Arkansas - Day 28 - Little Rock and points northwest

Harrison Village RV Park, Harrison
Saturday, 28 March 2020

route in Little Rock

today's highway route

Sightseeing in Little Rock
I heard an interview on the radio with a man who owned a restaurant, talking about the agonizing decisions he was having to make trying to be able to afford to continue paying his staff while not being able to open his restaurant.  He'd finally let his customers know he was open for take-out only and offering family meals at 50% off.  He asked folks to consider using some of the savings by adding a tip for his workers.  He said he was gratified when his business started picking back up, and he was able to keep his staff employed, but more importantly he was stunned by the size of tips people were leaving.  He said one person even left $500 at each of his 3 restaurants for the workers.  He said, "We bet on our community and we won."

I passed Philander Smith College and was curious about the name.  I know the word "philanderer" as someone who reneges on their marriage vows, though I don't remember it being used as a verb.  But this school was named in memory of a person Philander Smith, who died in the 1800s when names like that were more common than they are now.  It's a historically black college and, as far as I can tell online, they're still holding classes despite having cancelled graduation and closed the dormitories.  They claim they're taking all reasonable precautions by providing additional hand sanitizing stations around campus.  If this is true, to me it doesn't speak well about the level of common sense of the administrators here.

Little Rock Central High School National Monument
I found 3 explanatory signs outside the museum run by the National Park Service.  I'm posting those signs in pieces to make it easier to read them.

Here's the Cliffs Notes version of events: In 1957, Arkansas (like many Southern states) was still refusing to integrate its schools, in defiance of Brown v. Board of Education.  Little Rock authorities wanted to do it gradually.  Local activist Daisy Bates thought that wasn't good enough and convinced a group of 9 black students to try to integrate Central High School.

Ark. governor Orval Faubus used the Ark. National Guard to stop them.  Pres. Eisenhower called in the famed 101st Airborne Division, who escorted the kids into school and patrolled the halls to protect them.

the quote reads: "Any time it takes 11,500 soldiers
 to assure nine Negro children their constitutional rights
in a democratic society, I can't be happy."
Daisy L. Gatson Bates

The Little Rock Nine - note that, though they're just kids,
they have courage well beyond what most adults will ever know

In 1958, Little Rock voted to close public schools
rather than integrate them, and then blamed the closures
on the federal government

Central High School today

This school is gigantic, by the way.  That building extends a long way behind and beside what you can see in my photo.  Ten years ago, it had more than 2,400 students - larger than most towns in Arkansas.

detail from the front of the school

As I was walking the dogs around the museum up the street from the school, a park ranger came out while Gracie was rolling around in the shrubbery.  Instead of yelling at her, as I expected, he said she looked like she was having a good time.  He told me the museum would open in half an hour, which certainly surprised me, but I'm not really comfortable being in enclosed places with strangers these days, and anyway the signs had given me as much information as I wanted.

There's also a memorial across the street that we walked around a bit.

More Little Rock sights
About a mile from the school is the State Capitol.  I got lucky and came the day after the legislature had adjourned from its special session, so there was no traffic and no parked cars.  Made it easy for me to get a photo.

This building is notable for being an exact 3/4-size replica of the US Capitol building.  It was built around the turn of the 20th century using prison labor.  You can see a piece of my RV in the photo - though I got out and took several others from different vantage points, this seemed the best of the batch.

A couple of miles from the Capitol is the Clinton Presidential Library.

It was built at the beginning of the 21st century and seems to me to exude drabness, rather than presidential grandeur.  I think the design is cantilevered, though, and intended to project a forward-thinking appearance.  Maybe I just need to take an architectural appreciation class.

I heard on the radio about the death of the Rev. Joseph Lowery, Civil Rights icon from an older generation.  NPR recalled part of the benediction he delivered at Barack Obama's inauguration:

Lord, ... help us to work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.

You have to smile at this, as the new president and most of the audience did, but of course those on the far right didn't see the humor - or anything else good about either his prayer or, probably, about the inauguration itself.  What a shame.

