Day 8, pt 2: Fecudating Southern Riverbed

It is not a desolate place, as you might think, Oklahoma. I'm told by the faceless contributors of Wikipedia there are no less than 10 distinct ecological zones from border to border, more per square mile, than even California. From my driver seat, it's grasslands and prairie in the west and heading east the earth rises and wrinkles some with tree-stuffed gulleys and creeks and eventually small mountain ranges that spread into and take over much of Arkansas.

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You don't hear much about manufacturing in the south and maybe that's axiomatic, but Ft. Smith Arkansas is and was an exception, suffering the same rust belt obsolescences as say Lowell, Mass or Bethlehem, PA. Stout six or seven story brick buildings with broken windows, a tired empty Main Street, shuttered bars.

The Arkansas river separates it from Oklahoma which on the one hand made it a launch for traveling and trading westward, but psychologically made it a frontier town, on the safe side of Indian Territory. So while cotton, peanuts and light manufacturing kept it busy, settlers and outlaws wandering to and from Oklahoma apparently made it so rambunctious that it is now famous for its hanging judge Isaac Parker, who made good on his name by hanging roughly 80 men during his terms and as many as six in one day. And as a military fort, it was a way station for the Seminoles, Choctaw, and Cherokee on their forced march into OK. Karma can really catch up to you, even 100 years later.