Hey Light! A childhood encounter with the Gurdon Light.

I have very vague memories of the light myself.  Honestly, I still couldn’t tell you if I’m remembering something that actually happened to me or if it was told to me and I just remember the tale.  I hope you enjoy it.

The boys were excited -- uncles and cousins of mine, all whooping it up out on the back side of the house.  There was a spur of excitement going through the tight little pod of young men hanging out on the carport.

One of them came in the house and strode past with big steps, crossing the dining area and swiping the phone handset off its cradle in one long swoop.  He spun the dial five times and paused, then started talking rapidly into the phone.  There was laughing around.

“Hey!  Yeah, we’re taking the kids out to see it.  How about your bunch?”  He paused again, listening as I stood by the bar, peering up at him.  “Well, if you want to send the boys that’s fine.  The girls will be too scared.”

“I’m not scared,” I piped up.

“We won’t be out too late, but there are ticks out there.”

“I’m not scared at all,” I told him.

He looked down at me and kept talking.  “We’re about to head out.  Send them over.”  The phone handset went back down on the cradle and he bent over.  “You’re too young.”

“I’m not scared of anything!”  I insisted.  He took off back towards the carport, and after a moment I decided to follow him.  I must have been just five or six, but I was certain I was ten feet tall and bulletproof.

The trucks were being loaded up.  One of my cousins, still a teenager, saw me coming out and picked me up, setting me in the back of the truck.  They were all yammering on but I wasn’t paying much attention.

One of the guys wasn’t a relation but a friend of one of my cousins.  I knew his name was Marcus.  He had dark hair that swept over his eyes, and he had assumed a perch sitting on the wheel well.  “Y’all know the story, don’t you?”

Some of the boys nodded.  I nodded too, though I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.  Marcus continued anyway for the benefit of those who had shaken their heads.

“There was a lineman named Will McClain.  He worked on the MoPac line back in the thirties.  He got in a fight with one of his guys, a fellow named Louis McBride.  Fella beat him to death with a rail spike.  We’re gonna go see his ghost!”

I shivered, but I didn’t want the boys to tell I was afraid so I didn’t say anything.  Several of them yelled their approval, and two of them climbed back over the side of the truck to go hunt up a few more flashlights.  I checked to make sure my little Snoopy flashlight was working and tucked my legs up under my arms.

I heard my grandmother come out and call my name, but I didn’t answer because I knew she’d make me come back in the house.  It was getting on full dark and I didn’t want to wuss out.  I saw her go back in and walk past a few windows.  She was probably looking for me.

One of the cousins was passing a quart size glass Coke bottle around.  I reached out and grabbed it and took a sip of the hot Coca-Cola when it passed, just like the boys.  It went on, and I heard one of the uncles holler at Marcus -- “now don’t you throw that down, you drink that and put it on the carport.  There’s a deposit.”

The other truck started, and I crouched down even further, afraid my grandmother would come pull me out of the truck before we left.  Then the truck I was in started up too, and we were crunching down the gravel and out to the highway.

It was cold and quiet now.  The older cousins had migrated to the other truck for the most part, and I was sitting with a bunch of pre-teen boys hunched down against the stinging cold wind.  There wasn’t much point in talking, since the wind just whipped our voices away.

We drove through town, over the big set of railroad tracks through town then out onto Highway 67.  We made another turn on Stickey Road and drove until we got right by the interstate.  The trucks were parked end to end along the side of the road and we all piled out.

I paused for a moment, looking up at the interstate bridges overhead and wondering what sort of trouble I was going to get into.  There were already some of the older guys with their big Coleman flashlights walking east up the tracks, and they just kept pushing on.  No one argued the wisdom.  No one wanted to show they were yellow.

I turned on my little Snoopy flashlight and was bothered by how little it actually lit.  I decided my best bet was to stay in the middle of the tracks, and maybe I’d hear well enough to get off the tracks if a train came.  I couldn’t see much more than two or three feet in front of me with the little light and I kept it angled towards the ground.  There was some light cast ahead of me by the couple of guys behind on the tracks, and way ahead were the dancing lights from the big Coleman flashlights.

I could hear the older boys talking ahead of me, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying.  The screech of frogs and crickets was almost overwhelming, at first accompanied by the sound of passing cars on the interstate behind us.  The latter died out in favor of croaking and the occasional deep woods owl as we progressed further down the line.

The noise ahead changed as the guys reached the first trestle, the hollow thump of their shoes on the wooden crossties denoting the location.  I was extra careful on the ties, fearing I’d fall in the ditch below.  I wasn’t really worried about being hurt, I was more afraid of the embarrassment of falling in the mud.  If I was going to be as smart and strong as the boys I had to keep on going.