On down the road
The City of Little Rock has several locations for recycling drop-off, including one in the town of Maumelle to the northwest.  That location said online that it was one of the few open on a Saturday and that it was still open despite the current restrictions.  So we drove out there and sat outside the gate waiting for it to open.  Waited in vain, as it turned out.  We waited 20 minutes after the opening time, and I finally decided maybe they were no longer keeping Saturday hours or maybe they curtailed them.  Anyway, I put most of my recyclables in a plastic trash bag, wrote "Recycling" in several places on the bag, and left it beside the gate.  I'd never have done it except the radio had just this morning listed off a couple of the recycling locations that had been closed, and this wasn't one of them.  I hope it turned out okay.

While we were waiting, I noticed a beaver lodge in a pond not too far away and thought that was nice.  I hope that means this facility is being operated in an environmentally responsible manner.

I saw wisterias that had climbed trees and were 2 stories tall.  Really beautiful.

Back on the road, I saw cows and horses in various fields we passed.

I confess I'd never heard of Hungry Hungry Hippos until I heard a radio item about a nursing home that was in virus-imposed isolation, so to keep up morale the staff instituted a life-sized version of the game using residents in wheelchairs as the hungry hippos.  I imagine everybody had a blast. 

Many smaller towns along this road: Mayflower, Pickles Gap, Twin Groves, Damascus.  Also some larger ones, with Conway, pop. 58,908, topping them all.

Actually, I think this road is one of the most scenic I've been on in Arkansas, which is saying something.  Occasionally I get a view of mountain valleys with fields down below and streams running nearby.  I see many hills in the area, many curves in the road, which goes up and down hills regularly.  Cows graze in fields on mountainsides and down in the valleys below, looking as if they fell off the mountain where they had been grazing and just took up where they left off.  I saw green crop fields and yellow ones.

March in Arkansas is a purple month - there are purple flowers everywhere of all kinds - wild flowers and weeds and cultivated plants.  It's just lovely.

My trouble today is that I got very little sleep last night (or the night before, for that matter) and I'm finding it almost impossible to stay awake.  There are no rest areas along this road, no shoulders, and the towns are too tiny to provide anywhere for me to pull over and try to wake up.  This turned out to be especially dangerous when I found myself on a 7% grade, with advisory signs for trucks to use lower gears, and with a runaway truck ramp.  It wasn't just a steep downhill road but also had many curves.  I had to focus all my attention on staying awake so we wouldn't fly off the mountain at a curve.

I'm pretty sure we're going through the Ozark Mountains here; I've been feeling for quite a few miles as if we were climbing, which turns out to be accurate.  Little Rock's elevation is 335' and Harrison's is 1,040'.  So yeah, we've been climbing.

In the middle of nowhere, I found a gas station - national brand - selling regular for $1.19 for cash customers.  So of course I stopped.  Cheap gas is the one bright spot in the news these days.

I passed the tiny town of St. Joe - Heart of the Ozarks Since 1904.

I saw a couple of homemade signs for Generator George, who "sells peace of mind, not just generators."

I passed a business called Anything In Stained Glass.

And I had a wonderful view of the Ozark Mountains which, of course, I was in.

In the town of Western Grove, pop. 384, I saw 2 churches nearly across the road from each other, one with a sign that said "Pray for our Nation" and the other with a sign that said "Pray for our Country."  I hope they're both referring to the virus and not some other threat they perceive.

And so to this campground, just south of the town of Harrison, where I've stayed before.  I couldn't get the same campsite I had before and it took me some time to find another that was mostly level and in a location I thought would be fairly easy for the dogs.  When I mentioned to the campground owner that I'd still like my old slot if the folks left early, he told me they'd come up here from Little Rock to try to keep the wife safe from the virus. 

Her husband says she's got a long string of serious illnesses and absolutely cannot get that virus.  I think they came up here as soon as it became known the virus had started showing up in Little Rock.  The owner says she never leaves the camper they've got, which is even smaller than mine.  The husband sits outside from time to time, but they have a wheelchair for her and even if she felt safe coming out, which she doesn't, this campground has no paved roads - they're all gravel.  Not a good surface for a wheelchair.  Makes you realize how very lucky you can be and not know it.  I hope she manages to stay safe.