Waking Up in the Deep South

My last blog began by referencing the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. Board of Education, which came about in the year I was born - 1954. An old friend, Derrill Holly, asked why I left the "lead" and went off in another direction with my blog. So today I will blog about the social significance of growing up in North Little Rock, Arkansas, as segregation slowly (very slowly) evolved into intergration and the Vietnam war raged on, mostly to my utter indifference.

I lived in Lakewood, a lily white community, much like the one featured in the recent movie, The Help. The only black people in our neighborhood were the maids that came daily, and the men who manned the garbage trucks. Being a garbage man had to be the worst job imaginable. This was before Glad Bags and garbage disposals. Garbage was dumped into the garbage can directly from the dinner table. It was a putrid mess of garbage and maggots. I know. I used to look into the garbage can in disgust and fascination. Paper trash was typically burned in a container in the backyard, and yes, I set fire to the backyard on many occasions.

The "colored" lived in a different part of town known as Dark Hollow, or Dogtown (because when the white folks got tired of their dogs they set them loose in Dogtown). I can still remember segregated water fountains in downtown Little Rock. In 1963 or 64 my family drove to Houston to see the brand new Eighth Wonder of the World - the Astrodome. We took a side trip to Galveston and my sister, Mary Lynn, and I swam at a deserted beach. It was fun playing in the 3-foot waves, just the two of us, while our parents watched from the beach. But later, as we drove east along the seawall, we came upon a beach where hundreds of people were frolicking in the surf. We found out later that we had been swimming at the "colored" beach. Same gulf, same sand...different rules.

And so it went as I entered junior high school. Other than Martha, our part-time maid, I didn't know any African-Americans until I got to junior high. And there were only a handful of black kids at Ridgeroad Junior High School. I was oblivious to many things, including the war raging in Vietnam, as well as the war being waged in America for Civil Rights. That all begin to change when I entered the 8th Grade, thanks to my American History and Home Room Teacher, Mr. Harrison.

Mr. Harrison stood out in that small bedroom community of North Little Rock. His hair was a little long, and maybe a tad greasy. He wore boots and rode a motorcycle to work. Remember, this was Arkansas in 1966. It's possible I even caught Mr. Harrison smoking a joint in the film projector room when I surprised him during lunch one day. He was clearly startled as he blew smoke out the window when I burst in, but I didn't even know what pot was at the time.

But Mr. Harrison made an indelible mark on me that year. One that has shaped my thought process and my sense of social justice since then. My parents used to blame him for corrupting me, for turning me away from the conservative, Republican philosophy that permeated our community. And I guess he did.

One of the innovative things he did was if you made an "A" in American history the first six weeks, you didn't have to do any of the busy work, homework for the next six weeks. As long as you did well on the tests and continued to make an "A" you had no homework. You'd better believe I made an "A" every six weeks for the entire year. The only thing he required of the handful of us that continued to get our "A" was to write a short paper. He also gave extra credit for certain things. For example, he wrote the symbol that is now universally recognized as the peace symbol on the board. For ten extra credit points you had to come back the next day with what it stood for. Somehow Kenny Carpenter's dad knew that it stood for "Ban the Bomb." Kenny told me (he was in a different class) and I got the extra credit in my class.

Anyway, back to the paper. I was given the Vietnam War as a topic, and had to write a short paper on the war. I knew nothing, I mean nothing about the Vietnam War. So I went home and found my Dad's U.S. News and World Report, and possibly Time Magazine and basically regurgitated what they were reporting on the war in southeast Asia. It was pro-government, and basically crap. In his wisdom, Mr. Harrison generously gave my paper an A- and wrote the following at the top of the page: Good job! Just be careful that you are letting the facts form your opinions and not letting your opinions form your facts. Wow, he nailed it! Mr. Harrison was absolutely right. It was my Road to Damascus moment. My eyes opened and I suddenly began to question what was going on in this country, whether it was the war in Vietnam, or the struggle for Civil Rights. My whole belief system had been rocked to the foundation by that simple, seemingly innocent comment on my paper. My parents were right in a way. Mr. Harrison changed me, like no other teacher ever has. The 70s were approaching and I had an entirely new perspective on the country and the world.

I ran into Mr. Harrison several years later when I was going to college and he was dating one of my classmates (hey, I never said he was perfect). But today I have no idea where he is, or what he is doing. But wherever you are, Mr. Harrison, thank you. You have no idea the impact you had on my life and my philosophy. I still believe in justice, equality, dignity and democracy. I believe in the social Gospel. And I believe in you, Mr. Harrison. You have no idea what you did to a bright, but uninformed eighth-grade kid some 46 years ago.

Thank you.

Tilting at Pinballs...

