calimac

In an effort to lend intellectual value to my trip through East Texas, I stopped at some museums. First on the itinerary was a museum on the dairy industry in the unpromisingly named town of Sulphur Springs. This was full of well-presented detail and interesting relics like butter molds, and out front it had ... well, it had ...

That's my rental car udderneath.

The town of Quitman was reputed to have a Governor Jim Hogg Shrine. I'd heard of Jim Hogg - he's the guy who actually, really and truly named his daughter Ima (what's not true is that he had another daughter named Ura) - so I stopped to take a look. Turned out that the only museum on site announced on the sign its subject as Light Crust Doughboys. I'd bite - I had not the slightest idea what a light crust doughboy might be. Turned out that they were, and apparently still are, a noted western swing band, named for the flour they were engaged to promote. Bob Wills - whom I had heard of - got his start with them, but like the other early members was fired by Pappy O'Daniel, whom I'd also heard of. The museum keeper kindly turned on recordings of their music while I looked around, and they were good enough that I enjoyed listening to it.

The city of Tyler is noted for growing roses, in token of which it has an enormous rose garden. This was closed for pesticide spraying, but one could see vast expanses from the street. I amused myself imagining

vgqn wandering among them, critiquing the varieties.

The idea of a city neatly bisected by a state line struck my fancy, so I stopped in Texarkana, a place offering little else for the tourist aside from a good local museum which explains how the bisected town came to be, and offers pushbutton recorded examples of works by three musicians born in the tristate area, the disparate trio of Scott Joplin (TX), Leadbelly (LA), and Conlon Nancarrow (AR). Guess which one I like best.

These are the northward and southward views from in front of the bistatual post office building. In the latter photo, on the left in Arkansas the parasols indicate the welcome sight of an ice cream parlor. Away at the bottom, the state line road terminates in front of a concrete building uniquely housing DA and court offices for both states, but which is externally unmarked. Further north, the state line road becomes a commercial strip. Small flags of Texas (identifiable by their star) are attached to the light poles on one side; small flags of Arkansas (identifiable by reading ARKANSAS in big letters) are on the other.

The place called Hope is well suited for the presidential tourist. The visitor center in the train station is a Clinton museum full of photos and memorabilia, and a video they make you watch first. There's also a driving guide to Clinton sites in town, which takes you past his schools, the site of his grandfather's store, etc etc. His grandparents' home, where he lived to age 4, is open for tours and craftily preserved, most notable for the photos of little Bill taken at the very spots where they are now displayed.

Hot Springs, where Clinton spent his later childhood and adolescence, is very different. It's a tourist town, filled with strange and colorful resort buildings (and the humonguous old Army-Navy hospital which positively looms over town like Edward Scissorhands' castle), and hopeless traffic jams on the cramped, narrow streets. The tourist center knows little of this Bill Clinton fellow of whom you speak. The hilly neighborhood where Clinton lived for most of his years there is an odd combination of attractive Queen Anne houses and unutterably sleazy roadside motels, most of them closed with desperate real-estate signs plastered to the front.

The Clinton family home, above, is privately-owned and festooned with signs assuring the passerby that 1) yes, he lived here, and 2) no, it's not open for tours. In the yard are two small tombstones, but I didn't get close enough to see who they were for: Buddy and Socks, or Vince Foster and Ron Brown?

The Clinton presidential library museum in Little Rock is a ghastly-ugly building, but not as bad in sight as it looks in photographs. Again, great displays, especially of Bill's and Hillary's early years and on daily life in the White House. The summary of his presidency would have you believe it consisted of an unending series of foreign policy triumphs and not much else. A couple vague sentences on the impeachment admit that he "misled his family and the country concerning his personal life" (quasi-quote) but don't say about what, exactly. Implications that, here as elsewhere, the opposition was having hysterics over nothing will find no argument from me.

Through a newspaper events listing I found my most satisfactory Little Rock activity. A dulcimer convention was going on in town, with a public concert at a church the evening I arrived. How nice; local music, and of a kind I like. I spent a most pleasant time listening to various folk on hammered dulcimer, mountain dulcimer, and autoharp, with occasional accompaniment by other instruments, concluding with a grand finale of almost everybody on stage at once: 3 hammered dulcimers, 3 mountain dulcimers, 2 guitars, autoharp, banjo, and pennywhistle.

Watch on YouTube

One of the best performers, mountain dulcimer player Linda Brockinton, in a typical slow song.