Editor’s note: This is a revised and updated version of a column first appearing Christmas Eve 2015.

On a Saturday morning that spring, I sat alone, having breakfast at Leo’s in Hillcrest. A text came in from Gwen Moritz, then editor of Arkansas Business and regular estate-scale scavenger.

She said she was at that moment looking quite possibly at the very item I’d written longingly about in a Christmas column.

She was at an estate sale at a house maybe five blocks away. I hurried over and went upstairs.

Indeed, she’d found it, or, more precisely, one very much like it.

There was a brief discussion of estate-sale strategy. You could take a chance that the item wouldn’t sell, in which case you could get it for less on Sunday afternoon.

I took no chance. Full price. Right now. Into my Jeep. Then into the attic, until it was time.

And now it is time.

If all goes according to recent tradition this evening, at or about midnight, I will sit in a comfortable chair next to a deeply warming splash of Jameson whiskey.

I will turn off all lamps, overhead lights, smartphones, laptops and television sets. I will gather the beagles Roscoe and Sophie at my feet. Shalah will be nearby, pleased to behold my rare serenity.

In the darkness, I will gaze upon, and lose myself in, the vintage 6-foot aluminum Christmas tree, circa ’65, in the corner, a wonder of glorious nostalgia and tackiness.

I will watch the slow-circling color wheel transform the shiny tinfoil of the tree to a calm deep blue and then a peaceful yellow and then a shining green and then an understated red, and back around.

I will listen for the brief grinding sound each time the wheel reintroduces blue.

I will escape to childhood, to life at 10 to 12 in that flat-topped, four-room house at the end of a graveled lane in southwest Little Rock. I will recall a tree like this one, and a permanently creaking color wheel a little bigger and better than this modern online discovery.

I will be returned to that hardwood floor of the mid-1960s, flat on my stomach, eyes fixed, deep in my happy certainly that this exotic aluminum tree–framed by a picture window outlined in blinking lights–was surely the most magnificent among all monuments of the season.

I will remember the happiness and safety of those 1960s Christmases–of, in fact, an entire childhood.

I will be thankful for the hardworking low-income parents who provided that happy and safe childhood, and the little fundamentalist church that nurtured it, and the public school that educated it, and the community that encouraged it, and the backyard that was a field of dreams–a baseball park, a football stadium, a basketball arena, a golf course.

It was there I threw and caught the passes, even punted high and ran to make the fair catch.

It was there I provided the roar of the crowd and the play-by-play announcing and color commentary.

I concocted a baseball card for myself, one with impressive statistics and a brief biography that included the nickname: “Fly Ball Brummett.”

My dad told me that you don’t want to hit fly balls, boy, because they get caught for outs. And I explained that fly balls sent airborne by “Fly Ball Brummett” arced like gentle bombs to distant places no outfielder could reach.

He said I was talking about line drives. I said these soar higher than that.

We’d argue that way, and more seriously, for a few more years, and then each of us would realize that the other was smarter than we had thought. Then we got along fairly well.

Cigarettes took him much too young, younger by seven years than I am now. My mom gave me his cufflinks and tie clasp that first Christmas without him. I fled the room teary, much as he’d fled the room that Sunday afternoon years before when I coaxed enough Okinawa memories out of him that he mentioned “Sarge.”

After a half-hour of Jameson sips and color-wheel hypnosis, I will head to bed. And I will think about Mom, gone now three years, after four years in a nursing home for what they call “cognitive decline.” I will wonder if she remembered at the end, if but for a fleeting moment, that aluminum tree and color wheel of our cozy, happy little home.

It’s more likely that she remembered instead in those last years the very thing I’d spent those moments remembering–the safety and happiness of childhood, her own, which is where she spent her final days.

There are far worse places to be.

John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett feed on X, formerly Twitter.

Nearly 18% of 66,000 Arkansas executive branch and higher education jobs remained unfilled this year, according to available data.

The Arkansas Department of Veteran Affairs (ADVA) reported the highest percentage of staff vacancies in a single department, according to the Department of Transformation and Shared Services. Of the agency’s 303 total positions, nearly 59% were unfilled as of Dec. 5.

“The vast majority of our vacancies are direct care nursing positions at our two State Veterans Homes,” retired Army Maj. Gen. Kendall Penn, the department secretary, said in a statement. “However, our veteran residents are still getting exceptional care at both homes through a combination of state government-employed nurses and nurses provided by contracted staffing agencies.”

Penn, who was appointed in January 2023, will resign from his position on Dec. 31, 2024. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Dec. 17 named retired Air National Guard Col. Robert Ator II as Penn’s successor. 

“[Arkansas] state government continues to face a significant challenge trying to match the market rate for nursing positions, as well as additional ADVA high vacancy and low volume positions, such as those in food service and maintenance,” Penn said. “These challenged areas artificially inflate our overall department vacancy rate.”

Penn said the department hopes to reduce its vacancy rate in 2025 using a combination of special compensation recruitment and retention bonuses. Penn also noted competitive salary increases may stem from Arkansas Forward — an initiative from the governor that aims to increase government efficiency — which he said could help with vacancies.

