arkid's posterous

WET

I know an elderly lady who remembers the smell of grilled hamburgers and the sight of people drinking cold beer on Main Street in Arkadelphia. This was of course before the Big One. Before the men went off to war leaving the women behind with their ministers. The elderly lady is against this modern temperance movement that has mobilized in Arkadelphia. She can still taste the freedom that existed in the heart of a young and vibrant college town, a town that’s somehow survived natural disaster and the hostilities of a stir-crazy youth.

Sadly Arkadelphia can't really be considered college town anymore. It’s just a place where one might occasionally glimpse a mirage of possibility. The mirage leaves once summer arrives. Arkadelphia is a suit case town, a place where parents don’t mind sending their kids to school. Their parents say that after they graduate they can move somewhere else, a bigger city where the streets are flooded with life. All of my blown up talk is of course due to the fact that the people of Clark County are going to soon have a choice to vote as to whether they want the sell of alcohol to become legal in their communities. It was a close call during the last election. There was a petition that got it on the ballot. I remember because I voted for it, but then the State Supreme Court repealed it because of some fraudulent signatures on the petition.

There are many who feel that it would be a detriment on the community. What they don’t know however is that the community is currently experiencing an advanced case of rigor mortis. The anti-temperance folks have billboards that say Vote For Growth, Vote “WET”. The billboards also compare the population statistics for Clark County from the year 1940 to 2009. It’s a pretty tactful approach if you’re interested in seeing the growth of your community but for those who don’t care either way it’s a little less successful. They’d be more likely not to see any change at all because they’re comfortable. They are the ones who have lived in Arkadelphia and who will live in Arkadelphia way after I am gone.

I think a more successful approach would be for someone to take some pictures of the flowered crosses that litter the highway between Hot Springs and Arkadelphia and then show the statistics on who was killed by a result of drunk driving and who wasn’t. Maybe they should talk to the students and look at the retention rates. Or hell maybe they should just take an updated picture of the downtown where there are more private pharmacies and bank branches than there are small successful businesses.

I suppose Arkadelphia does quite well with the business of legal pharmaceutical drugs, I’m not knocking it. Percy Malone employs a good number of people and the world will always need pre-pharmacy majors and I say God speed to them. I have more of an issue with the lottery than I do liquor or pills. Frankly it seems backwards to sell lottery tickets and not alcohol but I know that there are a few gas station owners who are also against the law passing. I realize they have there own logistical if not moral issues against it but why have one without the other? If you’re going to fritter your money away on the lotto then why not have a colt 45 in your hand while you’re at it? Adults are going to make there own decisions. The personal morals of an entire town do not rest in a single persons decision to drink. The key is to be responsible while you drink and that is a lesson that most people have to learn.

The opposition has yellow campaign signs and billboards that say Vote No To the Sell of Alcohol. It’s pretty straightforward. They have no real reason in their message. It’s just a statement in yellow, but it's everywhere you look. Yesterday I saw that someone had spray painted the word Yes beneath the No on one of the billboards. This morning I noticed that the billboard had already been replaced with another one. That was quick, I thought. I didn’t even have time to take a picture. They are very determined and I’ll admit there are many people in small towns like Amity and Gurdon who do not want the law to pass as well. Perhaps this is where the majority of bootleggers come from. I never thought bootleggers existed until I went with a friend of mine to a singlewide trailer in Bonnerdale where a Mexican sold us cans of Red Dog beer for a dollar apiece. I don’t know if you can even buy Red Dog anymore. It’s a god-awful beer.

Still as I said people are going to make their own decisions. Maybe if the law passes they could put an extra tax on the booze that can go toward more college scholarships. It seemed to work for the lottery, and the good people of Arkadelphia already pay more for gas, why not liquor too?

