NO SECOND THOUGHTS: Too close to home

By JOEL PHELPS | arkadelphian.com

When people ask where I’m from, I generally pause before proudly saying “Arkadelphia” — I pause because, although I’ve spent a little more than half my 37 years here, I’m technically a Dallas County kid.

I also have some Cleveland County blood in me, having spent my adolescent and early teenage years  in New Edinburg.

We did a fair share of grocery shopping at the Mad Butcher in Fordyce, it being the nearest marketplace. This was the only place where I could find comic books and read through them at the checkout lane.

When I first got wind of a shooting there, I logged onto Facebook and the first post in my feed was a video recorded from a gas station I immediately recognized as The Hurry Back.

I made the hurried decision to travel the 50 miles along the twisting ribbon of Highway 8 to Fordyce in order to get a sense of the carnage’s toll; with no official word yet released, The Arkadelphian would probably be among the few local reporters on scene.

I traveled past my old Manning home; past the Ben Few Campground turnoff where my family swam in the ice-cold creek nearby; past what I’ll always call Jiffy Joe’s; past the Antlers Inn, where my older sister worked as a housekeeper and where I spent many a summer’s day sitting on the edge of a motel bed, my eyes glued to the TV.

While en route I phoned my sister to learn what she knew — her in-laws are embedded in nearby Thornton. Although she knew little about the circumstances, she relayed that her husband’s cousin, Shirley Taylor, was among the deceased. Shirley was raised on the same homestead. This shooting was really starting to feel too close to home.

As I drove into town, traffic and commerce seemed normal as far as Fordyce is concerned — idle, but thumping along. Upon approaching the barricaded highway, the scene took a surreal turn. Lights flashed atop a myriad of police vehicles; people hugged and cried in the parking lot of what I remember as Harvest Foods (my former stepmother once ran a gift shop in this very plaza); multiple news cameras filmed interviews or B-roll; crime scene tape flapped in the wind, keeping us out of the parking lot and a swath of West 4th Street in front of the post office.

In my career as a news reporter I’ve been outside a fair share of murder scenes, but nothing I had experienced would hold a candle to this tragedy in Fordyce.

Back home in Arkadelphia a quick visit to the grocery store or supermarket no longer feels the same. Are we safe anywhere? Gun violence, particularly mass shootings, is something we only read or see on the news in faraway cities.

Gun violence is not supposed to happen to our neighbors. 

It shouldn’t happen anywhere.