Relative motion next to a freight train

On U.S. Highway 65 recently somewhere near Dumas, Arkansas, goin' south. In case you can't understand the last part of my little diatribe on relativity, I'm saying that the essential thing about  relativity is whether you can do an experiment to detect whether you're at rest or you're moving. The answer in almost every situation (see below for exception) is no, you can't. Whether you're in straight line motion, or going around a curve, or accelerating upward in an elevator, or freely falling you are in a rest frame. Remove the visual cues, and the Newtonian frame of mind that says there's an absolute rest frame, and the experiments you do to try to detect your motion will fail. For the speed of light to be constant for everybody, no matter how they are moving relative to each other, the sensory information you have is only interpretable as something or somebody moving at constant speed relative to you, or for your apparent accelerated motion, as you being at rest and acted on by a gravitational field. We should, but so far don't, describe relativity in terms of rest frames moving with respect to each other rather than "reference frames" moving with respect to each other.

The one situation in which you can detect that you are moving is the earth's motion on its axis, which can be detected by setting up a giant pendulum suspended by frictionless pivots so that the pendulum swings in a single unchanging plane of motion as the earth turns (was that the name of a soap opera?) beneath it.  However, the earth is so big it's like an unmoving flat surface as far as the relative motion of my car and the train (and the trees and highway attached to the earth) are concerned. Try imagining just me in my car and the train in empty space moving relative to each other. Then you can understand how they're both rest frames as far as the people in them are concerned.

Pine Bluff downtown March 3, 2026

Strolling around downtown Pine Bluff after voting on March 3, I took some photos with my phone, a cheap ($15 per month T-Mobile) flip phone that's not great at taking pictures, since a lot of times in full daylight I can't even see an image on the little screen, and sometimes the image is blurred. A few photos turned out all right yesterday.

In the foreground are my 2008 GMC Canyon truck and the decorated former bus stop bench area next to the Southeast Arkansas Arts and Science Center at 8th and Main. In the background, starting on the left are the Pine Bluff library, the Chamber of Commerce building (where the Malco Theater once was), a glass wall covering the south side of an old brick building that once housed the Henry Marx Men's Store at 6th and Main, the as yet unrestored Hotel Pines (built in 1913), and close up on the right side the Arts and Science Center's satellite buildings (restored old brick buildings) housing, among other things, the Art Space on Main. An upper corner of the 11-story Simmons Bank Building (still the headquarters) can be seen farther back. 

This is the old S. H. Kress building, what's left of it, still standing I'm glad to say, at 4th and Main, where the 4th Avenue railroad tracks are. Other buildings in this area are in decent shape and are usable but not currently being used. Just across the railroad tracks is the still-being-remodeled Baim's Department Store building where the new location of Pop's Barbershop, currently at 3rd and Main, will be.

Below is the entrance, on the right, to the former Cohen's Department Store, now vacant, and further down a vintage car parked next to a bar/poolhall at 2nd and Main.

The vintage car is a Buick LeSabre or Centurion convertible, 1972 or 1973. This is 2nd an Main, where Reed's Drugstore was. There's a "pool hall" (my name for it) there now. It hasn't been open in recent years but apparently is now. It was open about 15 years ago, and Mark Townsend, Dennis Burnette and I played some pool and drank a few beers in there. Diagonally across from it (where I took the photo from) is a more active bar and restaurant, RJ's Sports Grill, where live music is played at least once a week. I haven't yet been there except for a brief visit when no band was playing.

Here's an example of a blurred image, in this  case because of my hurry to snap the photo without being seen. The car was parked in the Pine Bluff library parking lot (I parked next to it when I got there), and the sticker says "Good Without a God, humanist.org." Unusual to see in Pine Bluff! At least now that most people like June and Ed Freeman are no longer there (they likely would not have had a bumper sticker of any sort, however).  The former Shrine Temple where I voted is only a couple of blocks north on Main Street from the library, and I did spend some time in the library after voting and before going on my stroll down and up Main Street.

Henry homestead farmhouse photos Fall 2025

Spider web on the back part of Frank Henry family homestead house north of Monticello, Arkansas. Fall 2025.

Two fawns at the front of the Henry homestead house, as photographed by the game camera on a fencepost near the cypress tree. The date-and-time stamp doesn't work anymore (can't be reset).  The photo was taken in the fall of 2025. Other photos from this time period are shown below.

Front gate taken from steps shown in game cam photos 

or from breezeway, shown below.

The farmhouse is on a county road near Arkansas state highway 425 

north of Monticello. The historic Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church above is at the 

intersection of Hwy 425 and Mt. Zion Road, about five miles 

from the farmhouse. This is a January 2026 photo.