The 411 on the Donut Palace-Where the Customer is Still King

Lately I've seen a strange Asian girl hysterically waving at me as I drive by her small apartment on the way down to the Ouachita River Park where I occasionally kick it with my dog Kashi. Thinking nothing of it (because this happens quite often) I keep driving on down to the park. I thought that maybe she was a fan of dogs and simply thought Kashi was too cute. Well today I saw her actually at the park she was with a man who had a cast on his right foot sitting on a bench overlooking the Ouachita River. This is when I suddenly realized that the couple were none other than the long lost managers of the Donut Palace. I didn't recognize them before because they were not in their Donut Palace regalia. You see for the past two months no one has really known what has become of them. There has just been a sign on the front door saying due to extenuating circumstances we will be temporarily closed. Extenuating. A funny word I thought when I first heard Alanna read the note. I thought for sure that it was some type of mystery. Perhaps they were deported back to Cambodia? But it seemed that someone kept replacing the sign with a new one and it would always say the same thing. What madness! At the park the woman proceeded to explain to me that they had been in a car accident. She broke eight ribs and her husband fractured his ankle. The poor 24 year old girl who hit them apparently died. "I feel so sorry for that girl, the young Donut Palace entrepreneur stated. Her husband was on his cell phone practically the entire time she spoke to me. He was talking the Cambodian speak. Apparently they've been searching places in Texas for someone who could bake donuts. "Do you know how to bake donuts?" she asked. They don't know anybody in the area except for customers. "It can't just be anybody, they have to be good," she said. "We want people to come back!" I wished her and her husband good health and told them to hurry back. They are the only donut game in town. I wonder if they really know how much the good people of Arkadelphia miss them and their delicious bear claws?

It's True. We're Floating on Pine Needles

At mom’s café there is a cardboard cutout of John Wayne "the Duke" standing in the corner of the dining room. At the counter beneath the cash register is a corkboard advertising the sell of a mountain cur hunting dog, the kind that can tree squirrel and coons. On the counter there is the standard folgers coffee container with a description of the ailments that have afflicted a poor young girl who was recently airlifted to Hot Springs. Turns out the poor thing didn’t have insurance.

You know I think people have always used Folgers coffee cans for putting money in, even when they were made of tin or whatever kind of metal that was. Mom’s Café has a Sunday buffet that I will most assuredly come back for. It’s a country style buffet that you can probably only get in a place like Delight Arkansas. It's $8.50 but the sweet tea is endless and the look of the fried chicken and okra made me become titillated. I figure that there are atleast 30 or 40 small towns like Delight worth stumbling upon around Arkansas. You've just gotta pick up and drive. That's what we did. Alanna called it photo pickin' in reference to a show we like to ocassionally watch on the history channel about these two men who go to random places around the country in search of antiques and random items to sell to people for decoration or other practical use.

I would prefer to just get in the car and drive somewhere everyday, drive anywhere really, past the churches and old cemeteries, keep going through the small towns with small names until I find a café or thrift store that’s open. Most of the time the people will be nice and the food will be good. The character though it will always be unique. The character will be the aspect that makes you come back again. A lot of times I will patrol the landscape looking for something that catches my eye. It's tricky because of the season change. The thing about Arkansas is that objects typically cease to move once they've been put there by a certain person, unless it's foliage, or a giant white bunny rabbit strapped to a real estate sign, you can almost bet it will still be there when you come back through. You can hope anyway. I think if I stopped to photograph everything that caught my eye then I would be diagnosed with something chronic and unhealthy sounding.

Prior to Delight we stopped at Clear Water Cemetery. Originally we'd stopped because I liked the way the light was shining on these pine needles that had fallen on a strand of rusty wire. Then we saw the cemetery. It had been forgotten apparently. Above it were mountainous pine trees that had been there probably since the first grave was dug. I wondered about who might've laid out the diagram for this cemetery and what they were thinking with the pine trees? The blue sky amongst the scattering of pine branches resembled a grave yard in itself. There was nothing Clear Water about that blue sky. The forest floor was littered with decades of pine needles, so that many of the headstone monuments were difficult to see. Still the ones that were visible were very elegant in design. One had the name of a company in St. Louis etched into it. The peoples names, they were names that you don't often hear or see anymore. They had original statements regarding their loved ones on them and bible verses that you don't really hear read anymore. There was one woman, Adeline who had been buried by her children. It said on her headstone that she was a loving wife and a caring mother, and yet her husband was not beside her in the place that had been set aside for him.

