In the “too funny to be made up” category, I recently had someone ask me for help, because he could not find “Genesis” in the paperback New Testament he was reading. I referred him to the complete Bible on the bookshelf, told him to look in the front, and somehow didn’t laugh until he was out of the room, but this took extreme effort.
Unless you also live in the American state of Arkansas, you may not have even heard of Fort Smith and Pine Bluff. For those who grew up in this state, though, they’re considered (by our peculiar standards) to be major cities. Fort Smith is on the far West side of the state, on the Oklahoma border, while Pine Bluff is in the Southeastern part of the state, also known as the Mississippi Delta.
I didn’t learn Arkansas geography in school. Instead, when I was a child, my family traveled, mostly within the state — a lot. By the time I was ten years old, I’d been in all 75 counties of Arkansas, and knew quite a bit about where things are here . . . except for these two cities, Fort Smith and Pine Bluff.
If you’re from Arkansas, you know these two cities are nothing alike. What I noticed in childhood, above all else, was the fact that the two cities smelled so different from each other. The reason is simple: Pine Bluff has a lot of paper mills, and the smell near paper mills is not entirely unlike being locked in a small closet with several dozen rotten eggs. Fort Smith, by contrast, is relatively odorless.
What perplexed my parents, though, is the fact that I would consistently confuse these two cities. I’d refer to the “horrible smell of Fort Smith,” or, if I knew we were going to Pine Bluff, I might ask if we’d be crossing the border into Oklahoma. My parents always corrected these mistakes, but I kept making them, repeatedly, which is not like me at all. When young, I never had more than a 50% chance of correctly identifying either of these cities. Once I figured out what I was doing, though — at around age twelve — this repeated error made perfect sense.
When I try to understand something, I examine it, and consider it, mathematically. Often, I’m not even conscious I’m doing that — it’s simply how I think. Both Fort Smith and Pine Bluff are two-word city names. To make matters even worse, the first word of each city-name has four letters, and the second word in each has five. Once I realized these parallels, though, it all made sense: no wonder I couldn’t tell these places apart, with names which, examined through the lens of childhood mathematics, looked exactly alike.
To my knowledge, no one else has ever had a long-term problem confusing these two Arkansas cities. However, when those who know me well hear this story, they are never surprised that I would do such a thing.
I once got into a huge argument, as a 7th grade student, in a “talented and gifted” section of Social Studies. The issue: how many countries are there in the continent of Australia?
The assignment was to choose a continent, and draw a map of it on a full-size posterboard. I had worked for hours on this map, only to get it back, ruined, for the teacher had taken a red ball-point pen, slashed through my line “state and territorial boundaries” in my map’s key, and had written, as a correction, “not states — COUNTRIES.” She also docked points from my grade, but that was a minor issue, to me, compared to her ruining my map. She could have, at least, written her incorrect comment on the back of my map!
When I confronted her about her mistake, she maintained that the political divisions you see above are independent countries. In my opinion, “Northern Territory,” especially, doesn’t sound particularly sovereign, and I said so, but she may not have understood the definition of “sovereign,” for that did not work. Confronted with this absurd situation, I proceeded to grab the “Q” volume of a nearby encyclopedia, and began reading the article about Queensland, loudly enough for the entire class to hear: “Queensland: one of the states of Australia….” I freely admit that, at the time, my goal was to embarrass and humiliate her right out of the teaching profession — for the benefit of her present and future students. I’ve changed my approach, a lot, since then.
A huge brouhaha ensued, and we ended up taking each other to the assistant principal’s office: her, to report a disruptive and defiant student; and me, to report an incompetent teacher, who, in my view, at that age, should have been fired on the spot. Dealing with this situation was probably one of the stranger, and more difficult, situations of that assistant principal’s career, for he knew that Australia is both a single country, and a continent — but he could not, for political reasons I did not yet understand, agree with me in front of this teacher. As for me, I was simply incredulous that someone could be a certified social studies teacher, and not know this basic fact about world geography. The whole scenario, to me, was surreal.
The assistant principal handled it well. To the teacher, he said, “You can go back to class — I’ll handle Robert.” He then “handled” me, after she left, in the only way that could have possibly worked: with an apology, and a polite request to do my best to endure her ignorance until the upcoming end of the year. I respect honesty, was being given a request, not an order, and he had conceded that I was correct. I therefore chose to cooperate — with his polite request.
If he had not taken this approach, I likely would have added him to the list I had, at the time, of people (a mixture of administrators and teachers) whom I was trying to drive out of the education profession, for the benefit of all — but he did the right thing, thus earning my respect.
As for the teacher, I survived the rest of her class, brain intact, and assume she is now retired, this being well over thirty years ago. I’m now in my twentieth year as a teacher, myself, and am pleased to report that average teacher quality has dramatically improved since this fiasco happened. (I wish I could say the same about average administrator quality, but there are, at least, a few competent people working in that field, as well.) During my years of teaching, I haven’t encountered a single teacher who lacked this basic bit of knowledge about world geography. In fact, I count, among my colleagues, many of the smartest people I know.
