So, in planning our trip into Arkansas, I was really expecting not to like it. After all, it’s Arkansas. But upon arriving, I found it to be Arkansas! It was one really pretty state. Our first stop was, of course a rest stop. Graffiti covered and complete with bars on the vending machines, it was a no frills, we-have-a-crime-issue, move-along, type of rest stop (hey Arkansans, not the best intro to your state). But our second stop was the Clinton Presidential Library. I have no particular desire to ever visit a presidential library, but on this trip each person got to pick a site to visit, and this is what my husband chose. If you knew my husband, you would know this is confusing. You might have read in the another Arkansas post that my husband thought the Little Rock Nine was legit a baseball team…
Nonetheless, we arrived in the lobby of the William J Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, a sleek and modern mix of metal and marble, which helped to echo the loud thwack and subsequent traumatic crying behind me. I knew that it could only be my kids because Everyone Else’s Kids were all standing about introspectively considering the Clinton Presidency. One of mine, however, managed to trip over her sister’s foot and land on her thigh. How is it even possible to land on one’s thigh?
It was this fall that dictated the rest of our exploration through the museum. The audible gasp that carried through the atrium from the second floor as my daughter fell belonged to an exhibit guide that rushed down to examine Charlotte’s leg. He felt it gravely necessary that we ice down her thigh and escorted us to the lower level of the building to sit outside Café 42 (clever) where we waited for the ice delivery. Possibly from the actual Arctic. It took a long time.
By the time we got back to the main level, the tour had already moved 20 minutes ahead of us, so we took two uninterested children through a series of displays of the events of a presidency they could not relate to, which made it all the more difficult for us adults to linger over the displays. We eventually passed the tour group and discovered that the guide was fairly dry, so we were just as well off going at our own, slightly quicker pace. On the upper level – and the kids were so very excited that there was an upper level – there was a large display of White House china, and gifts that have been given to the US by visiting dignitaries over the years. But the best thing, in my opinion, was the recreation of the Oval Office as it was during Bill Clinton’s time. The room was roped off, but we were able to stand in the doorway and the guide posted there gave us information on various artifacts in the room. The guide happened to be the very man that came rushing down to our aid after The Fall Heard ‘Round the Atrium, and he took some time to discuss the fact that it was during Clinton’s term that it became common for government officials to carry coins or tokens specific to their position. This was common in the military before this time, but during the Clinton era, other government groups received tokens that were used, in part, to identify themselves as belonging to certain groups. Our guide held out a token from his pocket and instructed us not to touch, but we followed his purposeful point to read, “secret service”. He smiled at us then, and it was sweet to think of this man as perhaps a former secret service agent, now being working in the Clinton Library in his older years.
We left, then, and this is where those of you who bribe your children for good behavior have some leverage. The gift shop is not in the Library proper, but about a half mile away via golf cart-like shuttle. The gift shop is in a cute little revitalized area of Little Rock that borders the Arkansas River, and that area includes many little shops and restaurants – and a park. A cool park where kids can climb down into what looks like sewer pipes and pop up in another part of the park to climb a rope jungle gym or play in a splash fountain or climb a rock wall. It looked so much like sewer grates in fact, that my husband yelled at the kids for going down them. It looks so much like sewer piping and is so hard to keep track of your children, that kids will love it. Perhaps even enough to hang in there during your tour of the William J Clinton Presidential Library and Museum.
Fifty State Family 