There were probably only two individuals who had been buried there after the 1900s. The rest were people born sometime in the 1800s. Like many cemeteries there were babies buried there. There were a lot of young folk too. It was a difficult time to live back then. I suppose it was especially difficult in the South. Young was not young and children were having children everywhere, more so then than they are now.  On the far end of the pine tree forest a rotten pine had fallen over on a headstone. The man was a mason and a rotten tree had uprooted his headstone, some fraternity that is. I could not imagine taking a rack to the floor of Clear Water Cemetery but after writing this I've determined that someone probably needs to. Surely someone has a loved one buried there and even if they don't it seems like a shame to let it go back to nature like that. Then again maybe it is ok to just let it go. If it would've been like any other normal country cemetery I suppose I wouldn't have stopped and turned around. I suppose I wouldn't have taken pictures there or written this blog. All I know is that you can’t mow pine needles. You just can’t.

There were probably about 6 different last names. As I had said earlier there were a couple of first names we picked out that we rather liked. Cemeteries are wonderful places to pick out names. I looked mostly at the burial dates, while Alanna looked mostly at birthdates. I guess it’s a half glass full half glass empty kind of thing. We both looked at names. Some of the inscriptions were nice. I also liked some of the headstones. They don’t really make them like they used to you know. That’s why I’d like a recycled headstone. It doesn’t have to even be my name. I don’t think I would particularly care about the dates either just as long as it looked nice. The people who matter will know that it’s me when they come to my funeral. It won’t have to be anything too nice or large. I’m not a fan of the thick granite that has become so common in cemeteries. I'd rather be cremated than to have an ugly thick granite headstone. The small petite headstones are much better I think. For me they’re like skinny ties, if I could I'd wear nothing but skinny ties, not that I wear ties anyway. I really like skinny ties, sure I hardly ever wear one but it’s like dying you know. You only die once, but hopefully I’ll have a reasonable excuse to wear a skinny tie.

Even though it was messy Clear Water was the most serene cemetery I'd ever been in. On an RIP scale I'd give it a 9.7. I think it's probably because no one had been there in a while. There were no fake ugly flowers or fire trucks, just pine needles and rotten bark, a patch of weed and a bush of unedible wild berries here and there. Also there was just so much damn shade from those monstrous Pine Trees. Maybe I'll take a rake up there after the Fall and see what I find beneath the pine needles. I'll try to make it a Sunday, so perhaps I can get the lunch buffett down the road at Mom's Café. Where the fried chicken is just titillating.

Rugula is a Jewish Pastry

A man called me a stupid son of a bitch as I cut in between lanes the other day in Hot Springs. He was driving a blue pickup probably going just a tad too fast in the left lane. On the back of the tailgate it said “This Is How Country Boys Roll” I had just bought some raspberry and apricot rugula from Ambrosia’s bakery and I felt inclined to throw one at him. I didn’t get the inclination to do so until after he had driven away of course. I just sort of sat there and didn’t respond to him, it was probably for the best. He might’ve given me one of them good old country boy ass whippings. I had been trying to get across to La Hacienda. It was lunchtime so I opted to wait another day, but I went to a toy store instead. I may be exaggerating but I’ll wager that it’s perhaps one of the last small toy stores in existence. I know it’s the only one of its kind in Hot Springs. The owner is a nice older lady who brought up the prospects of retirement after I had only been in the store for less than 10 minutes.

