Warming the cockles at Faded Rose.

Sausage po'boy.

A cold wind is blowing, and ice is rattling in the trees.  Time to warm up.  And just as it's important to warm up on the outside with sweaters, gloves, and fuzzy hats -- it's just as important to heat up the insides, too.


A great way to enliven the digestive tract and send some heat down below is found within a steaming bowl of The Faded Rose's Crawfish Étouffée. 

Soaked salad.

The heat's not just a matter of temperature.  That initial sip full of comfort, crawfish, and creaminess gives way moments later to a sudden burst of pleasant spice that sweeps you out of a wooden booth in Little Rock and plops you down in a wire-back chair on Decatur Street on a late May day.  Not the painful kind of spicy that has you reaching for the antacid, but the sort that makes your nose run just a little bit.  The sort of heat that makes you feel armed and confident against the approaching cold outside the door.  The perfect sort of dish to sop up with the (thankfully provided) crusty French bread... yum.

Bread pudding.

Of course, the wide array of po'boys, tilapia and redfish dishes, shrimp items and delicious steaks, along with that fabulous Rose's Grilled Louisiana Crab Cakes, make the hardest part of eating there deciding what to eat.  Locations on Rebsamen Park Road and Bowman Road... check out the website for more on where to go and what to eat when you get there.

Pea-Knucklin'.

Emerson’s PurpleHull Pea Festival isn’t just about food and community, it has a lot to do with motorpower and sheer chutzpah.

Bill Dailey bugged me for years about coming down to the PurpleHull Pea Festival. Somehow, something would always come up and I couldn’t drive to South Arkansas for the weekend. But I wanted to go, and when I left television and started this blog I promised myself I’d make the attempt.

I finally got down there last June. I made special arrangements for childcare and left the house at oh-dark-thirty to drive on down through Sheridan and Fordyce and Camden and Magnolia to get there around ten that Saturday morning. Right on the highway in Emerson it didn’t look like much, but after I turned and headed west towards the school the traffic picked up.

And at the school, there was nary a spot to be found that wasn’t full of car or kid or booth. I rolled down the street and parked on the other side of the gymnasium and got my stuff together. I wanted to see what this was all about.

Turned out I was further from the action than I anticipated. I walked back the way I came past the school and a block and a half further to the church where the Great PurpleHull Pea and Cornbread Cook-off was being held. Around the back of the church I found the entrance and discovered that judging had just about concluded. While I was unable to sample as a judge (not that I’d been asked, but you know me, I would have offered), I had come at a great time for sampling.

As the winners were announced and trophies handed out, I wandered back and took a look. There were easily a dozen different cornbreads, varying in color from white to brown to brilliant yellow, each with its own shape in a dish or piled on a plate. Nearly a dozen dishes of traditional PurpleHull Peas were out on the end, and on the other end every manner of type of PurpleHull Pea dish, like PurpleHull Pea Salad, PurpleHull Pea Chili, PurpleHull Pea and Rice Casserole, PurpleHull Pea Salsa, PurpleHull Pea Zucchini Bread, PurpleHull Pea-Mole Dip and no it couldn’t be -- PurpleHull Pea, no, sorry, peach cobbler. Couple of versions of that.

The entrants and fans swarmed the table after everything was done, and plates were dished out for everyone to take and enjoy what was there. Linda Miller and Bill Samples, the winners in the PurpleHull Pea and Cornbread categories, posed for pictures. We all ate. And darned if it wasn’t all just good stuff… I even liked the bread.

Well, it was getting on about time for one of the two star attractions, the grand PurpleHull Pea Dinner. A crowd of us walked back up to the school and headed for the combined cafeteria-auditorium, where the first round of the shelling competition had begun. The kids were doing their thing, slitting the end of a PurpleHull peapod at one end and sliding their thumbs down to release the peas. There’s an art to it -- and either you’re taught it when you’re a child or you try desperately to catch up. While I had many purple thumbs back in my single digit years, I wasn’t about to go embarrass myself in the competition. I headed for the kitchen with my $6 for my PurpleHull Pea meal.


And as I stood in line, the ladies working the cafeteria line carefully loaded each plate up with a hunk of cornbread, a generous serving of PurpleHull Peas and a mess of peach cobbler. They asked each person going through if they’d like some ‘mater and onion with it -- the correct answer is yes. There was a hunk of butter on the end of the counter, and around the back was some peppers if you liked them. And you got a beverage, tea or sweet tea or Kool-Aid. After getting my plate and drink I weaved back through the crowd to find a single seat on a cafeteria-style table.

