jd

Mr Daniels, the one who started it all...

My [mis]adventures in Arkansas

Even though, I'm making a better-than-minimum-wage here working for my dad,and pretty much get whatever hours I want, its still nice to have a vacation now and then, so what if its the first full time job I've had in like a year. Plus, Marla, my friend, really needed a vacation from her awful life back in Springfield. So she found a place called Buffalo Outdoor Center in some poh-duhnk backwoods town in Arkansas called Ponka[called that because people from Ponca City, Oklahoma came here many years ago to mine for some weird metal, and named it after their home, before abandoning it when they got all the metal they could outta the mines, true story, I swear!]. Supposedly she'd stayed there with her father many years back and had pretty fond memories. So we get there and sure enough, its really nice, a log cabin, seperated sufficiently from all signs of civiliazation, and would be romantic, if you were both single, grrr. This is also, I find out, a dry county. For those of you in the real world, a dry county is where you can't buy alcohol. at all. And unbenownst to me, thats the way the citizens want it, and they will stop at nothing to keep it out of your system. So we get settled in and decide to take what we expect will be a short little trek to find some alcohol. I mean, its alcohol, everybody likes alcohol, so they gotta know the quickest way to the nearest beer store. We ask the "feller" at the main cabin "where's the closest place to buy beer around here?". He looks up, and like a parent whose 12 year old just asked to get "Slipknot" tattoed on his forehead, he glares at me and says "Missurah state line". Oh jesus, as far as we know thats a good hour away, and he has no real helpful hints on the best way to get there. It occurs to Marla that it probably wasn't a good idea to ask that considering they probably discourage drinking here, seeing as how a dry county probably stays that way due to popular vote. Y'know, I've seen a few of them Arkansan women around, and some of them have quite a few "young-uns" hangin' around, and I'll be damned if I wanna see the guy that touches \i them\i0 sober. So, anyway, back to my story. We head on to the nearest "civilized" town, through Compton, a town which seems to consist of a "One Stop" [known world-wide for its clean restrooms] and a few trailers, to some place whose name excapes me. I go into a convinience store, thinking that thay gotta have, 3.2 beer, or wine coolers or somethin', but noooooo. The lady at the desk says "Missura state line" and tells me how to get there[the state line, mind you, not any store in specific, that would be wrong!]: "go thataway, turn at the light, and go 30 miles". 30 miles!? Oh God, this was getting fucking ridiculous. So we follow her "directions and in less than 2 minutes, we find out that the directions were dead-ass wrong. I half expected that we had actually been directed to a police station, or church. But we found our way to the highway and used the atlas and sat back for the long journey ahead, when "what to my wondering eyes should appear?"! But a sign, an actual sign from God: "Liquor Quicker-11 miles"-50 feet high and colored in glorious red and yellow. I think I nearly made Marla run off the road with my shouts of "Look! Look! Turn! Turn! Oh My God!!". So we head down a lettered highway, which isn't on our atlas and just pray that this isn't some sneaky trick by the local do-gooders of that last town. So about 10.5 and [seriously] 3 counties later we are nearly in tears, cause there's no sign of banjo-free living anywhere, until out of no where, as we reach the top of our decided last hill, comes another sign; "your here cousin!", is all it says, in what seem to be hand written letters and before we can even fully comprehend this-there she was-bright and shining like the lights of Vegas for the first time: Quicker Liquor. Half-afraid of what i maight find inside, I stepped in to claim my prize. These people must have been opperating under some kind of loophole law and were flown in from the "other side" because they were clearly not from whatever farm animal-named county we were currently in. I picked up what seemed like would be a nice relaxing drink for a night or 2 in the woods: Pepermint Patty Mudslide. It seemed everything was looking up from here on out and i wanted to buy 15 bottles of "Night Train" to smash on the front steps of all who had led us astray in our quest, but alas, I was already sponging enough off of Marla, and she's more of a Tom Waits drunk, as opposed to my Sid Vicious-like antics, so I didn't wanna ask for any more money. So with the whole night ahead of us to drink, we[she] decided we would take a short hike and enjoy a little nature, our first day here. Oh Arkansas, why must you forsake us so. Thats right, this could never be\i just \i0 a hike in the