I’m considering some civil disobedience on this blog. Right now the only liquor sold in the county is through “private clubs”. These laws have traditionally been used to keep “a certain kind of folk” out of drinking establishments. In Conway it is actually a step in the progressive direction, but still holds some bad connotations. What am I going to do? I’m going to post all of my “private club” attendance numbers on this website, and encourage all new folks to Conway to use those numbers. Sure, when we got here a “membership” was only $5 per year, and now it is $5 for a “lifetime membership” but why not just pull the plug on the entire system. What good is a membership number if everyone is using the same one and they aren’t immediately traceable to the actual owner? Stay tuned.
Now that the temperatures every day push 90F, cool, clear water, is sometimes the only thought in a wilting mind. Conway doesn’t have a public pool, and the local lakes are experiencing E. coli scares.
The only way to get a nice clean swim in Arkansas is to own a boat and a car. If you have a motor boat, or pontoon, you drive down to Greer’s Ferry or Lake Ouachita. If you have a kayak or canoe, you go to the Cadron River or the Buffalo River. If you live in Conway, this means you need to drive at least an hour for a nice swim.
We kayaked the Cadron River before, but this was our first time on the Buffalo River. We camped on the banks near Gilbert on the sand and gravel shores Friday night.
Saturday we paddled from Baker’s Ford, 10 miles upriver. The sun was brutally hot and the water was delightfully cold. Ty’s kayak flipped on a fast-water chute. He only lost his hat and sunglasses, but he was pinned to a tree with his kayak in waist-deep water for at least 10 minutes. It was a nice moment of excitement in an otherwise leisurely float.
I’ve heard many people talking about “floating” the Buffalo River, but I have to say that the river was flowing at a nice clip and was very deep in many sections. It flows faster and deeper than the Niobrara River in Nebraska, but the curves and turns are very similar. The Buffalo River has much better cliff-infused vistas.
The river was packed with people for the Memorial Day holiday, and many of the gravel banks were filled with campsites.
We stayed overnight on Friday so we could get an early start down the river on Saturday. Next time, I think it would be fun float all day and then camp.
Our car was super loaded up with gear, too. We brought kayaks, 3 sleeping bags, four tents, two large coolers because we had a few folks from out-of-town with us. The next time we go camping, I am going to strive to pack light.
It is no secret that my favorite thing about the South is the weather. This feature goes hand-in-hand with the growing season. Last Tuesday we went to our first crawdad/crayfish/crawfish/mudbug boil, and it was super tasty.
Crawfish can best be described as mini-lobsters. To prepare crawfish, you throw a bunch of live ones into seasoned boiling water for a few minutes. Then the deconstruction begins, separating the head from the tail. There are pincers, but they are too small to open without tools. Ty managed to get one opened and the meat was light like crab meat. After separating the head from the tail, the optional step is to suck the juices out of the head. Nintey-nine percent of the edible part of the crawfish is in the tail. That segment is encased in shrimp-like segments, but they usually have to be cracked open. After eating dozens of crawfish I had a slight bruise/bleed on my thubmb with a freshly cut thumbnail since the fresh skin was exposed.
The latest issue of the Oxford American takes on food in the South. The climate makes the place, and the growing season, available ingredients, and preservation techniques make the food.
My garden has kicked it into gear. I’ve got tiny yellow squash, zucchini, egg plant, peppers, and tomatoes all ready to explode in the next month.
Ok folks, I’ve been super busy lately. My brother got married 2 weekends ago. I posted a bunch of pictures to my gallery.
I picked the Kentucky Derby winner last weekend, and Conway, Arkansas hosted another Toad Suck Daze. Ty and I ventured downtown for crawfish, a tornado dog, and sleep deprived people stuck on a truck.
I’ve got a fun garden anecdote. My neighbor Sam and I planted our cucumbers way too early. She lost 5 plants and I lost multiple others. I found volunteer cucumbers growing everywhere! I picked a few out from between the tomatoes and replanted them. I gave more to Sam. When I went to Nebraska I got some fun square foot gardening netting from Katie. I put up a trellis for Sam, only to find out that all of the cucumbers I gave her are either yellow squash or zucchinni! We’ll be good as long as the stink bugs and the squash beetles don’t take over.
The pollen around Conway is really bad right now. I took some pictures of my car this morning. At work in Little Rock, a co-worker noted how much more yellow my car is compared to the other local cars on the lot.
It is a cause that is near and dear to my heart. Numerous times when I lived in Lincoln, I’d get a phone call from my mother before going home for Easter. She’d ask, “Could you pick up a bottle of Windsor Canadian Whiskey?”, or “Could you pick up an extra 24-pack of Busch Lite?” The answer would always be “No, it’s the law.” The blue laws in Lincoln dictated that no wine, beer, or liquor could be sold before noon on Sunday. This is actually a big step. Earlier in the 1990s there were no Sunday package sales in the city.
