"All of this happened, more or less."
--Opening lines, Slaughterhouse-Five
More and more sheriffs, cops and law enforcement types, bless 'em, are having to go public with this whole clown thing. For those who've been too caught up in presidential politics lately, there's another national scandal making the rounds: Clowns on the loose.
Apparently, and only apparently because there's more talk than proof, folks are dressing up like clowns--mean clowns, bad clowns, scary clowns--and getting on people's nerves. Which is easy enough to do when it's only Bozo coming at ya, but scary clown?
We're not all that worried about Innocent Bystander walking down the street. We're not all that worried about lawmen like the Cross County sheriff who's making the news with his warnings for mean Ronald McD. We're not all that worried about the off-chance of somebody catching a clown on tape, like Nessie or the Fouke Monster.
We're worried that some fool dressed up in baggie pants, big shoes and garish make-up is going to startle the wrong person one evening and get plugged. Lots o' folks, especially in these latitudes, are carrying. To freak out somebody in the parking lot after dark dressed in some nightmare getup seems . . . incautious.
Save scary for Halloween, when people are expecting it. You don't have long to wait.
Who said traffic in downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock was going to be a nightmare?
Oh, yeah. We did.
It wasn't all that bad after the Broadway Bridge was shut down. Maybe it's the cool weather, but folks seemed patient and let others merge here and there. We didn't hear as many horns Wednesday and Thursday afternoon as we'd expected.
Ah, Arkansas. You were raised right.
You know the type. They mow the lawn every single week in summer, and are the first to rake the leaves in fall, and they help you push your car through the snow in winter because they thought ahead and bought tire chains. They never run out of gas. They can't sit still when there's something to do. They are Les Responsibles.
We know a few of them. Teachers during the week, full-bird colonels on the weekends. Raising kids one day, going off to war the next. Sometimes they are in the National Guard, sometimes in the Reserves. While we're sitting in our PJs on Saturday afternoons watching football, they've already led PT, ordered a million dollars' worth of equipment, promoted three people and solved a dust-up before it became an international situation.
A couple more were in the paper last week: One was named Luke McCollum, who is sometimes known as Vice Admiral Luke McCollum. He's taking a leave of absence from his job at Wal-Mart (former vice president for logistics services) to be the Navy Reserve's top officer at the Pentagon. He'll be in uniform full time for about four years.
We're looking forward to the Arkansas-Bama game next weekend. He's leading a force of 60,000 reservists.
Then there's Lt. Gen. Aundre Piggee, who just received his third star, and they say the deputy chief of staff is the highest-ranking Arkansan in the U.S. Army.
Thank heavens these kinds of people are available for the rest of us. Something tells us we couldn't thank them enough. And something else tells us they really aren't looking for thanks, but for another assignment to complete. On time and with flying colors.
If there's any good news at all in the Amfuel story, and it may only be a little, it's that the plant in Magnolia, Ark., might not close as fast as many first thought. Word came down late last week that 250 workers there are to keep their jobs well into next year.
The loss of Amfuel is going to hurt Magnolia. Over the years, we've had friends and family working there. Heck, Magnolia hasn't been without Amfuel since the end of World War II. The company was a source of good paying jobs in south Arkansas, and provided the military with fuel cells for aircraft.
But at least the plant isn't closing tomorrow. And the city, employees and their families have time to land on their feet.
Magnolia without Amfuel. That's going to take some getting used to.
Editorial on 10/03/2016