'Take a Number': The Podcast If reading today's dispatch about the Driver's License Bureau didn't scratch your itch, here's an audio itch scratcher.

To cast (a pod) or not to cast (a pod)

The person who cuts my hair every six months, whether or not my hair needs cutting, avers that she simply doesn’t have time to read anything, and certainly not anything I write. She listens to radio shows on her phone which she then broadcasts on her car speakers. These, she tells me, are known as podcasts. Marilee suggested that if I wanted her and her husband, Drew, to be aware of what is going on in my world, I should make a podcast, by which she means, read my columns aloud and record them and put them on Maumelle Monitor[ed].

So I did.
This was a trial run, recorded in two attempts, on my Galaxy Android phone, no attachments or filters. The room I’ve staked out for my creative endeavors is not soundproof. The 1950s GE fan I bought from a gun-slinger at his antique store in Hooker, Oklahoma, was blowing behind me as I read.

My 1950s GE fan from Hooker, Oklahoma, which is just south of Liberal, Kansas. The beautiful girls in the photograph are my daughters, Samantha Grace Grelen Kauffman and Rebekah Gayle Grelen at our house in Edmond, Oklahoma., in 2001.

I like the raw, untamed sound of this. Sort of like the rock ’n’ roll I recorded in 1971 by placing the corded microphone of my Bell & Howell cassette recorder next to the speaker on my transistor radio at full volume to record Grand Funk Railroad.

The Bell & Howell cassette-tape recorder I bought when I was 13 with money I earned detasseling corn (Why, to prevent self-pollination, of course!) in the fields near Colfax, Louisiana. The wonder is not only do I still own this, it’s that I can find it. Next project, to see whether it still works.

The Zenith eight-transistor Royal Fifteen AM radio that was a gift from my parents to me on my 10th birthday (March 1967). In those days, we cooled our house with an attic fan that sucked the sticky Louisiana air through the window screens. Bedtime was eight p.m. in the summers. I would lie on top of my sheets under the open windows, still damp from my bath, as my curtains popped in the attic-fan wind. Many nights I went to sleep with the Zenith under my pillow broadcasting the Saint Louis Cardinals, Tim McCarver star catcher. Winters, I lost consciousness listening to Pistol Pete Maravich and Apple Sanders at LSU down in Baton Rouge

Take a Number is a first-edition casting of a pod, destined to become a collector’s item. Feel free to share this with people you’d like to irritate. Here you go, Drew and Marilee.

Christie Grant, Squeaky Wheel of the Year.

By Jay C. Grelen, Storyteller-in-Chief, Maumelle Monitor[ed]

When I walked through the front door of Maumelle City Hall last Wednesday (March 27, 2024), I waved to Christie Grant at the front desk and turned right to go into the Maumelle branch of the Arkansas Revenue Office. The Department of Motor Vehicles, if you prefer. DMV. The place where you renew your driver’s license and car tags and pay your fines when you forget to do one or the other.

Regardless of what you call it, the DMV sits inside Maumelle City Hall, which is a great convenience to locals, such as me. I was there to transfer a car title.

“Jay!” she shouted in a whisper in her barely inside voice.

She was pointing, with great enthusiasm, in the direction of the front door. I didn’t comprehend. Christie raised her eyebrows for emphasis, her right arm flailing. She said something else I didn’t comprehend. So I walked to the front desk and peered at her over the anti-COVID Plexiglass (so 2020). She unplugged her right ear phone and stood up.

“Get you a number!” she whispered. “We got it!”

For a few days, the new ticket-dispensing pink flamingo stood on one leg in a watering can in the middle of the city hall lobby. Now it has been bolted to a pole and stands at the front door of the revenue office.

I saw that she was pointing at a fire-truck-red pink-flamingo-looking contraption standing on one square aluminum leg in an aluminum watering can. The pink flamingo appeared to be sticking out its tongue, which I discovered was a strip of white paper with a number printed on it. Number 186. A ticket. My ticket to the Arkansas Revenue Office so I would know my place in line. I pulled the flamingo’s tongue with my thumb and index finger, clutched it firmly between the two, and sashayed into the Department of Motor Vehicles.

This is noteworthy because until last week, Maumelle’s branch of the Arkansas Revenue Office didn’t have a number-dispensing operation., which led to crowds and confusion and tension. It operated on an honor system of sorts, by which I mean that when a taxpayer arrived at the DMV, the taxpayer was required to inquire of all of the other taxpayers in the office which taxpayer was last in line. Taxpayers occasionally argued about who was next in line; occasionally a clerk had to intervene.

The solution, most agreed, was obvious. Use a number dispensing system, like most DMVs and delicatessens have used since before a taxpayer walked on the moon. For some reason, that idea never found footing in this revenue office.

