My Eureka Moment - As Told In Photos

(PART II - See my last post, Saving The Best for Last, for the beginning of the story.)

What kind of place is Eureka Springs, Arkansas?

A place where Gramps straps his cane onto the back of his Harley and goes riding on the winding mountain roads (marked by signs stating "Crooked Road Next Two Miles") with Grandma.


A place where storybook homes - from Victorians to log cabins to stone cottages, seemingly miniaturized for cuteness - appear right out of a tale you once read.



A place where pristine spring water (discovered in 1856 by Dr. Alvah Jackson, who would market it as "Dr. Jackson's Eye Water") oozes from secret grottoes like this one. There are 63 springs in the area.



A place where you can go canoing on a public lake, pull over for a picnic and find the only source of company - and noise - is a flock of very friendly geese. (The animals? Just like the people!)



A place where a three-story building has three different street addresses, thanks to the unusual "stair-step" design of the town, which sits atop 20 hills. In between buildings, precipitous staircases are the only way to enter a building's mid-level shops and restaurants.



In sum, a place that gives a spectacular first date. I was charmed. I was giddy. I even had visions of what our life together might look like. And we ALL know how dangerous that is.

(In case you're wondering, it looked like this: me, sitting at a desk, looking out the window of my adorable, two-bedroom, circa 1900 Victorian cottage, which cost me less than $180,000 to buy, watching deer stroll through the leafy yard, writing the great American novel.)

Saving The Best for Last: Eureka Springs, AR

I knew I had to go to Eureka Springs while I was in Arkansas. I was simply too intrigued. You see, before I left, an Arkansas native told me in hushed tones, "That's where all the hippies and lesbians are."

Now that I've actually been to Eureka Springs (population 2,350), located high up in the fabled Ozark Mountains, I'm still having a hard time believing that this place exists. It's just too good to be true. Certainly I've never encountered anything like it in the South.

I would like to describe it in a way that doesn't make me seem spellbound. Problem is, I think that's exactly what I am. So bear with me. I'll first try to articulate what this one-of-a-kind, Utopian town is like in words - and then in photos in a separate post.


Here are the phrases that come to mind. I apologize in advance for sounding so gushy. (Although perhaps that's only appropriate for a place with "springs" in its name.)

--A sylvan wonderland
--A hidden Bohemia
--A fairytale hamlet
--A hippie haven
--A model of historic preservation
--A bastion of tolerance
--A slice of the Swiss Alps located in Northwest Arkansas
--An unspoiled paradise
--A refuge for rebels
--An artist's retreat
--A step back in time
--A Victorian confection
--The smallest progressive town in the South


A few facts to back up these grandiose descriptions.

• Fact one. The entire town of Eureka Springs is on the National Register of Historic Places. All of the historic buildings, hotels, homes and cottages have been preserved, and the town looks much the same as it did at the turn of the century. Because the original industry (bottling spring water under the Ozarka label and running "healing" bathhouses) died, growth stopped, and the only industry left was tourism. So to stay alive, reinvention was necessary. Homes were renovated and turned into B&Bs. Now, there are over 70 B&Bs in this walkable (albeit with some steep stretches) mountain village.

• Fact two. In 2007, Eureka Springs became the first and only town in Arkansas to establish a Domestic Partnership Registry. It is one of just eight municipalities in the South to have a registry or extend rights to domestic partners. (The others are Atlanta, GA; West Palm Beach, FL; Broward County, FL; Chapel Hill, NC; Carborro, NC; New Orleans, LA; and Arlington, VA.)

Culturally, the most striking thing about Eureka Springs to me, though, was that it's not just a gay-friendly place. In actuality, it's a place where ALL kinds of different people - from gays to bikers to hippies to evangelicals to outlaws to Yankees - live in harmony.

Tellingly, the town motto is "Where Misfits Fit." Tucked away in the lush mountains here, no matter who you are, you are embraced and accepted here as long as you embrace and accept everyone else.

As enchanted as I am? Stay tuned for part two - "Eureka in Photos"!

Crunch On These Numbers

Number of telecommuters to quadruple by 2010
“The International Telework Association and Council estimates that within the next two years, the number of U.S. employees teleworking will increase from the current 26 million to 100 million.”
From Bricks to Clicks (Gainesville Times)

Save $3,000 in gas a year by telecommuting
“If you commute five days a week, 60 miles round trip each day, you pay about $56.25 a week based on a per gallon price of $3.75 and an average gas mileage of 20 per gallon. That’s nearly $3,000 you’re spending on gas per year, compared to $2,100 a year when gas prices were $2.75, for example.”
Gas Gouged? Try Telecommuting. (MSNBC)

Is there a correlation? I think yes.

Have You Taken The Poll Yet?

If you haven't taken the "city satisfaction" poll yet, will you? Pretty please?

I am planning to write a fascinating, if not earth-shaking, analysis of my generation's "relationship status" with their current city. But how can I without YOUR possible swing vote?

Wondering where the heck the poll is? You'll find it about halfway down the right sidebar. Click the "Vote" button to make your mark.

Thanks, everyone!

Second Impressions of Arkansas

Uncrowded (There is no such thing as rush hour. Except maybe 7:00 p.m. on Fridays at the Outback Steakhouse.)

Walmartized (The world’s largest company was founded in Fayetteville, Arkansas.)

Genuinely Nice (People will bend over backwards to help you – just because. And friends are exceedingly easy to make.)

Economically Strapped (Median income, at $33,445, is the third lowest in the U.S. Only Mississippi and West Virginia are lower.)

Conservative (But only by a smidge. The state has gone Democratic in five out of the last 12 Presidential elections. Plus, a certain Mr. Clinton hails from here.)

Sleepy (Many restaurants close at 9:00 p.m. Most close by 10:00 p.m. Only a handful are open till 11:00 p.m.)

Laidback (Hurrying? Stressing? Why would you do that? It’s allllllll good.)

Not Overtly Prejudiced (Despite being a desegregation hotbed in the 50s, interracial friendships and marriages are not uncommon.)

Pretty (Fields of wildflowers. Beautiful mountains and valleys. Sparkling rivers and lakes.)

Itchy Around The Ankles (Chiggers are such a nuisance that homegrown anti-chigger products abound.)

Armed (People like their guns. They like to talk about them. They like to shoot them. Fortunately, not at people though.)

Carnivorous (Restaurants offer steak in whopping two or two-and-a-half pound portions!)

Musically Inclined (Grab a banjo. Bluegrass and its offshoots are intrinsic to the culture.)

These People Are Jacuzzi Mad

Jacuzzis are ubiquitous in Arkansas. By that I mean, nice hotels have Jacuzzis, smaller B&Bs and inns have Jacuzzis, even budget motels have Jacuzzis. To make matters even more perplexing, Jacuzzis sometimes replace the shower - or if both are offered, the tub may be located in the middle of your hotel room. Right out in the open!

I’m not talking about the honeymoon suite either. What I’m trying to get across is the astonishing fact that even a standard hotel room comes with a Jacuzzi-for-two, and the owners and operators are DARN proud of it. You drive past a locally-owned hotel/motel, and nine times out of 10 “Jacuzzis” will be mentioned on the sign.

Here's the popular "heart shaped" model.

Naturally, I have been scratching my head as to WHY Jacuzzis are so prevalent. At first I theorized that Jacuzzis flourished here because water is plentiful. Heck, it springs from the ground all over the state. In Hot Springs, Arkansas, for example, people have been soaking in spring water as a cure-all for over a century.

Then I thought perhaps it had to do with the populace, and their idea of what a “fancy” amenity was. Did it symbolize status? Decadence? Romance? Finally, I caught wind of a fateful clue. I noticed no one ever said “hot tub,” only “Jacuzzi tub.” That subtle distinction is what led this cultural PI to solve the mystery.

Jacuzzi, as it turns out, is not a made-up word. It’s a family. A very entrepreneurial Italian family with a bunch of brothers. One of the brothers’ inventions (a deep-water injector pump) would turn them into a powerhouse corporation – and a household name. What does that have to do with anything? Well, it was none other than the state of Arkansas that wooed the Jacuzzi brothers (with free land) to open two massive plants in Little Rock.

Suddenly it all made sense. The tubs were made here, so they proliferated here. Plus, the Jacuzzis were hometown heroes. They created jobs and brought prestige to Arkansas way back in the 60s. So people embraced them – big time – and now tourists from every economic strata can rekindle the fire thanks to this state success story.

Now that the case is closed, there’s only one thing left to do. I’m going to fill the Jacuzzi tub, crank the jets and call it a day. With my curiosity relieved, I can finally relax…and admit that I could get used to this.

A Little New Orleans in Fort Smith

Arkansas borders six states. Can you name them? (As full disclosure, I couldn’t either. I stalled out at four, and one of them was wrong to boot.) Check out this map for help.

One of the states is Louisiana, directly to the south. After Hurricane Katrina, more than 50,000 evacuees were taken in by the state of Arkansas. Some 9,000 of them were temporarily lodged at Fort Chaffee, the military base here in Fort Smith, Arkansas. (For those just tuning in, I've been telecommuting from Fort Smith for the past week.) I had wondered if I’d meet any evacuees still in the area, and yesterday, I did.

This gregarious New Orleans native remains in Fort Smith with her husband and two daughters. A psychotherapist in her past life, she keeps her hometown spirit alive by running The Shrimp Shed, which serves homemade New Orleans fare. I had the rich gumbo along with her signature crawfish cornbread.

Want a drink to go with your food? Better go put 60 cents in the soda machine. “This ain’t no five-star joint,” she told me merrily. Here, the word “shed” is not something cute and cheeky. The place is literally a roadside shack. The charm (and there was plenty of it) comes from the big personality behind the counter.

