"ARE YOU READY, SISTER?!"

I made it east through Kansas on I-70 to Missouri, passing completely through that state and keeping close to the Kansas border on Rt. 71 South. I drove through Kansas City and was going to stop, but decided not to, trying to make good time. In St. Louis, I stopped at an ice cream place called Braum’s that actually ended up being a grocery store as well, and very reasonably priced. I got two apples, a bag of hot dog buns, and a big bag of broccoli, carrots, and snap peas for $2.75! It was awesome! The other thing I noticed is that everyone was very nice, not like the suspicious stares I got in Nebraska. People said hello and asked how you are doing. I really enjoyed it, and thought back to the days of living in New York City, when my friends and I thought if a stranger was cordial it must mean they want something from you, or they are mentally disturbed. Nowadays, it’s how I judge my liking of a certain state or town - the nicer the people, the more I love it.

I also stumbled on a Goodwill store that was featuring a sale - everything in the store for 95 cents! I bought two sweaters for those Wyoming nights! Well, whenever I get there. Still, you can’t beat that deal. While paying, I asked the sweet cashier, "What’s the deal with Branson? On the map it’s a small town but I’ve been seeing signs all over for it and been getting emails for the past two years telling me to come there. What’s the fuss about?"
She looked almost embarrassed for a split second. "It’s not small, it’s getting really big. There’s been a lot of money spent to redo it, like, millions of dollars. The state is trying to build tourism there."
"Why Branson?"
"Um, I don’t know."

I was about 150 miles away and still couldn’t drive 15 feet without coming across another billboard advertising different shows and hotels. Branson seemed to be the Las Vegas of the Mountains, but a cheesy, watered-down, family-friendly one. No gambling, no sex shows, but it still had it’s own "strip" and featured tons and tons of shows. Many were bluegrass bands, gospel and country singers, although no one I had heard of. There were comedy billboards too, plastered with pictures of the hokiest-looking men I’d ever seen - guys with huge surprised looks on their faces, mouths wide, wearing overalls and fishing hats, some with plastic axes or spitting flowers. It almost seemed as though they were going for a Redneck Vaudeville style show. "Remind me to miss that," I reminded myself.

Speaking of Branson comedy, Yakov Smirnoff has his own huge theater built on the outskirts of town, just for himself, featuring a huge mural of him visible from the highway. In other words, Yakov Smirnoff is the Celine Dion of Branson, Missouri. Now, maybe I’m being to harsh, but that whole hokey-pokey comedy thing just doesn’t appeal to me. I like my comedians irreverent and subversive. I’m a Dane Cook girl. A Zach Galifianakis girl. A Lewis Black girl. And since we’re on the subject of Lewis Black, I will quote him to illustrate my experience driving to, through, and away from Branson, MO: "I had to put my fist in my mouth to keep my teeth from reversing and chewing out the back of my skull!"

71 finally got me through Branson and dumped me out into the Boston Mountains of Arkansas, also known as the Ozarks. I have to say, I was quite pleasantly surprised by Arkansas in general. I was honestly expecting it to be a bunch of hillbillies with shotguns and bushy beards yelling, "Get off mah land!", but what I found were some of the most wonderful people - and beautiful landscape - I’ve ever come across. I wanted to find a campsite in a town called Buffalo - my map said there was one - but the sun was setting quickly and I couldn’t wait any longer.

After pulling in to a few campsites that were closed for the season, wondering if I could just strategically hide my car behind a bush (I was scared of being ticketed for trespassing) I kept driving down Rt. 7. It’s really a gorgeous drive that cuts right in and around the mountains. It was raining, so fog clung to many of the trees and made seeing the beautiful views past the edge of the road difficult, but every so often a clear patch would offer a glimpse of miles of pine lining the Buffalo River. I also saw two smashed armadillos, which I didn’t realize lived in Arkansas. Driving the hairpin turns on wet roads made going any faster than 30 mph difficult, which made the native Arkansasians (Arkansese? Arkansasoids?) a little ticked at me, but not as ticked as they were when I braked and made a hard left into the driveway of the Mill Creek Campground, the only place open in all of the Ozarks, it seemed.

