GOING TO GURDON: The Light and the Roads and the Trains

Gurdon. Who’da thunk it.

Here I am in Rector and our Cougars are headed on the long road to Gurdon for a football playoff game. I overheard a fan say, “Are y’all going to Gurdon?” That caught my attention right away. “It’s so far away,” another said. “Yep, Gurdon is quite a drive from Rector, but those miles from my hometown of Camden to Gurdon to Arkadelphia seem not so far at all. Especially in reverie.

The Gurdon Light

Most teens having grown up in the area, including me, have seen “The Gurdon Light,” It is a mystery light located near railroad tracks in a wooded area of Gurdon. It is the subject of local folklore and has been featured in local media and on Unsolved Mysteries and Mysteries at the Museum.

A more recent Gurdon memory involves I-30 and the highway to Gurdon where there is no entry or exit ramp, though you’d think so, looking at a map. My dear childhood friend and I determined to have supper together in Arkadelphia since she and her husband were on a Camden visit. They were reading a map (imagine that) to get from Camden to Arkadelphia, hoping to grab I-30 at Gurdon. That road LOOKS LIKE an entry ramp. We’ve all made that mistake, but they made it at pitch-black dark. We had supper well after our intended meeting time, with me (image that) giving directions on how to get from Gurdon to Arkadelphia.

Gurdon's train station

Camden once had a passenger train or two and one of our after-supper highlights was to “meet the 7:30” after which we’d get an ice cream cone and take the long way home. Before the passenger trains quit their runs, Mother and Daddy took my brother and me on a train ride complete with a conductor and a ticket man who walked along the aisles. Our destination:  Gurdon. Gurdon is the “getting off place. You “get off the train at Gurdon.” My grandmother met us for the drive back home.

Early morning drives to Henderson State University (formerly HSTC) in Arkadelphia after a weekend at home took me through Gurdon, making the turn at 67 North and sometimes being blessed by a summer sunrise across fields and two-lane asphalt roads I was sure I’d never see again. All rural roads in Arkansas, I’ve learned, look pretty much the same.

So, “Are y’all going to Gurdon?” I’m not, but I’ll be cheering for the Rector Cougars and hoping the experience in Gurdon is one you’ll remember, for the best reasons.

Happy Anniversary, Y'all

             Happy 50^th Anniversary to us all.

This year and next year, 2019 and 2020, bring celebrations for 50^th wedding anniversaries of friends and relations. 

            A celebration we all can share, though, takes place today, July 20, 2019. I recall driving around Arkadelphia that hot July afternoon listening to the radio. An announcer reminded everyone that a live television program would soon be broadcast. America would be able to watch a moon landing by the Apollo 11 mission team and witness history as men walked on the lunar surface.

            We drove to a friend’s house and invited ourselves to what became a watch party. I remember where I was and with whom I watched and listened to history being made. If memory serves, I believe we said, “This is one event we will always remember.”

            All of us saw it together.

            The Eagle landed.

            Small steps and giant leaps burned into our collective memory.

             Happy Anniversary, y’all.

Tornado Kit: Are you prepared?

             In Tornado Alley, you need a Tornado Kit.

Tornado watches and warnings are not to be discounted. Perhaps it was my mother who ingrained in me a healthy fear of tornadoes, but whoever is responsible, I’m grateful. We once ran around opening windows on the southwest side of the house. The space under the house was for protection from bad storms even though it had spiders and their webs everywhere. Balancing the danger, I’d crawl inside, my mother kicking my behind all the way.

Plenty of near misses have cemented a healthy fear. Stories of chimney bricks in the bathtub, green and purple skies, temperature differentiation from hot to cold on either side of the building where I sat, a tornado paralleling Walnut Grove Road. I’ve had my share of scares.

            I’ve always known where I’d go when I heard a tornado coming for me, the sound said to be unmistakable. I’ve sat in the bathroom at Burger King with girlfriends, I've huddled with babies and dogs, ready to jump into my own bathtub with zillions of pillows. I don’t want to see cows fly past me or wake up in a tree, or worse.

            In our 1970s ranch-style house where we currently live, there are few rooms without external windows. I’ve determined my personal hidey-hole, because it’s every man/woman for him/herself in a tornado warning. I also have a tornado kit.

            The kit contains “sensible shoes,” a weather jacket, a bottle of Desani, and my purse.

            Do I need anything more?

Bats in the Belfry

     Let's talk about bats.
     Not the hot bats swung in the major leagues or by Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs in The Natural. And not Bruce Wayne, either.
     And not the 1.5 bats that emerge from the recesses of that Austin, TX, bridge.
     I'm talking about the bats that eat mosquitoes and drink hummingbird nectar in my back yard.


Long before the most recent incident, a nocturnal critter destroyed my hummingbird feeder and stand by jumping onto it and riding it to the ground, feasting on the wreckage. We guessed the culprit was a raccoon and borrowed a trap for an evening. We caught a domesticated cat which high-tailed it down the street faster than a mockingbird could fly. No more destroyed feeders, though.
   
     Most recently, the hummingbird feeders were ceremoniously emptied each night but the base of the vessel was not pried off. What drinks red nectar in the dead of night other than Dracula and...bats.
   
