"Every body got a phone now."

"Don't sell many maps," said the lady at the Petro or Flying J or where ever in West Memphis, Arkansas when Mr. Big Food asked if they had a "topomap" (what we call the states Atlases and Gazetters). "Every body got a phone now." (For the record, we were places today where I had "1x" service.) 

Mr. Big Food settled for what turned out to be a woefully inadequate fold-up map of Arkansas and we set out to do some exploring. 

Looks like the Delta!

"WE BUY SCRAP METAL SEVEN DAYS A WEEK"

Elapsed time, 25 minutes

Arkansas: The Natural State (think entropy)

Marked Tree that way. Birdeye the other.

See the hawk? We saw a LOT of hawks.

I should stick in a page break in before things get too exciting.

Homemade fried pie

Birdeye Store

NO shirt NO shoes NO service

We decided Momma really does bake pies here. It's a big operation. Note vent just to the right of the "annex" with NO  structural integrity. That's a real kitchen vent. As it was Sunday, we had no way to verify.

Moving on... .

Wonder if this is where Momma lives?

We talked about this. Neither Mr. Big Food nor I is familiar with the role Arkansas played in the Civil War. We speculated.

Lovely.

Note that we are definitely out of the Delta, though we still skirt it and can see it to our right at times as we drive further down the road. We were heading west. At Birdeye we turned right, and are now heading due north. Elapsed time since we left West Memphis-- including the stop at Birdeye: 42 mins. We are less than one hour from downtown Memphis.

Arkansas State Veterans Cemetery

Serene

col·um·bar·i·um

1. a sepulchral vault or other structure with recesses in the walls to receive the ashes of the dead.

2. any one of these recesses.

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

GOATS!

We are on our way to some place Mr. Big Food has seen on our woefully inadequate map.

He is navigating.

Meanwhile, I am taking photos of what will not be the only strange bird sighting of the day. Here are seven photos as I took them.

Geese. I think.

But also note the change in clouds-- looking north versus looking west.

More photos of rural America &c.-- including chicken fried steak-- coming up after the break. Stay tuned.