Fordyce, Arkansas

Dinner at the Meador's
That's not a knife Joe Bill!

Joe Bill & Sandy had such big plans for our 3 day stay in their town of Fordyce, population just under 5,000. They live on a property with a lake, 4 horses and a wagon. They were going to take us horse riding and for a ride in their wagon, but unfortunately, Hurricane Gustav had plans of its own and provided a deluge of rain such as this little town has never seen before. Joe Bill has lived on this property for 56 years and the lake has never been as high as it is today. It has rained, and rained and rained. I have been expecting our RV to turn into the Ark and sail out of here! But no, we are still on higher ground than the lake, but there have been numerous power outages, and the house here has had no power for over 24 hrs now and even the phones were out for awhile. We are just watching the news and seeing flood waters in Little Rock and hearing that 100,000 home are without power. The county electricity workers had been deployed to Louisiana to help there with problems associated with Hurricane Gustav, but they are now hot tailing back to Arkansas to help out with the floods and downed electricity poles here.

However, the rain has not stopped our fun...we have already had two dinner parties - one here where Murray & I cooked aussie sausage rolls and cherry flan for 8 people, and last night at Betsy and John Benton's where we had a delicious meal of chicken & asparagus casserole and lemon tart. As the power is still out, we decided we would drive in for a Sonic tonight - you know in the American movies where they drive up and a girl on roller skates comes out to take their order and delivers it to the car? Well, they have dispensed with the roller skates, but the rest is about the same.

Today we were guests at the local Fordyce Rotary meeting in the locally famous Klappenbach Bakery (http://www.klappenbachbakery.com/) where Lee & Norman Klappenbach create mouthwatering delicacies. The Rotary meeting started with a beautiful lunch of soup, salad, beans, a beef and noodle casserole and a selection of about 6 dessert pies. After that Murray & I gave a 20 minute powerpoint presentation on our US travels and Australia. We then dropped into the local radio station where Carna Coates did an interview with us (check tomorrow and see if the interview made local news: http://www.kbjtkq.com/newsmain.htm). We then came back to Joe Bill's mother's house which is on the same property as his house, and she played a Beethoven recital on the piano - she is 98 years old and played this same recital at the Ouachita University when she was about 19 years of age. Joe Bill is speaking a bit softly, but I hope you can hear him proudly introducing his mother in the video below.