And what a meal… no meat at all, just the savory sweetness of the peas accompanied by stringent fresh onions, juicy just-picked tomatoes and that slightly sweet cornbread. The peppers were all right with it, but I found that just sopping up some pea juice with a little cornbread was all I really needed.

Lunch over and the shell-off just about done, people started packing up and heading outside. Unlike most of the rest of last summer, that particular weekend in June straddled the 100 degree mark. A slow pilgrimage started towards a field down the road, with people bringing their chairs and umbrellas along. I followed suit.

And once I found a place to light and took some photos, I developed a mighty thirst. Fortunately there was a local group selling homemade ice cream. They’d made up a bunch in advance and stored it in pitchers, but it was melting so fast that what you got was a nice ice cream drink that resembled a shake, which was fine. I was one of the lucky ones -- they ran out and were down to canned drinks and bottled water minutes later.

Why in the world would all of us line up that way? Well, everyone wants a good seat for the tiller races. That’s right -- Emerson’s not just home to the festival but also to the World Championship Rotary Tiller Races. It’s something between a roller derby and a car wreck, I tell you what, but you can’t take your eyes away.

The first round was the ladies’ competition -- and there were just two racing this year. The crowd surged from under sunshades and umbrellas and crowded at the fence surrounding the makeshift tiller track, hundreds of people breathing and sweating with anticipation.

There was some prep work, and then suddenly the burst of gunfire and they were off!

And halfway down the lane, one of the two ladies wiped out in a huge shower of dirt and dust, quickly engulfed in a deluge of dirtiness. There was a moment of silence that gripped the just-hollering crowd, that moment of “oh gosh, what happened, she all right?” that whispered itself out there. The woman stood up, threw up her thumbs and there was a roar. It was all in good fun, and other than her pride and a few scrapes she was fine.

Unfortunately, no one could have known that the whole affair would end with the first race. The wipeout killed one of the two tillers for the competition, leaving little to do but try to fix it. While the crowd waited, a couple got married out on the track, and a gentleman showed off his tiny rail engine tiller.

And that was it. It was hot, I was tired and I had a long drive ahead of me. But I had a belly full of peas and a camera full of pictures. The day for me had been a success.

I just got to looking at the schedule for this year’s event. I noticed that this year the Great Purple Hull Pea Cook-off is in the afternoon and the tiller races are in the morning. Perhaps the idea is to keep as many people inside in the cool in the late afternoon hours as possible. I can sure endorse that.

If you’d like more information about the Emerson PurpleHull Pea Festival and World Championship Rotary Tiller Race, check out the website. It’s a great deal of fun and a wonderful time to enjoy one of our state’s more eclectic festivals. It's coming up June 25-26th and is usually held on the final weekend of June each year.

She Rises Again, Her Future Undetermined.

There’s something about a steamboat that instantly brings the Mississippi Delta to mind. A sense of purpose and determination, blended with the glory of high-class travel and riverboat shows, a sense of romance and history. Arkansas State Parks has had a real treasure with the Mary Woods No 2, but whether or not she’ll be restored one more time and returned to service is still up in the air.

Early the morning of January 31st, 2010 she listed over on her side and sank at Jacksonport State Park. At first, her submerging was thought to be the act of two men whose footprints were found in the snow. Later it was determined that her sinking was accidental.

The Mary Woods No. 2 was built in 1931 by the Nashville Bridge Company in Nashville, Tennessee. Because of her flat hull, she drew just four feet of water (that is, only four feet of the boat were below the water’s surface) and could navigate the Cache, Black and White Rivers. She carried all sorts of sundries and supplies to little towns all over north Arkansas. She was converted from coal-steam to diesel-steam in 1937.

She was donated to the Arkansas State Parks system in 1967 and has been at Jacksonport State Park ever since. She sank in 1984 in a cold snap because of a busted water line that, when thawed, allowed water into the boat. But she was quickly raised and restored.

Back in 1997, I saw her at what I thought was her worse. I was a television producer for KAIT out of Jonesboro, AR at the time. On March 1st, a string of tornadoes roared up the Highway 67 corridor from south of Arkadelphia to near the Missouri border. I remember the day clearly; my then-fiancé and I watched a funnel cloud roll above our neighborhood in Jonesboro before taking off south, struggling through an awful cell in Weiner and passing through a just-struck tornado path south of Beebe on our way to Vilonia that day. The next weekend we went out to Jacksonport State Park and viewed the damage to the steamboat. The top had been blown plumb off the pilot house, but it was still upright and tight on the water.

She was rebuilt and reopened in 2002, a grand steamboat restored to her glory. People could go aboard and tour her and see what life was like back in the 1940s aboard a working towboat.


When I first heard the Mary Woods No 2 had sank this winter, I just assumed she’d be back up and shipshape in no time, because I remembered reporting about the 1984 sinking. I was really upset over the idea that vandals might sink her for fun. Months went past, and finally in May a company out of Missouri came down to bring her back to the surface. What they discovered was a sad state of affairs. The water had inundated every part of the boat, and the superstructure above the deck had shifted. It was dangerous for divers to get in and impossible to implement the plan to fill the cabin space with air and right the boat in that fashion.

I had to go. I needed to see for myself what was there, and to find out if she’d ever resurface. So on June 9th, a bright hot Wednesday, I drove to Jacksonport State Park for a view of what was left.

I passed the courthouse and the turn-off road for the main area of the park, drove over the levy, and saw wreckage. A lot of wreckage, not what I had expected at all. The area had been cordoned off. I parked in the nearest lot and walked out to it.

I was momentarily and suddenly relieved because I recognized her paddlewheel right off. What lay behind it from my vantage point took longer to sink in. Beyond the warped paddlewheel lay not much more than a long mud-caked wooden deck and a few pipes and motors.

The entire top of the boat was gone.

I felt my stomach clench hard. This was far, far worse than the 1997 tornado. I was utterly shocked. I stood on the bank and watched for a while as a couple of guys worked on the mechanical bits while sitting on the boat.

The crew from River Diving & Salvage, a joint out of Bloomsdale, Mo, have had their hands full. They tried turning her over and they tried filling her with air, but after three months on the river bottom there was just so much destruction. In the end, the crew had to haul out the wreckage of the cabin and drag it to the surface. The mess sits in a pile on the bank on the other side of the boat. I noticed a few old tin cans on the bank, never opened and without labels, rusting in the hot air.

The gangway is still there, as are the exhibition markers that tell a truncated history of the boat’s past. To see what she used to look like and how she appears today is heartbreaking.

A woman on the crew approached me and we talked a bit. She told me that the hull and deck and paddlewheel came to the surface the previous Friday. The Mary Woods No 2 had risen again on the first day of Portfest, the park’s annual festival. It seemed fitting.

She also told me that whether and how the boat would be restored depended on whether or not the state decided it was worth the money. I recalled that the recovery from the tornado had taken five years, and between the courthouse and the steamboat the restoration had cost more than a million dollars.

A gentleman from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office came by to check me out, I guess. He didn’t ask me any questions, just walked up listening to our conversation. I suppose it was obvious I wasn’t there to cause any trouble.

"I heard this was vandalism,” I mentioned.

“No, we thought it might have been, but it was a broken pipe. Those guys shouldn’t have been out here, though.”

“So it was an accident?”

“It was.”

When I got back home, I contacted Mark Ballard with Jacksonport State Park and asked him about it. “There was a rust hole in a pipe above the waterline that allowed the boat to take on water, after the snow caused the boat to sit lower in the water,” he wrote. So yes, it’s awful, but it wasn’t intentional, and somehow that makes me feel better.

So what’s the future of the Mary Woods No 2? Ballard writes “The decisions of what we are going to do about restoring her has not been made. The department’s next step is to evaluate our options and determine cost estimates for reconstruction. Once a cost estimate is established then we will determine the feasibility of reconstructing her or any other options that we determine are viable.”

There was insurance on the boat, I was told, but how much it’d actually cover is no one’s guess. We’ll just have to wait and see if she’ll once again float in her intended majesty alongside Jacksonport State Park.

* Photos from this piece include selections from Arkansas State Parks, Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Steamboat.org, and the Newport Independent.

Postscript:
Sadly, the Mary Woods No 2 will not be saved. At its February 2011 meeting, the State Parks, Recreation and Travel Commission, the policy and advisory board over the state parks, voted to remove the boat from Jacksonport State Park. They're going to sell what's left of the boat and use the money for the park's planned visitors center. You can read more about it at www.arkansasmatters.com.