I started trying to remember where a person goes to buy toys nowadays, Wal-Mart I suppose. I used to always frequent KB toys back when it was still in the Hot Springs Mall. That was before the first Wal-Mart supercenter. I remembered how things at KB toys suddenly became more expensive after they built those new Wal-Marts and I would go to there toy section frequently and look around at their mobile action figures, the toys that would later be rendered useless after being innocently sunk into the dirt by the neighbor kids.

I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic as I stepped into her small toy emporium. We talked shop and I informed her about why I was there. We discussed a documentary called Toyland, which we’re showing this year at the doc film festival in downtown Hot Springs. She had no money for support and I had already predicted this before I stepped foot out of the car, I had known it before the country boy called me a dumb son of a bitch. I wondered what kind of toys the country boy had played with when he was little and where he bought them?

You can tell a lot about a kid when looking at their toy collection. In the beginning you can tell a lot about his or her parents by the toys that they buy for their kids but then as the kids grow older they develop their own toy individuality. Do kids still play with toys? I still like toys. Men refer to their motorized play gadgets as toys but they aren’t really toys per se. It’s cute that that’s what they call them but really they don’t deserve to be labeled as toys. They’re more expensive than the toy’s that you’ll find in Oodles of Toys on Central Avenue. You may perhaps derive pleasure and satisfaction from expensive motorized “toys” but they don’t have the same eternal quality that real toys possess. When I say real toys I’m referring to the classic kind of course the ones that requre an inkling of imagination for you to use. I guess the toys I grew up playing with were not all that traditional but they still required some make believe.

There is still a market out there and new toys are being created everyday. The documentary Toyland discusses the industry and the people who help contribute to this 22 billion dollar a year business. If you come to watch it you should go to visit Oodles of Toys afterwards and buy something imaginative for your child, cousin, niece, nephew or what have you. Hell buy something for yourself too.

The Haymaker

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That was the same night that a friend of mine had gotten pummeled for sleeping with a mutual friends ex-wife. My friend had only slept in the same bed as his ex-wife. He didn't actually "sleep" with her. I believed him, but our mutual friend did not. The wound was still fresh.

Growing up we always dealt with hay you know since we had horses. My friend's ex-wife, she really loved horses. She used to draw them as a hobby. They were always very good, detailed drawings.

A lot of the guys that were my classmates in highschool would stay in shape by hauling square bells of hay during the summer. Hay is just dead grass. It comes in two shapes, round and square. The most common shape would certainly be round. It seems easier to haul and it lasts longer in the fields. You have proabably seen a lot of round haybells while driving around Arkansas. I see them in freshly cut fields and fields with tall grass, grass that's taller than the haybells. It's a shame to see the amount of hay that goes to waste every year while goats and such are starving all around the world. We've got a good amount of pasture land out at my mom's that goes to growing weeds and blackberries. If the hay was worth anything and if we had the tools to cut and harvest it then I'm sure we would.

My brother was once pulled over with a square bell of alfalfa hay in the trunk of his mercury tracer. The cops thought it looked suspicious. Something like that would look suspicious. Alfalfa is green. It stays green once it's cut and dried. I have a friend who spoke to me once about being in a barn filled to the brim with bales of marijuana. I have difficulty imagining this too don't worry.

Dry Creeks, Antique Malls, & Queen Wilhelmina

It's a long drive to Mena. You go through several small funny named towns. The best one being Butcher Knife. To top it off there is a creek there named Big Fork.

Alanna won an honorable mention in the Southwestern Arkansas Photo Contest last month. It was the picture of me lying in the creek beside my mom's house. We never really gave a name to that creek. I know that there is another creek that runs into it at some point and I’m sure it has a name and that creek comes from the Caddo River and so on. I don’t know rightly what to name it just like I didn’t know what to call the photograph we entered. I suggested calling it No Name Creek and so that’s what we named it. Right now the creek is dry as a bone except for a few spots where the water has retreated up beneath tree roots. My dog managed to find a drink of water there and then he managed to get wet. There was no such luck for me. I peered into the water and saw the sun was reflecting light off the puddle onto the bank. I’ve seen the creek dry up plenty of times before back when we had cows and before when we had horses. We would run hoses and haul buckets to give them water to drink. Luckily we didn’t have to do this too often.