      Research suggested turning on a light to test the bat theory.
     I moved the feeders again and illuminated them with the back porch light.
   
     This morning, the feeder was still full, untouched by nectar sucking bats.

       Have your hummingbird feeders been mysteriously empty each morning over the past week? Do you have bats in your belfry?

Beads and Baubles

     I accompanied Mother on errands and learned to anticipate excursions to try on hats as she shopped. Her high-heeled shoes, earbobs, necklaces, and gloves entertained me, sometimes in church. The colors and designs captured my eye and as much as Mother loved getting dressed up, I love it, too.
     Fashion accessories today are more sedate, understated. Small and precious takes the nod over large and luscious. Too heavy, too grand, too showy, too matchy-matchy ages the wearer. Borderline gaudy jewelry screams blue hair and early-bird suppers.
     Since putting aside colorful extravagances in jewelry, my craving for sugar has skyrocketed. Candy colored bling and chocolate diamonds may hold the answer to carb-cravings. I've never enjoyed a ring-pop nor have I eaten a candy necklace buy jewel colored pins and rings pull me as surely as a sugar craving.

     The eye-catching jewels are far friendlier to the figure but can wreck the finances.

Fire, Notre Dame, and Me

Fire. I grew up in fear of it.

My uncle was a volunteer fire-fighter in Camden.

Ferdinand called us to the site of many fires in Camden, most of which were devastating.

Our house burned during a remodel. My grandmother’s house burned from a lightning strike. Camden burned on Christmas Eve. My insides become Jello, even now.

Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth is a saga about generations of builders and those who built a cathedral. The plot is far deeper and much thicker than that. The cathedral would burn. They would rebuild again and again. Straw roofs, straw-filled bricks, timber…it burns. What remains?

The devastating fire at Notre Dame in Paris this week has deeply affected me, though I’ve seen the cathedral only through the trip diaries of friends, photographs, and one special history teacher.

Dr. Jewel Vincent at Henderson, back in the day.

She and her husband had traveled the world, so, when she became a renowned professor of world history, she brought with her stories that fascinated and brought “world civ” to life for me.

In the day of big hair, she had it. A poof of coiffed black hair and a wardrobe befitting a grand lady, in high-heels that had everything to do with style, she commanded my attention in her classroom in Evans Hall.

Though this class was a survey class, she poured her soul into her lectures and I breathed in every word. I learned history that I use in trying to understand our world story. In studying chronological Bible texts that contain sidebars of history and culture, I dig deep into my archives filled with history I witnessed because of her. Dr. Vincent was a jewel, pun intended.

I saw Notre Dame cathedral’s flying buttresses, rose windows, spire, towers, interior grandeur through Dr. Vincent’s description, slides, stories; her own sense of awe became mine.

Reading the editorials and news stories about rebuilding the cathedral, “from the ashes,” the determination of a combined will gives renewed hope to the western world. Notre Dame stands as a testament to Christianity and civilization; it will become a tribute to a triumphant spirit.

Notre Dame cathedral survived centuries of war, the battering of nature, and was almost totally lost to fire while in the process of a much-needed renovation. Those far wiser than I will figure out what to do to save our grand lady.

Man looks at the outside; God looks at the heart. The cathedral, like an ancient tree, required hundreds of years to build but has been ravaged by fire in one day. The redwood forest of the great American Northwest suffers fire to bring about a new strength.

 Our Lady, treasure of the western world, will be rebuilt as a testimony to resilience and faith in God and the collaborative ability of mankind.

Fire can become a living, breathing monster, devouring whatever is in its path. Men and women can shrink in fear or rise and show the world an indomitable spirit, not lost in ashes.

The Princess

             In 1963, other than a date to the high school dance and a LadyBug shirt dress, what more could a teen girl want? Not that I recall asking for a Princess phone; my parents, however, gave me a powder blue one for Christmas, with a rotary dial that did double-duty as a night light.

            Without a separate line, of course, my Princess phone operated as an additional telephone set on one home line. Same phone number as our home phone, same line as the parents who would pick up the phone and say “Hang up, now,” that phone hosted multiple viewing parties after it finally was installed.

            Rather than lounging across my bed to talk with the friends I’d only seen a few hours before in the halls of my high school, I sat with my back to the bedroom wall, behind the bed, the Princess herself resting on the carpet beside me, her receiver clutched in my hand and “glued to my ear.” Best girl friends and I were leery of telling too many secrets because nosy brothers could, with great stealth, listen in on conversations. The Princess phone was primarily a teen girl status symbol, like the latest and greatest IPhone today.

            Unlike today, however, we had no call-waiting, no caller ID. We had to be respectful of time limits because the operator could break in to say, “There’s an emergency call for this number.” We would be in deep, dark trouble for playing pranks using the phone, like calling a random number to ask “Is your refrigerator running?” A simple thumb and forefinger could press a lever to release the plug from the jack and the phone could disappear as quickly as it appeared.

            The only question my brother asked as I left for college: “Can I have your phone?” He did not care that it was a pretty, blue Princess. I did; I declined his request.

            I loved that Princess phone and I used it until I married, leaving my parents’ home for my own.