Two log cabins sat to the left of the driveway, a broken-down double-wide trailer to the right.
No signs pointed a way to an office, so I just kept pulling in, over the slick gravel "bridge" that was really just a road in a creek, with a pipe through it to let the creek flow past. Five fat ducks sat in the middle of the bridge and honked loudly as I roused them from their places. Later, I apologized by feeding them two of my hot dog buns, which the females ate from my hand. Past the ducks, I pulled into a large open field ringed by huge oak and pine trees. Picnic tables were scattered along the treeline and a stone building, painted white, sat towards the back of the field.

As I grabbed my purse to find the office, a wrinkled old woman drove over the bridge on a golf cart, accompanied by a blond, middle-aged man with a thick mustache. I spoke first. "Hi, where do I pay?"
"Raht here!" the man giggled. "I’m Richard! An’ this here’s Miss Marie, you pay her."
"Great!"
They showed me the bathrooms, the showers, and the electric outlets. "Now," Richard warned, "they’s sulphur showers, so they maht smell a lil’ funny to ye, y’know, like rotten eggs or whatnot, but they’s alraht."
"Oh, crap... um, am I gonna smell like that when I finish showering?"
"Awww, no, not’a-tall! It just evaporates, it’s fahn" Their accents were very thick, making it almost hard to understand them.

They went back to their cabins, my six-dollar check in hand, and I began the nightly debate with myself over whether to pitch a tent or sleep in the car. I also mused at the gorgeous sunset that was exploding over the treeline, clouds glowing gold and pink against the grey of the passing storm. Right as I chose the car, because it had been raining heavily, Richard drove up on yet another ATV. "I was ‘bout to go check on some cattle, you wan’go for a rahd?"
"Uh, sure!" I grabbed my camera as he rooted around in the back of the ATV for a can-coolie.
"Here y’go," he said, handing me a Busch Light.

We drove up the hill on a shoddy path, as he told me, "Be on the lookout for deer an’ stuff, they’s errywhere!" Right as he said that, we noticed two tawny fawns standing stock-still in a pile of brush. As we rounded a corner, going higher up the hill, a large doe crossed our path, standing between us and the babies. The way Richard got excited about everything, the pure joy in his laugh, made me giggle too. "Awww, look’a them babies!" he squealed. His accent made it sound like "bauybees".

About a half-mile higher on the hill, around a turn, we came into a cow pasture dotted with trees. Thirty-four head of cattle did their best to ignore us as we maneuvered through the sparse trees and hooves. Two belonged to Richard. "That there’s my ol’ Billie!" he said, pointing out a tan and white cow. "You wan’ take a picture?"
"Sure!" I said, hopping off the ATV and up to the animal. She took off walking at a fast pace.
"You kin chase’er!" Richard called.
"Um, okay!" I hollered back, uncertainly, awkwardly tailing poor Billie.
"You jist watch out ‘cause sometahm she’ll stop on a –"
Billie stopped. I was listening to Richard and not looking. And thus I walked face first into a cow.
"On a dime?" I asked, rubbing my cheek.
Richard laughed so hard I thought he’d fall out of the vehicle. "Weeee-heeee! Dat dere was ‘bout the funniest dang thing I err’seen!"
"Well," I said, climbing back onto the four-wheeler. "Glad I could be of service!"

We followed the path out of the trees and into a large open pasture. A huge white horse was grazing just past the treeline, hidden by brush. When we came through the fence, she reared up, whinnied loudly, and ran off into the dusky meadow. I gasped; it was so beautiful. Richard laughed as I asked, "Can I ride her?"
"She’s ‘bout thirty years old. Not even mahn. She b’long to the man who live up the hill, I cut his hay for’im. He’s the one that owns the rest’a them cattle. I’ll take you up’ta his place later. He’s on vacation raht now." (At least I think that’s what Richard said. His accent was so thick it made him sound like Boomhauer from ‘King of the Hill’.)

We drove through the meadow, passing the bull and the new calves. Some of the calves were quite curious and walked in front of the ATV, sniffing us and watching us closely. As we traversed the field, Richard said, "I’ma take you down’ta the bluff on Cottonmouth Creek." We crested a small cliff and drove down the bank of a dried-out creek bed.
Ever the ignoramus, I asked, "Why is it called Cottonmouth Creek? Do people smoke a lot of pot back here or something?"
"Nah, it’s ‘cause all the cottonmouths that live down here."
"Cottonmouths?"
"Y’know. Water moccasins." (A snake just as deadly as a rattlesnake.)
"Hey, great!" I said.
It was nearly dark when we parked and Richard grabbed two beers from the cooler. We stood there for a good half-hour, just talking. It was awesome. He was kind and not at all creepy.

Some memorable points from our conversation:

"Are you much into politics?" I asked him.
He laughed. "Awww, man. I just started votin’ about two, three years ago. One a the state politicians told me I should run’fer office! But I ain’t much into all that. But I did get into it wit’ him a little. He was comin’ round, tryin’ to get votes and asked me what I thought about taxes. I tol’ him just what I thought - see, Tyson Chicken is an Arkansas-based company. But they’s runnin’ all over the country, registerin’ their trucks and most’a their machines in other states, like Oklahoma. That’s bullshit! They just don’t wanna pay the Arkansas taxes, an’ in the meantime cain’t nobody make a dime here. I tol’ that man that, and he said he’d see what he could do about it. Then he told me I should run’fer office! I ‘bout laughed in his face! Kin you ‘magine a hillbilly like me in the state house?"
"Maybe. There’s one in the White House right now."
"Awwww, yeah, I ain’t much for the president."
"Me neither. But what did you think about Clinton?"
"Well, he’s from right down the road. Before he moved to Hope, he lived up this way. He went to my junior high."
"Oh, did you have classes together?"
"Girl, how old you tryin’ to make me? I meant when he was runnin’ fer gov’ner, he came to the school an’ answered questions from us kids."
"Oh. Sorry."

At one point he finished a sentence with, "I’m just’a ol’ hillbilly."
"Really? You consider yourself a hillbilly? You don’t find that offensive?"
"Naw, not really. You kin call me a hillbilly, you kin call me a good ol’ boy, or a mountain man. The one word I don’t like a’tall is ‘redneck’. Don’t call me a redneck."
"Why not that one?"
"It gits a bad name. Jeff Foxworthy’s ‘bout the worst thang t’ever happen to Arkansas. Makin’ us look lahk a bunch’a dang fools. So I don’t like ‘redneck’. It means stupid."
"Agreed."

We finally pulled out of the creek bed and back up into the pasture. Richard put the parking brake on and got up out of the driver’s seat. "Get up, now, girlie," he said.
I looked at him quizzically. "Where are we goin’?" Two hours in the South and already the accent was rubbing off on me.
"Wherever you want to. You gone’ drive."
"Okay!"

He showed me how to work the gears and soon we were barreling off into the pasture, with only the light of the gibbous moon and a set of headlights to guide us. "I gotta New York woman drivin’ my Polaris! I’ma be the talk’a the dag-gum county!" I noticed how he never cursed, he only said "dag-gum." "Pull up here on this hill and turn ‘round," he said. "I wan’ show you these mountains." The Ozarks rose like darkened breasts, stretching from east to west under the now-starry sky. A fog was rolling in, coating the horizon with haze. I told Richard about my run-in with the owl the night before and he told me ghost stories about the spirits who lived in the surrounding woods. For once, I wasn’t scared, thanks to a "How To Deal With Ghosts" cell phone pep talk from my good friend, John, back home.