The creek is a dry and beautiful place right now and I hope to take pictures of the leaves resting along its bed. I went and picked up Alanna’s honorable mention along with a few other photos, which did not receive mention at the Ouachita Art Gallery over in Mena the other day. Mena is in the Southwest portion of the state. People used to say the town was cursed because of the tornadoes that occur there. I say that Mena is just too close to Oklahoma and that’s why they’re so prone to twisters.

The idea of a curse is silly. The front page of the town paper talked about how these people from New York had come down to help rebuild houses that were demolished by the last tornado. The drive-ins and other businesses had signs up on their marquees saying “Thank You New York” and “Welcome New York” as if the entire state of New York had rode down on a charter bus to help rebuild some houses. In actuality it was a large group of volunteers referred to as “New York Says Thank You”. A group made up of firemen and ground zero construction workers from New York. It’s a damn fine thing those New Yorkers are doing.

My family used to live in Mena before I was born. That’s where my dad worked at US Motors before he sold real estate. Mom thinks that dad lost his hearing working in the US Motors factory. He lost his sense of smell when a man broke his nose in high school. It was about a girl I think. I almost got my nose broke once. I smell just fine. We had an old beagle dog that had lost his sight. His name was Sadsack. I think he had cataracts. Dad had cataracts. He’d gone years being told that he had degenerative eye disease, a common ailment for those with diabetes. He had the cataracts removed later in his life, only a few years before he died.

 On the drive up mom told me that Dad had once sold a pre-furbished house to a man outside of Mena and once dad had gone to see the house he said that he would never sell another one again. Apparently the place is no longer even standing. She said that Dad felt real guilty after that. “I think pre-furbished houses have come a long way since then,” she said.

While we were in Mena Mom showed me the intersection where my uncle Herald died. Apparently she had passed by the accident shortly after it had happened and didn’t even notice it. “Herald was tall and awkward. It was the fact that he grew tall so quickly that made him awkward,” mom said. My brother was born in Mena. This major event occurred in an eight-room hospital that is no longer standing, little did the demolitionists know that the building that they were tearing down would have been better preserved as a museum.

Mena has a fine little downtown with the art gallery; a playhouse called the Ouachita theatre, and an antique mall. There are about 20 old people who rent out a space in the mall and for anyone who is interested they still have space to rent. It’s only $1 a square foot plus 5% of all your sells. It looks like I have something to look forward to when I’m old. There is one man who used to work the railroads, he has probably the best spot with antique railroad items, signs etc. He has a Ziploc bag full of old Lucky Strike coasters that I want to buy but he never has a price on them so I am currently waiting for the old man to come in and tell me how much he wants for them. I’ve gone in their twice now and there is still no price. I want them coasters damn it. He also has an old conductors hat that I am partial to. He wants $175 for it. That’s justifiable since it’s an antique I guess. Alanna says I’m crazy.

When I went there with my mom I bought a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer chalice and a Lum and Abner coffee mug that I’d had my eye on for a while. Lum and Abner put Mt. Ida Arkansas on the map. Mt. Ida is another small Arkansas town about an hour from Mena. Lum and Abner was a radio show based in Pine Ridge Arkansas. There is currently a museum there. Lum would read letters written to his mother from a woman in Mt. Ida. The show used to be very popular nationwide I believe. They used to have a Lum and Abner festival in Mt. Ida. I’m not sure if they still do it or not. I wrote a poem about Mt. Ida that mentions Lum and Abner and this racist dentist that I used to go to there.

I plan to go back to that Antique Mall for the coasters fairly soon. Currently they’re having a 20% off sale for any interested buyers of antique merchandise. Also at the Ouachita Theatre they’re showing Steel Magnolias until September 11. The film version of Steel Magnolias is what helped make Julia Roberts famous.