While Veteran Affairs had the highest vacancy rate among departments, the Department of Finance and Administration’s Division of Racing reported a 78% vacancy rate with 11 of its 14 positions empty as of Dec. 5.

But DFA isn’t planning to hire any additional full-time staff to the three positions it already has filled, spokesperson Scott Hardin said.

“The Racing Division’s needs are met in full each year,” Hardin said. “The Division utilizes seasonal, extra-help positions for those that work in live racing for a certain period each year. It allows the state to meet all needs throughout the live racing season. In addition, three full-time employees oversee the day-to-day operation of the division.”

Higher education positions at colleges and universities are also on the state payroll. According to Arkansas Department of Education data from October, Southeast Arkansas Community College reported the highest vacancy rate at 66%. Of the school’s 365 available positions, 243 were vacant.

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences offers the most positions of any college or university with over 11,000 jobs. Data shows UAMS has one of the lowest vacancy rates among higher education institutions at 8.5%.

‘Arkansas Forward’

In November, Sanders announced a proposed overhaul of the state employee pay plan through the Arkansas Forward initiative, which officials have said aims to improve government efficiency.

Arkansas state employee pay plan overhaul boosts salaries for hard-to-fill jobs

The proposed pay plan would cost an estimated $120 million annually and provide pay raises to 14,539 employees. It would also add two pay table distinctions, professionals and law enforcement and safety, to an existing four classifications: general, information technology, medical professional and senior executive.

The pay plan does not propose decreasing any available jobs, though it would consolidate roughly 2,000 job titles into approximately 800, officials said.

If approved by the Legislature, the pay plan would go into effect in July 2025.

According to a 900-page progress report on Arkansas Forward the governor’s office released on Dec. 16, the whole initiative could save the state $300 million over the next six years by implementing cost-saving measures.

The report suggests that many Arkansas cabinet-level agencies need to upgrade their salary schedules to compete in the job market.

In addition to the employee pay plan, the initiative also calls for the integration of information technology across all state agencies, a centralized state procurement process and renegotiated contracts, the sale of old state vehicles and a reduction to the government’s physical footprint by identifying cost savings in real estate.

The report provides examples of “compensation levers,” or instances in which an employee would receive a bonus based on their performance. The report also recommends one-time annual bonuses for people who “perform above baseline,” and “spot bonuses” that are awarded outside the normal evaluation cycle to employees meeting their performance expectations.

“I’ve made no secret that I believe that Arkansas’ current state employee pay plan is broken,” Sanders said at a November press conference announcing her proposed pay revamp. “It’s confusing, it doesn’t reward hard work and it’s not recruiting new hires for our most in-demand positions.”

The initiative would increase the entry-level salaries of correctional officers, social services employees and Arkansas State Police officers at double-digit percentages. Officials often describe these positions as the state’s toughest to fill.

According to data from the state Department of Transformation and Shared Services, the Department of Human Services reported 20% of its positions were vacant.

State Police reported a vacancy rate of about 10%, and spokesperson Cindy Murphy said the agency had 74 vacant officer positions on Dec. 4.

The vacancy rate across all correctional departments and agencies was nearly 30% as of Dec. 5.  Shari Gray, a spokesperson for the Department of Corrections, said 1,010 security positions — including correctional officers — were vacant.

At the Board of Corrections’ monthly December meeting, members discussed extending shifts of most employees at Community Correction Centers from 8 hours to 12 hours. The change in shifts would both reduce the need to hire more staff and ensure that there’s enough around-the-clock supervision to allow more inmates to be moved from county jails to the state-run centers.

Statewide job openings

The roughly 12,000 vacant state jobs are a small portion of Arkansas’ total job openings. In September, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Arkansas had 102,000 job openings. Arkansas tied with Alaska for the nation’s highest job openings rate at 6.9%, according to the BLS. The national rate was 4.5%.

According to the most recent BLS data from October, Arkansas’ total job openings decreased to 82,000 for a rate of 5.6%. The national rate was 4.6%.

Though Arkansas has been at the top of the rankings in recent years, Michael Pakko, chief economist at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock’s Arkansas Economic Development Institute, said the inflated rates are a nationwide phenomenon.

“On one hand, it means that we have a robust labor market where there’s plenty of opportunities for workers and job seekers,” Pakko said. “On the other hand, it probably does indicate a mismatch that we need to address in order to utilize our full potential.”

The BLS defines open jobs as full-time, part-time or seasonal positions that could start within 30 days and an employer is actively recruiting outside workers.

The number of jobs available can also contribute to a higher quit rate because workers feel comfortable that there are other opportunities out there, Pakko said. The perception, however, puts more constraints on employers, and they may have to offer higher wages to keep staff.

Nationwide, about 1.7 million fewer people were active in the workforce this November than in February 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey of unemployed workers, about half said they are now not willing to take jobs that don’t offer remote work. One in three respondents said they were focused on gaining new skills, education or training before reentering the job market, and 17% had retired.

“As baby boomers are aging and retiring, we’re losing a lot of that cohort of workers, and then it’s a matter of offsetting that with higher participation from younger-aged groups,” Pakko said.