We weren’t far past the trestle when one of the guys hollered “Whoa!”  He clicked off his light and we all followed suit, standing as quietly as we all could in the sliver of crescent moonlight along the train tracks.  We listened, hearing a little rustling that could have been us or the wind or any sort of passing animal.  And then, someone hollered

“HEY LIGHT!”

… words that about knocked me out of my skin.  I bit down on my tongue to keep from crying out.  I was suddenly very scared.

But there was nothing.  We all looked around, then different male voices from around the track started chiming in.  “Nothing.”  “I didn’t see it.”  “Naw.”

“Nothing,” I chimed in.

“Who is that?” one of the guys asked, but no one answered.  I figured I was already in big enough trouble and started back towards wherever we were going, snapping on my light and angling it at the ground.

“What light is it, Marcus?”  one of the guys behind me asked.

“It’s supposed to be Will McClain’s lantern you see, but I think it’s his head.  Don’t ghosts glow?”

Another voice piped up “how far along is it supposed to be?”

“It could be about anywhere,” he replied.  “We gotta keep going.”

And on we went.  Two more times we paused, cut our lights and waited for some sort of light to appear.  It was a long trek.  My tennis shoes were starting to get damp inside and mosquitoes kept buzzing my head.  I saw the Coleman flashlights suddenly aim up -- seems we’d reached Highway 53 and had gone past where we were supposed to see the light.

And they all turned back, a few of the uncles heading past hurriedly, talking betwixt themselves about which trestle it was past.  We headed back down along a low incline hill a bit.  This time we were quicker, and I was nearly running to keep up.

And then I tripped.  My flashlight landed on the tracks and then fell over the side of the embankment.  My knee hurt from scraping the gravel between the cross ties.  I tried not to whimper.

Right about that time another halt was called.  The lights went out -- all but my little Snoopy flashlight, which was just out of my reach.  I crawled forward and finally got over to it, clicking it off just as one of the guys hollered “hey, there it is!  See it?”

“What?  Was that it?”

At first, I thought they were talking about my light, but then it was followed by “no, there it is!”

“Where?”

“Ahead!  See it bob?”

“Hey, Light!”  two of them hollered.  I tried to tell whether I could see a light ahead on the tracks or not.  I stood up and brushed myself off, peering into the darkness ahead.  I could see a little movement, but whether or not it was a light or the shadows of the guys on the track ahead of me I couldn’t tell.

For a few moments we were all quiet and still.  I think everyone was trying to determine whether or not what they saw was real.  And then Marcus again.  “See?  There he is!”

There was a whooping amongst the men, and I heard a couple of hands clapped on shoulders.  I was scared to move forward to try to see it better, since the lights were off.  But I didn’t want them to leave me out there in the dark, so after a few moments I turned my flashlight back on.

“Hey!” I heard from a couple of directions.  I scuttled down the tracks until I could see forms in front of me and killed the light again.  By this point other lights were flashing about and the moment had passed.

“Are we going to see it again?”  someone asked.

“Naw,” Marcus shouted for all of us to hear.  “We’ve probably done spooked him back to his grave.”

No one argued with that.  We all just kept walking down those tracks in the dark, slapping mosquitoes and trying not to trip.

When we got back to my grandparent’s place there was an affirmation from everyone that yes indeed, we had seen the ghost of Will McClain.  But I wasn’t convinced.  I was relieved to be able to sneak in with everyone and not get in trouble for going, but I kept my mouth shut and went and got ready for bed.  I scratched those mosquito bites until I fell asleep.

Years later I learned more about the light.  I also learned that folks from Gurdon have all sorts of different ideas about it.  Some say it’s light from Interstate 30 bouncing through the trees… but we were way deep off the interstate and besides, that light’s been seen since the thirties and I-30 came through years later.

Some, like my mom, swear it’s just swamp gas.  Others believe it’s light emissions from compressed crystals underground.

There have been all sorts of paranormal folks who have headed out and who say they’ve figured out that yes, there’s some ghost out there.  I’m not sure if I’ll ever be convinced.

I went out there a few weeks ago and took a look at the old tracks, both from Stickey Road and from Highway 53.  The tracks have been abandoned in the intervening years, and they’ve grown up quite a bit.  But while I was out there on those tracks, I heard a train approaching.  I heard the rumbling along the tracks and the whistle as the train approached a crossing, and it sent chills through me.

Of course, it’s from the line that still runs through the city of Gurdon, a town that had few claims to fame outside of the Gurdon Go-Devils. the International Order of the Hoo Hoo and Jimmy Witherspoon.  A town that’s earned a spot on the paranormal map.  Go figure.

On the subject of fried bologna: Southfork Restaurant

Fried bologna... it's what for breakfast.

