Arkansas Interludes

Arkansas Interludes

En route from Memphis back to Springfield early on Sunday morning, I stopped by a McDonald's restaurant in Marked Tree, Arkansas. As carried my bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit, along with a much needed cup of coffee, to a table, I noticed a group of older men congregated at a table behind the napkin and fork counter. All were apparently planters, most probably retired. I have seen their counter parts in many areas of the country: good ole boys who meet regularly, sometimes everyday, to bond and exchange well-trodden information. Their appearances were typical: nondescript: jeans, baseball hats with advertising or cute phrases on them, heavy coats, big pot bellies, and unkempt hair. But two in particular caught my attention. One was overweight wearing an insulated hat and a heavy insulated coat. He didn't say much, only sat and listened to the others. Between his front teeth, he firmly clutched a long McDonald's stirring wand which he constantly waved up and down as though this helped him to concentrate. The other man had a leathery, weathered emaciated face which was permanently formed into either an exaggerated smile or a grimace. I couldn't tell which. A large knit cap was pulled snugly down over his head. His eyes were bright, resting just beneath the rolled up folds of the hat. The grin-grimace contours of his face presented the air that he was up to something, perhaps impishly tricking his listening audience.
This seemed important because his conversation was about the deceased country singer Hank Williams. As I devoured my biscuit, it occurred to me that only in rural Arkansas could I find a group of people remotely interested in a country singer who had been dead for over fifty years; one who had never heard of by most of the younger generation. However, this group considered the information to be current stuff. It seems that he personally knew the man who was with Hank Williams the night he died of an overdose of something in the back seat of a car while on the way to a gig. His vicarious story affirmed that “other people” had told a lot of tales about Hank Williams' death, but his source had personally been there and knew the real facts about what happened. The other men commented on their approval of this event without bothering to ask how they could confirm that this was not just another fictitious tale.
The conversation went long. And when I left, I realized that this moment, this brief experience neither important nor monumental, is the fabric of which our conscious journey through the decades is made. This moment probably should have been forgettable, but I knew I wouldn't. These men and I would never again be in the same place or the same time. We had met without their realization, but they would be stored forever as part of my remembered experiences
A few months later, I again found myself in an Arkansas McDonalds, this time in West Memphis. As I ate my pancakes and sausage, I observed an aging farmer, coveralls, hat and all, sitting across from an equally aging black man. Both appeared to be in their late seventies; both ate bacon, sausage, and cheese biscuits. Both slowly drank their coffee between halting bites and conversed in low tones. What intrigued me was a reflection about their age and the history of this area to which they were clearly tied: long time artificial distinctions between a black man and a white man. Surely in their youth they would have been drastically separated by physical and ideological concerns, if not outright aliens to each other.
I have no idea what circumstances prompted their coming together. Age seemed to have washed out the foolishness of culture leaving only the vibrant contact and friendship between two human beings. Age had become an equalizer: youth, vitality, knowledge, and history reduced to the common denominator of what is essential in the social experience of man. These former things are transitory; what is not is the ability of men to reach out and understand each other. I realized that when we are in the grave our convoluted thoughts and opinions become nothing, even incredulous to another generation. This was a beautiful moment, and I left enriched, changed. Through the juxtaposition of these two relics emanating from a horrid past, I somehow saw a microcosm of what can be crystallized into a gem when our vain struggle to uphold pride, false heritages, and erroneous opinions fail.
I carried these experiences back to my high school English students as an assignment. Probably, they will all regularly meet at the same places, creating their own brand of meaning in lives, to an outsider, that could be classified as mundane. Interesting, they will never know they were noticed and have been the subject of a writing assignment in a Missouri high school classroom