A Few Days in Mexico

I had the good fortune to be invited to spend a few days in mid-March in Mexico. My cousin Paul and his lovely wife Robyn invited me to spend quality time with them at their home near Puerto Vallarta. It was especially gracious of them to invite me since our friendship only goes back to our family reunion in 2009.

Willis, Sr. in a passport photo taken shortly after he traded combat with Pancho Villa for the more challenging opponent, my grandmother.

While Paul and Robyn have been semi-expats in Mexico for some time, when I think of Bryants in Mexico, I think of my grandfather, known in the family as Willis Senior (as opposed to Willis Seňor) and his time below the Rio Grande. No, he wasn’t in Juarez watching one of those shows with a donkey (I wouldn’t rule it out, but there's no documentation), but instead served under General John J. Pershing in 1916-1917 as part of what was then diplomatically called The Punitive Expedition, now known as the Pancho Villa Expedition.

Pancho Villa

If you were sick or perhaps paying more attention to your spontaneous erection at the thought of taking in-car driver training with the Rogers twins the day this was discussed in your high school A.P. History class, the U.S. of A. looked askance at Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa’s raid on the town of Columbus, New Mexico. One hundred years later, historians are still debating whether Villa was seeking to spend some leftover dollars or just wanted to be able to tell strangers in a bar, “Yeah, I’ve been to the Gadsden Purchase. Hasn’t everyone?” 

Woodrow Wilson

Venustiano Carranza

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson attempted to con Mexico’s president—a guy with the fabulous name of Venustiano Carranza— by claiming that the sending the US Army into Mexico was done with “scrupulous regard for the sovereignty of Mexico".  President Carranza, as one would expect, got his serape into a knot about the—as Henry Kissinger would say-- “incursion” into his country. Although Pershing was under orders to bring back Pancho Villa dead or alive, the United States gave up on the effort after eleven months. In those pre-Yelp days it took that long to learn that the Mexican food was better in Texas than it was in Mexico. Looking back from a vantage point of almost 100 years, no one considers this period to be a high point in the U.S. - Mexican relationship.

I am not a strong believer in omens but I knew that I was going to have an interesting trip when I looked at the fellow next to me in the departure lounge in the State College airport shortly before 6 AM to see that he was wearing bedroom slippers designed to look like some sort of little fuzzy animal. I think they might have been hamsters wearing Persian lamb coats. Apparently they are the perfect thing to go with sweats and a flat brim.

Manspreading in the departure lounge

When I checked in for my flight from Chicago to Puerto Vallarta I found that I could purchase an upgrade from steerage to business class, which is practically Net Jets compared to my usual spot in the middle seat between two folks who suffer from terminal flatulence while eating bottomless bags of bar-b-que potato chips. I weighed my grandmother’s dictum that “the back of the plane gets there at the same time as the front” with my father’s motto, “you don’t go on vacation to save money”. I came down firmly on the side of my father. I was all over that offer like a cheap suit. After entering my credit card credit card number and agreeing to terms and conditions that I never, ever, bother to read, I was practically a member of the leisure class. 

This meant that when it was time to board in Chicago, I was on the plane early, with my easy-to-spot compadres. They were mostly well dressed, except for guy in the row right in front of me, who thought that gym shorts and an Ohio State golf shirt made him GQ ready. His younger, but hardly trophy, wife sported an equally not-quite-dressy-enough for Walmart outfit. Fellow upgraders, I presumed.

Since Puerto Vallarta is supposed to be Mexico’s answer to Provincetown, Key West, and Rehoboth Beach rolled into one, I used the opportunity of boarding early and lounging in my seat scaled to actual human beings to check out (i.e. cruise) the sans-culottes as they passed by, struggling with their carry-on steamer trunks, anvils, live chickens, and whatever else people try to carry on a plane these days. Among the families and women dressed trampy-by-Las Vegas-standards, there were just two promisingly cute-ish guys. Otherwise, it was slim pickings. The line of passengers looked more like the communion line at State College Presbyterian Church than it looked like people headed south of the border for debauchery on the Mexican Riviera.

After a smooth flight, we landed in P.V., where the plane parked away from the terminal, and the ground crew rolled a stairs up to the side of the plane, just like in the old days. I was reminded of the postcard I bought in Dallas of JFK and Jackie—in her pink Chanel suit and pillbox hat—descending the stairs from Air Force One at Love Field, right before the famous motorcade.  I wondered, “Should I have packed by pillbox hat?”

When they opened the door of the plane, the sudden realization that—Wow! The heat and humidity are doing nothing for my natty outfit of navy blazer, white oxford, and khakis—brought me back to reality pretty quickly.  Oh well, I thought, if the British could subjugate an entire subcontinent in weather like this, surely I was up to the task of a few days of R and R. 

After a short trip through customs and immigration and I was met in the arrival lounge by my cousin Paul’s wife, Robyn.

Our first stop, on the two hour trek north to their house, was Walmart, where we loaded up on some staples and we (OK, I) marveled at the fact that Walmart in Mexico is pretty darned similar to Walmart in the U.S. I had no idea what anything cost since, as the ugly American, I had no idea how pesos translated into "real money". 

 The limes, however, were much limey-er than they are in America.

Speaking of limes, while R. and I were in the store shopping my cousin P. made sure that we stayed hydrated and enjoyed a prophylactic treatment against scurvy with a gin and tonic for the ride to the house.

The trip north from P.V. was quite beautiful, once you got away from bits of unattractive strip mall development, presumably put up to make Gringos like me feel at home.

We passed by more roadside stands than there are in Cape May County, NJ which is saying something. It was coconut season--they were stacked up at every fruit and veg stand like pumpkins before Halloween back home.  Paul pointed out one spot where a strip club was adjacent to a cemetery, the perfect spot for guys who never know if they’re coming or going.

From the coconut district we entered the watermelon district where there were piles after piles of watermelons for sale by the highway. We stopped to buy some. I don’t know how many pesos they were but it translated into not much in American dollars.

Not long after the watermelon district we came we arrived at their home, Casa Largarto just off the now no longer very busy coastal road.

It’s not so much a house as a grouping of three small buildings that take advantage of the steep, lushly landscaped hillside site.

The main entrance and garage were at the street level. The master suite is above the garage, and above that there’s a sky deck, or as P. and R. are learning to say in the local tongue, the mirador.

To me, Mirador is the name of a famous estate near Charlottesville, Virginia that was the girlhood home of Nancy Langhorne Astor, the first woman to serve in the British Parliament. It’s as stunning as P and R’s mirador, but in a different of way.

A few steps from the entrance building there’s a round two story masonry guest house with a thatched roof. Because of the sloping site, the main entrance to the property puts you on the second floor of the guest house. There was another guest room it at ground level.
 

The third building, a few steps further below the guest house, contained the kitchen, dining, and living spaces. Open on three sides, it was as much a thatch-covered patio as it was enclosed structure. It commanded a spectacular (and I do mean spectacular—on my first evening there we saw whales swim by) view of the little cove and the Pacific Ocean. The kitchen—an extravaganza of colorful tile and modern conveniences was located in the end of the building away from the ocean. P and R had the place decorated tastefully with a refreshing lack of tchotchkes.

A stairway leads from patio outside the living pavilion to the Pacific Ocean, about sixty feet below.

Soup to nuts, the place is beautiful. And you can go there too, since P and R have it on VRBO.

R. took me on a tour to get the lay of the land and to see see the other rock star houses in the 'hood.

Just add Mick, Keith, etc. and you're good to go!

The best part of the trip was the rare treat of hanging out with my cousins—two more arrived the day after me. They're bright, amusing, and fun to be around. We yammered about our family—who drank lighter fluid, who was crazy/a crossdresser/in a cult, who was on the Titanic/Hindenburg/Challenger, what did you really think of our grandmother, and so on.

Somehow I doubt that these are officially licensed NFL products.

During my four days there, we did some touristy stuff like going to a Mexican market.

I got quite a charge out of the Mexican approach to logos:

Nothing says tasty like a cow smacking his lips at his hindquarters being turned into a steak.

Don't all happy hypodermic needles wear lab coats?