There are a certain number of dishes I consider to be native to south Arkansas. Most of these never grace a menu at a restaurant — sugared rice, tomato slices, mac-and-tomatoes, butter beans (not lima beans in butter), pintos-and-ham, yellow corn cakes, collard greens, apple smack (baked apples in cinnamon without a crust), blackberries and sweetened condensed milk, bream fillets and fried bologna.

That latter item — you can find certain places. My friend Jerry rants and raves about the inch-thick slice on the fried bologna sandwich at Whatta-Burger. But not a whole lot of places. Jerry grew up around Glenwood, so I can see how that might influence his choice there. It’s just a south Arkansas thing, and it’s ingrained in us (such as the desire to consume every deviled egg at a gathering, just happens).

There is a place that does carry a certain south Arkansas meal, though, that I think should be pointed out, even if it is a truck stop. That place is the Southfork Restaurant.It’s on the Gurdon exit heading south towards Texarkana on I-30. And there’s a particular meal there that just hollers that particular area of culture at it, if you’re willing to listen.

See, fried bologna is not haute cuisine. You’re never going to see it on the menu at a five star restaurant. You’re not going to find it served alongside filet mignon or lobster, and if you’re lucky you won’t find it as a surprise at an Iron Chef competition. Some folks eat it, others serve it up to family members, and there are a few who use it as fish bait. It is a food of the people, particularly the ones who wear their collars blue, and with a little dirt on them.

It’s not a sandwich meat, it’s a meat category on its own, just like Spam. Similarly, it can be served at any meal. Bologna and egg scramble is popular, as is bologna and biscuits. At lunch served in a sandwich cold, sure, but at dinner in huge hunks in the mac and cheese or in the sauerkraut. Yay bologna.

Thing is, just like other usually pork-based products, I haven’t imbibed in bologna in a long time. I’ve also passed up on those pintos and ham, too, since I don’t want a dietary rupture or other nastiness unfit to be recounted on a food blog. That’s why I stared long and hard at the menu at Southfork Restaurant one Friday afternoon. Grav and I had stopped on our way somewhere else. I’d missed out on the other meals of the day and another hour’s drive or more without refueling would just make things tougher on us both. He was taking care of other business in the attached gas station while I gawked at the menu. And I kept seeing bologna all over the place. Surrounded by the familiar patter of soft rhythmic voices in the restaurant, I felt a centering, a question coming on.

I looked straight at my waitress as she returned with an iced tea. “How’s the bologna?” I asked.

“Thick.”

“Is it popular?”

“Well, of course it is.”

“I just wondered,” I asked, my eyes already starting to scan elsewhere on the menu for a Reuben or a bowl of chicken and dumplings. “I can’t have it.”

“You can’t have some beef bologna?” she asked.

I stopped. It had been so long since I’d had bologna, I couldn’t rightly recall my last encounter. Lunchmeat just isn’t found at my house, much less combination meats such as bologna, the occasional turkey pepperoni not withstanding. “I… don’t know,” I answered, thinking.

“I’ll give you a minute,” she said as she saw Grav coming down the way. He sat down and picked up the menu.

“What’s good here?” he asked.

“Breakfast,” I answered, and got an immediate weary look.

“Anything else?”

“Actually, breakfast is the only thing I’ve ever had here. Good cornmeal pancakes. Good coffee.”

“So what are you going to get?”

“I’m thinking bologna.”

He stopped, looked at me over his glasses. “You’re going to eat bologna.”

“It’s beef.”

“It’s bologna.”

“Yeah, well…” I was staring at the menu item. Fried bologna… burned, as it should be. It came with pintos and ham and cornbread and fried potatoes. At that moment I could not think of a more south Arkansas dish.

“Well, it’s your choice.”

“Will you eat the beans?”

“I’ll try them, sure.”

“And the bologna?"

“You’re on your own.”

Our waitress came back and took my order. We chatted about the south Arkansas patter and the randomness of things while we waited.

The platter came out on two dishes — one with the fried bologna and potatoes, one with a rather large bowl of beans, cornbread, onions and tomatoes. And margarine. I was giddy. I think Grav thought I’d lost my mind.

I didn't wait at all. I just cut a piece of the thick slice of bologna and ate it. And for a moment, I was eight years old. It was almost crustily burned on the edges, and warm in the center, and it tasted… like only bologna can. Part of me was repulsed. Part of me felt guilty.

The potatoes, once I tried them, were the same sort of skillet potatoes you get out of a big piece of cast iron on the stove, but different — obviously (and quite rightly so) cooked in vegetable oil instead of pork fat. But tasty to me.

Grav kept shooting the beans. And shooting them. And shooting them. In fact, I should be using his photos but I’ve worked him way too hard this week. Those beans, and their dangerous little lumps of pork meat, all served up in that fantastically chipped-edge bowl. And I couldn’t try them. But they smelled great.