I am glad, however, that I don’t have to call the teacher in this story a colleague. I simply cannot respect willful, stubborn ignorance, especially in the face of evidence that one is wrong. When one of my students catches me making a mistake, I do the right thing: I thank them, make certain everyone understands the correction, and then we move on with the lesson. That’s what this 7th grade teacher of mine should have done, as well.
If you drink alcohol, and are about to travel in Arkansas, you might want to buy your booze before your trip. You can’t buy liquor on Sundays or religious holidays (a blatant First Amendment violation) in this state. In some counties, first-time visitors learn the term “dry county” when they are told by a clerk that they can’t buy alcohol there on any day of the week. Yes, we still have prohibition here, in many parts of Arkansas!
If you see the sign above, and have you have the urge to utter “Arkansasssss,” pronouncing the second “s,” you’d better do it quickly, if you want to mispronounce the name of our state legally. Once here, it’s actually against the law.
Husbands can even legally beat their wives here . . . but only once a month.
Blindfolding cattle on a public highway is illegal here, even though that’s just good sense, and probably would never be done if our state government hadn’t suggested it with this law. Here’s my favorite dumb Arkansas law, though:
This is the Main Street Bridge across the Arkansas River. It separates Little Rock and North Little Rock. Perhaps as a flood-control measure, our state legislature (#50 among American state legislatures in college achievement) passed a law forbidding the Arkansas River from rising above the level of this bridge.
I’m sure there are more.
Technically, we live within the city limits of North Little Rock, but we’re surrounded by Maumelle, and also live in the Pulaski County Special School District, not the North Little Rock School District. Telling people we live in NLR causes confusion, so we say “Maumelle” instead, but mail won’t reach us unless it includes “North Little Rock” in the address. What’s more, that’s all in one county, Pulaski, near the center of the state.
The weirdness doesn’t stop there. Nearby is a city named Conway. I went to college there. It isn’t located in Conway County, though; that’s further West.
Head Southwest on I-30 from Little Rock, and you’ll soon encounter Benton (not in Benton County, although at least Bentonville is), and then get a chance to take an exit to go visit Hot Springs — but you won’t find it in Hot Spring County. Van Buren is right next to Oklahoma, and a long drive from Van Buren County. Is the City of Jacksonville to be found in Jackson County? Of course not — not in this state. Boonville, similarly, is not located in Boone County.
We have a Mississippi County here, and it borders two other states. We also have a long border with the state of Mississippi. However, Mississippi County, Arkansas isn’t one of several counties which do border the State of Mississippi. Instead, it borders Tennessee and Missouri.
Even things which seem intuitively obvious about my state’s political geography end up being wrong. Ask someone familiar with a U.S. map which state(s) you can find South of Arkansas, and they’ll almost certainly answer with Louisiana, perhaps including Texas, as well. However, the states of Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee, and Mississippi also include land that is South of carefully-chosen points in Arkansas. Here’s visual proof, which you can enlarge with a click:
Yes, all six states which border Arkansas are technically South of us, in a sense.
Perhaps the strangest thing about Arkansan political geography is that the town of Lonoke is actually in Lonoke County. It’s even their county seat. What are they trying to do there, confuse people?
Here, with so many shameful things in our state’s history, it’s nice to have the opportunity to be proud to be an Arkansan. The cause of this pride? Judge Chris Piazza’s ruling, yesterday, allowing the first legal gay marriages in all of the American South to occur in this state — my state — today.
Dare I hope that this is the beginning of a progressive trend here?
Same-sex couples are getting legally married for the first time in Arkansas — today. I live in Arkansas. I didn’t expect to see this happen in my state for at least a decade.
Thank you, Judge Piazza.
(For more information, simply google “Arkansas gay marriage.” It’s all over the news.)
This really happened, in a geography class I took, long ago, in an Arkansas elementary school.
Teacher: “Which state is south of Arkansas?”
Me: “There are six: Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.”
Teacher: “No, Robert, that’s wrong.”
Me: “No, YOU’RE wrong. I’m right, and I’ll prove it.” I then got up, walked to the large classroom map of Arkansas, and ran my finger downwards on the map, six times, along the arrows you see above, while shouting, “South! South! South! South! South! South!” It’s true: from some point in Arkansas, you can travel, due South, into some part of any of the six adjacent states.
The teacher called my mother. Her response? “What’s the problem? He was RIGHT, wasn’t he?”
Murder By Death is an awesome band from Bloomington, Indiana, and these pics are from the sixth of their concerts I’ve seen. As always, they were fantastic!
I live quite near Mayflower, Arkansas, site of an oil spill and ongoing cleanup efforts. You’ve probably seen it in the news.
Living in a landlocked state, we did not have “oil spill” on our worry-lists here.
You may live near this pipeline, too, and not even know it. That’s why I’m posting this map (which I did not create, but simply found with a Google image-search). There may be other such pipelines here, as well. Few people notice them — until one breaks.
RobertLovesPi.net 