"This place is very haunted. We’re sittin’ right on the Trail of Tears. Lots of Cherokee here. Sometimes you kin still find arrowheads if you’re tillin’ the hayfield. An’ right down there, see that space between them trees? One man shot another man there years back over one foot a’land. The man’s fence was one foot over the line, so the first man shot’im."

We drove up another crest in the pasture. I was getting sleepy and wanted to go back, but Richard was anxious to show me the hay barn. "Awww, you gotta see the new tractor! Come on, this’a way!" The barn smelled of sweet hay, freshly cut and dewy in the humid air. Sure enough, a new John Deere was parked square in the middle of the barn, surrounded by a half-circle of hay bales stacked to the ceiling.
I acted polite. "Wow, you’re right, that’s a nice tractor. Okay, ready to head back?" I had to go to the bathroom.
"Awwww, naw, you gotta sit in it! Come on, climb up there! It’s still got that new tractor smell!"
It did.

Pulling away from the barn, Richard wanted to drive. "There’s one more place I gotta show ya ‘fore we go back, alraht?"
"Okay," I mumbled, trying not to pee my pants.

However, it turned out to be worth it. Richard maneuvered the four-wheeler down into another bend in the creek, but this one was not dried-up. "See the minnas?" he asked, pointing to a crag in the shallow limestone. The ATV’s headlights illuminated the tiny fish darting back and forth, making them look like floating shards of silver. The creek was divided in parts by higher levels of limestone, making pools. "That part over there’s ‘bout 10 or 12 feet deep, we cain’t go over there!" Richard told me. "But watch this!" He pulled the vehicle strategically to a point by one of the limestone juts. "Put yer seatbelt awn."
I obliged.

Then he shouted "ARE YOU READY, SISTER?!" and gunned it through the creek, laying on the gas pedal and making the Polaris bounce over the beds and send huge plumes of water in every direction, again illuminated by the headlights. I screamed, delighted, and Richard laughed his belly laugh. "You a crazy thang!" he shouted, turning a tight donut in the center of one of the pools.
"Me?! You’re the one drivin’!"
"You’re right!" he hollered, taking off just as fast in the other direction, soaking our jeans and spraying mud on our shirts.
He did it about three more times, until we were thoroughly drenched, and then gave me the wheel to turn back home.

As we drove, he said, "I knew right when I looked atcha that you was a crazy thang!"
"What do you mean?"
"Awww, just full’a life an’ havin’ fun! That’s you, ain’t it?"
"Hell yeah!" I shouted. "I didn’t know there was any other way to be!"
"There ain’t, really."

As I drove over the flat part of the pasture, I noticed an armadillo waddling along, almost blending in with the grass. "Look, an armadillo!" I pointed.
Richard hates armadillos. "FOLLER THAT DILLA!" he shouted into the night, reaching behind him into the storage rack of the ATV. "You don’t mind if I shoot it, do ye?"
"Uh...uh.....I....um..." I didn’t want to play God with an armadillo’s life, but I didn’t have to. By the time I had turned the cab to face the animal, Richard had pulled a huge shotgun from the rack and shot right from his seat. The sound was deafening. I watched as the poor dillo was lifted off its feet by the bullet and flown three feet to the right. But it didn’t die, it just scurried off into the darkness.
"Why do you hate armadillos?" I asked him.
"They’s just like rats. Come in and dig big ol’ holes in the dag-gum field, then the calves get stuck in’em and break they ankles. Or the hay rake’ll sink in there when we’s balin’. Don’t serve no purpose, don’t eat no insects lahk spiders do. They just worthless rats. Done migrated here from Texas!"

When we got back to the campsite, Richard turned a huge halogen light on for me near the bath house. "So the ghosts don’t gitcha."
I asked him to walk over and wake me up before leaving for work the next morning. "I’ll bring ya some coffee!" he offered. Then he said, "I’ve always wondered how New York girls kiss."
"Keep wondering. Goodnight, Richard."
"‘Night, lil’ missy."