Leaving Conway, Arkansas

We lived in Conway for about a year. We had come from East Texas and then realized Texas is full of genuises in comparison.
I think I was surprised by the things that went on there for someone who had been a short term resident.
We had a young couple next door, recently married. I would go over there and we'd sunbathe and chat. I lost at least 25 IQ points talking to this girl. I could feel them draining away. She had turned Catholic because her husband was Catholic. Without doing that, the Church would not have recognized the union; they would have been "living in sin" as you know. I suppose this means that all Protestant marriages are not marriages at all. Only the Catholic Church is valid; only They have a direct line to God.
So she was telling me she wanted to know about Heaven. I am probably twisted, but if I want to know about Heaven I simply form my own opinions based on what I read and on logic. But she was totally convinced that her priest had all the answers. So she was really glad that when she asked him what Heaven is like he answered her AS IF HE HAD JUST GONE SHOPPING THERE. Can you imagine how Fabulous this must have made him feel?? This guy had no special knowledge of Heaven. He had no memory of ever having been there. But he sat back in his chair and told her all about it. I just looked at her. I was astounded.
We went inside and there was this Saran Wrap or crunching sound as she made her way down the hallway of her new house. With each step, you heard a crunching noise. I began to think it sounded like the plastic that lines some types of carpet. YOU REMOVE THE PLASTIC and then you lay the carpet.
It took me about a month to face the fact that the carpet layers had left the plastic ON, thus the crunching noise. She said, with little interest, that she had no idea what the noise was.
She had "custom made" drapes. Normally, I would be impressed that such a young couple would have been able to afford custom made ones. But one side
was about six inches too long and dragged on the floor. So they hung them, saw that they looked ARKIE, then left. She was slightly annoyed; nothing more.
She had a young son. The poor thing wrapped his thumb around the car door before slamming it shut and broke his thumb. This child also was lighting matches in the storm cellar around the block. When I told her this, she said, "oh, that's just kids." My daughter had been down there and told me.
Our builder and his wife had seven children. They came over one day after we moved in and I recall her counting heads before they left. I told them I could not turn off the bathroom faucet. So they sent a big guy over who showed me all was well. He white knuckled it and it did indeed shut off but I was unable to do it.
My husband was teaching at the "university." A nice couple taught there; they were childless. Both from Ole Miss, they had racist tendencies. They decided to adopt. She said she went to a doctor and he told her he had a nice girl who wanted to give up her year-old baby for adoption to a good home. Our friends anxiously awaited the final arrangements and invited us to dinner to see the little girl. She was holding onto the coffee table, wobbling, and was one of the cutest babies I had ever seen with her slightly olive complexion and very dark black hair with ringlets all around her face. My girlfriend began speculating, that night, on her nationality. She thought she might be Asian or from Hawaii.
My husband couldn't stand teaching at the school anymore and we left. At some point later we were talking to other friends who knew the couple who had adopted and they told us the baby was black. Then she said, quote, "they won't face it. She gets very dark in the summertime but they just won't face it." I have nothing against black people at all but don't doctors have some sort of duty to know the ancestry of babies they adopt out? Or, maybe she made it up and there was no doctor involved. I have googled the names of this couple but I can't find them.
When we first arrived we were house-hunting. A realtor was driving us around to various subdivisions. We saw one that we really liked but he turned around to me in his car and said, "that's built on a THWAMP AND IT'S THINKIN."
WHAT? Then I realized he meant, "it's built on a swamp and it's sinking."