January 31-February 3
Monday the 31st, we took Interstate 30 out of Grand Prairie toward our next stop, Texarkana.
It took about three hours, and the sky was clouding up. No rain. That was coming later. With a vengeance.
We were finally out of the desert. After almost two months of it, we’ve had enough desert to last us a long while.
Most of the drive was in Texas, because Texarkana bills itself as a single town divided by a state line.
I knew there was a Texarkana, Texas, and a Texarkana, Arkansas, but didn’t know that you pass from one to the other seamlessly. On the highway into town you pass a water tower that says “Texarkana, twice as nice.”
The hotels in Arkansas were getting better reviews and I was tired of Texas, so we stayed at a Best Western franchise called the Texarkana Inn & Suites on the Arkansas side. It was roomy and comfortable. If I go back to Texarkana, I might stay there again.
Seeing that it was Lunar New Year’s Eve, we tried to find a place to have a Chinese dinner. Joanna said you’re supposed to eat certain things—chicken, pork, fish—at the New Year because they are auspicious.
A very long mung bean noodle called fun see is also auspicious because it symbolizes longevity.
I checked out what I could of the Chinese fare on offer in the area, and none of it looked very auspicious at all.
So we found one place, Osaka Steakhouse, that had drawn some good reviews. Not Chinese, but we’ll give it a try.
There was sashimi on the menu, too. That really put me in the mood for some raw fish. I hadn’t had any of that since we went to dinner with Bill and DeeDee in Mesa just before Christmas.
Google showed the way. We take I-30 back to Texas, merge onto the Frontage Road, then take Guss Orr Parkway until it turns into West Park Blvd., and you’re there.
We gave up after two failed attempts to find Guss Orr Parkway.
We wound up going to a nearby Outback Steakhouse.
Joanna mentioned to the waiter that she has to avoid pepper. She has had some reactions to it lately and is being even more careful that usual.
The waiter went to check on a couple of questions she had. The next thing to happen is a visit from the manager, who went through the whole menu with Joanna, to point out what had and didn’t have pepper in the seasoning.
We had never had that happen before.
Joanna wound up getting grilled salmon. I opted for pork medallions with a semi-sweet sauce garnished with chunks of pineapple. It was good to change from red meat to the other white meat.
I had the La Crema Pinot Noir. It was good, but a little too mellow. I liked the Trinity Oaks at Longhorn better.
Tuesday was New Year’s Day. We drove down State Line Avenue to take a look at options and to take in a few sights.
We passed several of the Chinese eateries I had read about, and they looked dodgy indeed. Definitely not even in the league with Big Skyy in Riverside. Certainly not like a couple of authentic places we frequent back in New Jersey.
We parked near an Episcopal Church complex that included a day school. It surprised me to see that in Arkansas. I had always thought it was only the New York Anglo-Saxons who had Episcopal parochial schools.
The reasons we parked there were across the street.
First was the Jim Crow monument, dedicated to the mothers of the Confederacy who had sent off their “hero-sons” to lose the war to preserve human slavery. But an even bigger draw was something that I expect could be a truly unique public building.
It is a combined U.S. Post Office and Federal District Courthouse. It straddles the state line and serves the Eastern District of Texas and the Western District of Arkansas.
If anybody knows of another federal or even state courthouse with a similar arrangement, please let me know. Let’s include a reference to that too.
We went back to the hotel and just for the hell of it, I rechecked the directions to the Osaka Steakhouse.
I realized that Guss Orr Parkway isn’t marked. It looks like an exit from the Frontage Road to get to Pavilion Parkway, which is marked.
So we gave it a try. Once you know the secret, the rest is easy.
We pulled up at the Osaka and found that for some reason we couldn’t guess, the Japanese restaurant was closed for Chinese New Year.
To hell with it. We gave up and went back to Outback. It’s the least we could do to return their favor to Joanna.
We struck out for Forrest City, Arkansas, on Wednesday. It was a three and a half hours of driving. With a stop for gasoline in Bill Clinton’s hometown, Hope, Arkansas, and another couple of stops for brief stretches, it took us a little more than four hours.
I got us lost looking in the dark for a seafood restaurant, and that’s how we stumbled on Ho Ho, a Chinese take-out joint. The name is Cantonese and means “very good.” That’s a bit of a stretch, but unless we wanted Popeye’s chicken or McDonald’s, it looked like the only option.
We shared the house special lo mein and a piece of Dixie-fried catfish.
The plan was to stay in Forrest City for the night and then take the much shorter drive to Jackson, Tennessee, on Thursday.
Funny how plans can change.
It was not actually raining, more like a mist that collected on the windshield, for most of the trip to Forrest City.
When we reached the Comfort Suites on Holiday Drive, the parking lot was full of white pickup trucks from a construction company. Several guys from those trucks were sharing beers in the breakfast room off the lobby.
As we were going into the elevator a man joined us. We asked why so many trucks. He said they were all here because of the ice storm.
I had been watching weather forecasts predicting little or no accumulation of snow and ice. That had changed in the past few hours.
The ice started sometime Wednesday night. There were travel warnings on the Accuweather website and on local TV.
By morning things outside the window were covered with ice. There was slush on Holiday Drive. Little was moving. The pickup trucks, though, were already gone, all on the job.
The TV station from Memphis has been carrying stories of power outages, fallen trees and car wrecks.
We managed to extend our stay in Forrest City by two days. We’re playing it safe, staying off the roads and indoors.
There were a few Lean Cuisine frozen meals for sale in the lobby, so we ate Wednesday dinner from the microwave.
They were strange. Joanna had something like penne with chicken and broccoli in Alfredo sauce. Mine was a small chicken enchilada with Mexican rice.
I don’t expect ever to have a craving for Lean Cuisine in the future, but they actually weren’t bad. Boring, maybe, but nothing processed-food revolting about them.
Temperatures are expected to rise on Saturday, so we’ll head out then for our next stop, in Lebanon, Tennessee, on the other side of Memphis.
That’s only a two-hour trip, so even if we run into delays, we don’t have far to go.
Stay safe, gang, and watch out for the ice.
Love to all.
Harry and Joanna
No comments:
Post a Comment