I wonder what the park will do now. I wonder if there are other old tugs out there like the Mary Woods No 2, and whether there might be any efforts to bring another steamer to the park.

Last days of The Box.

“Get on down to The Box,” a popular admonition when I was growing up. Or directions. I just remember adults around me talking about these great burgers when I was a kid, burgers that defied 80s health-food logic and the like.

I keep hearing these things about The Band Box on south Main Street in Little Rock… its ancient past just about lost in antiquity. Some folks outside the state know the place by its full name because of its connection to Bill Clinton; in 1992, journalists descended on Little Rock to dig up anything they could about the up-and-coming presidential contender, and what they discovered was he really, really loved his food. Not as famed as Doe’s Eat Place but somewhat closer to the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion, the little building got its share of visits from out-of-towners. Around here, though, it’s always just been The Box, and you just went and called in an order or went and picked it up.

I got away from the place in my grown-up years. Something about wanting to maintain a more svelte appearance and healthy lifestyle. But then I fell into writing about travel and food for a living, and I put it on my list of places I wanted to share with the world. And somehow, I kept missing it.

And then back in January, word came that USA Drug had managed to buy that block between 16th and 17th streets and were going to level the whole damn thing and build one of those spankin’ new stores there. I knew the clock was ticking… and yes, I finally made it down there, with eight days to go.

Now, when you walk in the place, the first thing you see is the kitchen, right across the low bar from you. You always say “hi” or “hello,” unless you want to get chided by one of the buxom women behind the counter. If you’re in the know, you say hello to Arthur on the griddle. You go find yourself a seat in the windowless dining area or you sit at the bar, either one.

This last visit (and I do mean last -- to this location) I walked right up and sat at the bar. One of the ladies there pulled out her ticket book and gestured at the wall with her head -- “menu’s there, hon.” I knew what I wanted before I got there, and only looked at the wall after she had torn off the ticket and slapped it on the counter across from my seat.

The kitchen was impossible. I mean, seriously, how five people and a child could keep things rolling in what appeared to be a 12’x12’ or so space I’ll never know. One lady worked the buns -- toasting them and then assembling the condiments and veggies on top. Arthur worked behind her, manning not only the constantly-filled griddle but the onion rings and the French fries as well. A large tattooed guy, generally good-natured and friendly, managed to glide back and forth effortlessly between dishwashing and bringing in stock and doing whatever needed to be done. Another lady swept through over and over again, waiting the tables out in the dining room and then almost skating back and forth with the orders. The last manned the register, a full time job in itself. I did see a girl, I’m guessing around 11 years old, taking some of those orders herself and bringing them back up.

The place is so small, you can’t help but rub elbows with your neighbor. Yet when I arrived there were easily 50 people in the place. They ranged from T-shirted 20-somethings to a couple of guys in business suits, all handling burgers and picking at fries and all talking. No music played overhead… just that constant hum of half-a-hundred mingled voices making lunchroom music just under the level of speech.

I watched as burgers came off the griddle, four to six patties at a time. The lady working the buns would pop the bottoms into red plastic baskets that had been lined with aluminum foil and wax paper, each bottom bun covered with its supply of Miracle-Whip style salad dressing, white onion, pickle, thin tomato and such. Arthur would all but fling patties onto them -- some with cheese melting down on them -- and then sling back around and bring utensil pinches full of fries or onion rings around and flop them on in. He’d also throw a little bacon or Jalapeno on top of a few, per order. From time to time I’d see a double-patty head over. The top bun with its thin layer of mustard would be plopped on top and he’d throw the ticket on top of the basket for the waitress to come grab.

Back to that menu -- it includes a decent amount of things -- a hamburger steak place, turkey with cheese, a chicken sandwich, a ham sammy. I did see one hamburger steak go out -- and amazingly enough, a salad, first I’d ever seen ordered there, but it could have just been a mirage. But not once did I see a chicken sandwich leave that kitchen. No, everyone wanted some beef, and it was flying out the kitchen at an incredible level.

There was a line forming at the register. I’d made it there about 12:30, in the middle of the lunch rush, and folks were getting done and antsy and needed to head back to work. They’d all holler over at Arthur, just about every one. A distinguished looking gentleman in a black polo hollered over.

“Did I hear you were out of beef?”

“Just about,” Arthur replied, slapping more patties on the griddle. “That’s what we want to do. We want to run out of everything.”

“I hear you must have struck it rich and that’s why you want out of this place.”

“Aw, you’d know more about that than I would.’ Arthur sprinkled the pattied he’d just thrown down with spice, then flipped the ones next to the new patties so they could cook on the second side.

“I don’t know about that. You gonna remember us when you’re movin’ up?”

“You’re the one in line, you’re movin’ up just fine. Let me in on that secret!” he happily called. The gentleman nodded his head and opened his wallet, having just reached the register. He flipped out a couple of bills and waived off the change and receipt.

“When are y’all closing’ up?”

Arthur reached over and slung down a couple of patties pasted together with cheese on a basket-bound bun. “Last day’s a week from Friday, the 18th. It’ll be a few weeks.”

“And you’re opening over on Ringo?”

“Seventh and Ringo, yeah, man.” He slid a single over, then another, and a third but with no cheese.

“I’ll be there.” The gentleman opened the door and saluted at Arthur.

“I’ll be waiting,” he called after him, and slung a big pinch of fries into the last of the four baskets. In one smooth motion, one of the ladies behind that counter grabbed the basket and slid it in front of me. “We need to get you an iced tea,” she said, more to the other girls back there than to me.

“I figured it’d come when it got here,” I told her. I had witnessed the crazy busy behind the counter for about ten minutes at that point.

“Thank you,” she answered, plopping a fork down in my basket.

The mess that awaited me was hot -- I just saw it all come together, but I still managed to burn the roof of my mouth on the fries. They’re unseasoned and they’re greasy, more home-fries than French fries, but man… that’s good. I dunked them in ketchup and figured out pretty quickly why I had that fork and why I should have used it. No manner of flimsy paper napkins was going to be able to get the light grease off my fingers.

I examined my burger, as always. Arthur came to the counter and grabbed a stack of patties from underneath. He gave me a curious glance as I took the first couple of shots, then turned around back to his work with no comment. The burger had that nice sort of crust on it, the sort you get with a well-seasoned griddle, the sort of grease-fired crust that makes a great burger what it is. That patty didn’t have a whole lot of seasoning to it, but it was what it needed to be. The burger meat was smashed down just enough with the long flat spatula Arthur wielded to knock it at quarter inch thickness, cooked medium well and coated with the Cheddar cheese I had asked for (Swiss, American and Pepper Jack are other options). The patty sat on its veggie bed, and when I took that first bite juice ran down my arm and dribbled off my elbow. That… that’s a burger.

I looked up and realized the once-full restaurant had suddenly lost all but a quarter of its occupants. The clock on the wall had just turned to 1 p.m. and the business crowd was gone. What was left were the lollygaggers, the self-employed and folks like me, unwilling to work on the time clock.

I was never rushed, never hassled for the camera or the notepad, just asked once if it was all right with me. Yet I got one of the best dinner shows you could imagine, watching the well-oiled machine that was The Box’s crew. And when I went to pay, I took a good look around and tried to soak up the memory. There are still stickers on the walls from radio stations that disappeared 30 years ago, photographs faded with age from beauty queens and politicians and an air of timelessness and humility. It’s hard to think it will all be gone soon.

Come August, it’ll be back, just not here. It’ll take a few weeks to get moved into the new place at 7th and Ringo, and then it’ll be back open again. But I can’t tell you whether it’ll be close to the same. Will the griddle be towed over there? Will the grease be saved? Will what made The Box what it’s been all these years what it is? Those are questions to ask after it reopens.

For now, it’s just a whole lot of memories and some mighty fine burgers, hanging on for another eight days before oblivion. We’ll see how things go.

If you want to go grab yourself a bite before the closure, you can find The Band Box at 17th and South Main in a pungently red and white building on the northeast corner. I’d suggest going early or late on the rush, unless you love that packed-in feel. It’s open 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Call-in orders welcome at (501) 372-8735.

One Box After Another.

When the THV Summer Cereal Drive started, we couldn’t have imagined just how far it would go.

I saw a thing on Twitter the other day that stirred my mind. It was a message from the Arkansas Foodbank Network, celebrating the 10th year of the of the THV Summer Cereal Drive. I did a little counting on my fingers and realized that yes, it had been that long.

