Confession

May I make a confession? Danke. This has troubled me for years. You see, I traveled up to Eureka Springs via the sensible way this past week. That’s of course through Conway, Clinton, Damascus, (sorry the famous “waving lady” passed away some years ago) Marshall, Harrison, etc. I think GPS systems take you through Oklahoma City from Little Rock. You’ll appreciate my map reading skills when the floods come and the power goes off.

Back to the trip: of course I crossed one of Arkansas’s true treasures, the Buffalo River.

That made me think about way back in history when the Corps of Engineers became offended that there was a free-flowing stream in America and they took out after the Buffalo River, survey-transits a’blazing.

A wonderful cartoonist for a wonderful newspaper, George Fisher (8 April 1923 – 15 December 2003) of the Arkansas Gazette and a group of dedicated environmentalists thwarted those plans. The group called itself, if memory serves, the “Save the Buffalo River Society.”

The time was mid-sixties or so and I was a draft-evader at the University of Arkansas. I joined the Save the Buffalo Society shortly after they formed it. I’ve bragged about that to everyone who would listen. I even bragged about it to those I dated, English Majors mostly. Mister environmentally sensitive: that’s what you could call me.

This self-aggrandizing claim served me well for over 50 years.

Now, after seeing the beauty of that river again, I feel compelled to make a confession, clear my conscience, cleanse my soul, and seek righteousness.

It’s like this. I joined the Save the Buffalo Society because of a girl. She was an art major and a year older than I. Yes, I should have known better than to shift majors. Oh, I wasn’t an English major. I simply dated them. English majors are good folks who know the dangers of a dangling participle. Even B Cole was teaching Language when I met her, and I figured that was close enough.

But an Art major? What was I thinking? Well it wasn’t a case of moral clarity or love of unfettered nature, unfettered things maybe, but nature, no. Anyway, she wanted to save the river from becoming a lake, and I wanted to save her from becoming a lonely Art major. Being the adaptive sort, I signed on to saving the great outdoors. As you might have guessed, such subterfuge didn’t work.

Not only did I fail to impress her, (a pattern that was to exist for years until a superior type of woman picked me out on a parking lot) it got worse. Imagine my shock when I discovered my true value to her. She was using me as a shield to cover up an affair with a married Art professor. Does humiliation never cease? The horror! The horror!

Oh, I did receive one blessing, an “A” in Intro To the Arts. As Swinburn said, “Even the weariest river, winds somewhere safe to sea.”

And I did learn a valuable lesson: English Lit. That’s where the action is.