As we continued our westward trek across the continent, the last in our trusty RV, we plowed on into Arkansas, which was approximately the midpoint. This leg of the trip was a bit nostalgic for a couple of reasons. First, this is the state where Dennis grew up. And second, our theatre company did a booming business during the summers performing for a number of Arkansas libraries, many of them year after year. And our route across the state took us through quite a few of the towns whose libraries we haunted.

Jonesboro

First up was Jonesboro, in the Northeastern corner. And we actually paid a visit to the former children’s librarian, Kay Taylor, at her home. We go back a long way with this dear lady and the Jonesboro library, having performed there almost every year from 1996 to 2019. Librarians are among our favorite people in the whole world; they have a tough job (even without the trendy tsunami of ill-informed attempts at book banning) which they almost always execute with the utmost dedication and good cheer. And Ms. Kay was a trooper among troopers.

While we were there, we took a little tour of the amazing mind/body studio (yoga, Pilates, meditation, massage, etc.) her daughter and son-in-law are constructing. It’s brand new, but it will have a classic old, rustic look to it and will have all kinds of intriguing architectural and functional details. We can’t wait to make it back some day and see the finished product when we pass through again. (It has since opened and offers an array of classes.- check out Eastern Livity if you are in the Jonesboro area.)

The next of our perennial library towns was Walnut Ridge, a small community that can (and does) boast of having been visited briefly by the Beatles — not once, but twice.

Mountain Home

And then there was Mountain Home, where we’ve also performed a few times. We stopped here to visit some friends, Peg and Brian. Peg was part of the RV homeschool community that we were involved with years ago when our son was little. Brian is from Scotland; and we arrived just in time to congratulate him for his recent milestone of attaining U.S. citizenship. His son from Scotland also dropped in for a visit. And somehow, somehow, we got so caught up in visiting with our dear friends, that we managed to fail to get a single photo while we were there (except of ourselves doing yoga on their carport). Sorry, guys. We promise we’ll do better next time.

Northwestern Arkansas

And then we continued driving, and passed through the library towns of Yellville, Green Forest, Berryville, and Eureka Springs (the “Switzerland of the Ozarks”). Our stopping point was Fayetteville, in the Northwestern corner of the state. And then we were within spitting distance of five libraries that we’ve been honored to perform at over the years, in the cities of Fayetteville (home of the University Of Arkansas), Bentonville (home of Wal-Mart), Springdale (home of Tyson Foods– the chicken people), Rogers (home of Daisy B-B Guns), and Siloam Springs (home of some water).

In Fayetteville, we visited Dennis’s sister Willene and her husband Paul. Since Paul is, like Dennis, a bibliophile, we unloaded some of the books Dennis has been hauling around. (He has a nasty habit of doing that, once racking up 138 books when we were on the road — in a VAN, not an RV.) And we caught up with a couple of packages we’d had shipped there. These included (hurrah, hooray and huzzah) our new passports, which took a big load off our minds.

The Saga of the Passports

Our old passports still had three years left before expiration. But during the 15-month global tour we’d just completed, we visited a lot of countries and collected a lot of passport stamps (and frankly, the immigration agents didn’t always use the best judgment about where to place the stamps, often wasting valuable space). As a result, we were concerned about not having a sufficient number of blank pages — many nations require several before you can enter the country — for our next outing. So we applied for new passports, which would require sending in our old ones.

It was only then that we had learned that there was a huge, huge backlog in passport processing, owing to the aftermath of COVID. Whereas turnaround time was normally a month or so, it was now at SIX months at more. And we’d be leaving the country again in four months from the time we applied. This left us really chewing our nails. But as our deadline approached, we decided to try to speed up the machinery by forking over extra (hefty) fees for expedited processing. Even that left us waiting too long.

So we tried calling a number for the Department Of State. After several attempts, and waiting on hold for a total of about two hours, we managed to get through to a real human being on two occasions. (And we’re glad to say that both times, the individual we spoke to was courteous and professional.) And we were able to get our passports sent out promptly; they arrived at our mailing address, our son’s house in Rhode Island, after we left there, but he forwarded them on to Arkansas. And here they were in our hot little hands at last. (In order to help ensure that we would have plenty of blank pages in the future, we ordered passports with an extra number of pages, as opposed to the standard model.) Phew!

And we worked in another medical visit, with Dennis going to a podiatrist for a foot problem. Having exceptionally wide feet, he’s always had difficulty being fitted for footwear; and in some cases has experienced a civil war between his feet and his shoes. Lately, he’d been having persistent discomfort on the sides of his feet; the doctor took some X-rays, pointed out that his little toes had been squashed out of place, and advised him to wear looser fitting shoes (no kidding). He also administered an injection of cortisone into the joints — which is every bit as much fun as it sounds like — and said that if worse comes to worst, he could always do surgery to grind off part of the bone. Yoiks.

RV Woes

Also in Fayetteville, we finally connected with an RV technician to have a look at our wonky air conditioner. Even better, he was a mobile repairman, a young man named Landon, who came out to the house and climbed up onto our roof, even in the Arkansas heat. The bad news was that we needed some kind of gizmo replaced, and he wouldn’t be able to obtain one during the time we were in town. The good news was that in the course of diagnosing the problem, he did some tinkering, some juggling of wires, some voodoo ritual of some kind or other, and the AC started functioning again, at least temporarily. And as it turned out, the “temporarily” was permanent, or at least long-term enough for us — we never had trouble with the AC again.

Meanwhile, Kimberly got out her skateboard and did some brushing up on her daredevil skills. And we had some visits with Willene’s twin sons, her daughters-in-law, and grandkids, giving us the chance to be kids ourselves.

Fourth of July and Family Celebrations

Then July 4th rolled around, giving the extended family an additional reason to gather, celebrate and play games like Uno and Apples to Apples (both among our favorites). We always like to see the festivities around Independence Day, including public displays of fireworks. But we don’t enjoy it so much when citizens take fireworks into their own hands, especially at all hours of the day and night. People don’t realize how traumatic these noises cand be to individuals with heightened nervous sensitivity — such as combat veterans suffering from PTSD. This time, fortunately, the decibels were not excessive.

There was another reason to make the day a festive family gathering: it also happens to be Paul’s birthday. And this time there was a delicious (and reasonably healthy, to our amazement) homemade cake to commemorate the occasion.

Born on the Fourth Of July. Not a bad deal, it would seem. Maybe it doesn’t feel like you’re getting older when the whole nation greets you on your birthday with pyrotechnics.

6/26-7/4/2023