Dad and I had a nice Spring Break trip through Arkansas and Mississippi. Here we are in Square Books, the downtown bookstore in Oxford, Mississippi. It was a great bookstore. Very cool place.
This is Dad in one of the old bath houses in Hot Springs, Arkansas. It's now a museum where you can see how people used to come here for a bath in the healing waters and then work out at this gym (men only of course). What you can't see in this picture are the wooden dumbbells they used.
I reread To Kill a Mockingbird on this trip because my classes are going to start reading it soon. I love this book. I also learned about a similar trial that took place in Mississippi and went to the courthouse where an all-white jury found 2 white men not guilty of the murder of Emmett Till, a black boy from Chicago who was brutally beaten, shot, and then dumped in the Tallahatchie River with a cotton ginning fan tied around his neck for whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. Dad and I also went to Money and found the general store where the alleged whistling took place.
And this is in front of the home of William Faulkner in Oxford. He bought this house shortly after he married and lived here until his death. He wrote the outline for his book, A Fable, on the walls of his office here. To keep his kids from playing on the balcony, he told them stories about how someone died from falling off and their ghost stills sits out there. He also told them there were ghosts haunting the front yard and if he landscaped as his wife wanted him to, the ghosts would move into the house. No doubt the kids helped him convince his wife to leave the yard as is.
We also went to Cleveland where we watched ACU play two games against Delta State, and on our way home we stopped in El Dorado, Arkansas to visit Dad's aunt and uncle.
It's always nice to get out of town for a while and do a little traveling and exploring. It's rejuvenating and helps give me a greater appreciation for home.