For the record I am 57. I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1954. It was the year and place of the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown vs. Board of Education. There may have been color TVs somewhere, but not at 4501 Lakeview Road. That came several years later. This was long before fax machines and cell phones (even the ones that came in unweildy bags like some kind of WWII radio used to call in air strikes.) Computers? Fugetaboutit! Xeroxed copies? I still remember being teacher's pet (true) and getting to take the test to the school office so it could be copied on the mimeograph machine. Ooh, that smell! My grandmother's phone was on a party line, not a wireless network. It was oh so tempting to listen in on one of her neighbor's calls, and perhaps I did just that. At school we didn't have DVDs, although we did get DPT shots. We saw the occasional "movie" in class, but we were more likely to watch a film strip. The most hi-tech thing I can remember was going to the YMCA (where old men still swam naked) and watching a film about the Olympics that was threaded into the projector backwards. We kids roared with laughter when the pole vaulter flew out of the pit and grabbed his pole, returned to earth and sprinted backwards to his starting position. Ha-ha! I'm laughing right now just thinking about it. Near the end of my high school years Pong was introduced. It was the first "video game" I guess. Über low-tech by today's standards, but we had been tilting at Pinball machines for decades, so it was a quantum leap forward.

So why this trip down memory lane? Well, I guess I have been thinking about today's kids, including my own, and contemplating how the digital age has changed their lives so dramatically, for better or for worse. Youngsters today are known as "digital natives." They've never known life before the Internet. Never known life without a cellular lifeline. Never known life without video games so lifelike, they become reality for some. And I have noticed that the digital natives have developed a sixth sense. I call it Phonar. It's kind of like sonar (which dolphins use on porpoise - insert groan). Put me in a noisy restaurant and call me. Odds are good that I won't answer. But put my kids in a football stadium with a decibel level of 120 and they'll never miss a call or text. Put them at a bar full of loud drunks and they will answer any text or call. It's uncanny the way they intuitively know when a friend has pinged them on their smartphone. It's Phonar, a sixth sense that is common to digital natives that allows their brain to pick up whatever waves are emitted by cellular phones. They don't even have their ringer turned on! And I have seen my daughter instinctively reach into her purse to grab a call, so don't tell me it's the phone vibrating. I can't do it. I know my wife, Carol, sure as heck can't do it. Harvard or ACC should grab some grant money and research this phenomenon. Oh well, as Robert Earl Keen puts it "will there be wireless in heaven, or do I go to hell?" Hell if I know!

A Culture of Me-Gocentrics

Andy Warhol was a prescient purveyor of pop kitsch - a modern era Nostradamus. He predicted the future when he opined that at some point everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. He was totally on target. He just didn't know what it would look like. He predicted the fame, but he couldn't have begun to imagine the digital/information revolution. Fame? Yes. But fame that comes in bandwidth, not minutes. Perhaps it's 15 gigabytes of bandwidth, or terabytes, or Hershey's Bites. I really have no idea how bandwidth is measured. I just know that, like electricity, it's there when I flip the switch on.

I call this fame, Me-Gocentria. It's all about me, me, me. Enough about me, let's talk about you. What do you think of me? Everyone wants to see themselves (and have their friends see them) on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, or read their blog. Our culture seems to have an overwhelming desire to be noticed, recognized and most of all "followed." Hey, I am guilty as a preacher in a cheap motel room. A couple of you are reading my blog right now. One person actually follows my blog - bless you Teresa. I debuted on YouTube a couple of weeks ago singing a Dylan song. Of course, I Facebook and FourSquare. Linked In? You betcha. I tweet, therefore I am (someone). In other words I'm not here to pass judgement. It's just the way it is.

There is another phenomenon I call Me-opia. Many of us are so consumed with being Me-Gocentric that we show signs of Me-opia. For example, walk into a restaurant and chances are you will see at least one table (probably more) where everyone at the table has their mug in their smartphone. I was introducing the superintendent of a large school district at a breakfast meeting recently. As I looked over at her sitting at her table I noticed she had her hands in her lap, head bowed. How sweet, I thought, she's praying over her meal. As I got closer I realized she was checking her phone for e-mails. But back to those people at the restaurant. The irony is they may actually be communicating with each other as they apparently ignore each other. One is checking in on 4Square or changing their status on FB while the others take note on their smartphones. Communication in today's digital universe. Me, me, Me-opia.

That's it. Just a couple of random observations from Me. My next observation will deal with something I call Phonar. Stay tuned.

Johnny B

Why Johnny's Garden?

We'll get to "Why Johnny's Garden?" in a bit.  But first I must say I loves me some music.  It started as early as the 3rd or 4th grade in the Lakewood Elementary schoolyard when I adamantly defended The Beatles.  This was not something you took lightly in the largely, shall we say, unsophisticated backwaters of Arkansas in the early 1960s.  My friend Oliver arranged to have his intercom left on all night on his front porch so I could put rubber bands around my pre-dawn delivery of the Arkansas Gazette while listening to Clyde Clifford on KAAY (the Mighty 1090) in Little Rock.  I left Arkansas to the sounds of Bill Clinton playing Yakety Sax and moved to Memphis and the likes of the Gentry's and Al Green and Issac Hayes.  But Memphis was so far ahead of the curve in rock music.  Jon Scott and his minions were playing real "progressive rock" music on FM100. My first concert was The Who, followed by Steppenwolf (or as my Dad called them Steppendoodoo) and the Byrds, and then the Allman Brothers (all living, I might add) and an unknown warm-up act called ZZ Top.  The mood in Memphis, although rooted in the blues and rockabilly, was all about David Bowie, Lou Reed, Mott the Hoople, as well as what we might call Americana today - Joni, the Eagles, Jackson Browne and others. 

