An Arkadelphia resident need not be a sports fan to know which university is hosting a football game. From nearly anywhere in town you can hear the crowd and play announcer. If you hear a drawn-out “First and Ten”, Reddie fans will respond with “Henderson!” If you hear Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”, then you know Ouachita has made it to the end zone. Until a few seasons ago — we don’t recall when — a Tigers touchdown was celebrated with a cannon boom. This past Saturday as the Tigers were putting a whoopin’ on the Boll Weevils, we’d heard enough of Survivor. We wanted to hear (and feel) the cannon go off, several blocks away from our backyard on Martindale Hill. We inquired with a knowledgable friend, who relayed that “years ago” the NCAA banned the use of cannons at college football games. We’ve been unable to find anything online that provides an explanation for this, but surely there’s a valid reason. As longtime residents of a two-college town, we’ve grown to expect (and even look forward to) the occasionally raucous behavior of college students. After all, we were college students once. We say lift any ban disallowing college students to let loose during their four years of freedom. Let the good times roll. Embrace the rowdy. Bring back the boom.
Hey, N: Didn’t wanna be your Facebook friend anyway.
Wouldn’t take much maintenance or manpower to clear a few roadside weeds and tall grass to further highlight the beauty of our new elementary school. Just saying.
The annual Manchester Pumpkin Day festival is this Saturday from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m.
Throughout September we took a break from posting content to our Facebook page. Partly as an experiment to determine any lull in readership, but mostly because it’s a hassle keeping up with the comments. Some readers have encouraged us to get back on the Facebook wagon so they can read the comments others leave. Truth be told, our page views suffered a 35% drop in September, albeit a slow month for big news. We may use Facebook again, we may not.
The moon will be in its waxing gibbous phase during the first week of modern gun deer season. Bummer.
Speaking of moons, 2024 PT5 — the bus-sized asteroid that will be orbiting earth for weeks to come — isn’t visible without a powerful telescope. Wouldn’t it be neat if, say, Henderson State University were to dust off some telescopes and host a community event allowing residents to catch a glimpse of our temporary mini-moon? Just a thought.
From our friends at magnoliareporter.com: “Yes. It does seem strange that Henderson State University, which dropped academic programs in English, history, biology and a dozen others in 2022 during a severe round of budget cutting, will revive its track and field program in 2025.”
The Spouse thought it a good idea to use a shop vacuum to clean the spilled coco husk from our iguana terrarium. There was no filter in the shop vacuum, so now there’s a layer of fine brown dust covering the entirety of arkadelphian.com’s newsquarters. But we’re not crying over spilt coco.
Seasonal depression is a strange beast.
We drove Friday afternoon to Hampton to retrieve a utility trailer we lent to relatives back in July. The four-hour round trip (minus the time spent visiting with family) left us in a temporary condition of exhaustion we call Hampton-lag. We imagine a drive through Kansas or Nebraska would be more entertaining.
One of the clerks at Bailey’s in Fordyce has a potty mouth. We just wanted a slice of pizza — not a slew of F-bombs. Good thing he wasn’t sharing his colorful lexicon with a man of the Gospel.
We received your anonymous snail mail news tip, whoever you are.
Walmart: Mid-September is way too early for Christmas merchandise. Put it back and at least wait until your Halloween aisles are empty. Also: stop reserving parking spaces for customers who don’t use them. That goes for you, too, Atwoods and Brookshire’s.
Joel Phelps is editor of arkadelphian.com. Contact him at editor@arkadelphian.com or by snail mail at P.O. Box 13, Arkadelphia, AR 71923. I don’t mourn musicians I’ve never met because I knew them, but rather because they helped me know myself. I miss you every single day, Tom.