Here are some of the things I learned from this engaging restaurateur:

--Crawfish season has just ended. “Can’t get it no more, honeybun,” she told a disappointed customer, who was looking to buy fresh crawfish for a party. “Not anywhere. Not Arkansas. Not Louisiana. It’s done.”

--The reason people didn’t evacuate before Katrina was because the buses stopped running. “Buses were how people got around,” she explained. “No one had cars. That’s why when a woman had man problems, the joke was, ‘Don’t worry. Men are like buses. ‘Nuther one be round in 15 minutes.’”

--She wants to go home. But now she’s started this business. So like many evacuees, she’s not sure when she’ll return. Her youngest daughter was four when they left, and now she’s gotten used to Arkansas. “When my girls are here [at The Shrimp Shed], it’s like dinner and a show!”

It's places like The Shrimp Shed that make me think I could connect with this place. The question is, for how long?

From Ozark Stomp to Honky Punk

The right music can set the stage for romance. Fortunately for me and Fort Smith, Arkansas, the thriving bluegrass scene has gotten my blood flowing.

Take for example The Ben Miller Band from Joplin, Missouri. I stumbled upon them at a bar in downtown Fort Smith. I was a bit stunned to see a shirtless man playing a washboard, a bearded man playing a washtub bass (a broom handle attached to a metal basin) and a wailing singer on the slide guitar. But they soon had my ears tickled and my toes tapping. The three dancing fellows below were feeling it as well. Look to the far right to see the washtub bass.

(As the murkiness of the photo shows, smoking is still permitted in bars in Arkansas. Let’s call it a red flag. But that’s a different post.)

A driving mixture of bluegrass, zydeco, blues, hip hop and good old-fashioned jamming, the band calls their sound Ozark Stomp. (The Ozarks are a mountain range spanning Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.) How much did we dig it? Well, let’s just say three live CDs were purchased from Mr. Miller on the way out.

More surprising, though, was my appreciation for Hank Williams III. A local slipped us his Straight to Hell CD with no small amount of religious fervor. I was expecting country, of course, but country it is not. Called “hellbilly” by some, “honky punk” by others, Hank the Third, as he’s affectionately called, is an unclassifiable renegade. Irreverent, aggressive, hard-drinking and hilarious, he’s got a spirited defiance that goes over quite well in these parts.

Who knew Fort Smith would be a musical education? I find it remarkable that almost every bar has live music four or more nights a week. Music is not just a soundtrack here. It’s a way of life.

That’s a serious turn-on.

Even The Government Is Telecommuting

You know something’s WAY beyond a trend when the federal government is doing it. On June 3rd, the House approved legislation allowing qualified civil servants to telecommute 20 percent of the time – essentially one day a week. Currently about 6% (110,000) of federal employees telecommute at least one day a month.

Why is Uncle Sam joining the bandwagon? “A happy workforce is a productive workforce,” says co-sponsor, Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill. He also cited high gas prices, reduced traffic congestion, less air pollution and decreased absenteeism as factors. Co-sponsor, John Sarbanes (D-Md.), said the government must boost telecommuting to remain competitive in hiring.

The way I see it, employees are leading the way. The more demand there is for telecommuting, the more flexible employers will have to become. Working one day from home per week is becoming pretty common. But what about working from home most or all days? I see more and more people – and I mean full-timers too, not just freelancers – negotiating this in the future.

Skyrocketing gas prices are one reason. Another is kids. In families with two working parents, career flexibility is a huge factor, and not just for working mothers, as this New York Times article about equal parenting demonstrates. Most of the parents interviewed had creative work schedules (e.g. three 10-hour days and two half days). But there’s still all that time lost to commuting (five weeks per year!). That’s five more weeks parents could spend with their kids.

Would you work from home most or all of the week if you could? Have you asked? Please comment away!

What Can We Learn From A Name Like Toad Suck?

I'm a writer. I pay attention to quirky words. And when I travel, I can often get a good sense about a place from the names of its towns, rivers, streets, parks, etc.

So when we drove past Toad Suck in route to Fort Smith, Arkansas, I knew I’d hit the jackpot. This was a place with a sense of humor. Here are the most prevalent theories surrounding this colorful name, courtesy of The Log Cabin Democrat. (See, even the local newspapers have interesting names.)

Despite its hard-nosed investigation, the Cabin concludes that the origins of the name remain in dispute. To quote, “There has never been toadal agreement.” I felt a love of small town America flicker upon reading that.

This observation of linguistic creativity was not isolated. I soon noticed some very amusing town name mashups in the region. It’s like they found every possible combination using the stem “Ark.” Here are my favorites:

Arkadelphia

Texarkana

Arkoma

So I have to put a point in the “pro” column for Arkansas on this front. The names here make me smile.