I did reach over and grab a cornmeal roll. Just like I expected, it was unsweetened, crumbly and a little dry — sort of like a good cornbread memory. Buttered it was great. Buttered with a piece of that fresh onion on it, and yeah, I was all about the experience.

I was a glutton. I ate the tomatoes. I ate a bit more of the onion (but not all of it — traveling in a confined space, it woulda been rude). And I ate every bit of that slice of bologna.

So, part of my regular diet from here on out? No. Not in the least. We weren’t ten miles down the road before the whole “what the hell did I just do?” cropped up in my mind. Bologna, beef or not, worse than potato chips or candy bars, just utter junky food. But for that moment, it was oh so good.

There was, of course, the entry for bologna and eggs on the menu, and I had considered that (before Grav’s weary look) and I probably woulda had a similar experience. And maybe next time I head back that direction I’ll give it a shot. Probably. Who knows?

Fuzzy Memories and a Short Stack.

This coffee cup somehow reminds me of my grandfather. He was a one-armed house painter, no joke. I don’t have a lot of recollection of him, but one thing I recall is that he always had his coffee in a brown cup. Of course, he used a little milk or Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk in his.

It’s funny -- I had family in Gurdon, but I’ve been passing by the South Fork Restaurant for years. Never occurred to me to go in. And from the outside, it didn’t look that large to me. Then again, exit 63 is a patch of big sky in between the woods and the highway. Go figure.

Walked in this particular Friday morning on my way to Dallas. There were a lot of tables right inside the door but I wanted to be by the window, in a booth. One of the waitresses told me to just sit anywhere, so I found a nice booth next to the window under a rope-strung light. I had coffee at my elbow in mere moments. My waitress left me with a menu and I looked at it. What I wanted was right there, and I ordered straight up the next time she came around -- a short stack and cheese grits. She looked down at my notepad and smiled, looked at my coffee, and went to fetch a pot.

The crowd was pretty evenly split. On the window side of the establishment seemed to be the locals, the other side truckers and other passersby just stopping in. The local crowd was mostly older folk, remnants of a once bustling population in these parts. Industry has, for the most part, left his area. Most everything has gone to the big city. The folks left hang onto their homesteads - retirees, gentlemen farmers and those working for services that support the logging industry.

There was something there that morning, though, something in the taughtness of the face of the waitresses, the meticulously curled and styled ‘dos of the matrons at the next occupied table, the men in their baseball caps with their slab jowls. Something so familiar.

When the waitress came around I found myself drifting so easily into that South Arkansas drawl. That made the strange blend of Midwestern and New England and who knows what else across on the other side of the room seem that much more strange.

Maybe it was the way the light filtered in through the window, that particular angle from the Eastern sky at this time of the morning, that set off that familiar sensation. But that’s silly. Home for me is Little Rock, with its fused Midwestern and Southern accents and attitudes, a mesh of trees and steel and concrete, all waiting and ready for the next big piece of news. Little Rock smells of political sweat and comfortable people, both static and in motion, still very much trying to be grown up and mature but still waiting for its voice to change. It’s shot up and out since my childhood days, but it’s still not a really big city, and I hope it never gets there.

But South Fork… it’s like one big pole barn erected on the side of an old gas station, decked out and painted up in black and beige and brown with that big blue wall and a gigantic painted-on American flag. There’s a counter for loners like me at the back, a true diner-style counter that faces into the kitchen, but I’d rather crouch in a booth and kick back in my few minutes off the road. I might have felt differently if the place had been packed. It’s a big place -- and though there were nearly 30 people inside it still felt cavernous.

I hear the guys over at the next table, jawing on in that particular South Arkansas patter I grew up on, the emphasis on every second or fourth syllable, the punctuation with “pap pap!” or “oo hey” or “huh.” Lots of “you” and that big long “I” and the “me-uns” too.

My waitress brought over the food, and I ate and listened to the conversations around me, a fly on the wall in this country restaurant. The plate-sized corny pancakes were more than I had needed, but I had really needed the cheesy grits. Something filling, something sustaining on a long drive. Yeah, I could have made do with eggs, but being on the road eggs are hard on the system.

The bustle continued around me, the two waitresses warming up coffee here and there, flittering about like hummingbirds at a feeder, asking customers “can I take that out of your way, dear?” and “what else you need, sugar?” I dallied over my third cup of coffee, mentally calculating and wondering if I could make it to Sulphur Springs before my rest stop or if I needed to park it at Texarkana for a bit.

I nearly ran into my waitress as I started to get up, she coming by to fill my coffee again. She apologized as I shook my head, not needing a warmup this time on the coffee. I smiled and she smiled, and nodded her head the way people in this part of the state tend to do. I flipped my dollar on the table and went up front to pay.

It wasn’t long before I was back on the road, heading to Dallas, shaking off that strange sensation of home and feeling the coffee go right on through me.