While moving to Austin, I decided to take my time and enjoy it. I never really had a true vacation in my post-college days. Any time off I had taken was usually brief, hurried three-day weekends probably filled with beer. This time I wanted to take a more leisurely pace on this trip. The first time I ever “drove” to Texas from Central Illinois, it was rushed since Dad had to be at work on Monday. None of us really got to take in the scenery of places we’d never seen before.
Day One was pretty successful despite getting lost in Springfield and St. Louis. There was no rush since I told Lee I’d be there by Thursday (2/3/94). Day Two was going to be the highlight of my trip because I had stopped in Memphis on purpose to see Graceland. By the time I arrived I had realized it was also Groundhog Day so I tried to formulate a joke with Elvis sightings and this “holiday” my father always ragged on (Winter always has six weeks remaining by 2/2). I was on a budget so I only took in the house. Until my next visit in 1997, the tour guides still gave you a live explanation over all parts you saw. He definitely lived like a hillbilly who suddenly fell into a fortune, including his grave being in the backyard. Truthfully, his father had the whole family moved from the public cemetary to the backyard after Charlie Chaplin’s corpse was held for ransom in the late 70s. With the house, trophies and racquetball court explored, it was a quick trip to the Graceland post office to send everyone postcards. Then back on the road to Little Rock via I-40, I-55 had played out on this trip.
The drive was amazingly short. I left Memphis around noon and arrived in Little Rock around 2-3 PM. This day’s goal was Dallas so I stopped to check out all the Bill Clinton sites that had been put together recently. There wasn’t too much, he had only been president for over a year. The tour guide lady was quite helpful. She showed me something I never noticed in the famous victory-night photo. As Al Gore is leaning over to shake hands, a Secret Service agent is discreetly holding on to the belt loop in his pants so he wouldn’t be pulled into the crowd. I scored a shirt of Socks, Clinton’s pet cat he abandoned for a dog, to send Mom. A quick late lunch at some local deli Clinton and other politicians allegedly ate at and back on the road to Texarkana via I-30.
Little Rock to Texarkana was rather quick too but I always laugh at the exit sign for Hope, Arkansas along the way. Until Clinton became president, Hope was more famous for making Klipsch stereo speakers. My first college girlfriend, Maureen Carey, was also from there. Maureen had mentioned that the current governor of her state was from her town, this was 1987 then. Being a Midwesterner, I tended to dismiss such a piece of trivia mentally with “Big deal! You’re from the same town as your backward state’s governor. I grew up in Springfield, hometown of Lincoln who has a pretty impressive legacy.” Sunset was coming and I didn’t have a clear idea how far away Dallas was so I kept on driving.
Texarkana didn’t have any real claim to fame other than being the hometown of Ross Perot. I filled up the car with gas, grabbed some McDonald’s and drove on to Dallas. I settled on the suburb of Garland because they had a Waffle House next to the hotel.