Molly, Rita's 12-year-old beagle, in Rita's living room. This blanket-covered wicker
rocker isn't Molly's usual chair, but she liked being in it for a little while. December 6, 2024.
Lake Wallace near Dermott on a foggy day (December 15, 2024).
At least one big alligator lives in this lake.
This '67 Chevelle Malibu was parked near the entrance to the Brookshire's Super 1 grocery store at 28th and Hazel in Pine Bluff when I came out into the parking lot on January 20, 2025. It was in bad shape inside, too, with upholstery worn down to the seat springs on driver's side. The front seats were bucket seats, so this is likely a Chevelle Malibu SS, which was probably my favorite model car in 1967, when I was in the 7th and 8th grades. Pat Calkins became my best friend at about that time, and he really liked the Malibu SS, too. But he was lucky in that his dad had, in addition to the Impala station wagon family car, a white '66 Mustang Fastback, another of my (and Pat's) favorite cars. He got to use it after he turned 16 on January 20, 1970. I got to drive it occasionally, and was even stopped for speeding by an Arkansas state trooper when Pat let me drive back after we took a girl (Pam Hankins?) from Pine Bluff to Helena (she needed or wanted a ride there) one weekend night in September 1970, soon after I turned 16. I recall from that night: "Tears of a Clown" playing on the car radio as we were leaving Pine Bluff driving on Harding Blvd; saying to Pat on our way back on Hwy 79, north of the Free Bridge and near my grandparents' farm, "There's a blue light ahead of us (pause), and one behind us too"; that I had a "lid" of marijuana stuffed in one of my square-toed boots (and Pat was also holding, LSD probably) when were were stopped; the state trooper had me sit in the backseat of his car while he wrote the ticket, and I could see the radar unit Nixie tube display showing I'd been driving 78 miles an hour. (Speed limit on major two-lane highways like U. S. 79 was at the time 65, if I remember correctly. This state trooper must have been a decent guy to not to give Pat and me a hard time, since we were hippies, or at least wannabe hippies, which means I was wearing bell bottoms and probably a tie-died t-shirt along with my newly purchased square-toed boots, and I had semi-long hair, though not long enough to be parted in the middle.)