If I have one regret in life it is that I went to the Eagle Scout Court of Honor to pick up my Eagle badge on the night Jimi Hendrix was playing in Memphis.  Had I known he was going to die in a month, they could have mailed me the Eagle award.  It was a lifetime memory squandered. C'mon man, it was Jimi "freakin" Hendrix!

So here I am 40 years later still going to concerts of one sort or the other almost weekly.  In the two years since I moved to Austin I have seen well over 30 concerts, including British royalty like Van Morrison, Roger Daltrey and Ray Davies, not to mention dozens of smaller club-type shows at the Cactus Cafe, Saxon Pub and others. 

So what's this got to do with Johnny's Garden?  Well, Johnny's Garden, by Stephen Stills, is one of my all-time favorite songs (I have many).  And it represents the feeling I have for Austin.  It truly is Johnny's Garden.  Here are some lyrics:

I'll do anything I got to do
Cut my hair and shine my shoes
And keep on singing the blues
If I can stay here...in Johnny's Garden

I was going to explain that the song was written about an English estate Stills bought from Johnny Lennon, hence the name.  And some sources bear this out.  But it appears that the real story is that Stills bought the house from Ringo, who bought it from Peter Sellers.  And Johnny was the gardener.  He came with the estate.  The picture above appears to be all the proof I need (that's Johnny in the middle).

So to me Austin is Johnny's Garden, and I will do anything I got to do to stay here.  This becomes especially true as I write this, because last week my number came up in the latest Austin American-Statesman lay-off.  So I guess I'll shine my shoes and cut my hair, because I was born to live in Austin, or as we sometimes affectionately call it, The People's Republic of Austin.

As the legendary Sheriff of Soap Creek, Doug Sahm put it:

If you're down, and confused
And you're tired of payin' dues
Come on down
To Austin town
And get a life...

Sophomore Jinx

"When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him."
- Jonathan Swift

My first blog was so well received (it's possible that at least one person read it) that I have decided to post my second blog. I feel a bit like John Kennedy Toole, who wrote one of the great American novels - Confederacy of Dunces. No, it is not the tale of the 2012 Republican candidates. Instead it is one of the best depictions of life in New Orleans ever put to paper. Eleven years after his suicide, his mother, with the help of another great Southern literary figure, Walker Percy, finally got JK Tooles book in print. It is now a classic. My point is not that my first blog, or any subsequent blogs, is a classic (surely they ain't), but rather that one lonely reader can be enough to make the writing process seem worthwhile.

But the title of this blog is Sophomore Jinx, not Confederacy of Dunces. And that brings us to the legendary singer/songwriter Willis Alan Ramsey. Willis Alan put out an album around 1970 on Shelter Records. Like the book, Confederacy of Dunces, it is a classic. Songs like The Ballad of Spider John and Northeast Texas Women sounds as fresh today as they did 40 years ago. Willis Alan solved the dilemma of the sophomore jinx by doing something few, if any artists ever do - he has yet to release another album. Like Jim Brown, he retired at the top of his game. Legend has it that he is a compulsive perfectionist who has yet to put together just the right follow-up to his first album.

Fortunately I am neither compulsive, nor a perfectionist (ask my wife, please). Therefore, this is my sophomore effort at blogging. Sorry, but there are more to come. My next blog will explain why my blog is called Johnny's Garden. For you Stephen Stills fans, you may already know.

Virgin Post

So this is my first blog, my maiden voyage. What to write? Profound? Funny? Poignant? Angry? Edgy? I know, college football. First to College Station for the UTexas/aTm game. Two great universities. One legendary rivalry. Both teams left it all on the field. Aggies will be talking about the Personal Foul call for helmet-to-helmet on UT's winning drive for the next 118 years. Was it a questionable call? Possibly, but there was helmet-to-helmet contact. I'm not sure refs get to grade on the curve. It either is, or it isn't. And it was. Texas has a PF called on a phantom horse collar in the first half. It all balances out. But IMHO the big difference in schools was played out on the field - at halftime. The Longhorn Band spelled out aTm and Thanks, while playing "Thanks for the Memories.". The Aggie Band did a "saw 'em off" routine that signifies the desecration of the Horn's mascot, Bevo. One school showed their class, while the other showed their ass.

In other news from the sport's desk, Andrew Luck deserves the Heisman. He is the best player in college football today, and a terrific young man. In high school he played basketball against my son. Most kid's with his talent for football would have passed on basketball, a somewhat brutal sport at the high school level with huge potential for injury. But he played because he loved it - all four years. Great family, too (even they did go to rival high school, Stratford).

And I saw today (via Twitter first) that the NBA Lockout has been resolved. Lockout? You mean they're not playing? Who knew!? Wake me up when the play-offs start. Wait, never mind.

Well that's it for the maiden voyage. Not that good actually, but I promise they will get better. Or not.