From Toad Suck to Wooly Hollow

We awoke this morning in our newest neighborhood at First UMC of Conway, Arkansas to a bright Labor Day Monday sky and the sound of multiple lawn mowers working up and down the surrounding streets.  Homeowners and yard services hard at work.  So what did I do?  I got straight to my gardening with the rest of the locals.  I watered TOM.

About 11:00 we piled into TOAD for the 4 mile trip to the Crockett residence for lunch.  Vickie makes the BEST Guacamole! 

And she reads some of the most interesting American authors!  She told us that in Stephen King’s new book, Doctor Sleep, the little boy from The Shining returns as an adult.  We both may just have to read that one.

  

We were really impressed by the shelf of Clayton’s published works in his field of religious studies.  I had about 30 minutes to scan his 2011 edition of Radical Political Theology. I won’t pretend to say I understood all he was driving at in the skim I gave it, but we spoke of it later that afternoon and I think I got the gist of his premise.

Vicki next took TOAD and us to the place TOAD had heard about since first  arriving in Arkansas as the IN PLACE for amphibians of all sizes.  FROG had to stay behind but she had seen the place where the festival happens when we first came into town.  TOAD couldn’t see it since she was tied too close behind FROG at the time.  The unincorporated community of TOAD SUCK and the TOAD SUCK DAZE FESTIVAL was next on our bucket list!

OK, the town of TOAD SUCK is no more but the dam and Corps of Engineer’s Park at the Toad Suck Ferry has taken its place. And while the festival has been moved to downtown Conway the spirit of the event still survives in the original site, out by the dam and barge locks on the Arkansas River.

Then we loaded up Bryan, age 9, and Maria, age 13, in the car and both of us drove twenty miles north to the lovely Wooly Hollow State Park and Bennett Lake.

The Woolly Family cabin, built deep in the woods of this area in 1882 saw four children born and survive to adulthood within its walls.  Today it stands as a memorial to all who homesteaded Western Arkansas in the nineteenth century.

Bennett Lake had been dug out in 1939 to develop new ways to farm that would avoid erosive tilling practices like those that caused the Dust Bowl in this area and west throughout the thirties. The lake was a hit with fisher persons and swimmers from the day it opened. And it was a hit with all of us today.

The water was comfortably warm, the air the same, and the sun shown down on the best way to say goodbye to summer I can think of.  Oh, and the food in the snack bar, including some kicking ice cream, was HALF 

                                           PRICE till gone!

The  Crocketts headed home to Conway and we hung around to read a bit in the golden evening light then followed their tracks, almost.  You see, they had told us of a regional chain of BBQ establishments called WHOLE HOG CAFÉ and we just felt it was time to loosen our belts for some down home Arkansas BUH BA Q.

Yeee Haaa!

-Ken