It started out as such a small affair. I was producing the morning show back then, spring of 2001, and Theba Lolley brought the idea to my desk. Robin Henson was over at the Foodbank at that point, and Tom (Brannon, that is, I just assume everyone knows that’s who I’m talking about when I invoke that name) took ahold of it and ran with it.

The idea was a simple one, but it addressed something that needed attention. Each year thousands of Arkansas school children receive reduced or free breakfasts and lunches at their school. What happens to those kids during the summer? A traditional food drive wasn’t the answer -- whatever went to the kids had to be something portable, something they could have in a backpack or stick back in a closet or whatever. Cereal was ideal. It could be eaten with or without milk, and it was associated with breakfast, the most important meal of the day. We set out to collect cereal so the Foodbank could distribute it across the station.

I remember that first year we had a collection bin for the drive up front, and each morning one of us, usually Badi Galinkin or sometimes Robert Settles, would go drag that box out to the Weather Garden and we’d stack cereal boxes on the picnic table, a big prop for Tom to mention and point out. There was some limited participation that year -- it hadn’t caught on like gangbusters but we still did pretty well, with viewers bringing in 23,405 boxes.

There were glitches… James Staats, his heart’s as big as his head, you know -- he donated vouchers for meals at Golden Corral to give out to people who brought cereal boxes to the station. Thing is, early on we didn’t set any sort of standards. There was this one lady, bless her little pointed heart, who went to the store and bought several of those multi-packs and broke them up -- and wanted a voucher for each and every one. I think we ended up passing along several and were on the air the next morning explaining that… well, c’mon people, a voucher in exchange for a 50 cent tiny individual box of cereal was ridiculous and besides, it was all about the kids.

There were up years and down years, but we saw a pretty steady increase of cereal coming in year after year. We’d have big power hitters like Middleton Heating and Air and Southwest Hospital and the one woman wrecking crew that was Wanda Bateman with Margland Bed and Breakfast, each a team in our competition. It was a load of fun. I believe we struck somewhere around the 40,000 box mark in 2005.

That next year, 2006... that was something. It’s the year the drive really came into its own. The school competition got underway, and we had all sorts of classes competing against each other through that April and May. Then Tom issued this challenge one morning… it was such a casual thing at the time, but it changed everything. He challenged the evening side folks to get involved -- and boy, they did. Liz Massey and Craig O’Neill dove right into it, setting up live shots and doing all sorts of crazy things. We were doing our own, getting out all over Arkansas with live shots, meeting people, encouraging them to come out with doughnuts and coffee and smiles. A little chance to be on TV in exchange for a box of cereal for a hungry kid. For us, it was a good tradeoff.

And it was crazy and time consuming and sometimes people scratched their heads at us about it. There were many late mornings I’d be ready to finally go home and turn to see Tom still making calls at his desk. He worked very hard on it.

That year, we nearly hit 150,000 boxes. It was incredible. All those individuals and companies had come together and done something extraordinary. It was nice to be a part of something like that.

The 2007 Summer Cereal Drive was the last big project I undertook while working for Today’s THV. I remember mornings that were already a little too warm when we’d leave the station and head to our remote location to set up. I remember the quiet hanging over the parking lots where our live truck had set up, how empty it was at five in the morning and how by the time we broke down at nine how it would all snowball, an impromptu carnival of regular folks doing their part, smiling and challenging others to do more. It was one of my favorite times.

Last year’s drive brought in 185,198 boxes for the cause. Earlier this year, Feeding America recognized the Arkansas Foodbank Network by recognizing it with a Hunger’s Hope Award for Fundraising Program of the Year for the Summer Cereal Drive. Sarah Cowan with the Foodbank says this could be the year that lofty achievement of one million total boxes could be reached. It is a big deal.

So do something for me… or better yet, go do it for the kids. Be a part of the community drive June 15th-25th. Go find out more about the THV Summer Cereal Drive at www.todaysthv.com. Go click on news and select THV This Morning and click on the Cereal Drive banner. Find out what’s going on and do something. Send money. Send cereal. Show up at a liveshot and give Tom a little good-natured hell. It’s all for a good cause. I’m so glad I got to see that little seed of an idea get planted and still amazed how it’s grown.

Breakfast pastries on Main Street at Little Rock's Community Bakery.

An Arkansas classic, Community Bakery has served pastries and fresh bread to the city of Little Rock since 1947. Find out why this Main Street mainstay has managed to stick around as one of my go-to places in the capital city.