Arkansas: Family and Fried Food!

Drive #1

Austin, TX ---> Pocahontas, AR

Distance ~ 650 miles

We started this summer with a great month of hanging with our Austin family.  Highlights included: Freslie's Celebration of Love, playing tennis with the Southside Bangers' phenom Scotty Berens and floorball with the Juiced Crew, and sharing the news of our growing little one, Wiggle Worm.  Note: the nickname for the baby is yet to be set.  Along with Wiggle Worm we are considering Squirrel and Stowey (short for stow-away).  Please add your suggestions in the comments.  Lowlights included: Hudson attacking a neighbors cat and therefore planning for a new fence, and someone driving into our lawn during the middle of the day and damaging our gate and mailbox.  Time to hit the road and make more highlights!

Our first stop is Pocahontas, Arkansas to visit Granny Bea and Aunt Faye, Cara's 90+ year-old twin grandma's.  We had three great lazy days reliving old stories and relearning valuable lessons from Granny Bea and laughing at the next unexpected comment from fun-loving Aunt Faye.  

We quickly assimilated into their nonagenarian lifestyles: Breakfast and then The Price is Right at 10:00 am, lunch and an afternoon nap, early-bird dinner at 4:30 pm, local news and then the Wheel of Fortune at 6:30 pm, bedtime for Granny Bea shortly after and staying up with Aunt Faye until around 9:00 pm.  

Besides relaxing and talking at home, we took a day-trip to see the farmland where Bea and Faye grew up.  It was great to see the setting first hand of many of the stories Granny Bea has told us over the years.  They had a difficult childhood with few luxuries and spent most of their days working on the farm before and after school, picking cotton or miking the cows just to name two that are often spoken about.  They grew up during the Great Depression and one of the stories Bea loves to tell is hearing President Roosevelt announce on the radio the passing of the Social Security Act while helping her mom make corn cob mattresses for the kids.

Cara's Uncle Hoyt joined us on our last day and we decided to go big!  We started the day off with a traditional Brown breakfast of biscuits with gravy (bacon and chocolate), fried ham, bacon, and eggs.  After a few hours of digesting on the couch, we had dinner (what they call lunch) which was a fried bonanza of catfish, potatoes, and hush puppies all washed down with a soda.  

Thanks to Granny Bea and Aunt Faye for hosting and loving us.  What a great way to start this adventure.  On to the east coast!

-M

The Brown home.

 Crosswords and couch time.

Granny Bea and Aunt Faye's childhood school house.

Sittin' on the porch enjoyin' chocolate gravy and biscuits with Uncle Hoyt, Aunt Faye, and Granny Bea (from left to right).