Little Rock and Dermott photos spring 2025

 

From the Knoop Park overlook (called "The Point" by local residents),

7:08 a.m. April 22.

The walking path in Knoop Park, 7:20 a.m. April 22.

Deck on Arkansas River at Riverbend condos with cottonwood trees.

Rita and Woody (Shih Tzu) are on the deck.

Old cigarette display case at Delta Drug, 111 E. Peddicord St, Dermott, Arkansas.

Note the word "Stop" on the left, and the timeless clock face on the right.

February 6, 4:33 p.m.

Joe's (former) Garage, 700 block of  E. Speedway St., Dermott.

May 17, 6:15 p.m.

Molly (beagle), Lake Wallace fog, '67 Chevelle Malibu

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.)

More Pine Bluff High School deconstruction, etc.

Top photo: the John Allen building on the Pine Bluff High School campus. It was built in 1907-08, and torn down (bottom photo) in 1973. I attended PBHS during 1969-1972 and had many classes in the Allen building.  The other two old buildings on the campus were the Junius Jordan Building (1918) and the Woodrow Wilson building (1924, originally used as the junior high school).

Both of the above photos are from the 1974 PBHS Annual. Most of the PBHS annuals are digitized and viewable at the Pine Bluff library website. For some reason the 1969 annual (yearbook) isn't uploaded. I'll have to see if I can correct that oversight. The bottom photo must have been taken in the early summer of '73, before the 1973-74 school year began. The John Allen building was the first of the three old buildings to be torn down. I recently found, on microfilm in the library, an article and photo in the Pine Bluff Commercial from June 4, 1973, about the beginning of the John Allen building demolition. And I actually remember seeing the beginning of the demolition that summer, and being shocked by it, because I felt I was partly responsible for it.

In the '71-'72 school year, as editorial editor of the Pine Cone, I'd written a few editorials saying the old buildings were fire hazards, implying without realizing it that they should be torn down and replaced by new buildings. A reporter from the Commercial interviewed me in January 1972 about my editorials, so I'm on record as supporting the demolition of those beautiful early 20th Century Pine Bluff High School buildings, designed by Charles Thompson. Talk about Ink on His Face! But I'm not sure what else could have been done with them, and they were fire hazards.

So the demolition of the old buildings began 51 years ago, and the class of 1973 was the last senior class to attend classes in the John Allen building.

The night I saw the beginning of the John Allen building demolition, which would have been close to the time it started, I was at a party in the Broadmoor neighborhood and Brian Carty, a classmate of mine, told me the building was being torn down. Then he drove me and someone else (don't remember who) in his new VW Beetle over to look at the beginning of the demolition. This must have been the first weekend of June in '73. Two other things I remember from that night are: being told that the McDonald's in Pine Bluff had just started serving breakfast, and hearing the song "Monster Mash" on Brian's car radio. Brian changed stations when it came on, and I sort of registered a complaint, saying I hadn't heard it in a long time. Brian registered a counter-complaint. He said "They're playing it all the time now."  It was the beginning of the "oldies" radio sensation for my generation! A bigtime radio business now. What would it be like without such nostalgic songs easily listened to on the radio airwaves or satellite radio? It would be a lot more nostalgic to hear the 60s and 70s songs, that's  what. "They're playing them all time now."

I now live a block from the Pine Bluff High School campus, which is currently (again) being demolished, or at least all the buildings are. The football stadium is not. The McFadden Fieldhouse was left standing 50 years ago, and so was the modern building with the cafeteria and the band and choir classrooms in it. But these buildings are being torn down now along with the 50 year old ones.

Above and below: Goodbye McFadden Fieldhouse.

The football stadium in the background.

The John Allen building stood in the approximate

area where the sign is in these pictures.

This year, 2024-25, PBHS classes are being held at what was

formerly Jack Robey Junior High, on south Olive Street.

Vintage postcards of the John Allen building (above) and the Junius Jordan building (below).

The statue David O. Dodd, "the boy hero of the Confederacy," was moved to the front of the Jefferson County courthouse before the demolition of the Allen building in '73, and thus it's missing in the first photo from the '74 annual (top of page). Last year it was moved again, this time to a more appropriate location, Camp White Sulphur Springs Confederate Cemetery outside of Pine Bluff.

And one more (below), showing, at the bottom left to right, McFadden Fieldhouse, the Wilson building, and the building with the band and choir classrooms and the cafeteria. And the hole where the Allen building had been. The other photos show a snow-covered hill and a basketball game inside McFadden Fieldhouse. There were very few hills in Pine Bluff, so it's a safe bet that this one is at the Pine Bluff County Club, where I went sledding as a kid during some of the few times it snowed back then in Pine Bluff.

