Nearby
Bentonville was and is the home of Walmart. In 1950 Sam Walton bought an
existing five and dime store in downtown Bentonville. Opening on May 9 1950
with a one day “remodeling sale” he found it to his liking – none the least of
which was due to the former owner being able to register only $72,000 in sales,
and Sam in his first year was able to register over $105,000. At the time, he
was a Ben Franklin franchise. It’s interesting to think that what he learned in
being a Ben Franklin franchisee eventually created the largest retail company
in the world, and yet Ben Franklin Company itself has long since bit the dust.
His original store, at least the front, is still across the street from the
main town square.
The old
store façade is now the front for the Walmart Museum, which chronicles the
birth and growth of the conglomerate, and memorializes its founder. I have to
admit I always had a poor personal opinion of the Company, viewing them as
viscously working to put their competitors out of business with loss pricing,
and then raising prices when all the competitors were gone. I saw them as
destroying the fabric of smaller communities. Sam’s mission seems a bit more
worthy as it is cast in the Museum. Since early on he had documented his
mission as to create a way for average Americans to be able to stretch their
dollars, buy more, and therefor improve their standards of living. Sounds nicer
than my perspective.
Sam’s
original office with all its furnishings was great fun. The statistics were
staggering, and all the Companies that were spawned – Walmart Financial,
Walmart Broadcasting, Walmart Logistics – pretty much any kind of supporting
service you might need to run a multi-location retail establishment with
thousands of employees and customers is now a separate company under the
Walmart umbrella. And most – maybe all for all I know – have a headquarters
building in Bentonville.
When
stopped for lunch at a Thai restaurant downtown one day, it seemed like all the
other folk there were Walmart executives. We overheard all kinds of discussions
about employee training, livable wage, trucking, you name it. From what I can
tell, if you live in Bentonville you can’t help but be immersed into the world
of Walmart.
We
visited the Bluff Dwellers Cavern just across the border in Noel Missouri,
maybe 20 miles North of Bella Vista. Privately owned attractions are pretty
common in this part of the world, and Bluff Dwellers Cavern is one of them.
Discovered in 1925 by Arthur Browning on land he owned, the family has given
visitors private tours since its inception. Through archeological work Browning
was able to prove that the cavern exterior has been occupied for over 12,000
years.
I
mentioned that the Woman had some disappointment at Mammoth Cave. While it was
immense and really interesting, it was a dry cave, capped by a rock layer that
prevented water from seeping in. Because of that there are no stalactites or
stalagmites that she associates in her mind with a “beautiful” cave. Well, she
got her fix here. The cave system here is very wet, alive and growing. While
not the biggest formations we have ever seen, the variety and uniqueness made
our visit enjoyable.
A couple
of the highlights of the cave really excited us:
·
Bats live in this cave, just like they do in Mammoth. However, we
saw no bats in Mammoth, and we no sooner entered Bluff Dwellers Cavern and
there were some hanging from the ceiling.
·
They had a small but great museum of artifacts. Crystals and geodes
were numerous and some were very unique. Pictures of the early cavern
buildings, tour groups and family members were fun to look at. However, the
coolest item in the museum was a petrified bird’s nest, complete with petrified
eggs.
·
Although most never see it, the caves are rampant with wildlife.
For some reason the day we were there the common cave salamanders were out and
about. They are salmon in color, and the ones we saw were 4-5 inches long. I
bet we saw dozen of them.
The
Cavern is still a family business, today run by the grandchildren of Arthur
Browning who discovered it. Until recently it was run by his daughter. However,
she gave her last tour at the tour guide at the age of 87 when her grandkids
encouraged here to retire.
We
sauntered down to Fayetteville and drove around the campus of the University of
Arkansas. It seemed like a pleasant campus, but the vicious Razorback mascot
symbols everywhere became somewhat overwhelming. We also visited the Crystal
Bridges Museum of Art. This is a spectacular art museum, both for its unique
architecture and the quality of its collection. The Museum is sponsored by
Walmart (of course) so admission is free to all. We were surprised to see
original works of Homer Winslow, Georgia O’Keeffe, Gilbert Stuart, Norman
Rockwell, James Whistler, Pablo Picasso and so much more.
Another
bonus – a significant collection of Andy Warhol’s work was currently in
residence at Crystal Bridges. While I always thought of Warhol as more current,
he was born in 1928 and died in 1987. He is probably best known for his work
done in the 1960’s. We really enjoyed this exhibit because not only could we
relate to some of the actual images. It was just interesting to see a more
comprehensive exhibit of his work. This museum is definitely worth a visit.
When
surfing the web for tourism ideas I discovered that the first home the Bill and
Hillary Clinton lived in as newlyweds was here. Apparently Bill had asked
Hillary to marry him on at least one occasion and she had declined. When he got
his professorship at the UA law school he asked her to move there. She had no
interest in moving to Arkansas but did visit him there. On one visit, she saw a
cute very east coast looking brick home just a block or so from the law
building, and commented on it. Apparently Bill took that signal, bought the
home and used it to lure her not only to marry him, but to move to
Fayetteville, where she became a law professor as well. They were married in
the living room of this home.
We got a
little bonus when we were there. We learned that all the Arkansas based Clinton
historical sites had gotten together and created a passport that you could get
stamped when you visited. On other trips we had visited his boyhood home in
Hope, his presidential library in Little Rock, his high school in Hot Springs,
so it turned out that by visiting this site, we had completed our Arkansas
“Billgrimage”! The kind docent there took pity on us, since we visited those
sites before the passport was developed, and awarded us the William Jefferson
Clinton pins that go along with completing the Billgrimage.
We saw
the aqua colored tile that Bill had personally laid in front of the fireplace –
it looked like he did a really nice job. Hillary would later comment that of
course it should look nice, when you take a weekend project and make it last 6
months. We also learned that the Clintons were not the first notable people to
own this home. Two of the biggest processed chicken distributors in the US
happened to hail from this part of Arkansas, the Tyson family and the Swanson
family. The founder of Swanson foods used to own the Clinton home, and used to
experiment with recipes in its modest kitchen. Allegedly the recipe for the
Swanson chicken pot pie was developed in this very house.
Having
completed our Arkansas exploration of Slick and president elect Hilary, it was time
to move on.
Talk to
you soon!
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