Day Five: Hot Springs, AK to Dallas, TX
09.30am
We leave the Comfort Inn, which we chose because it has wireless networking in the lobby, to find out exactly what it is about Hot Springs that brings people here. Last night all we saw of town was five miles of strip mall: buzzing neon, rattling air conditioners and four lanes of traffic. Chain hotels, chain restaurants, chain stores and lots of pawn shops, including the intriguingly named Boll Weevil Pawn.
By day Hot Springs hasn’t changed. If anything, it looks worse. What were blank gaps in the neon last night are empty shops and abandoned cinemas this morning. Apparently once we’ve picked our way through this detritus there will be a national park maintained by the government.
The town of Hot Springs rose to prominence in the late nineteenth century, when the European trend for spas crossed the Atlantic. The natural hot water springs (153°F) that flowed from the surrounding hills provided a perfect location for the construction of bath houses, and the type of health tourism which is exemplified in England by Bath came to Arkansas. They spas seem to have enjoyed their heyday in the early twentieth century: many of the pictures of bathers in the Fordyce Bathhouse show men and women with silent-movie star hairdos.
Today, Hot Springs has all but forgotten what made it prosperous. The neon lights and empty buildings continue all the way up and past the grand old bath houses. An ornate 1920’s picture palace now sells plastic aeroplanes that circle on strings attached to the ceiling, three storey buildings that would be prized in New York lie semi-derelict. Four lanes of traffic clog the road, making it difficult to cross the road to the bath houses. This was America’s first resort, but it’s hard to see why all the tourists are here now.
The bath houses themselves are mostly empty. Of the eight grand buildings, Superior, Hale, Maurice, Fordyce, Quapaw, Ozark, Buckstaff and Lamar, only two remain open to the public. Buckstaff is still an operating bath house and Fordyce is a museum run by the National Park authority.
We examine Fordyce. It’s very finely finished. The craftsmanship in the tiling, woodwork and brickwork is far superior to any of the modern buildings in town. In the central men’s bath hall, light filters through a stained glass ceiling onto a Romantic statue of a knight in armour being presented with a pitcher of water by a native squaw. The craft is good, even if the sentiment is mawkish and revisionist. The odd touches of arts-and-crafts decor contrast strongly with their antiseptic surroundings. There’s lots of spartan white tile and surgical stainless steel. The building is an exhortation to physical and spiritual health through rigour and discipline.
Upstairs there’s an exhibit of machines made by Dr. Gustav Zander. His inventions of the 1850’s are the forerunners of modern exercise and weight machines, and were bought by the Fordyce baths to provide more treatments than just the baths and massages. A couple of Arkansians, gawping at the machines, but not reading the information beside them, announced in self-satisfied voices that “They look like torture machines!” and “That’s just quackery!”
Ultimately we both found Hot Springs to be a very sad place. The civilization and gentility of the bath houses seem like relics from a very distant past. Certainly the old Hot Springs was a place for the well-heeled and now it’s accessible to all, but somewhere in this process something has gone very wrong, and the things of value in the town have been lost, destroyed, or put in cabinets, pieces of history to be snickered at by supposedly enlightened modern America. This country that is apparently so proud of its history also suffers from an indiscriminate neophilism driven by commerce. We’re glad to leave Hot Springs.
12.20pm
Leaving Hot Springs, we pay a quick visit to Malvern, AK, to see if it bears any resemblance to Malvern, UK. It’s a seedy little dump. As we’re driving into town we’re waved at by a man with a beard, a white suit, long white coat, white top hat, gold chain with a huge cross, and a white cane. He looked like a vaudeville Christ, and was most likely an evangelist or pentecostal. Most cars in these parts carry bumper stickers praising God, supporting the troops, or both. Our car has New York licence plates and bumper stickers that read "Mission Nothing Accomplished: Defeat Bush in ’04″" and "Abolish War Through World Law." Courtney looks very worried indeed.
13.58pm
Texas, Y’all!
14.59pm
We’re driving southwest down I-30 to Dallas, where Courtney’s friend Dee lives. We joke that she’s the last Texas democrat, but it’s not really much of a joke.
15.09pm
I just saw my first buffalo bathing in a pool on Broseo Ranch, just off I-30.
16.00pm
I nod off. When I come to about twenty minutes later we’re driving through a very different landscape. There are different species of trees; large hawks or eagles with brown bodies and white heads circle over the verges; the air is drier, and so is the grass on the plains.
Texas is so big it barely fits on its own map. Little inserts, like those that are used to display the Outer Hebrides on maps of the UK, are used for the big square of land in the north-west and for the very southern tip of the state. Apparently it’s three times the size of France. I couldn’t get my head around that the first time I heard it, and now I’m here it’s still hard to conceive.
