On the Road with Verona Red Day 2: Hot Springs, AR

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Hot Springs, Arkansas

Due to a fairly rough night, despite my best efforts at waking the group up (a few mumbled repetitions of "Guys... guys we need to get up" before falling back to an uncomfortable slumber) we ended up setting out a couple of hours past the ideal departure time. No worries though, as a quick phone call to the night's venue, Maxine's, cleared everything up in a few minutes. Adam took the helm and drove for many hours while we kept our ears open for our bands to play on the radio.

Hot Springs is a surprisingly bustling town considering its population of around 40,000 people. Its big claim to fame is being the boyhood home of former president Bill Clinton. This was exciting news, as perhaps this was an environment that fostered and nurtured the values that Mr. Clinton endorsed through his presidential career. We were definitely looking forward to meeting the women of Hot Springs.

The downtown area had a small but busy nightlife area, the most crowded bar being Maxine's. We transferred the equipment from the van to the stage and then everyone relaxed a bit before the set began. The venue had live music on an extremely regular basis, and it seemed like the crowd was definitely interested in experiencing new bands. After a great set, Chris and Mike schmoozed their way over to the merchandise booth, chatting the crowd up and trying to generate some lasting interest in the band.

The Aftermath

While the rest of us were clearing the stage, apparently Mike was making some progress towards some sales with a locally grown mother and daughter combination. My task complete, I wandered over to the rest of the band to see who these ladies were. Adam bolted the other way past me with a look of extreme consternation on his face. I later found out that this was because the mother, while showing Adam the pictures on her cell phone, had "accidentally" landed on a self-photo of her middle aged lady parts. It seems that the insinuation was that Adam could partake if he so desired. The daughter was fairly level headed considering her train-wreck of a mother. She was definitely interested in Mike, who was keeping her at arm's length because of his girlfriend waiting for him back in Chicago. She was middling in terms of attractiveness, and would have been a step down for Mike for certain so the aversion was pretty simple.

We parked the van down the street, and went back to Maxine's to consume the free pizza and beer we were all entitled to. As we got to the private VIP area reserved for the bands, Steve made his way up the stairs with a gentlemen from the crowd that looked even skeevier than him. The snippets I overheard of their conversation were on extremely classy topics, like peddling various illicit substances and romancing the ladies. When the grimy Arkansan vagrant reached for his second slice of the band's pizza, I could see the rage growing in Adam's eyes. A brief chat and walkabout with the lad calmed the tempest.

While trying to park the van, Chris had stumbled across a business that piqued his interest. A little joint with a French name with a big neon sign in front that said "Strip Karaoke". Never one to pass up an adventure, Chris asked me if I'd like to join him. We strolled down the avenue and entered the fine establishment. We were informed by a gruff black bouncer that the cover was ten dollars and it was B.Y.O.B, as we stared in amazement at the little sliver of heaven that waited just beyond. We heeded the lesson learned from Icarus though, and left for fear of flying too close to the sun.

We decided to take the daughter's offer and go to the bar down the street for a bit before closing time. This was more the way that we perceive the Southern bar; open area with hardwood floors perfect for a good line or square dancing session, tables and stools that looked like they hadn't seen a cleaning rag since the celebration of Clinton's inauguration, and rampant obesity in patrons and employees alike. A cowboy hat, boots and a heavy dose of good old backwater prejudice was all that stood in the way of us fitting in with this crowd.

I know this sounds terrible with the generalizing, but all those stereotypes proved true over the next few hours. In fact, the very first set of people that Chris and I talked to were a brother and his scantily clad sister acting a lot friendlier with each other than most siblings do. The way they talked and acted, I'm surprised they could keep their hands off of each other long enough to belch out the inarticulate semi-sentences they were producing from their mouth holes. Actually, they were quite kind (I think) and proposed that we join them at the after hours establishment down the street, an invitation we regretfully had to decline.

Meanwhile, Mike and Adam were talking to the daughter from before and trying to secure a resting place more comfortable and legal than a van on the street. She informed them that she was staying with her mother at a hotel a bit outside of town and extended an offer for us to crash there for the night. We gratefully accepted, as the necessity of a shower was becoming clearer with every passing hour spent in a hot van with 4 other males in their mid 20s.

As we entered the hotel we were presented with a seemingly tornado ravaged room of beer cans, children's toys, food wrappers, books (ha just kidding) and other various garbage. Did I forget to mention? Daughter had a son. The reason they were in the hotel in the first place was that the father of this future success story stabbed her, so daughter, her mother, and the baby all moved. All of this must come as a shock. We all grabbed blankets and pillows from the car, and I began the shower rotation. When I came out, much to my surprise, the mother and two of the reddest of necks I have ever seen were entering the hotel room. One of them was a fat bemulleted middle aged guy, and the other was a skinny younger guy with crooked teeth in a wife beater. Think Cletus from the Simpsons. The older guy looked like a Gus, and the younger guy, for lack of a better name and for the sake of rhyming, was called Bus.

The mother and daughter immediately started spitting venom at each other while the Gus n' Bus laughed hysterically. Their next joke was to start throwing dollar bills at the daughter, encouraging her to strip and perform sexual acts with various band members. The mother seemed to find this highly amusing as well, which was a credit to the stability of the family. Then, the mother kindly invited us to help ourselves to whatever beer and food was around. This was great, until the next bit of information came out: "And I got some weed too which ya'll can have. I got some dope here, but jes' enough fer us so ya'll can't have any of that." Dope in various circles and locales means different things, but I was able to discern the regional meaning when the tin foil and lighter came out. We were sharing a room with three full blown meth heads. The daughter gave a resigned sigh, and slid under her blankets.

Over the next few minutes, coincidentally enough, Adam, Mike and Chris all realized they had left something in the van that they urgently needed to collect. I was cuddled up on the floor trying to ignore my surroundings as Steve, who had recently concluded after much deliberation to not partake in the meth, walked out the door and urgently beckoned me to get the hell out of there. I was a bit drunk, and a lot tired, so I hadn't even realized the Verona Red exodus that had been made. I then proceeded to oh so subtly grab my bag, shoes, huge blanket and pillow and extract myself from the room, mumbling "This, uh... this blanket smells really bad. I'm going to get a new one from the van."

After seeing the dude-filled van, however, I decided to take my chances with the meth heads. I went back to the hotel room alone, trembling with fear, and was invited to sleep with the daughter in her bed. At least I would be comfortable when a meth addled hillbilly shanked me in my sleep. Bus took a thick novel from the daughter, surprising everybody as he began to read the first chapter of the book with a solid elementary school level proficiency. Now, most people would read about a paragraph before they got bored with the joke, but the meth carried him through about twelve pages of this lovely bedtime story.

Eventually the two gentlemen departed, leaving me alone with the mother and daughter. The mother made some lovely and warmly received insinuations that I would be more than welcome to share her bed. In fact, she opined, although her daughter desperately needed to get laid, her experience and knowledge of carnal affairs would make her a much more suitable bed partner. After gently declining, despite the yearning in my heart and loins, the mother and daughter proceeded to have a very loud argument over how the daughter was going to wake up for work early the next morning. The mother was adamant that the alarm not be set, as it would wake her up. She then suggested that the daughter not even go to work, and begin collecting unemployment and/or welfare much as her cunning mother was doing to support her habit. It turns out that the whole "waking the mother up" aspect was rendered moot anyways, as she was having meth fueled arguments with herself throughout the entire night until morning. And she still didn't have the decency, or to be fair, probably the capacity to wake her daughter up in time for work.

Hot Springs, Arkansas. Way to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and really shed those antiquated stereotypes.

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