Arkansas Blog

Yeah, Max, I'm just waiting for someone to unearth my membership in the Fort Smith Rock Club. That was almost 50 years ago and I swear if any of the girls I dated or married had known I had a deep, early interest in rocks....I'd probably be alone and childless today. I was pretty well drawn to stamps too, but even a fool knows you can only properly service one mistress at a time.

I wish I had known Dr. Freud. It took me 40 years to figure out my early interest in rocks was a pitiful attempt to get the attention and approval of my father who made a living blowing up mountains in order to dig out the rocks. Did yer Dad like stamps, Max?

I'll never forget those early rock finding expeditions I took with old people who'd be pushing 120 today. Rocks are more interesting then you'd think. And even though I was a little boy at the time, I discovered a gorgeous little rock finder name Stuart, proving it wasn't just little boys who were nerdy enough to like them some rocks. What an odd first name for a little girl...wonder what happened to her?

She had a sex-change operation.

Now goes by the name, "Jerry Cox."

All that remains of my childhood is a Heddon fishing lure which once had a bass on it so big I couldn't reel it in. I dragged the bass from the mouth of a creek on to a small peninsula. I think it was 8lb, or course they get bigger with the passage of time, but none of my brothers nor dad caught a fish that day and mine fed the entire family. Of course there's pages and pages of photos.
My stamp collection was lost in a move. There was only one other stamp collector in my small school so there was no club. A few years ago I visited that part of Lake Hamilton where the creek entered the lake. It's all dredged out now and covered with homes. Oh, I still have my Boy Scouts cap, made in U.S.A.

Max, that's neat. It also serves to remind us of the power of print. Someone saved that clipping knowing it would be meaningful someday - and it surely has tickled you a bit today. I wonder what will become of all the deathless, digital prose we're producing now. I love the internet but long live newsprint. This proves it.

great point, mag.

I may be the only human left in america without a laptop, but at the end of another 10-hour day at the computer, the last thing I want to do is crawl in bed with a laptop to read the paper. I want the REAL paper. I read the NYTimes online, obviously, so I won't get it a week late.

Im a packrat, but I totally agree with mag. every now and then, I'll come across an old column written by Bob Lancaster or John Brummett that I've cut out and saved, years ago. I LOVE to go to yard sales, especially locally, and buy things that are wrapped up in 30-year-old hometown weekly papers. somewhere I have the last edition of the Arkansas Gazette. Saved a few Charles Albrights and Richard Allin's, too, does anybody else have his oyster loaf recipe?

seems like Gene Lyons once wrote a column about his family's poodle called something like "beloved pet makes her last leap." It made me cry then and it does every time I find the damned thing. I happened to have a poodle myself at the time.

one of my Bob Lancaster columns came out when some idiot fool church in Berryville (I think.......) wanted to close its daycare because most of those women were just working for fun (Bob wrote about the sheer joys of working with chicken guts all day long) and that if the daycare centers were closed, they'd be staying home with their kids, as the Lord intended. And they were working, according to their churchified opponents, so the family could have big ol' TVs and SUVs and vacations and eat out all the time and also because these wimmenfolks who had forgotten their proper places wanted, I quote, as best I can, "Lord have mercy, store-boughten clothes!"

that was at least ten years ago, maybe longer, and if I'd saved it on a computer somewhere then, I doubt I'd be able to find it today, due to either lack of tech skills or a fatal computer crash, or both, but I can tell you exactly which folder it's in, back in the filing cabinet in the extry bedroom.

anyone remember the charles albright column about visiting his son who had joined the Navy at Hampton, VA? I had two little boys then and that one made me cry. A lot. Of course I can't remember this accurately either, but he said something to the effect of: We must have told him a million times, growing up -- Son, stay in your own yard to play. and now he's going to get on this huge ship and set sail for the other side of the world.

ok, thats all I want to remember now. But those are two damn fine reasons, in my opinion, of why the plain old paper, printed with ink and on paper and all that old-fashioned stuff, can never really be replaced by online papers.

I read some papers online and subscribe to others. But after working on the computer all day, my eyes hurt, and I really don't want to look at a laptop to read anything, or one of them there fancy Kimble (sp?) contraptions that Amazon sells now (for about $300, right?) Just like a crack dealer to people who always have to have something to read............and it has to be a new book, none of those Z-stores for you Kimble people, as far as I know.

Yeah, sure, you can get your book immediately, but I like (and can only afford) used books. I try to buy from Arkie sellers every chance I get, found someone in yellville, i believe, just the other day.

I was remembering being a philatelist and numistmatist. I still have those blue coin collection folders in a safe deposit box. However, back then all scouts did it for a while to get the merit badges and I don't remember that being particularly "nerdy." However, I don't remember any stamp or coin collectors of the gentler sex.

I don't remember what happened to the stamps book.