A wonderful friend of mine used to react to the infamous news stories of the Pentagon spending a thousand dollars on a single toilet seat with a characteristic blend of pragmatism and wit: “Hubbell, I either want it stopped, or I want in on it.” He was a man of vast contradictions—the kind that define a truly rich character. He possessed an immense heart, loved his children to a fault, yet could be as tough as hand-forged nails when the world demanded it.
There is a specific geometry to memory, often tied to the weather and a sense of motion. When the afternoon was flawless, he would pick me up for lunch in his ancient Cadillac convertible. Top down, riding the suspension of a bygone era, we would head toward a classic North Little Rock institution called Cuz Fisher’s.
To step across that threshold was to enter a sanctuary of radical belonging. The room didn’t merely tolerate your presence; it claimed you. Everyone greeted you upon arrival, and the waitresses delivered hospitality with a sharp, universal shorthand: “Hon.”
If you were measuring the experience by material standards, the next best thing about those lunches was the homemade pie—flaky, unpretentious, and perfect. But the best thing, the true anchor of those afternoons, was the conversation.
On paper, our friendship was an impossibility. We were separated by vast topography: worlds apart in political ideology, generations apart in age, and shaped by entirely different chapters of the American experience. In a culture obsessed with categorization, we should have been adversaries, or at least strangers.
Yet, we found ourselves utterly at ease in each other’s company. We discovered that our differences, while real, were superficial compared to the subterranean currents that connected us. We shared an unyielding affection for the Razorbacks, a fierce and tender love for our children, the medicine of a shared laugh, the sharp clarity of a stiff drink, and a hundred other quiet commonalities that never make the evening news.
I share this fragment of the past not merely as an exercise in nostalgia, but as a necessary counterweight to the contemporary. Today, we are told that division is absolute—that to disagree on the abstract mechanism of the world is to be entirely incompatible.
But my memory offers a different verdict. It reminds us that human beings possess a remarkable, quiet capacity for alignment when they sit face-to-face. Over a steaming cup of coffee, a slice of pie, or a cold beer, the immediacy of shared presence dissolves the abstractions of conflict. We often mistake agreement for connection. True community does not require an echo chamber; it only requires a shared table.
In the end, the commonality of what we love, what we fear, and what we enjoy does not merely exceed our differences. It renders them small.
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