The two gay guys who were directing it had gone to Wal-Mart in order to spread the word that it was going to be a free show that night. I think a lot of the rednecks were turning a deaf ear to their attempts. It looked like everyone in town was in Wal-Mart. One of the directors had trouble walking so he used one of those electric wheelchairs. I think he had bricks for feet. The other was a little younger and much more energetic. He still had thinning hair and he wore a white T-shirt promoting Jesus and a nearby Lutheran Church. He was being the most aggressive in recruiting people to fill seats. He made sure to approach the women standing in the sewing section. The Wal-Mart in Mena still has a sewing section. They also have a pretty impressive outdoor/hunting area. There deli area was also impressive. The Wal-Mart in Arkadelphia sucks. They don’t even sell gas. No wonder these people don’t go downtown I said to myself while eyeing the small hand guns and fine deli meats. Who would want to buy a small wooden Mary figurine or an old world map in some musty antique mall when they can get everything they need in one place?

Blacks look to be endangered in Mena and many other places in the Southwest portion of Arkansas. The few that I saw while in Mena looked young and they all seemed to be accompanied by white parents. I wrote a prose poem about my friend Joe who had been adopted by two white parents. They were neighbors of ours. They didn’t stay long probably because we lived in Southwest Arkansas. We almost became cub scouts together.

I would rather not bash Wal-mart but say that in every town it’s possible to commingle a viable downtown with a mega supercenter. I think Wal-Mart is a necessity, but I also think every downtown needs a good café/music venue, a used bookstore, antique mall, a theatre, and an art gallery in order to survive. That’s not too much.

If you turn right on Mena Street (Mena's downtown Main Street) and pass all of these things you’ll ultimately reach Queen Wilhelmina State Park. Mom told me that there’s a small train there that takes you through the park. It’s supposed to be picturesque. I told some visiting bikers from Illinois about it while standing in line at Wendy’s. They had no idea it was there.

Why Westerns Make Me Sentimental-The Story of True Grit (a review) kind of

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I picked up a copy of True Grit at an estate sale. For many of you who aren’t aware of this Arkadelphia is a Mecca for estate sales. I think it’s because of the surplus of old people that live here. Ms. Thompson typically manages these estate sales. She invited me to a square dance once. Only once.

I love old people. Recent estate sell purchases include paperbacks, old school binoculars (for the opera). We also got a couple of old cigar boxes, and an orange chair. The second day (Saturday) everything is always half off so that is the day to go. I don’t think it’s normal for someone to love estate sales this much…anyway back to the book.

True Grit was a national bestseller written by Charles Portis who is from El Dorado Arkansas. Portis graduated from the University of Fayetteville with a degree in Journalism and he would later go on to do significant work as a journalist and novelist. True Grit is of course his best-known work because it was turned into a movie in 1969 starring John Wayne, and Arkansas born Glen Campbell as Texas Ranger LeBeouf back. John Wayne won an academy award for best actor in a leading role for his portrayal of the one eyed fat man/marshal Reuben (Rooster) Cogburn.

The Coen brothers are currently in post-production of a remake of this pure John Wayne classic. The majority of it is shot in Texas, which is a closer step to Arkansas than the original, which was shot in Colorado and California. I’m still a little bothered that they felt the need to film most of it in Granger Texas and not in Arkansas. Arkansas needs some of that freaking revenue damn it. I think they should’ve at least spread it around they could’ve filmed part of it in Oklahoma as well. What am I saying? Oklahoma is a hellhole.

Now a lot of people are asking why the Coen brothers are remaking a film that is held by many to be a classic. Let me start by saying that this is going to be a Coen brothers Western, which means that it’s going to be a contemporary and ultimately more violent take on this classic novel. The casting is perfect (not surprising for a Coen film) with Matt Damon playing LeBoeuf the Texas Ranger and Jeff Bridges playing Rooster Cogburn. Josh Brolin is also listed as playing the character of Tom Chaney. Josh Brolin was inspirational in “No Country For Old Men” which was an incredibly dark sort of Western.

