Out of arkansas (05/07/08)
In South West City, Mo., at Missouri's southwest border, an 1821 stone marker is inscribed "Mis. 1821" and "Ark." (no date; still a Territory). Statehood brings a wealth of riches to the privileged few.   A 36o30' north latitude survey line here also designates the southern border for the 1820 Missouri Compromise, a Congressional decree pairing slave- and no-slave (free) states for simultaneous statehood, thereby balancing Congressional votes, for or against slavery...

Out of Arkansas (04/30/08)
Water and sewer rates: Everybody still here? Okay. All of this dithering and figuring about how to pay for the improved, enlarged sewer plant is without any regard to high-end usage and its cost-affect on the low-end usage.   Residents use about the same amount of water as always, and the vast majority don't have swimming pools, hot tubs, spas, laundries, restaurants, car washes, elaborate gardens, fountains, bars or public bathrooms...

Out of Arkansas (04/23/08)
First, let's take a generality as a given: In war, there is a fine line between combat and murder.   The Civil War did not begin at Fort Sumner, S.C. It began in "Bleeding" Kansas during the 1850s, where pro- and anti-slavery politics escalated from violent arguments to violent combat along the mutual borders of eastern Kansas and western Missouri...

Out of Arkansas (04/16/08)
Eureka has a dense concentration of late 19th- and early 20th-century architecture, representing distinct styles of various eras, including Victorian and Romantic.   National Folk, 1850-1890. Overall: symmetrical, simple, two long, divided window panes. ...

Out of arkansas (04/02/08)
During the winter of 1858-59, three successful Missouri businessmen -- William H. Russell, Alexander Majors and William B. Waddell -- founded the Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express Company, a freight and stage company employing about 3,500 wagons to run between Leavenworth, Kan. ...

Out of arkansas (03/19/08)
De Soto's 1540s' records recount almost constant contact with villages in Arkansas. In 1673, French Explorers Marquette and Joliet encountered only a few scattered villages along the Mississippi. European diseases had taken out about 80 percent of them...

Out of Arkansas (03/12/08)
It is so.   Delegates. The Primary Election is the first step into political manure. State delegates, chosen by the party, pledge to vote for our choices for the political party's nominating convention. Each state has a specific number of delegates based on population...

Out of arkansas (03/05/08)
As long as we're on this subject, let's consider the Chamber of Commerce's new, widely played ads to attract attention to Eureka as a wedding destination: "Romancing The Springs."   One more time: Romancing The Springs. And now, all together: Romancing The Springs. Finally, what in the hell does Romancing the Springs mean? As a definition, romancing means, "to carry on a love affair."...

Out of Arkansas (02/27/08)
All cultures have these kinds of interesting stories meant to engage children's attention while teaching the facts of survival in a world that isn't fair.   In 1812, the Grimm brothers published their collection of German Fairy Tales, which were really grim but truly good advice...

Out of Arkansas (02/13/08)
From 1830 to c.1900, an estimated 300,000 people traveled 4 to 5 months along this 2,020-mile route; 30,000 of them are still buried beside it.   The trail began in Independence, Westport, and St. Joseph, Mo., and ended at the Pacific Ocean. It was followed by families who wanted a new life, free land or the thrill of an adventure that promised rewards described only vaguely by their imaginations...

Out of Arkansas (02/06/08)
Topographically, Arkansas can be divided into distinct sections: mountains to the north and west, alluvial plains to the east and south.   This topography and the major rivers dictated animal traces, early Indian paths, later European trails and roads, railroads, and today's highways, many of which parallel or overlay each other...

Out of Arkansas (01/30/08)
He sat his big Arkansas mule crossways, right leg hooked in front of the saddle, left boot stuck down into a stirrup. He sat as he was: tall, lean, old, and violent. Directly ahead, from his broadside, about 20 yards down the track, a cabbage head laid by the rock depot, spouting hot white clouds of steam hissing chalk-colored dust...

Out of Arkansas (01/23/08)
Down by the Arkansas, near its old river crossing at Toad Suck Landing, the Ozark Mountains peter out, changing to bottomland soil and odd sandy roads headed east toward Lollie, a little place, small, without charm or a promise of it. White folks have lived here by the tens, not hundreds. The dead ones are happier...

Out of Arkansas (01/16/08)
Okay, it's winter. Truly. You're beginning to gnaw on the bones of gossip. And, not only can you see your neighbor's house, you can see your neighbor in the house. Your first thought is, "I never liked him anyway."   Obviously, it's time for a road trip, but can you afford one? Sure...

Out of Arkansas (01/09/08)
First off, let's get a definition for what a punctuation mark (?) is all about: It's used after a direct question. Really?   Okay. But why does "why" need a question mark? "Why's" definition is: for what cause, reason, or purpose, which is unto itself a direction question...

Home for the Holidays (01/02/08)
Home For The Holidays Dec. 27, 2007. Packed yet? Okay, then how about a checklist? Really? And your dogs have vet reservations? Sorry. Yeah, but it does sound like your folks' new house is awfully, very big.   Oh, this year you all, all of you all, are going over the hill and through the woods to grandma's ... uh, your brother's in-laws, parents' house?...

Out of arkansas (12/19/07)
Eureka Springs was built on two mountains and a long, broad hollow between them. Nowhere is there a place flat enough to pitch a circus tent.   Reportedly there are 238 named streets. None of them form a four-way intersection, most of them are wickedly narrow, and all of them run hog wild along razorback ridges and up-and-down daredevil grades past cliff-clinging houses...

