Then there is the town, a wacky tourist town. The small city of Hot Springs, AR might not be culturally unique for its part of the country, but its magnolia tree-lined main drag, never fully replete of the sound of freshly-detailed Harley Davidsons and "salt of the earth" locals, its unkempt charm both intrigues and disgusts.
About the photo above: of course, the person who typeset the billboard at the church fully understood the joke being made. However, this was the questions that I heard more than one festival participant ask, and that might sound offensive, that these guests of the city would assume that the local's weren't sophisticated enough to get the joke, but many of us had enough encounters with the locals that would make us wonder.
"TODA'S SPCIAL, Humbergers, $4.99" - I read this, scrawled on a blackboard sign placed outside of a Mexican restaurant just a few blocks from the school where we all stayed. But--before you might assume that an adult without a high school diploma wrote this, here is some context. This restaurant was only open occasionally, managed or owned by a single family. A mother and her two children would be working when it was open, and the daughter, who seemed to love "playing restaurant," took my order when I ate there, and her writing on the tablet was full of misspells and backward letters. Maybe she was ten years old, maybe younger. She had fun making change, coming to the table and asking "how is everything?" and when I saw the blackboard, I recognized her handwriting immediately. I have noticed this about Arkansas...my guess is that in most states, kids under 16 are not allowed to work at food establishments, but AR seems unique in this regard.
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