normal for people who felt traumatized to lose swaths of their memory. People sometimes mistake my dogged intensity for research as good memory. That’s totally inaccurate. Even with the memories I’m sure of, I tread cautiously.
I remember shortly after mom and dad got back together. Even though it’s largely irrelevant, we lived somewhere along Main near Spruce Street. I remember coming inside to see dad on the couch with his gallon jug of water. I remember him being grouchy from a hard day’s work. Of being scared to death of him. I did not understand that partial memory until this morning. I had been forced back into the house after being with Grandma and Grandpa, during which Mom reluctantly described it as a separation. She never admitted to me or anyone in front of me that she had filed for divorce. I’ve lost all memory of the massive, violent fights they had before and after.
The other big wow of all this is that my secret sister was born in May of 1972. Subtracting nine months from that means that the document I discovered also indicates that dad had another affair shortly before mom dropped the divorce. So when I had to go home to a place on Main Street in Brinkley, dad was having another child, whether he knew it or not.
As for dad, Aunt Susan wasn’t the last affair he had with someone he shouldn’t have. When we got burned out of City View in Springdale, we went to live with the widow of one dad’s cousins. He had an affair with her, too.
Shortly after my secret sister’s birth, we packed up and moved to Northwest Arkansas. I didn’t find out about ‘why’ we moved until the day I met my secret sister, almost five decades later.
We moved back to Brinkley for about a year while I attended 3rd grade. I don’t know why dad felt like his secret was safe regarding his daughter we didn’t know about. Dad operated a gas station across from the Lutheran church in Rich, off Highway 49. He tried making a go of it again in 1993, up until his death. He remarried mom exactly 29 years after he married her the first time. I constantly think about the year we lived in Brinkley, and about the fact that I had another sister just out of reach. Or about how differently our lives would have been had mom proceeded with the divorce.
The more I learn, the more I know how many secrets the Terry side of the family kept. It seems impossible that mom didn’t know more of them, but as my sister agreed, when mom was angry, she couldn’t resist screaming about whatever she could. None of us remember her ever mentioning our secret sister.
As for this original divorce filing, mom never admitted it.
Secrets.
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I drove to Springdale and parked my car. I wanted to say something new. Instead, the phone started immediately. A young man walked on 71, talking way too loudly into his phone. I didn’t have to eavesdrop. Whoever he was, the last place he needed to be was out in public. And whoever was on the other end of the phone probably needs to be careful of being around him.
When I took the first picture of the Springdale administration building, for the first time in years I remembered going to vacation Bible School in the building. Somewhere around 47 years ago. That’s a sobering thought.
Passing what used to be Mathias plaza, I recalled the earliest memory I had of it. When I went with my friend Mike to the opening celebration decades ago, when a boot shop could make a fortune in a small town dedicated to rodeo and simple living. I don’t remember a lot of specifics other than scamming too much free candy.
Walking past the old AQ spot, seeing a monstrous car wash in its place. Decades of nostalgia washed away by modernity. Despite what many claim, AQ was never about the food. It was one of the few agreed upon destination restaurants, one I only got to visit when family made their rear visits to this isolated corner of Arkansas, before the interstate snaked its way through to us. Like its competitors Hush Puppy,art Maedtri’s, and others, it remains only in old shoeboxes of pictures. And though it seems you can bring back the name, you can’t bring back the amber-hued nostalgia of it.
Seeing the Harps plaza caught me off guard. It’s another place totally transformed. I stood and looked at the bright modern lights shining against the dark of the early morning.
Chills ran up my spine as I entered the North entrance of Buff cemetery. It is one of the dark places of Springdale. Everything is shadows. Most people wouldn’t want to walk such a huge cemetery in the middle of the night. I visited some of the names that matter: Jimmy, Ardith, Donnie, Julia, Bill. The bright red light in the background confused me. Of course I made my way around to see its origin. It’s part of someone’s memorial for their loved one. A decoration that no one other than me would see, wondering in the middle of the dark. Neither of the pictures I’ll include accurately capture how dark it is, nor how prominently the small little light projects across the curve of the hill holding all the graves.
Bluff cemetery is stunning in the hours of the vampire. Tall, old trees, filled with chirping insects, none of which are bothered by light. It’s been years since I’ve been here in the dark. I don’t know how I let myself forget how peaceful it is. A literal 360 of the night sky, one unaware of everything around it. I didn’t get spooked even once, not that I expected to. I’m not worried about the supernatural; pretty much everything we have to fear walks on two legs. And the most dangerous creature of all is a man convinced of his good intentions.