woods: Marla had to roll a cigarrette for the trek and unable to handle 2 things at once, she turned off the ignition, but with her eyes fixed securely on the tobacco, she left them there. So we realize this about half way back up the trail. We look all around the car and there is nothing we could possibly use to gain entrance. "Luckily" there are 2 houses across the street, one directly across, and another down the crossroad about a quarter mile. So we opt for the closer of the two. As we get closer, we see that there is no obvious front door, and its one of those set-ups where the whole yard is fenced in, so we'd have to open a gate, to get to the house-a pretty scary prospect out where no one can hear you scream. So we keep walkin' on and right about as we're trying to figure out the best approach, some hidden vicious-sounding dog begins barking his balls off and that's enough to try the other house for a coat hanger. So we start hiking up that way and it doesn't look nearly as scary: its up on a hill and there are two new- ish looking cars out front. But would I be writing this if things were so simple? As we get to that side of the street, and begin up the the hill that is their enormous front yard, we notice that the cars we thought were "newish" are actually a Dodge Aires with 3 flat tires and an 80's Pontiac Sunbird[thanks to Marla's "manly" knowledge of cars], completly missing the front 2 wheels and, yes, as the cliche goes, up on blocks. The upper part of this front yard is covered in everything you would imagine would be \i inside\i0 the most white trash of trailers, plus literally hundreds of beer cans and bottles[dry county my ass!!], 3 rusted up oil drums[containing the decomposing bodies of the last facially-peirced hair-dyed-kids who asked for a coat hanger], and various other peices of debris. Have you seen those videos they show on th news of places that got hit by tornadoes? well this was ike a mini one of those. It was right about then that we began hearing "dueling Banjoes"-in our heads of course, but it was very appropriate, and didn't help our fears any to talk about it. So, do we brave the evil, punk-eating dog, or do we knock on this door, where no one has noticed us walk up in the five minutes we've been on their property. If we walked away now, they might see us and think we were trying to break in, or spy on their teenage daughter. So we knock. No reply. I assume thats because of hollywood squares being up so loud inside. we knock a little louder and this young boy comes and perches himself on the sill of the window next to the door and just stares at us. I suspect they don't get a lot of visitors out here, I mean, I was lookin' my sunday best here: took out my peircings and covered my head, and he still looked like he'd never seen such creatures as us. After several seconds of his unflinching glare, the door opens and a short rather-large, but very friendly, if a little[ok, a lot] on the dim side, lady greets us. We explain the problem to her and she seems a little confused, as a very small delirious little girl comes spinning at us from between her mama's legs. We explain that we could just use a coat hanger or something. All the while the boy at the window persists with "who is it mama? whadda they want", almost scared sounding. she shuts the door to see what she can find, and the boy stays there, keeping watch that we don't have our greedy little eyes on any of the 15 rusted minow buckets scattered around the front porch. Many minutes later we hear "go see if yer daddy's got any pliers in his tools". So then the door opens again and she produces a rusty coat hanger. Now I'm not complaining here, a rusty one works just as well as any other, but who has a rusty coat hanger just sitting around?! And how does a coat hanger get rusty inside a house?! And do I really want to know the answers to these questions!? The daughter is nowhere in sight probaby with "daddy, and his tools". She says, she'd let us use her phone, but she doesn't have one. The nearest town, as we know from earlier is 30 minues away-driving. They don't have a working car, and they don't have a phone. But they got a \i tee-vee\i0 ! So we kindly thank her and head very fast down back to the car, thankful to still be alive. \par When we get to the car and pull back the seal to "jimmy" it open, we notice [and I've heard this before, I remember], that as well as crunching like an alluminum can in an accident, the other reason Neon's suck is cause you can't get into 'em that way. They have some little protection device over the part that pops up the lock. Yeah, thanks Dodge guys! But luckily we discovered a "secret"-manufacturing-defect way in. So we got in, drove back, and I didn't want to waste any time getting drunk, so I just took some perkiset and left the alcohol[which as fate would have it, had turned, or whatever and was chunky!] for tommarow...