I was driving through Arkansas one fine September Saturday in 1994. I'd chosen a pretty rural route, and it was very pretty--reminded me a bit of my childhood home in Oregon--but I was starting to sweat the time. You see, my beloved University of Colorado Buffs were all set to square off with The University of Michigan Wolvernines in Ann Arbor, and I needed to find a bar to watch the game. I think it was Fort Smith that I needed to get to, but it might have been Little Rock; really, I forget (it was my one and only time in the state).
So I stopped at a little restaurant in this tiny Arkansas town and asked the only woman working there if she knew how long it would take me to get to Fort Smith (or Little Rock...you get the idea). She said she didn't know, but her cousin had gone there on a T-ball trip for her kid, and she'd give her a call and find out.
So she calls her cousin and then tells me, "four hours. It's four hours away." Holy ****! I've got to get driving! The game starts in, like, an hour!
I hit the road and found myself in the city less than a half hour later.
This left me a couple of questions to ponder:
1. How could this woman live only a half hour from a "city" and be completely unaware of it's location.
2. What the **** was her cousin doing that it took her 4 hours to get there?
Of course Blake Anderson tipped the ball to Michael Westbrook, and I became somewhat distracted (and also temporarily detained for my resulting enthusiasm) and those questions remained unanswered.
opcorn:
