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By BEN THAIR | Clark County Constitutional
BLAKELYTOWN, Arkansas — Jacob Barkman, the Father of Clark County, made an otherworldly appearance April 1 when he stepped out of a time machine and into the Clark County Arkansas Museum.
Barkman was set to be the keynote speaker of an historic community event at which museum officials announced they had unlocked the secret of time travel with the invention of a portal.
“We finally did it,” commented local historian Wendy Richter, adding the museum group used its annual funding from the city and county to research and design the time machine. Using technology developed by Elon Musk, the group worked secretly for the past few weeks to build the time machine.
By all appearances, the machine is a crude example of what one might think a time portal would look like: It’s crafted from cardboard, rubber bands and staples, and the dials are fashioned of knobs recycled from a kitchen oven found in a pile of rubbish at L&W Recycling. Other than that, it looks pretty futuristic — kinda like one o’ them fancy cybertrucks.
Richter then began her introductory remarks about Barkman’s importance as a figure of local historical importance. The crowd nodded politely, albeit inattentively. Barkman, meanwhile, meandered curiously around the depot-turned-museum, appearing perplexed by the city’s concrete and asphalt streets and particularly baffled by the steel parallel rails stretching in a northeasterly/southwesterly fashion. He then wandered in the direction of the Ouachita River in search of transport he referred to as a “steam boat.” He hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
It was then that a fur-clad William Dunbar and George Hunter, in a fashion similar to that as seen on Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, leapt from the time machine and began inking copious notes and illustrations of the crowd that stood before them. The duo then boarded Amtrak’s Texas Eagle passenger train, reportedly headed to explore portions of western Texas and beyond.
All members of the historical association then stepped into the time machine. Association president Bob Thompson pushed a series of buttons and turned the dial to 350°, and the crew and time machine vanished skyward as bolts of lightning flashed in all sorts of directions.
The museum was left unattended at the time of this writing.
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