right on bro!

Yesterday was overcast and dark, setting the tone for the entire day. All I could think about all day long was curling up in bed with a cup of tea and a book. But I’m halfway across the country, and I got another half to go.

I started off the day by going to the Oklahoma City National Memorial. It’s the site where Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred Murrah Federal Building back in 1995. There’s a memorial now where the building once stood, and they closed off 5th street and replaced it with two giant gates - one labeled 9:01, the other 9:03, signifying the times before and after the bombing - and a reflecting pool, which was under repair. The building next door used to house the local newspaper, the Journal-Record, but they’ve turned it into a museum. They preserved the wall that faced the Murrah building, and left the scars in the concrete and the fire escape that got twisted up in the bombing.

The museum was pretty intense, describing everything from what the Federal Building was used for before bombing, to the timeline of the bombing, to the coverage afterwards, to a history of terrorism. They actually had a recording of the bombing from a taped government meeting, which was scary to listen to. And they had a history of the capture of McVeigh and the trial afterwards. I went through the museum pretty quickly, and left feeling a bit sad.

After that, I got lost driving around in Oklahoma City for a bit, and then it was off to my next destination: Bentonville, Arkansas, home of Wal-Mart. Up north up 44 to Tulsa, and then east on 412/Cherokee Turnpike to Siloam Springs. I broke my “no chain food” rule today and got some lunch at McDonald’s. I was running late and was worried that I wouldn’t make it to the Wal-Mart Visitors Center in time, so I ignored my printed directions and shortcut through some backroads (Route 59 to Route 102). The weather continued to be overcast and crappy, and it started raining, but the Arkansas countryside was beautiful and calming.

I finally made it to Bentonville, 30 minutes before the Visitors Center closed. The Visitors Center is where Sam Walton opened up his first store back in the day. It’s located in a square on Main Street that looks like the city square in Back to the Future, except Bentonville’s version is almost totally deserted. The Visitors Center is a giant PR job, full of positive images of the growth of Wal-Mart (I didn’t know they had stores in China) and Walton’s own success as a businessman (CEO of the year, Presidential Freedom award, etc.), but whether you like Wal-Mart or not, it’s hard not to respect (and even admire) the impact he’s had on the retail industry. I bought a bumper sticker (”Bury Me Next to a Wal-Mart So My Wife Will Visit Me”) and a copy of Sam’s Rules of Doing Business from the musem store.

By then it was getting dark. My plan was to get drive far enough to get close to tomorrow’s destination, so I cruised around Bentonville for a quick minute (passed the Wal-Mart Home Office, the Wal-Mart Transportation Services building, and the Wal-Mart Logistics building), and then jumped on Interstate 540 and headed south. The traffic in the Bentonville/Rogers/Fayetteville was, surprisingly as crowded as one might find traffic in Los Angeles. It thinned out after I passed the area, and that’s when it got foggy and rainy out.

So now I’m here in Clarksville, Arkansas, typing this from my motel room (which has free Internet access). I ate dinner last night at the Catfish House - an all-you-can-eat buffet of garden salad, cole slaw, macaroni and cheese, and fried everything else. Now I’m going to let you in on a little secret - I love eating catfish. So when I saw the billboard advertising this joint on I-40, I knew that’s where I was going to eat. I arrived 20 minutes before closing and pretty much ate all the catfish fillets they had left there.

I left my favorite sweater in Oklahoma City. Weak.

Music of the Day
Guided by Voices, “Huffman Prairie Flying Cloud”
Rollmottle, Unfinished Track

New photos are here. Not very many today.