Another time, I wanted to make an Irish cream cake before a blizzard came in to town at noon. It is as if the people who write blue laws don’t consider the culinary value in pink vodka spaghetti sauce, adding wine to any recipe a la Justin Wilson, beer cheese soup, or even as a method of fruit preservation.
When we moved to Arkansas the laws were much stricter. I have to drive at least 20 minutes to get to the liquor store. You can go 3 blocks down the street at our house and buy an over-priced Bud Light, and drink it in an entirely too loud, overpriced pizza atmosphere. That’s not really my style.
The problem here in the south is that nobody wants a liquor store in his or her backyard, even a fancy-schmancy one with a wine-tasting bar like they have in Little Rock. All of the grocery stores are too small to have a decent liquor section even in wet counties in Arkansas, and I think it may offend the Baptists. One wonderful thing about Lincoln were all of the liquor stores attached to the regular grocery stores. The price and selection at Hy-Vee, Super Saver, and Russ’s is something to embrace and to cherish. (The local beer selection alone at the Hy-Vee near 48th and O St deserves an award and your patronage.)
The with three colleges, city of Conway in Faulkner county is really growing right now. Four years ago, restaurants couldn’t serve alcohol and the gastronomic choices in the community really suffered. Now we can at least go down the street and watch Sunday football, have a beer, and eat a pizza. The educated contingent in the community is really growing too, so that means more people who want to have a convenient drink at home or at a party. That means more people who want to make Flaming Cherries Jubilee at the spur of the moment, and you can’t do it with out brandy!
Finally, distributors aren’t allowed into the county. Restaurants have to bus in their own booze. They use inefficient vehicles and drivers who usually do other things to get the booze from the same places where private citizens buy their beer, wine, or liquor. Let me make this clear: each restaurant has to send a truck down to Little Rock, and bring it back filled with what they need. In the sane world, the Budweiser truck comes up once a week and serves all of the restaurants. The current scenario is completely unsustainable from a petroleum usage aspect. Oh yeah did I mention the 40 minute round-trip drive to the liquor store for the private citizen? That is 1 to 2 gallons of gas per trip. Multiply this trip by a quarter of the residents of Conway (2008 special census) at an average rate of one trip per month, and that is 172,632 gallons of gas. I’m not even going to touch all of the lost tax revenue exiting our city and county, and that is a much stronger point than the wasted gas.
Had an insanely fun weekend. Got to hang out with my friends/band members, celebrated the divine Robin’s birthday where she did not get goosed by Ted Dansen, attended the Oxford American music issue party, and played the ponies at Oaklawn.
Saturday night we went to the Starving Artist Cafe in North Little Rock. I really like their lunch specials and soups. Robin ordered the lamb…If you know a good place in Little Rock for lamb, let her know, because she can’t find it anywhere. I had the Ahi Tuna and it was completely overcooked! Waiters don’t ask how you would like your tuna cooked, because Ahi Tuna should be seared or served rare. Next time I’ll have to stipulate. Ty’s redfish special was pretty amazing.
Next we headed down the street to the Oxford American Music Issue party. All of the music was great, and the atmosphere at OA parties is always fun. We were most impressed with the True Soul Band! I wrote about last year’s music issue party pretty extensively, but this year we just hung out and danced.
On Sunday we went to Hot Springs for the Oaklawn Race Track opening weekend! With temperatures in the 60s, we spent all of our pony picking time outside. It got a little cool when sun went down over Boll Weevil Pawn. I ended up winning about $65! At first I liked how slim the programs at the track were, but then I saw that they contain half of the information of the traditional two-page layout. I think I’ll be pre-printing my program, or buying the DRF from here on out.
My friend David had a new lens to play with and took a bunch of fun pictures that day. If he posts them I’ll link to them!
This was the opening weekend not only for racing, but also for the casino. We registered for the casino’s frequent player program to get extra gambling money and a discount on our buffet. While we were standing in line, we suspected a computer problem, as all of the customer service people had to yell a number out loud to say they were locking or reserving that particular record! Behind us, a raffle was about to take place. A couple of older men turned a hopper to draw 5 $200 prizes. A crowd of really old people began to gather, and one of the older men tried to get a microphone to work. After failing with the second clip-on microphone, he decided he’d just shout over the crowd. I have never seen an angrier mob with a larger sense of entitlement. After each name was called, these old folks would holler, “WE CAN’T HEAR YOU!” For some reason, maybe common decency, the people in the front did not telegraph back the names by yelling back to those people. Some older folks even began crashing our customer service line to get closer to the drawing. We got out of there right before the rakes and pitchforks came out.
Next, we went to the buffet because we had a couple of vegetarians with us, and the only things in the entire clubhouse they could eat were pretzels and bloody mary drinks. I’m going to apologize for whining so much here, but the buffet wasn’t that impressive. There were certainly good parts, and I was surprised by how much I liked the cheesy scallop/shrimp/crab/krab casserole. The pork loin dish with cranberries or raisins was great too. On the down side, the meat at the carving station was very over-done and the bread was all for display! My friend Sasha brought a sesame roll back the table to find it completely shellacked. I should have probably eaten more of the great looking fruit and miniature desserts.