I am just as much of a fan of the original but it was most definitely a John Wayne production meaning that much of it was cleaned up. I think that Bridges will be capable of acting the role of the Rooster that we see in the novel. Taking into account that the John Wayne version of True Grit was done much earlier I am sure we will also get to see some folks getting shot in the head and what not. The Coen brothers are known for their depiction of brutality after all which is what makes this a must see Western even if you have never before been a fan of the genre.

As a side note the original True Grit sported an amazing cast with John Wayne, Robert Duvall as Lucky Ned Pepper and Dennis Hopper as Moon. According to Hopper’s wiki page, John Wayne was responsible for helping Hopper get the role as Moon thus helping him to get his career back on track after he’d gained the reputation of being difficult to work with. The original film also did quite well in staying true to Portis’ novel. We see Rooster literally riding “Blackie” Mattie’s horse to death in order to rescue her after her snakebite. We don’t however see, Mattie get her arm cut off in order to save her life and we don’t see much of what occurs later within the novel. I do expect to see the trademark shot of Rooster Cogburn with the horse reins in his teeth blazing two navy sixes.

It’s a testament to the writing of Charles Portis that his book has been now made into two major Hollywood films. I don’t think there are too many writers who have gotten to seen there book made over twice especially not a Western. I’d like to know what it was about the novel or the original movie that tempted the Coens to tackle the project.

There aren’t too many famous writers from Arkansas and I think the ones we’ve had often go underappreciated. Much of the success of this book rests in the character of Mattie who is the narrator of the story. There were plenty of books and films about empowered women back then but few of them were only 14 years old and even fewer of them were homely or unattractive. Making her incredibly spiritual to boot just makes her character stand out even more. Not even today do you see people writing about homely adolescent girls with fervor for Christ vengeance.

The novel is a quick read and I definitely believe that it’s worth your time even if you aren’t a fan of the Western genre it’s interesting to read about the geography and people of an early Arkansas. The novel may take place in other places around the South besides Arkansas, but it’s really an endearing portrait of the state because you can tell that Mattie takes much pride in her roots. During her narration she mentions places & towns like Dardanelle, Mt. Magazine, Helena, Ft. Smith, and Little Rock. She doesn’t shut up about Little Rock.

A good hunk of the novel takes place in Fort Smith prior to their travels into the rugged Oklahoma Indian Territory. I don’t know what type of town Ft. Smith is today since I’ve only been through it once or twice. In the book a horse trader complains because he was fooled into believing that Ft. Smith was to be the Pittsburgh of the Southwest. But even if it was, I’m not sure if that would be a good thing, at least not by today’s standards. Mattie Ross is convinced that it belongs to Oklahoma rather than Arkansas.  That’s where my father had had an accident that nearly cost him his life. I know I should give the town a chance but it represents a little portion of hell for me. The girl narrator in True Grit doesn’t care much for it either since that’s where her father is shot in the forehead by a no good Louisiana cur named Tom Chaney. Every time I see a Western I think of my dad too. He liked westerns of course like most men his age. I bought a James Stewart western while at the Wal-Mart check out. It was called Winchester 73. They mention Arkansas a few times in the film and it’s about the 1873 Winchester, which was a very special rifle. James Stewart gets the rifle stolen from him after he wins it in a shooting contest and the movie is about his getting it back. It’s a good film if you like Westerns. Rock Hudson plays an Indian chief in the movie. Rock Hudson was a major gay actor back in them days. That was kind of a big deal back then.

