September 6, 2012

We got the coffee made and then walked over the Clinton Presidential Bridge.  There is a geocache in the middle above the Arkansas River.  We found it and forgot to bring a pen.  We went back to the Casita, had breakfast and then walked back across the bridge to the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum.  We signed the geocache on the way over.  The lady in the museum said she thought Clinton was going to be there tomorrow.  There were a lot of people running around today getting things ready for him.  He has an apartment on the top of the library.  We went through the museum.  Jim said he noticed that there was no mention of Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky in the White House.  He said there were a few paragraphs about Clinton's impeachment, portraying it as a rabid right wing witch hunt, but that nothing was said about why he was impeached (lying to congress).  Jim thought this was  a whitewash of history.

After going through the museum we walked back across the bridge to the Casita and had lunch.  We then went to the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site.  This is where there was a school integration crisis in 1957. Nine black students were to be admitted to the school by order of the Little Rock School Board in accordance with the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. the Board of Education decision ending segregation in public schools.  Arkansas’ governor Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the black students from entering the school in order to prevent violence from breaking out among the protesting segregationists.  President Eisenhower ordered in elements of the Army’s 101^st Airborne to enforce the students’ admission.  He also federalized the Arkansas National Guard.  The historic site also included a restored Magnolia gas station.  This place was a hangout for all the reporters who covered the crisis.  It had a pay phone they used to call in their stories.

We went to the Clinton Museum Store and got a postcard to send to mom.  Then we went to Vino’s brewpub, had a beer and talked to the brewer.  He showed us his brewery and gave us a new beer not for sale yet.  We gave him a Southern Star beer from Conroe.  In the parking lot across from Vino’s we found a geocache.  It was rush hour so we drove a couple of miles down the road to a VFW and sat for a while and had another beer.  We found a geocache a block away and then went back to the Casita and I fixed supper.  We sat out by the Arkansas River after supper on a park bench and had a glass of wine as the sun was going down.  We talked to some people in the park for the Razorback game on Saturday.  They said they knew Bill Clinton.