Sometimes the most pleasurable memories are those which have rested for a long while at the back of the top shelf of the closet of your mind, waiting to be dislodged by a chance encounter, and then re-savored and maybe embellished and re-imagined.
So it was the day I attended the ceremonial transfer of his public papers by my longtime friend and former law partner Jim Guy Tucker. But the summoned-forth memories that day were not those usually associated with a long public career. Rather, they went back to its beginning. More about Jim Guy later.
My senior year in high school was bookended by trips to international conventions of the Key Club, the service club for high school boys sponsored by Kiwanis International. The conventions were to take place in Toronto and Boston.
As local president, I was content to sing in our Key Club quartet, the Blue Keys (actually six guys), and preside at meetings. Jim Guy, on the other hand, saw the club as a vehicle for doing good things for the world. Fortunately, much cooler heads prevailed.
He also aspired to a more robust social life, centered on an elderly convertible with an unfortunate tendency to stall out unexpectedly. Restarting the car required use of a tennis racket. But that's a memory and a story for another day.
For our first trip a small group of us boarded the train in Little Rock's Union Station in the middle of the night, bound for a stopover of a couple of days in Chicago on the way to Toronto.
In the Windy City I watched Don McNeil's Breakfast Club, a hugely popular radio fixture, through a large plate-glass window in the ground floor of our hotel. The show featured "marching around the breakfast table," to what end I don't recall.
We took the Canadian Pacific Railroad on to Toronto where we spent most of the non-convention time just walking around the city, which was, as Peter Ustinov famously said, "like New York run by the Swiss." I hope it still is.
Coming home we retraced our railroad steps. Nine months later we left Union Station in midafternoon, headed for Boston, with stopovers in Washington, D.C., and New York City. The Washington link was brief, but sweetened for me by a chance to see a good friend whose family had recently moved from Little Rock to D.C.
She and I spent an evening at the Steamboat Lounge, sipping beer and listening to guitar legend Charley Byrd.
New York did not disappoint either.
The group decided we could not miss the Empire State Building and Times Square. I slipped away and bought a ticket to West Side Story at the Wintergarden Theatre instead. I sat behind a pillar and the part of Maria was played by an understudy named Jan Canada, not by Carol Lawrence, the star. I didn't care.
Near Times Square we bought inch-wide acetate ties and pearl tie tacks from street vendors and were approached by a pimp. Jim Guy was along on this trip and he was mighty offended. I was mildly amused and simply declined politely. Jim Guy was trying to enjoy the trip while at the same time organizing a campaign for one of the major offices in Key Club International, so I think he was wound a little too tight.
We walked the city again and headed off to Boston where another competition awaited our Arkansas group. Our six-man quartet had won the talent competition at the regional Key Club conclave and earned a spot competing at the international event. Our original lineup consisted of lead singer and guitarist Johnny Roberts, Bob Griffin on drums and singers Pat McWilliams, Wayland Holyfield, Nicky Avants and me. Wayland also played bass guitar.
Unfortunately, only Johnny, Wayland and I could make the Boston trip, so Johnny undertook the task of making an adequate singing drummer out of me. We came in second but by popular demand we did several encores before the entire assembled delegates.
Jim Guy was elected international vice president, despite having to repeatedly explain Little Rock and Orval Faubus at every turn. He went on to Harvard, Vietnam and still higher office.
Johnny became a bona fide lifelong rock 'n' roll legend, Wayland an award-winning Nashville composer, Bob a world-renowned physicist, Nicky a major league umpire, and Pat a successful businessman.
Key Clubbing was not quite through with me, though. In those years, entering Hendrix College freshmen underwent a few weeks of hazing, designed in part of remind them that, whatever their high school status, college would take them down a notch.
Our dorm's jocks decided that, as freshman class president I needed a little something extra, which included having the Key Club logo Magic Markered on to my backside, below the words "El Presidente." It took awhile to wear off, but I still remember the experience ...
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Chris Barrier is a Little Rock lawyer.
Editorial on 04/20/2018