The Ozarks

Before leaving Oklahoma City we’d decided to go to the Museum of Cowboy and Western History. It was a great idea. This is a gorgeous museum with all kinds of interesting exhibits of artwork, competitive Western art, rodeo artifacts, Western movie history, and a complete Western town in a separate wing that is interactive. The kids were beside themselves! There is also a buffet that serves Western heritage foods for $9. It was such a treat! The best part for me was seeing a triptych painting of Yellowstone. I was speechless! It was just like being there again. Here are some pictures from the museum.

Afterward we started off for Farmington, Arkansas to visit my cousin Denise, her husband Millard and their children Desiree, Jared, Madison, and Desiree’s beau Caleb, who would visit us as well (they have another daughter who lives in New York City). I set the GPS and began the journey east only I didn’t realize that there was a more direct route to get to her house and the GPS took me that way. At one point I had no idea where we were and then we passed a city that was bigger than Oklahoma City. It was Tulsa only I kept thinking it must be Muskogee. It was funny when I finally figured out what was happening an hour later! The scenery was slowly changing from “high plains” to hills and from hills to mountains. Arkansas is very much like Vermont only the trees are mostly thin oaks and the ground is super dry (which is unusual). This is a relatively newer state and so its buildings are mostly pioneer as opposed to the oldy-worldy feel of Vermont but other than that it was hard to remember that it was Arkansas!

My cousin Denise and I are very alike and she once homeschooled her children too. We are both organized and relatively fearless about exploring the world. She has four children who are all so friendly and our kids are great companions. We are always so thrilled to see them and Marley and Cole were only too happy to be around teenagers again. It was great to have a home-cooked meal and to just hang out around a kitchen table telling stories. I was so happy to be there!

The next morning, Denise and her youngest daughter Madison took us up to Branson, Missouri to see the famous entertainment strip. This is the “off season” as Southern students are back in school. We had a great time looking at all the entertainment venues. We went to a 1950’s musical café for lunch and were serenaded to by our waitresses. A waiter was trying to hustle his wife’s CD so he annoyed us but it was fun just to sit and chit chat and enjoy the music.

Denise was so generous and brought us to the Titantic Museum which is very interesting! My grandmother used to always tell me that her uncle bought a ticket on the Titantic but when he went to board he was turned away because he had “pink-eye”. I never believed her because I couldn’t imagine what a Lebanese man was doing in Southampton, England to get to America. But, now I believe she was telling the truth because about the third of the 3^rd Class passengers had Arabic last names!!! The funniest part of the Titantic Museum were the two “Dogs of the Titantic” who are King Charles Spaniels that live during the day at the museum and at night with the manager. They are in a display about the dogs that were aboard and they wear the blue diamond necklaces from the movie!!! I couldn’t stop laughing every time I saw their sweet faces wearing the necklaces. They are wheeled around in a pram with a little bell! It’s so outrageously cute!

We then went to the Chinese Acrobat show. This is my favorite cultural show. Although they are still children, they train their whole lives to perform and the show is stunning. They work so hard and I only hope they are compensated appropriately and are not like gymnastic slaves on loan from the Shanghai Circus. The kids got pictures with them after the show and mostly they looked scared and very culture shocked to have to shake hands and have their picture taken with enthusiastic Americans. Madison looked like she could have been one of them and an old man came up and shook her hand to thank her for the show!

We had another great dinner with the whole family and spent lots of time talking and laughing together. We are culturally from an opposite spectrum of the northern "attitude" and southern "charm", but we have a great relationship and ask each other lots of questions. This would be the best way to start this part of the journey in the American South because, for me, this would be the hard part in trying to find some common ground with other Americans. My experience with southern people has been very limited so I couldn’t be fair and say that I have scads of southern acquaintances. I have met lots of southerners on cruise ships and in traveling and almost always it has been a confusing experience upon further examination of our cultural differences.

One thing for sure though is that it's hard for me to see the Dixie flag being hung on cars, windows, and some private businesses. It may be a matter of southern pride but the history of the flag is simply that it was flown by men wanting to keep their African-American slaves. This is the hardest thing to look at in the south and try and understand what the flag flyer is trying to convey. I couldn't imagine being a descendant of slaves and seeing this "Southern Heritage" flag everywhere.

We left my cousins after being stuffed full of delicious foods and headed south through the Boston and Ouachita Mountains. Like the Appalachians, the Ouachita are home to many very poverty stricken people. The entire drive along Routes 71 and 270 was very sad. So many struggling businesses were closed up and there were no economically successful towns. I would think that these places have a hard time as it is. Most people keep all kinds of "yard sale" type items on their front porch and lawn that are for sale. This is also the quartz crystal capitol of the country and they are often for sale in yards.

We arrived at Hot Springs, Arkansas about three and a half hours later and enjoyed the most ridiculously rickety and troublesome wax museum ever! It was so funny that we couldn’t stop laughing. The figures were frightening and didn’t look like the person they were portraying in most cases. There was an escalator with Mae West, Louis Armstrong, Liz Taylor and Pope John Paul II all waving at us from their steps. At the very top was a poorly proportional Jesus hanging from a cross. Behind that was ‘The Last Supper’ but there were business styled name plates in front of them as if they were attending a convention! It was weird and almost sacrilegious! Just next to ‘The Last Supper’ was the ‘Room of Horrors’!!! It was such a strange old place that had 1950’s kind of reverence and obsession with horror at the same time. It was bizarre! We went to the basement to see ‘Fairytale Land’ which was fodder for children’s nightmares! This is also President Clinton’s boyhood town and he has a wax figure that "somewhat" looks like him. All I know is that I would never want to be locked-in the Hot Springs Wax Museum overnight!!!

We walked along Central Street to see the hot springs and the bath-houses. At the turn of last century, Hot Springs was a hopping place as it was believed that these mineral waters would cure what ailed you. Even President Roosevelt came here to help with his polio and then didn't want to leave having purchased a cottage with his mistress Lucy. The beautiful bath-houses are all but forgotten now but there is a considerable effort to bring them back to their former glory. It is a lovely town with all kinds of natural fountains and waterfalls pouring forth the hottest water I have ever touched without having to heat it first! Even the town fountains are blisteringly hot!

To the right is a picture of one of the springs cascading into a public park. There is a small concrete pool at the bottom of the cascade and when I touched it, it felt hotter than a cup of tea! If you were to fall into the spring by accident you'd be scalded for sure.

Interestingly, the sound of the southern accent has faded from it’s newness and now I don’t even hear it! We would have long week in Louisiana coming up and I was excited to go further south into Cajun Country! I was finally in the American South!