One of the fun things about this job is putting together the Fun Guide, named in 1982 during a four-mile ride through the Mark Twain National Forest to our Butler Hollow mailbox. It was four miles past the mailbox to Ruby’s in Seligman where a case of Blatz in longneck returnable bottles was $7.80.
Three of us sat on the bench seat of a green and white 1970 Chevrolet C10, and three dogs, Maggie, Ruby (not named after the liquor store) and LeJohn, were in the bed.
“What Eureka Springs needs is a fun guide,” our driver said. “We could call it the Fun Guide. It would have music, history, events, art, good food, how to assess soil to see if it met your growing needs – fun stuff.”
We filed this information away in case we ever got a job where we could put something like a fun guide together.
It took until 2012, so that’s what – 30 years – for the words Fun Guide to be on the cover of a publication in and about Eureka Springs. We’ve been publishing ten a year since then, and the Fun Guide that hits the streets next Wednesday will be our 70th.
Last week we got a phone call from Arkansas Parks and Tourism and they want our Fun Guides in every Tourist Information Center in the state. Which is a fun surprise since we neither cultivated nor saw this coming.
Here’s the thing, we couldn’t do any of this without living in an area that encourages activity, civility, camaraderie, and love. Yes, we’re publishing a weekly newspaper and a Fun Guide because we love it but we wouldn’t love it if we didn’t love all of you. Even the ones we don’t love so much, we sorta love.
We know that as long as we put kids and dogs on our front page we can print whatever we want inside and you’ll be mostly okay with it.
And it’s just more fun to be here with all of you, even those we don’t see eye-to-eye with, than it would be to be anywhere else with anybody else.
That’s all.
P.S. The possums are big enough to lap their milk.