Tuesday, 10 March 2020
We had heavy rain all night. Last night's campground (Cane Creek) is very small, but the sites are level, and it's dark and quiet. But as I was walking the dogs before leaving the campground this morning, 2 dogs - probably from the houses across the street from the campground - started following us around the campground. They were fearless and neither my yells nor my dogs' growls deterred them. Another camper heard me yelling and helped me by distracting those dogs until I could get mine back into the RV. Both she and I told the office and, as I was leaving, one of the rangers was headed over to check them out. The other camper said neither dog had a tag on its collar. This is the 3rd time we've been followed by unleashed dogs, and I don't know anything I can do about it.
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| today's route |
Aside from those dogs, I would have been happy to stay longer at that campground, and would have if I could have picked up a wifi signal. Oh well.
I passed a small herd of longhorns in someone's front yard.
A sign told me I was crossing the future I-69 corridor. I think I saw a similar sign in Louisiana.
I saw a situation that I'm sure matches many people's mental images of rural Arkansas, though it in no way matches the reality of what I've been seeing here. But it was a striking picture. I was behind a slow beat-up small pickup that turned at an isolated trailer set deep in a field at the end of a muddy drive. The trailer was old and tired-looking, and set out a ways from it was one of those old tubular kitchen chairs with the vinyl seat cover - just sitting there by the muddy drive. I wondered what kind of life these folks have.
I passed lots of fields for cows (present) and crops (not yet planted).
I crossed Bayou Bartholomew and got a surprise when I looked it up. At 364 miles, it's the world's longest bayou and, with more than 100 aquatic species, it's North America's 2nd most diverse stream. It separates the Arkansas Delta and the Arkansas Timberlands and runs a long way down into Louisiana.
The Japanese American internment camps museum
McGehee, pop. 4,219, is home to the Jerome-Rohwer Interpretive Museum and Visitor Center. Jerome and Rohwer, named for the towns they were in, were the only 2 Japanese-American internment camps west of the Rockies. This museum is housed in half of the old train depot and, to my mind, desperately needs about double the space. Aisles between the exhibits weren't much more than 3' apart, making it difficult to see clearly the images they were showing. You'll see the odd angles in some of my photos, and that's why. The serious lack of space is probably also why I found the arrangement of items confusing, but I've tried to coordinate it here to be more easily understandable.
Nothing exists now of either the Jerome or Rohwer camps except, in both cases, the smokestack for the hospital's incinerator. I understand there are memorials at each site, but I ended up not visiting either one. For all its problems, this museum still packed a powerful message and, having no friends or relatives involved, I felt no need to visit empty fields. We all know one former resident, though - George Takei of Star Trek fame lived at Rohwer for 7 years of his childhood.
How it began
The next day, FDR signed the order declaring war against Japan.
I'm including these exhibits in their entirety because they have a lot of details showing some of the moral dilemmas people faced, and how they responded.The short version, though, is that all people of Japanese descent living on the west coast of the US, whether US citizens or not (and most were), were rounded up and sent to live behind barbed wire for the duration of the war.
Evacuation and relocation
It seems to be an American characteristic that we, as a society, get hysterical from time to time (think McCarthyism). This was quite clearly one of those times. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans were herded together and shipped by train to places that were scarcely even built. The map below shows where the internment camps were, with the 2 in southeastern Arkansas being the only ones west of Colorado.
The camps
Life in the camps
When the camps were disbanded
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| temporary housing in CA for internees |
Art in the camp
Apparently, the art teacher was very good and the students were very talented.
At right and below are two angles of the same painting.
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| re: carving at left |
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| re: painting at right |
There was a great deal more, but I'm getting such a squirrely wifi signal I'll stop here about the museum, afraid I'll lose it all if this program freezes one more time.
The curator, Susan Gallion, gave me a lot of information, her card, and the address of the PBS program about this period. I haven't watched it yet, but if you're interested, here's the link. https://archive.org/TimeOfFear
Back on the road
I've begun seeing very flat land - clearly I'm in the Mississippi River Delta now. I'm guessing that maybe the crop fields I'm seeing here are rice fields.
A sign told me I'm on the Delta Rhythm & Bayous Byway (puns are popular everywhere). This is also part of the Great River Road, though we're a little too far away to see the Mississippi.
Lake Chicot, tonight's campground, is the largest natural oxbow lake in North America as well as Arkansas's largest natural lake. It's a half mile wide and almost 22 miles long. It was once the main channel of the Mississippi and was left behind when the river changed course.
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| looking southeast |
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| looking northeast |
The trees in my photos don't show it very well, but most of the trees along here are cypress. "Chicot" is French for "stumpy," referring to the cypress knees and stumps found all along the shore.
Legend has it that Hernando de Soto was buried in this lake; it's known that he died in this area in 1542, so who knows?
What I do know is that the lake gave me a beautiful sunset tonight.
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