Day 89, Sunday June 2, 2024: Joplin, Missouri to Fayetteville, Arkansas

Carnegie libraries visited: none.

Days sober: 346

The three individuals chatting behind the pickup truck parked right next to Goldfinger wouldn’t go away this morning, so finally I just popped open the hatch and popped out of it. I gave the gape-jawed chatterers a cheery “good morning” and walked into the hotel, as if nothing could be more normal than a person popping out of a hatchback.

Remember – of course  you do, I wrote it just a day or two ago – when I said my daily drives were getting much shorter? Hold that thought. My itinerary called for me to drive 150 miles yesterday, 65 miles today, 150 miles tomorrow, and just 73 miles the day after that. Today my schedule showed that I would drive around St. Louis and visit three Carnegies, all of which are closed on Sunday. Methinks: Why not visit my family in Fayetteville? It’s a mere 365 miles from St. Louis, and I can spend a couple days there and easily get back on my schedule by Tuesday or Wednesday. So here I am, having just arrived this morning, stopping only at the Bella Vista library along the way, in plenty of time to do a little writing, surprise my father in time to shave him for the weekly family Zoom, and still make it to the early afternoon Razorback baseball game with my brother Curt. 

Bella Vista Public Library

The Razorbacks lost the baseball game. I was disappointed, of course. I love the Hogs, and have always been their fan throughout glories and agonies, even though college sports are atrocious in almost every way. Big money, exploited athletes (until NIL were approved, so the athletes can receive some fraction of the money they generate for their coaches), and the others who profit from them, are at the top of the ways that big-time college sports corrupt college culture. 

I played one year of college tennis for the University. It was my dream to play for them, and I was fortunate enough to earn a spot on the roster as a walk-on (non-scholarship) player. Our coach – Tom Pucci – was despicable, and not just because of the atrocious way he treated me. Once I was playing him in a set and he deliberately cheated by calling one of my shots “out” when it was ever so clearly in. Cheating his own player! That’s the least of it. I heard (from a reliable source) that he also encouraged his players to cheat if they could get away with it, and he paid them for doing so. What a lout. He is on the very short list of people I have known whom I despise.