For my birthday this year, we decided to get out of town. The nearest racetrack is Oaklawn at Hot Springs, but they run in the spring. The nearest track with racing right now is at Blue Ribbon Downs in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. The racetrack is without booze, which seems to be a running theme in our move to The South. Luckily, we stayed in Fort Smith, bastion of wet counties in western Arkansas.
We checked out the downtown in Fort Smith on Friday. The town has a very complex mix of people of Vietnamese, Native American, Mexican, Caucasian, and other southeast Asian heritage. This made for a very wonderful trip to a Vietnamese Pho (delicious noodle soup) restaurant, as well as a very good Thai Curry place called Bangkok Cafe. Friday we went downtown, checking out places to eat, antique stores, and a yarn shop, where I got my birthday present from Ty. (I KNOW! The entire trip was a birthday present!) We went down to the banks of the Arkansas River, which was running fast and full and furious. Check it out, in the picture I’m wearing the yarn I got from Ty for my birthday 2 years ago!
On the night of my birthday, toasted champagne in our hotel room. Then we went a martini bar called 21 West End for dinner and creme brulee, and martinis of course.
Saturday morning we headed out to the western wear shop. I am enamored with a brand called Southern Threads. They have delicate, almost china-like patterns on the shirts for men. All of the women’s clothing had bright colors and too much glitter, or were too pastel in bad ways. Ty found some cool shirts though!
We drove on to the racetrack, and we stayed in the clubhouse since it was chilly outside. My only gripe with the track, besides the booze, was the exacta box betting scheme. At every other track we have been to, we have been allowed to bet $1 per exacta box bet, as long as the number of bets being bet were greater than two. We like boxing 3 horses, so it is normally a $6 bet. At Blue Ribbon downs, it is a $12 bet, a little too rich for my blood. It really didn’t matter, because we didn’t win anything until the 8th race, when I bet a $.10 superfecta and won!
Most of the races that day were quarter horses, appaloosas and paint horses. They only race the straightaway for 250-450 yards, which makes them hard races to handicap. We went back to Ft. Smith and had Thai food.
I got some really cool other gifts for my birthday, but those will have to wait for my next post!
Yesterday was my first day of work from home. Everything went well, I was able to connect to the network, do some training, install some software, handle things that happened in the office, and even field calls from co-workers. I felt very accomplished, and worked through the time that I would have been driving. The one drawback was the gigantic pain in my back at the end of the day.
People who have visited the tower know that I enjoy backless chairs. I used to sit on a Rubbermaid tub full of fabric scraps and yarn. I upgraded to an ottoman with three inches of foam on the top. It obviously isn’t made from the correct foam, because it obviously didn’t keep up with my support needs.
So today is a day for putting things together! I bought a computer chair, some shelves for extending the life of our garden plants, and some parts to finish up the elephant/Chinese dragon for Conway ArtsFest.
Here is my TODO pile:
For the elephant, I’ve got to connect the ears to the head. The body is a long piece of fabric. That’s got to be assembled, and I purchased irrigation tubing to create hoops under the fabric. I am going to use this hoop tutorial to create the hoops. The instructions suggest 1 or 3/4 inch tubing, but Lowe’s and Home Depot only had 1/2 inch tubing. At Lowe’s I met a really friendly guy working there with a sort of notorious Confederate General/KKK Grand Dragon name. We talked about how I got to the south and how I’m liking it. I told him I loved the growing season and the football, but I could do without the dry counties. He proceeded to apologize for the roots of his name (white supremacy, confederate generals), and everything responsible for making Faulkner, Conway, and Cleburne counties dry counties. He was intrigued about using hula hoop instructions on irrigation tubing, and he was super friendly!
This week, I used fabric stiffener on the elephant head. The product I used had an embarrassing name.
Right now I’m trying to figure out how the head will be worn by a real person (probably me). The options below show the head with and without my arms inside of it. I’m also trying to figure out how to get some trunk mobility, and in a dream last night I had an excellent idea about water noodles! The noodle should take care of the weird kink in the nasal bridge.
Last week Mary Ruth and Jeff Marotte hosted Oxford American’s party to welcome new columnist Jack Pendarvis to the fold. I don’t often get good pictures at readings because I sit too far away!
This case was no exception! It was a great party complete with pizza, cookies, a poetry reading, and Jack Pendarvis doing an impression of Truman Capote reciting Johnny Cash.
The Oxford American offered a few unpublished and published poems up for the night, read by members of the Arkansas Shakespeare Festival.
Now I’m not a real writer or from the south, but Oxford American events are always a good time and I always meet so many interesting people. I’m also equally amazed by how entertaining the people I already know get at these parties! Need an example? My friend Robin, out of the blue, decided to buy me a “I +heart+ Kris Allen” shirt, and bring it to the party. See…even Kris Allen was at this party, complete with grayed 5 o’clock shadow….at least on my shirt.
