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.

  In 1885, Eureka was required by a federal court to compromise a legal argument about who owned 325 acres of downtown property.

  How did this happen? The short version: This is Eureka Springs, right? Okay. On July 4, 1879 the town was named. Almost simultaneously the "residents" applied for a town site, a State-approved city, which failed immediately. Most folks hadn't lived here long enough to be legal voters.

  What to do? Get a "citizens" committee to plat a town, regardless, which they did by hiring a hard-drinking surveyor, I.N. Armstrong, who was authorized to sell one lot for one dollar. A lot was usually two lots (back and front) about 40 feet square, each, when possible.

  Armstrong was directed to sell only two lots (or one lot, back and front) to any person or entity because three hungry factions were waiting in the wings: speculators (looking for quick profits); miners (claiming mineral rights to the "medicinal water"); and homesteaders, often scammers, (looking for cheap land).

  Armstrong was also directed to plat a street or an alley every 80 feet, which is why the town looks the way it does today. By 1880 he had sold about 1,500 lots, sometimes twice. Armstrong left in mid-winter for "healthier climes" and Eureka was incorporated, lots and all, on Feb. 14, 1880.

  Sharks in the shallows: April 13, 1883, Powell Clayton's Eureka Improvement Company bought a deed to 325 acres of downtown Eureka from two Missouri speculators, Alexander and Linzee. The City thought it owned it. Oops.

  About two years of legal arguments later (April 6,1885) at federal court in Eureka, the judge rendered the verdict for The Compromised [sic] Decree of 1885, as agreed to by the Mayor Archimedes -- no kidding, the namesake of the "I found it" man -- Davis, the Eureka Improvement Company and former mayor and U.S. Marshall John Carroll (not the county namesake).

  So What? Well, part of that deal gave the spring reservations to the public for free and forever, and it gave the Eureka Improvement Company, among other things, "the right for 50 years ... to construct and operate streetcar lines, gas pipe and water pipe lines on each and every street."

  And, exclusively because of the Improvement Company, Eureka Springs is what it is, still, today. So, let's hear it for old-fashioned capitalism. They got and they gave.

  Oh, yeah, the 1879 citizens committee (Let 'er Rip, Boys) did a pretty good job, too.