Northwest Arkansas

I don't have a lot of overnights these days because I bid for locals and red-eyes, so it was a bit of an anomaly to have a four-day trip pop up on my schedule. I was not looking forward to the overnights as they all had early morning shows, but I arrived around noon today to northwest Arkansas Regional Airport today on a deadhead from O'hare and had the rest of the day to explore. Some of you might know this area as Wally*World, or Wal*Mart Country. It's where Sam Walton had his first store and his company seems to own post of northwest Arkansas.

Next to our hotel was an amphitheater owned by Wal*Mart. The ubiquity of Wal*Mart stores themselves seems to be on par with Starbucks in Seattle. The hotel shuttle would take people into town for free, so after I grabbed some lunch, I went from the town of Roberts into the town of Bentonville. The main square of the town is like something from another era. This is also where the Walton's "Five and Dime" is, which has been converted into a museum. As it was free, I decided to take a look. It is kind of like going to a presidential library, where history becomes more subjective and nothing bad ever happened.

 Some of the more interesting aspects of the museum were the story of Sam Walton himself. He seemed to lead a surprisingly modest life and drove an old Ford pickup truck. He also apparently flew airplanes to scout locations for new stores and there was a video of other workers commenting on his flying. "Oh that Sam, flying into restricted airspace and getting intercepted by fighter jets." Or, "He did a dead-stick landing because he thought he ran out of gas. He just forgot to switch fuel tanks." Sam Walton was apparently a terrible pilot.

I suppose if the FAA comes after you and you're Sam Walton, you just give them discounts to Sam's Club...

Anyway, after the Wal*Mart museum, I walked to a place called Crystal Bridges Museum. I had to go down some trails through the woods to get to it. It focuses on American artwork and how it has changed throughout the centuries starting with things like portraits of George Washington to Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol.

It was fairly interesting and best of all free because (no surprise) Wal*Mart owns the entire complex. I enjoyed some of the museum's modern stuff, which was borderline creepy with its realism. One of the exhibits was just candy in a pile against a wall with a caption that said the exhibit was interactive and you could eat and taste the exhibit. No thanks. That candy's probably been there since 1998.

But this 3-d self-portrait was one thing that literally stood out for me. Another room had a very lifelike wax figure of an old man sitting on a bench bored. When I finally finished walking through the museum, I couldn't find a way out. It's like they wanted to keep me there (no doubt a tactic inspired by Wal*Mart). After about 20 minutes of walking in circles, I escaped back to the trails and walked back to the main town square.

Shortly after I got there, the trees and decorations illuminated and christmas music began to play from speakers. It was actually a pretty impressive setup for a smaller town. One thing I found interesting, however, was the statue of a confederate soldier in the middle of the square. The hotel shuttle driver had very strong opinions about it and why it needed to stay, but the real irony in it all was a sign in front of the statue telling people not to throw coins into the fountain or add anything to the statue etc. Yet here it was in the middle of the square essentially transformed into a neon christmas tree.

After snapping a few pictures in and around the square, I called up my new friend, the shuttle driver, and he gave me a lift back to the hotel while adding his commentary about how the town's changing and how it's too built up and so forth. To be fair, there was a surprising amount of traffic on the way back to the hotel, which he claimed was to make me feel more at home. I bid my southern friend adieu and attempted to thaw out inside the hotel. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by this region. The shuttle driver may not like the growth, but it's certainly helping the economy - even if everything is owned by Wal*Mart.