Rosie Aberdeen, assistant to Mayor Furlow Thompson of Pot Luck, Arkansas, told me to “go on in,” so through the doorway I went for my annual visit on behalf of our state’s Municipal League. The self-titled “best mayor in America” was reclining in his office chair, staring through sunglasses at the ceiling while listening to a cassette player. I recognized the tune: a 1960s favorite among military veterans of that era, “We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place.”
I startled him when I closed the door. “What the? Oh, it’s you.” He turned off the music and removed the sunglasses. “Has it been a year already?”
“Yes sir,” I said, remembering that he liked formality at times.
“Did Mark Hayes send you?”
“No sir,” I said. “I came on my own.”
“I figured you were here on Mark’s behalf.”
“Why is that?”
“I borrowed five dollars from him to tip the parking valet at the last conference. I thought maybe he sent you for it.”
“No sir, I just like to visit with you, and learn.”
“Sit,” he said, “and ‘sir’ is for officers. I know who my parents were.”
“Right,” I said, sitting. “How’s it going?”
He grinned, leaned forward and asked, “Who wants to know?”
“Your public,” I said. “You have become sort of a folk hero among our elected officials.”
“Harrumph.”
“Did I interrupt anything?”
“Just reliving the last year. It’s been a wild one in case you are wondering. I don’t know about other cities, but our people are fractious. They want to blame their mayor for everything from the price of Cheetos to daylight saving time. Just this week, Norma Raye Chidester called me an old fool and said I should step aside.”
“Goodness,” I said. “You didn’t listen to her, did you?”
“No, I just told her to find someone who would take this job and I would gladly go up north and make music with an old pal, that mayor up north who picks the steel guitar. That shut her up.”
“Really?”
“Really. People want to grouse, not govern. They got their heads stuck on Twitter too much these days to think about serving. Not many like my late friend Robert Patrick or that bright young feller over at Cave City. What’s his name?”
“Jonas,” I said, “but I’m surprised that a progressive town like this can’t produce any number of candidates.”
“Too much of what an old city manager once called the ‘uh huh—oh syndrome.’”
When I looked confused, he continued. “Refers to them town scolds who are always running around saying, ‘uh huh, uh huh’ but once they get into office and see what’s really happening, all they can say is, ‘Oh!’”
He changed the subject. “Did I ever tell you how I got to be mayor in the first place?”
“No, please do.” I took out my notepad.
“Put that thing away.” I did and he continued. “Well, the mayor before the mayor before me had prepared some new regulations for our planning commission. Pot Luck had just put in a new sewer system, and every scoundrel in the county was wanting to haul shacks in, call them affordable homes and tie onto our system. The city couldn’t allow that.”
“And?”
“After she had all these regulations passed and in force, she fell in love with a fire truck salesman, got married and moved to Florida. That left the mayor’s job open.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t. The council at that time picked one of the best young men in town to fill out her term. He was a recent grad from Hendrix College and was saving up to go to law school. It seemed like a perfect fit. Until ….”
“Until what?”
“Until the planning commission started enforcing all those regulations that his predecessor had come up with.”
“And?”
“His life turned worse than you can imagine. By the time his term was up, he hated city government so bad he eventually went to practicing law and filing suits over statutes that cities hadn’t dealt with for nearly a century. They call him ‘Mandamus Bydamus’ now, and worse.”
“I think I’ve heard John Wilkerson mention him,” I said. “So, what happened then?”
He leaned back, looked at the ceiling and said, “The clouds opened and a voice said, ‘Let the righteous come forth,’ and all the suckers rose from the sea, At least one did. Me.”
“Were you committed to good works?”
“No, I was bored and financially secure by then. I guess I missed a life of danger. I had very little fear of adversity or voters. I figured, what are they gonna do, cut my hair off and send me to Vietnam?”
“And?”
“I was elected in a landslide, over 80 percent of the vote.”
“That speaks well for you.”
“I was the only candidate.”
“Did you have a campaign slogan?”
“Yep.”
“What was it?”
“I hear the other guy is worse.”
“You’ve been mayor for a long time. Did you do away with the new regulations?”
“No, not at all. Oh, one or two of the sillier ones, like the one requiring folks building a new home to have a front porch. The young planners thought that was a winner.”
“It wasn’t I take it.”
“Not by a long shot. Lots of folks in Pot Luck don’t sit on front porches. They open their garage doors and sit in there drinking sweet tea or beer and waving to their neighbors walking by or visiting with the ones who stop. You planners have an awkward sense of human nature.”
“Hmmm.”
“I learned a couple of things, though, from that experience.”
“What?” I asked.
“First, it’s not always the folks who first write regulations that get chased off.”
“No?”
“No. It’s the folks that first enforce them.”
“That made sense.”
“Second thing is that once the first crew of those enforcing the regulations are gone, things don’t return to zero. There’s a ratcheting effect. If you get rid of the worst regs, or appear to, you can start back way up the ladder and folks think you are a hero.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “Anything else you’ve learned?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Far too often it’s the mayors who do things that get voted out, not the ‘go along, get along’ crowd. People don’t always like change.”
“But you’ve done a lot,” I said, “and you are one of our longest-serving mayors.”
“I learned the trick,” he said.
“And what trick is that?”
“It’s based on two things,” he said. “When things happen for the good, always give credit to other people, particularly people out in the community.”
“And the other?”
“It’s usually people out in the community who do make those good things happen. A mayor’s job is to make people feel that it is OK to do good things.”
I left feeling a bit wiser, if a bit older. A person can learn a lot from our state’s public servants. I may go visit Cave City.
