Day 14, Monday February 26, 2024: Fayetteville, Arkansas to Fayetteville, Arkansas, via Eureka Springs

Carnegie libraries visited: Eureka Springs, Arkansas

Northwest Arkansas is booming. Bentonville is home to Walmart. It, not Amazon, is the biggest retailer in the world. Tyson Foods, just down the road, is one of the largest agricultural companies; if you eat chicken nuggets at any fast food joint, they probably come from Tysons. The nouveau richeness of the area represents a big change, as when my family moved to Arkansas in the 1950s the area was rural and poor. Poultry trucks were more common than Porsches. If you look out the window as you fly into XNA, the regional airport, these days you will still see trailer homes and tractors on lots next to McMansions and Maseratis.

I drove a loop from Fayetteville through Hindsville, Eureka Springs, Pea Ridge, Bentonville, then back home to the Rom Family Orchard (RFO) in Fayetteville. In 1970 the entire town of Eureka Springs was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it has been designated as one of America’s Distinctive Destinations by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The town has steep, winding streets lined by Victorian homes and arts and crafts galleries. How steep is Eureka Springs? The Basin Park Hotel has its main entrance on the floor below the first, and its emergency exit in the back of the building on the fifth floor. As an undated newspaper article in the Carnegie archives states: “The town is set on end. There isn’t level ground enough within the city limits for a baseball game.”

Eureka Springs Carnegie Library

I had visited Eureka Springs, but not its Carnegie Library, many times over the years. Tht building appears almost to be carved out of the hillside behind it. In fact, the library’s construction exceeded the original estimates because the land local investor R.C. Kerens donated was a solid stone cliff. The library today appears almost in its original form, and when I entered it did feel like I was stepping back in time. The only two patrons there were a mother and daughter, both dressed in goth. 

In Eureka Springs, no one would blink to see goths, punks, hippies, or hillbillies walking the streets. According to Brock Thompson in The Un-Natural State: Arkansas and the Queer South, Eureka Springs became a haven for lesbian separatists and other counter-cultural types in the late 1960s and 1970s. It was the first city in Arkansas to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

It was also the scene of one of my earliest drinking sprees that I distinctly remember, if I’m a touch vague on the details. My brother Curt, friend Tom, and I drove up in Tom’s lemon yellow Vega to hear some band in a cellar bar. I was probably about 18, with a fake ID, which was easy to make in Arkansas in those days. The main thing I recall is that we stumbled out of the bar at closing time, staggered our way up the hill to the historic Crescent Hotel, and then one of us (Tom? me?) ended the spree by flopping into the bathtub to sleep it off. I thought it was just one of life’s many adventures, rather than baby steps toward big problems.

I’ve returned to Eureka Springs every decade or so since then. On a sunny October Sunday in  2017 I drove my father, Ace, and my wife, Ayse, there. We had brunch at Local Flavor Cafe, and I had an artistic variant of huevos rancheros.

As you can see in the picture, I haven’t yet touched the eggs, while I have almost finished my first bloody mary (top right of the picture). I would order another one – only one more – at that meal, although I did have another beer – or maybe one more after that – at the Rowdy Beaver Den, where we sat for a while listening to a rock cover band. 

I didn’t break any laws that day, or get in any trouble. I would not be drunk when I drive home. My father never said anything about my drinking to me, and Ayse would not have found my behavior (two drinks at brunch, one or two more at a bar in the afternoon) out-of-the-ordinary. What I vividly remember is the feeling of how I wanted more and more, even though I didn’t want to make a scene. At Local Flavor, did I slip away to the bar and ask the tender to make it a double? I don’t know; maybe. At the Rowdy Beaver, did I drink out of Ayse’s cup while she was using the restroom? That’s something I definitely would have done, given the chance. 

Eureka Springs is such an enchanting place, and I got to see it on a sparkling autumn day with two very special people. Rather than focusing on them, and on the moment, my mind instead chose only to wonder “How can I get a couple more drinks without being noticed?”