Day 9: Victorian Spa

Even in the middle of the night, with packs of dogs still howling, I couldn't figure out if they were circling the camp or just throwing their voices. These and other deliriums were on my mind each time I woke up, hot and stuffy in the tent. I don't think the dog slept at all - ears were up the whole time, waiting for invasion.

***

Morning came without a change in temperature and I packed up and headed down to Hot Springs, not even bothering to cook breakfast.

Signs on the edge of Hot Springs welcome you to the "Boyhood Home of Bill Clinton." I don't really know what his biography is, but I wondered what brought him and his mother and his brother here. Maybe it was work, maybe it was just getting the hell out of Hope which apparently is no bigger than a blinking light at an intersection. And maybe it was a leg up, but before I reached the Historical Downtown Area, I passed more old buildings with signs for businesses that didn't exist anymore than working ones.

Still, it's a pretty spot. Surrounded by mountains, near the big vacation destination Lake Ouachita (very popular with boaters and fishermen), it has a faded, even dilapidated quaintness that reminded me of other former Victorian hot spots like Asbury Park, Cape May, Atlantic City. It's probably in better shape than either of those, because the National Park Service runs much of the show here, for good and bad. Good, because at least there's a continuous source of revenue for upkeep, bad because it's the Park Service and it's notoriously stiff sense of appeal.



The foremost reminders of Asbury Park are the mid-century motels, flared arcades, glassed-in porches. So out of place here in the Ozarks, among the Gilded Age bathhouses and mermaid fountains, they're wedged in with failed grandiosity on the still somewhat fancy downtown boulevard. That nearly all of these hotelmotels are boarded up adds to the perverse pleasure, for me at least, of visiting towns of former glory. The motels are instances of a spa town that maybe lost a lot of business in the 50s and 60s and suffered from return-to-better-times schemes that all these old American vacation spots seem to go through.

Again, fortunately Hot Springs has the protection of the federal government - it's been that way since 1832. The town sits at the foot of a rugged, forested round-topped mountain, the site of Hot Springs National Park. There is lovely winding road up to the top, with lots of trails, of pavement and dirt, crisscrossing up and down, a gorgeous campsite on the opposite side of town, and picnic areas. Every bit a national park, the oldest in the country, actually.

At the top is a pretty turn of the century plaster belvedere from which you see all the other rolling Ouachita mountains and valleys. But at the very tippy top, about fifty yards behind and up the hill sits a small Space Needle observatory, which no doubt literally commands a better view. It probably costs something to go up it, but why bother? There weren't many cars parked there, either, but lots of people braving the steep trails or pulling off the road to get their 360 degree views for free.

What put the mountain on the congressional agenda to set aside are the springs, though recreation was not what they had in mind. The springs are bountiful, mineralled, and of course, hot - an open secret for hundreds if not thousands of years. In the early 1800's guys started to build wooded tubs on or near the springs and the tubs soon had buildings fitted around them. Piping soon siphoned the springs elsewhere to other buildings with tubs, canals and gulleys were cut into the hill to divert the steamy water, people built their homes on the banks of the streams, through their garbage in them, etc. By all accounts there wasn't a lot stewardship involved.

When that became a problem, Arkansas politicians petitioned the feds to help protect the area. The federal government agreed, not least because the waters had a reputation for medical and therapeutic uses. Most people went to them for rheumatism, nervous conditions, all manner of unnamed "women's ailments", arthritis, you name it. Maybe, in an edgy 21st century perspective, I'd like to think this was a sincere attempt to provide and protect a health service for the people. But the government was certainly interested in protecting the springs for veterans, if not everyone else and so came in, cleaned everything up, sheltered the springs under lock and key and began issuing licenses for business or medical access only. Remarkably, Congress also authorized a government sponsored free bathhouse for the indigent.

(Geek alert: the Wikipedia entry for Hot Springs National Park, found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Springs_National_Park, has under its references a 200 plus page history of Hot Springs in pdf form, complete with pictures).

Bathhouses opened up at the foot of the hill, only a few hundred feet from the springs, and eventually throughout town, with clientele ranging democratically from the indigent to Gilded Age parvenus. Bathhouse Row became the defining feature of Hot Springs, with hotels or sanatoria attached to them. Only two are open any more, though a couple of the hotels elsewhere in town are open for business.

The National Park Service oversees them now, restoring one, the Fordyce, into a museum, and keeping another, the Buckstaff, open for business. The Fordyce, it turns out, was for the upper echelon, complete with elegant cherrywood lockers, stained glass in the steamrooms and a fountain of Pissaro (said to be the first of European to dip his boot in the water) in the men's room. Crews are working in several of the other buildings with I suppose designs to open them again.

***

The Buckstaff treatment (cheap! $50 for water internal and external plus a massage) leads you through not just a series of soakings, washings and steamings, they pour out of Victorian contraptions intended for Victorian ailments. It turns out this was the best reason to go Hot Springs.

The treatment takes place in one large, white tiled room filled with tubs, benches, sinks, and stalls with varying degrees of privacy. The attendant, Walt, was dressed in white t-shirt, shorts, tube socks and shoes, waited for me to approach, wrapped in a queen sized cotton bedsheet. With brief, stern guidelines I was told how to climb into the clawfoot tub. Once settled in, I was immediately given a small dixie cup of water to drink and, mysteriously, my own lufa mit. You're suppose to hold on this the whole time and then take it home as a souvenir, Walt told me. Well, ok, I will.

Meanwhile, in the tub, separate piping gives the water a nice massaging stir and after a relaxing, unbothered twenty minutes, I was brought out and led to the other end of the room where a much smaller squat porcelain tub had a thick stream of water running out of it. Sit down, please sir, Walt told me, and I did. Legs draped over the edge, feet on the tile floor, ass in the tub. The warm water hit my lower back and ran under and around my cheeks. I put my hands on my knees. I waited for something else to happen. But after a little while, Walt came back and escorted me away.

I came to a hunched, tin covered stall. It was the steam closet, but I needed to know what I just went through.

"What's with the buttwash?" I asked, with mock male comraderie. But Walt'd been asked that a thousand times. "It's a treatment for lower back pain and hemorroids, sir. Step inside." He opened the closet door and I sat on the century old water and buttock softened wooden bench. Milky glass, reinforced by chickenwire, let in light overhead and made me think of a nursery hothouse. I draped my towel over my head and pretended I was consumptive.

After another ten minutes or so, it was on to the highpoint of my Victorian techthrill. Walt pulled the curtain and unveiled the most menacing apparatus I'd ever been naked in front of. I literally took a step back. A dozen little spigots, attached to rib-like arms reached out in a semicircular embrace and I was asked by Walt to step inside. On came the water, spraying me on all sides and from a gushing open faucet above. It was hard to do the little dance I do when in my own poor single-headed shower - reaching for soap was out of the question - but I managed to lift my arms, rub my face and legs and back and hit all the right places. And while I felt pretty restricted, it was also pretty thrilling to be in the middle of this water spouting contraption.

Out I came, dripping. I was allowed to dry off a bit, but quickly led to a cot where Walt provided strict directions on how to lie down ("Legs up, head to this side ... THIS side please.") and on which side of the body ("On your back, please sir."). Once in the proper position, a hot, soakingly heavy towel was fitted over me for a long, sleepy rest, and the treatment was concluded. I felt great.

***

After Hot Springs, it was on to Little Rock, partly to get back onto I-40, but also to hit the Arkansas state capital. I think I want to get a little obsessive about visiting every state capital I can.

Pictures of the Arkansas capital, plus more of the insides of the Fordyce, Gilded Age spa supreme, are in my Picassa folders, here: