Bow Tie o’ the Day is helping me make bigly plans. We’ve been flipping through actual, paper pages of two guidebooks about the state of Arkansas. I know! Who’da thunk it? I’ll be on the loose with a suitcase of bow ties in Arkansas. It’s gonna happen in a couple of weeks.
I have nothing against Arkansas. I just never imagined I’d be visiting it. Arkansas, as a destination, is Suzanne’s fault. She took the opportunity to arrange our July vacation completely on her own. She followed our main “rules” for choosing a vacay spot. First, it must be a place tourists don’t flock to, cuz we want to look at the place and its people, not other tourists. Second, the vacation spot needs to have a beach. We’ve done ocean beaches, but this time we’re beaching at a lake in the Ozarks.
When I order guidebooks for our various vacations, I don’t order the ones with fancy maps and facts, facts, facts, dry facts. I order the guidebooks that tell you about the weird, infamous, haunted, tall tale places you might want to visit. For example, I read in one of my Arkansas guidebooks about the chicken in this photo. Its owner named it Boo Boo because it was afraid of everything. And it regularly had seizures. (I’m envisioning Boo Boo, the chicken, as kind of like the fainting goats who get startled, freeze in mid-motion, then fall over. Boo Boo, The Fainting Chicken!))
Apparently, one day Boo Boo had a seizure and she fell beak-first into a pond. Boo Boo’s owner saw her floating there and tried to save her, but she was dead. Well, Boo Boo’s owner’s sister, who was a retired nurse, happened to show up. The sister performed mouth-to-beak resuscitation. Dead Boo Boo came back to life. Somehow, Jay Leno heard about Boo Boo’s life-and-death adventure, so Boo Boo and its owner were guests on The Tonight Show.
Back in Arkansas, a few weeks after Boo Boo’s Hollywood appearance, she had a bigly seizure and really did die. One of Boo Boo’s people erected a memorial shrine to the famous, dearly departed bird. Personally, I think the retired nurse who gave the chicken mouth-to-beak resuscitation deserves a shrine too. But if we find Boo Boo’s final resting spot, it will be enough to keep me jolly.