As the text says, there was an ice storm in January 1974. I was there and remember driving my 4-on-the-floor 1972 Toyota Corona on the ice-covered parking lot next to TG&Y in the Jefferson Square shopping center, skidding and sliding in circles in the car, and also "skiing" along next to my car holding on to the open driver's side door and the roof. 

I was enrolled in a Vo-Tech electronics course at Pines Vocational Technical School after dropping out of Hendrix College at the end of 1973, and I do recall the return that year to Daylight Savings Time in January (energy crisis), because it was still dark (as the text above notes) as late as 7:30 or 8 in the morning, because it was really 6:30 or 7. And January, and cold! The daytime (7:30-3:30) electronics course was not to my liking and I quit after one day.

I lived in a modern one-room cabin "riverhouse" my grandparents had built in 1969 next to the Arkansas River (no telephone) at the time. My parents didn't find out I'd quit the electronics course until March. Since I was unencumbered, instead of getting mad at me for wasting his money on the class, my dad asked me if I wanted to go to Costa Rica with him and his friend Joe Hardin from Grady. I did. I enrolled in my first physics class that May, in the first semester of summer school at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. My free and easy drop-out days were over then.

Pine Bluff Commercial and 2 trains passing in the daytime

I worked for the Pine Bluff Commercial newspaper twice, once after graduation from high school in 1972 as a summer job before going to college, and then again when I moved back to Pine Bluff  in the late summer of 2005, after being away for 33 years. Both times I started as a copy editor, then became a reporter, and both times the job only lasted a little over two months. This was what was expected of me in '72, since it was just a summer job. I actually liked the job then, EXCEPT for having to be there at 7:30 a.m. since it was an afternoon paper. Even though it was a morning paper in 2005, and work hours were flexible and started around 11 a.m., I struggled with the work of being a modern copy editor,  using InDesign to edit and lay out stories and photos.. Then I struggled just as much with being the Business and Farm reporter when that job came open, because I'm no good at writing copy quickly.  I wrote some stories about Hurricane Katrina based on interviews with evacuees from New Orleans who were staying in Pine Bluff, but I really wasn't suited to the job, so I up and quit the first week of October.

The Commercial is still being published, barely, having been bought in 2020 by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette . It's published as a 6-page part of that newspaper's Arkansas section. It wouldn't have survived on its own, so it's good the ADG bought it. The building the Commercial was in from 1963 until the paper was purchased by the ADG--the building I worked in both times I was there--is still standing but is in pretty shabby shape, basically abandoned, although it was bought two years ago with the idea that it could be used to house a cryptocurrency mining operation. Here are two photos I took of it recently, the first before the shrubs were trimmed. The state of the building is an indication of what has happened to newspapers as well as what is happening to Pine Bluff.

The cryptocurrency operation plan isn't happening yet and I hope it doesn't. The parking lot beyond the chain link fence was the employee parking lot both times I worked there. (I don't recall if the fence was there in 2005--probably not--and it definitely wasn't there in '72.) 

In 1972, the glass door going into the newsroom from the parking lot had the words "Employe Entrance" stenciled on it.  That spelling of "Employe," I learned later, was an older spelling of the word that the Commercial (the owners, Ed and Armistead Freeman) still insisted on using in 1972. 

I took the above photos at Beech Street and 4th Avenue, while I was parked on the railroad tracks on 4th Avenue. Beech Street is one of the few streets that has a RR crossing now (Cherry, Walnut, Pine, Main, State and Alabama are others). Overpasses were built in the late 1980s on University Avenue, Convention Center Drive, and 5th, 6th and 28th Avenues.  Poplar Street, a block east of Cherry, doesn't have a RR crossing, but I pulled up there a few weeks ago when I was leaving my house to drive to Little Rock because I noticed there were two trains passing on the two tracks--a rare site. It was something I thought other former or current Pine Bluff residents might like to see. I was playing the title track of Joy of Cooking's 1971 album Closer to the Ground while shooting the video. The temperature setting in my recently purchased 2008 Camry Hybrid happened to be 71 also. I think my late friend Pat Calkins would have liked this video, although there's not much to it. He made a video about ten years ago that I have somewhere (on a VHS tape) of the harbor and the Pioneer Inn area of Lahaina, Maui, while walking around and narrating it. I sure hope I can find that tape, now that the old Lahaina area he filmed is gone.

The Martha Beall Mitchell house at 4th and Elm (a block away) is barely visible (behind a tree) at the 48 second point in the video.