Maybe I’m not supposed to be walking around at that hour. The front entrance is closed. But if anybody would fault me for wanting to enjoy the place and visit markers of the people I once knew, I would ask them to visit the place in the dark, experience the cool breeze, and be surrounded by the insects and the huge sky above. These places call upon us to reflect in the daylight. In the dark, you don’t have to wonder where you will end up. All the joy and drama that was so important yesterday vanishes.
I did not realize I walked two miles in big criss-crossing loops in the cemetery until I exited.
I didn’t consciously turn the direction that I hadn’t planned. I hit the intersection of Sanders and Lowell before I even realized I went east. I wonder how many people even remember a corner store once stood across from the intersection of Mill and Lowell street? That’s another memory I had forgotten until now.
The moon shadows beautifully illuminated the old houses through there. The kind of houses that once defined Springdale. Sure, there were rich people, and we all knew where they prefered to live. The rest of us lived in houses like these. With porches, wood siding that probably never got painted often enough, accompanied by the sound of the trains that always passed through. Most people had a vehicle for hauling. The kind where you could put down the tailgate and have both kids and dogs jump into without a second thought.
It’s safer now. I think back to the times I huddled in the back of a pickup with my brother and sister. More than once we drove all the way to Brinkley, across the mountains and down the interstate long before it connected us to the rest of the world. I could tell you a dozen stories about some of those trips. Statistically speaking, in a multiverse of possible outcomes, I probably didn’t survive in any of the parallel universes. That last thought is the kind of foolishness my Grandma would have scowled at.
Then I came upon Randall Wobble, One of the most misspelled roads possible. The Fitzgerald cemetery sits awkwardly on the corner. Most people do not know the history of it, nor of some of the interesting people buried there. It’s been passed millions of time, just a blip on the periphery of people’s attention. Nor do they know how historically significant the nearby area is, cut by one of the oldest roads in the United States. Old Wire and Butterfield Stagecoach contain massive amounts of history that shouldn’t be forgotten. We may now have the interstate, but Springdale has the original artery of the nation, at least in this direction.
I walked the length of the now desolate Cargill property. I worked there for years, from the kill side to HR. I met housands of people there, including my wife who died. It was a place that needed almost everybody if they needed a job. You rolled the dice if you applied. It was the place that made Spanish a song in my heart. It’s hard to believe that when I applied there, the plant was only about 25 years old. 35 years elapsed since then, until its closure. It is a harsh reminder that nothing is permanent and that plans are what we create in an attempt to control the future.
If you want to know what Springdale might have become absent the interstate and forward-looking people, take a walk in the dark along Jefferson and keep going until you hit modern Huntsville Avenue. I’m not maligning the area. Without infrastructure and jobs, places like Springdale would have stagnated. Prosperity brings scissors, though. Old places have to get replaced, often taking some of the things the original residents cherish. Frankly, one stretch of the streak reminds me of a James Cameron movie. It’s hard to explain unless you were there with me. Trucks loading and unloading, lights, machinery buzzing and clanging.
The Berry Street and Emma intersection was wonderfully redone. It’s been a couple of weeks since I took a long early morning walk through downtown Springdale. The progress on the building on the old Layman’s property Is is amazing.
I put the “detour ahead” picture in because It’s a warning to remember that none of these beautification projects will work long term if there aren’t enough jobs or an economy that supports working-class families. This isn’t a political statement. It’s an economic reality that a lot of places have forgotten. The consequences squeeze regular people out of the place they never wanted to leave.
Emma is as beautiful as the last time. I look at all the new steel and glass places with appreciation. But my eyes seek out the familiar. Spring Street visually hollered at me as I passed, as did the neon horse guarding the old bank building.
I hope no one minds that I reiterate an old observation of mine: Springdale definitely has beauty, a nice mix of demographics, and plenty of things to do. But the logo that the Chamber of Commerce picked still makes me feel like that the Borg have invaded, leaving this logo behind as a warning.
As I neared at the end of my walk, a vehicle stopped at one of the four-way stops along Emma. You know the ones I’m talking about. You would have thought Springdale installed tire spikes, given the amount of complaining when the signs were first installed. The man inside shouted, “Hey, X!” I shouted back, “Hey, how are you doing?” It was dark, so all I saw was the silhouette of his face as he leaned slightly out the window. I have no idea who it was!
But it’s the perfect metaphor threading through the mass of words I’ve shared. Springdale is still a place where we can be neighborly, even in the dark on a deserted Saturday morning.
I hated for the walk to end. My legs were protesting and wobbling. A reminder that we’re supposed to do all things in moderation, whatever the hell that is.
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P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 