Our Road Trips

9/30/2014

We spent the day touring Little Rock's 2 famous governmental facilities. First up was the William J Clinton Museum & Library overlooking the Arkansas River. We spent about 5 hours walking through all of the displays...lots to read. We both enjoyed the trip down memory lane a lot...it all brought back a lot of memories, both good & bad. His presidency was a very active time in this country, and aside from a few hiccups, was filled with a lot of good for all Americans.

We have been through 3 of these Libraries on this trip. Herbert Hoover's place in Iowa taught me the most, simply because he was in office before my time and I had never really studied up on him. Dwight Eisenhower's contribution to our society was mostly done during WWII, as his displays indicated. I was a little disappointed that more time & space wasn't dedicated to his 8 years in the White House...the vast majority of the place was about his time before he was our President. But while there was lots of items about Bill Clinton's early years, including his 10 years as Arkansas' Governor, most of the displays were relating to his 8 years as our President and the years since, it reminded us how many things have been forgotten in the 16 years since he left office and how our lives change so quickly when there is a change in the White House & the Legislature...fun day.

We also took the free shuttle across the way to the Museum store, lots of Clinton memorabilia for sale. There was a lot of stuff available if you were willing to pay the price. My CC stayed in my wallet, thank you. But all in all, we had a fun day walking the halls & viewing the memories that were there representing the first administration where the principle players were born after WWII.

From there, we drove the 10-12 blocks to where the Arkansas Capitol sits on a hill overlooking downtown Little Rock. The place was virtually vacant except for a few guards (imagine how boring it must be guarding an empty building) and about 6-8 women we saw in various offices doing the vast amount of paperwork required to run a State government. I will probably never understand why there is always a paper back-up for everything in this day of hard drives and multiple methods of electronic storage devices...guess it is good for the folks who build filing cabinets for a living.

A gal met us at the Visitor Services desk and said we were welcome to do a self tour of the building, as there wasn't any guided tours available, so we took our guide books and went exploring. Nobody was there to get in our pictures except a couple of women on their way home for the day and in one instance, a woman getting her daily exercise by walking laps in the halls of the Senate offices on the 3rd floor. We were locked out of the Senate & House chambers (probably for good reason), but otherwise most everything was open. The building is in the final stages of a major re-freshening project and it looks great for 100+ years old. Some doors need to be sanded down & refinished, but otherwise the building looks pretty nice. The monitors are all flat panels & the building has been brought up to the 21st century. I especially enjoyed reading about all the crap that went on during the construction 100+ years ago...imagined myself at all the ridiculous meetings back then...but I suppose they weren't like being stuck in Groundhog Day like I have been from time to time. But it was interesting reading, plastered on the walls for everyone to ignore, at least by the majority of the folks who walk by the display on a daily basis. That is why I enjoy these sort of displays so much.

After about an hour & a 1/2, we went to our car without speaking to one person other than the guard who searched our pockets and the lady who told us there was no guided tour...we had the place to ourselves and we enjoyed that just fine...I bet Bill Clinton never had it so good.

Steve & Barb Larson