To illustrate gravity of the situation, Maumelle Monitor[ed] offers you, dear subscribers, these exclusive verbatim excerpts from a high-level city hall meeting in the summer of 2023. Maumelle Monitor[ed] is protecting the identity of the speakers and the source of these excerpts, the authenticity of which. Maumelle Monitor[ed] has verified.

• “Christie’s the only one who keeps the situation under control.”

• “There was a group of people standing in line, (and just before 8 a.m.) a guy got out of his car … and said, ‘Just so y'all know, I'm first in line.’ And another guy was like, ‘Well, what makes you think you're special?’ And he's like, ‘Cause my car was here first.’ And the (other) guy said, ‘That doesn't matter. I was at the door first.’”

• “We suggested that we let them sit in the council chamber, and Caleb (the mayor) said no, because ‘people come in with drinks and food, and I don't want drinks and food in the council chamber.’’”

• “I've talked to the mayor ad nauseam about having building services put in an exterior door, but he's worried about the optics — that if it's hot, or cold, or raining, and they don't have enough space inside ...”

• “Maybe he (the mayor) needs to have a conference with somebody.”

• “If you go into any other revenue department, their offices are bigger. They can fit people in there.”

• “It's a no-win situation.”

• “It could be won. We could find a solution. But we have to be allowed to.”

• “[The old revenue office] was laid out different … You had two rows of chairs.”

• “And you know what else? They always had the number system.”

Christie Grant, Maumelle’s Squeakiest Wheel, poses with the brand-new number dispenser that will de-stress visits to the State Revenue Office.

Now, thanks to “Squeaky Wheel” Grant, the Maumelle branch of the State Revenue Office has a number system. Mayor Norris authorized the purchase of a system, which includes a ticket dispenser and two digital monitors light up with the next number. The little monitors also beep when a new number is up, and a little computer voice announces the next number.

Taxpayers never again need to ask: “Who’s last in line?” They just take a number.

“The Maumelle office certainly has a lot of traffic for an office of its size,” said Mr. Hardin of the DF and A. “We are confident the number system will provide an even better day-to-day operation in the Maumelle office. Customers don’t want to spend any longer than they have to in a revenue office.”

A new taxpayer-tracking monitor hangs on the back wall of the Maumelle Revenue Office.

The peace and tranquility in Maumelle’s Driver’s License Office is so thick you can bite off a chunk as if it’s cotton candy. I am here to testify that the experience was flawless. I walked into the office, the flamingo’s tongue still pinched between my thumb and pointer finger, and took a seat.

A second monitor hangs on the north wall of the City Hall lobby next to the box for collecting old U.S. flags.

The number on the screen was 181. My number was 186. I did the math, rechecked my figures, and settled in with the satisfaction that my turn was only three taxpayers away.

When the red LED number flipped to 186, I checked my flamingo tongue once more. Then the monitor dinged, and that little voice said: one-eighty-six. Ms. Heather, who runs the place, looked at me and said, “Next.” So I stepped up to the counter. Ms. Heather introduced me to Ms. Jennifer, who has worked at the Maumelle office for about a month.

Ms. Heather patiently and professionally explained to me what I needed to do to finish up the car title business. That was it. No tension. No taxpayers cutting their eyes at other taxpayers, daring someone to jump line. In and out.

By the way, I know that the difference between 181 and 186 is not three. Give me a second, and I’ll calculate the correct answer. I knew three was wrong as soon as I blurted it out, but I always get nervous when I can’t pull up the calculator on my phone.

The new ticket dispenser has found its place at the front door of the State Revenue Office in Maumelle.

Maumelle Monitor[ed] comforts the afflicted and afflicts the afflicters. If you’re an afflicter, buckle up and batten down. We’re here. If you’re afflicted, breathe easy. We’re here. We also write stories that have nothing to do with affliction.

This is Jay Grelen. I hope you remember me from my Sweet Tea column in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The state’s largest newspaper published the column for seven years on the front page of its Arkansas section on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. That was a while ago. The newspaper business has changed. Now I’m a newspaper refugee clutching his manual typewriter and trying to stay afloat. I worked in the newspaper racket for 35 years, including stints at the Denver Post, the Lexington Herald-Leader, the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, and the Mobile Register. My last stop was a 10-year stay at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. In 2017, Governor Asa Hutchinson hired me as his senior writer; after nearly six years with Governor Hutchinson, I became chief of staff to the mayor of Maumelle, who in August 2023 promoted me to Chief of Staff Emeritus. I have returned to writing for a living, and I am participating in the much balleyhooed rebirth of local journalism. Since I live in Maumelle, that’s where we’re starting. Maumelle Monitor[ed]’s first mission is to chase the elected foxes away from the public henhouses, which belong to the constituents who voted them into office. Maumelle Monitor[ed] is named in honor of its late predecessor, the Maumelle Monitor. We would be grateful if you would consider subscribing. Thank you for reading. Jay Grelen, Storyteller in Chief.