Out of arkansas (12/12/07)
Here we are with 12 days before Christmas, not the beginning of Epiphany (the 12 days from Dec. 25 until Jan. 5).   The only divine manifestation now is the revelation of a mathematical equation: The sum of your purchases divided by the shipping costs is equal to the square of the late charges on your credit card...

Out of arkansas (12/05/07)
[Synopsis: Part 1, last week: 1820 Little Rock. This week: Oh, Oops, there's a north side of the Arkansas River. Community names began popping up like rabid Pogo sticks.] In 1838, U.S. Army officer Richard DeCantillon Collins established DeCantillon, (Why his middle name?) a river ferry landing to Little Rock, way after which it became Huntington, in honor of killing small animals in the swamps and bogs, and, briefly, before the completion of the north river-side of the Memphis & Little Rock Railroad in 1871.. ...

Out of arkansas (11/28/07)
As the state's number one historical attraction, Eureka Springs has a right to be contentious. The town's ongoing political free-for-all is merely preserving Arkansas history.   An 1819 act of Congress established a new Territory named Arkansaw. Nobody here paid much attention to the spelling. They wrote it, and anything else, as they pleased, like Arkinsas, Arkansa and Arkancas, which mostly sounded sort of, kind of, the same...

Out of arkansas (11/21/07)
In 1966, Notre Dame's legendary football coach Ara Parseghian ran out the clock against Michigan State to cinch a 10-10 tie, which later won him the national championship.   When pressed to explain how it felt to play for the tie, he said, "A tie is like kissing your sister." Well, if that's true, then a compromise is like kissing a cockroach...

Out of arkansas (11/14/07)
If the vehicle you drive gets less than 20 miles per gallon, you own a gas guzzler. Simply put, this means you're a second-class citizen. Smokers get more respect.   "Why pick on me?" Too much gas is the answer. A garbled news story wrote it this way, "Carbon emissions are to rise by 45 percent over 1999 levels."...

Out of arkansas (11/07/07)
Kenya, once an East African, British colonial possession, is home to the Masai, famously fierce warriors, as well as exceptional herdsmen.   The British, ever obtuse about cultures other than English, "hired" them to tend vegetable gardens, swat insects and such. This deal fell apart pretty fast, after the British told the Masai to get rid of their goats because the goats were eating the gardens...

Out of arkansas (10/31/07)
"A man walks into a ..." Most everyone knows what's coming next, a bar joke that will be predictably short and definitely twisted.   Bar jokes are so famous, there are jokes about bar jokes: A man walks into a bar. You'd of thought he would'a seen it. Or, more directly, a rabbi and a priest walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Is this some kind of joke?"...

Out of arkansas (10/24/07)
Demolition by Remodeling Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, also known as the “Undenied Generation,” finally found true happiness: the good old days and especially those good old houses. Well, almost.   There is a problem with those little rabbit-warren rooms, and the bathroom needs to be bigger, the kitchen smaller, and that wasted space of a porch should be enclosed, and why can’t I have a tower and some windows in the attic?...

Out of arkansas -- (10/17/07)
In 1812, Arkansa, as spelled then, was a District in the Territory of Missouri. As far as locating Arkansa on any map of that era, the best notation would have been scrawled, "Here Be Dragons."   About 45 miles from today's northeast boundary line is New Madrid, Mo., platted in 1789 at a horseshoe bend of the Mississippi River. ...

Out of Arkansas (10/10/07)
An apocryphal story about Eureka Springs has an old resident of the town visiting with a stranger on a bench in Basin Park during The Great Depression.   Sitting among the vacant splendor of perfectly preserved stone buildings and gingerbread houses, the stranger says, "Old Timer, this town is sure enough dead." The old man agrees, saying, "Yeah, but ain't she laid out pretty."...

Out of arkansas (10/03/07)
"Remember friends as you pass by / As you are now so once was I / As I am now so you must be / Prepare for death and follow me." (19th century headstone.) Beginning in the Victorian era, death and cemeteries were romanticized, especially by the new concept of interment in secular, garden cemeteries rather than churchyards. Named from the Greek "koimeterion," meaning resting or sleeping place, cemeteries are reliable sources for town histories...

Out of arkansas (09/26/07)
In 1857 John Butterfield's newly organized Overland Mail Company reeled in a whale-sized $600,000 per year, six-year, U.S. mail contract.   The 1861 War of Northern Aggression, which, along with 618,000 men, killed his contract and the world's longest stagecoach line: 2,800 miles, 120 miles every 24 hours, running day and night, stopping every 20 miles enroute to San Francisco...

Out of arkansas (09/19/07)
Arkansawyers, like all Southerners, are known for their hospitality, within limits. We are always willing to bend over backwards for a guest but as a whole we have never been known to bend over in any other direction.   Hernando de Soto was the first guest to understand our limits of hospitality. He was, without doubt, the original Show-Me-The-Money man...

Out of arkansas (09/12/07)
The first road west of the Mississippi left Arkansas Post and followed Indian trails, animal trails, rivers, creeks and the line of least resistance. The danger of cutting cross-country during the 18th and 19th centuries is best paraphrased by a modern park ranger: "My problems start when the smarter bears and the dumber visitors intersect."...

Out of arkansas (09/05/07)
While not a dark continent, Arkansas has no illuminated reputation. Geographically we're the state somewhere above Texas. Economically, our motto is "Thank God for Mississippi." And as a people we even describe ourselves as Arkansans, like maybe we are Kansans, instead of Arkansawyers...