My dad got a Winchester from my grandfather after he had died and the same week my dad past away it was stolen out of our home. I later got it back though I’m not sure how. It’s a very nice rifle. My grandfather had received it as a retirement gift from the Forest Service. I’m glad that I got it back, and I didn’t have to kill anybody for it like poor James Stewart had to. Dad couldn’t see to shoot a rifle too well that is until he got his cataracts removed. John Ford the director and good friend of John Wayne lost an eye because he got impatient and removed his bandages before it was time. What an idiot. John Wayne wore his eye patch supposedly over the right eye in Rooster Cogburn supposedly as homage to Ford in the film. John Wayne was apparently too fat to walk or much less ride a horse in the making of True Grit. That makes me wonder if he didn’t just get a pity award from the academy? I doubt that’s really the case but either way, I think he deserved it.

A Month Old Conversation Regarding Albert Brooks

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While eating Mexican food with mi hermano I suddenly thought of Albert Brooks. My brother has always been a fan of Brooks. For him “Mother” and “The Scout” were possibly his best films. My favorite Brooks film is called “Defending Your Life” where Brooks visits a peculiar after life before going to Heaven.

Brooks has his first novel that’s to be released May 2011. It’s happens to be called “Defending Your Dystopia”. It’s about the near future. The near-future being 20 or so years from today, besides this novel the only thing Brooks has done was appear as a character in a 2008 episode of Weeds.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/defending-your-dystopia-albert-brooks-visits-the-near-future-in-his-first-novel/

What many people don’t know about my brother is that he’s often been of the Jewish persuasion particularly when it comes to Comedy. It makes sense since. Jews are funny.

I have befriended only four Jewish people in my entire life. One was my best friend in Kindergarten. I can’t really say for certain if he was Jewish but his name was Jacob and he wore suspenders. I wonder what ever happened to him? One girl I knew in high school had a Jewish father in Arizona but really the only thing Jewish about her was her nose and her last name. The other two Jewish girls I know are both highly intelligent and are both quite pretty. Just talking about this makes me think of that first season episode of Mad Men where they are discussing the exodus and Draper is putting the moves on his Jewish department store gal. That’s such a magnificent show.

Carl decides to IMDB/GOOGLE Brooks and he finds out via the Albert Brooks official website that Saturday Night Live was originally going to be called the “Albert Brooks Show” but apparently he declined the move to New York saying that he would write and occasionally appear on the show. It was Brooks who actually suggested that they alternate hosts for each show thus the SNL that we now have today was born. So there you go SNL fans. You’ve got Albert Brooks to thank. Watch all of his films, write him and tell him how much you care.

http://www.albertbrooks.com/contact.html

After we made the SNL discovery I told Carl that Albert Brooks was for SNL, what George Washington was for the United States. Carl along with being a Jew Lover is also a fan of history and he told me once that the people of our great country had actually wanted to install George Washington as a type of King, but Washington having the foresight that he did declined and suggested that each President serve a limited term as elected. See the resemblance now? Brooks didn’t want it to be all about him and through his lack of selfishness we have America, as we know it today, complete with a long line of historic SNL skits and newfound comedic talent. God Bless you Albert Brooks and God Bless America.

Cousin Clovis

I wish name tags weren't required at family reunions. In Palm Sunday Vonnegut talks about how our culture is in peril because of our lack of extended familes. Many of us are all about some primary family at least for the first 17 or 18 years and then well I'll see you later. Vonnegut argued that much of the loneliness and confusion in the world could be avoided if every young person had a family member to stay with. Someone who could allow them an escape. Vonnegut was a smart guy filled with common sense. Still, some people run away from the idea of an extended family. Some people go to college argued Vonnegut, so they could experience what it's like to have a temporary extended family. I've been thinking some lately that I need to try to spend more time with the primary family. I met a cousin at my family reunion the other day. His name was Clovis. He said that his father always told him that he should buy him a little place in Hopper. He was the one who got out. He only went to Mt. Ida which isn't very far, but he got out of Hopper. Clovis said that all the people he knew and ran around with back in Hopper are laid up in a cemetery now. I bet it would make some people a little sad to consider what their extended families would have been composed of. Mine is littered with mexicans, potheads and devout conservative christians who enjoy the great outdoors.

2nd Annual Arkuff!

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