Due to extreme exhaustion (painting and the stress that goes along with my house being a wreck), I am reposting this from my blog on myspace. It was originally posted on April 8, 2006.
After a wonderful breakfast at our usual Saturday haunt (Brother Juniper's for those of you who are familiar with the area) my SO (significant other) and I decided to trek into the unknown country in search of property to build our house on. We set sail in the old 4 wheel drive sleigh down I-40 into Arkansas. MY SO wanted to check out a piece of property that he had known as a teen. There was a lake there, and in his youth, it seemed like an idyllic place to have a home. I was game, so off we went.
As we left Memphis, we saw the familiar sights of the downtown area, the Mississippi River, the dogtrack and the last Walmart for miles. We were optimistic and talkative on the trip. I saw the last vestiges of civilization growing smaller in the distance and felt a bit uneasy, but decided that we were going on an adventure, and I was going to give this a shot. I'm ready to handle anything... or so I thought.
Any of you that have been through this portion of Arkansas... the portion between Memphis and Crowley's Ridge, know that it is not the most picturesque part of the state. But knowing this didn't dampen my enthusiasm. We had printed off a map of the area before leaving Memphis, but it didn't give a whole lot of detail about the area... but it looked like serenity on Google Earth... lots of trees, some rivers... very little development. What Google Earth didn't show was a lot of unmarked roads, watering sloughs that were mistaken for creeks, and the "antique" vehicle graveyards that we were to come upon. I kept thinking to myself that this is the way it is in the country... certainly no civilized person would live this way. And surely it would get better as we got close to Forrest City. Boy, was I wrong.
After we missed the cut-off, we decided to turn around and see if we could find it. As I said, the roads are mostly unmarked in this area, so we found ourselves turning the car around again. We had narrowed it down to one of two roads... and we slowly took the first one. As we rounded the corner, we slowed the car... and noticed a pole on the ground with a street marker on it. Upon close inspection, we could read the name of the road... Good Hope... the road we were looking for! The fact that the marker was down on the road made us laugh, but it should have given us a glimpse of what was to come.
There were some houses on the road... nice, middle-class houses... a good enough distance away from each other to be respectable. We had to find another crossroad. Again, the roads are not always clearly marked, so we had to guess which one to take. We guessed right... and turned again to our supposed utopia. The first home we saw was very nice... a sweet A-frame up on the hill. It could have been the first piece of what the original owner of the land envisioned to be a beautiful homestead. It went downhill from there...
We saw some homes that were nice, although neither they nor the lake were impressive. It was what we were about to see that neither one of us was prepared for. Another turn took us down what I can only say reminded me of the hill country in Deliverance. It was where old trailers went to die. It was worse than that... it was where perfectly respectable people (us) were uncomfortable in their own skin... and made us feel as if each of the... oh let's call them "residents" shall we... were eyeing up our 14 year old car as if it was a prized pig they were about to chop up for parts on Thanksgiving. We looked around, then looked at each other, laughed nervously, and said "let's get the hell OUT of here!" As we continued to attempt to find the original road we came in on, I looked to the left side of the road. Here on the "lawn" of one of these semi-permeable dwellings I saw a complete dashboard and windshield (broken of course), which made me wonder what the story was behind the rest of the missing vehicle. I wasn't curious enough to get OUT of my vehicle to find out! I was too afraid that I might run into someone who thought I had a "real purty mouth".
We finally did find our way back out of that area... and found ourselves back on I-40 and headed back in the direction of Tennessee at last (thought I'd never hear myself saying that). On the way back, I took notice of all the things I didn't let completely enter my consciousness during the trip out... the bus graveyard... the Volkswagon beetle graveyard... the shack that once served as a grocery store which was now a "atfish eafoo" restaurant, which was proudly displayed on the building. There was a house that had a very nice white split rail fence all the way around the property... a very sizable area... and the owner had his very own gas station. Characters, I thought...
But never was I so glad to see the sign proudly proclaiming "WalMart this exit"... I'm home!
Nazdrovie'
Paczki Puta
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