Arkansas
Spud visited Arkansas in October of 2013. The state's motto is 'The Natural state' but the tato was unable to determine exactly what that referred to. While the Ozark mountains in the North and its beautiful Hot Springs National Park could certainly give ample reason, it may also be that the state beverage is milk and that fewer plastic surgeries are done here than most anywhere else in the US.
Regardless of the motto, Arkansas is the home of one of Spud's favourite NASCAR stock car drivers: Mark Martin. That in itself was reason enough to make the trip. The small town of Batesville is Martin's hometown so Spud drove out to Mark Martin's museum, strategically located inside his Ford dealership. On display were many of Martin's trophies, firesuits, helmets and race cars from his stories career. There were also interesting photo albums; cobbled together from early family photos and from Martin's own race diary at the start of his career.
Regrettably Mark was not to be seen, however many of his employees were eager to talk him into buying a Ford Fusion. The tater respectfully declined given that its impossible to reach the pedals.
Mark Martin is not the only celebrity to emerge from the backwoods of Arkansas. It is also home to the 42nd President of the United States, none other than William Jefferson Clinton. Clinton was born in Hope, Arkansas and gradually made his way to the city of Little Rock. The Clinton Presidential Library is located in Little Rock and Spud thought he'd make a visit.
Spud found it odd that the Clinton Library was next door to a company called 'Heifer' as that would be the last thing you'd expect to find around Bill. Well then again, Monika Lewinsky wasn't exactly 'wafer-thin'. Turns out that Heifer is merely an organization committed in the fight to end world hunger.
Inside the vast walls of the Clinton library, Spud found an enormous archive containing 2 million photographs, 80 million pages of documents, 21 million e-mail messages, and 79,000 artifacts from the Clinton presidency. Oh, and a few boxes of cigars with the word 'practice' marked on the outside.
Spud is not a big bookworm however he was looking forward to combing through the emails and pictures involving Clinton's many women. They would be an infinitely more interesting read than anything related to government policy. Not surprising, Spud couldn't find anyone working at the library that knew where the items were. Curiously, the entire library staff consisted of female interns.
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