June 2013

My doctor and dentist are missing. Maybe their mug shots are not posted on the walls of law enforcement agencies, but they’ve dropped out of my life and — let’s face it — that’s what’s really important here.

Occasionally, you’ll hear it said that someone wasn’t appreciated until they after they were gone, but that’s not the case in this case.

Gene Howard, DDS, and Laura Mayfield, APN (read that as nurse practitioner), have disappeared in separate incidents, but I doubt I’m going to get much sympathy from the FBI or Arkansas State Police.

Robert F. Kennedy died 45 years ago today.

He was shot the previous day, just after midnight June 5, 1968, after making a speech following his win in the June 4 Democratic primary in California. Sirhan Sirhan shot Kennedy in the head as the New York senator and his entourage passed through the kitchen of the Ambassador hotel after leaving the ballroom full of Kennedy supporters.

It wasn’t the first time that I have driven past the offensive parking lot that UAMS built on the spot where Travelers Field/Ray Winder Field stood from 1932 until sometime last year. But it may have been my first trip by that hallowed historic spot since I returned from a eight-month stint of working in Poteau, Okla.
So it was jarring to my psyche again.
The asphalt lot looks so damned small. I realize that our memories from childhood can make something that seemed so large then appear quite small as adults. But I attended games there from 1960 until the last one in 2006. So I remember how large the outfield was.