But we mostly chatted, caught up on our reading, ate delicious food, and quaffed adult beverages. Not always in that order. It was a relaxing time with great company in a beautiful setting.

My temporary office. View was great; internet, not so much.

And in between all this, I had the DTs (digital tremens) since my phone didn’t work and the wireless available at a nearby restaurant was spotty at best. 

One day, the cousins and I went to the beach—just a short four wheeler drive from the house. There wasn’t a soul there and we got a bucket of beers, and sat in a mostly deserted café at the edge of the sand.  The water was warm and refreshing but before long, it felt as if I had barbed wire wrapped along my leg. Then one of the cousins said, “Did you just feel something?” Yes, we’d all felt it. Lo and behold we’d all been stung by jellyfish. It hurt but wasn’t disabling, like a mild case of shingles. We discussed peeing on our stings and decided against it. I was glad I’d packed ibuprofen.

My final night there, we had a bonfire on the beach. Even in Mexico, in the age old battle between beach bonfires built below the high tide line and the rising tide, the rising tide wins. 

L to R: Kristin, Rick, Paul, and Bill Bryant

The night after our bonfire, it was time to go back to Puerto Vallarta to start my trip home. The cousins and I said our goodbyes, and we posed a family photo to mark the event.

R. and P. put me on a bus and told me that when the bus arrived at an actual terminal and the driver got out, I’d be in Puerto Vallarta.  The bus was modern, clean, and speedy. In fact, the roomy seat reclined so much that it was like taking a 90 minute test drive of a La-Z-Boy Recliner Rocker.  The trip felt much safer and surely was more comfortable than the legendary Chinese buses that used to tote folks around the Mid-Atlantic states. Generations from now, my collateral descendants will not be wondering which ancestor was in a bus plunge in Mexico.

I’d looked into booking a room for my final night in Mexico in a quaint and charming hotel in the olde quarter of Puerto Vallarta. However, after reading Trip Advisor at length, I decided that I couldn’t tell the difference between one commenter’s colorful publican and another’s bitchy old queen. So, I decided to play it safe and stay at the large outpost of the U.S. of A. In other words, the CasaMagna Marriott Resort.

Nothing says quality like a double portrait of J. Willard Marriott and his son Bill that's in every Marriott lobby. I have lots of Marriott points and was able to cash some of them in for a room with an ocean view.

The building is an enormous John Portman-esque thing that would look a thousand times better if they’d just freshen up the exterior paint color. The color wasn’t baby shit brown but it made me think of baby shit brown. And that’s just as bad.

The hotel really was top notch even though check-in took 16 minutes once I got to the head of the line and my “Sucks To Be You” coupon for a discount on a massage wasn’t worth a whole lot since there weren’t any appointments available. But the thought was nice.

The swim-up bar is on the backside of Gilligan's Island.

A stroll around the grounds showed that there weren’t legions of buff, attractive, and amusing gay men who’d had excellent SAT scores lounging and loitering by the large pool with swim-up bar, or even on the adjoining not fantastic even-by-New Jersey-standards strip of beach. Puerto Vallarta may be Mexico’s answer to Provincetown, Key West, and Rehoboth Beach rolled into one, however, at CasaMagna, the Book of Mormon in the nightstand is the one revealed by the Angel Moroni to Joseph Smith so that he could found the church responsible for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Osmonds, and the dearth of Starbucks in Utah.

These guys do not exist in real life. At least in my real life, including my Mexican vacation.

Were the Book of Mormon in the nightstand at CasaMagna a DVD of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical with book, lyrics, and music by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone, well, there would be a whole ‘nother crowd making burnt offerings of themselves down by the pool.

Once I'd settled in, I showered, shaved, and Aqua Velva-d and upped the snazzy quotient with some fresh madras for a cab to the Olde City, Puerto Vallarta's gayborhood. Perhaps it was a communication problem caused by his lack of English and my lack of Spanish, or he didn’t like Aqua Velva and madras, but the cabby was, well, creepy. It was the only time in Mexico I encountered someone who was creepy.

The cab dropped me off at the Cathedral and I gave it a quick Reformed Protestant jiffy tour, taking in of all the bells and smells that I could stand in five minutes.

I walked around the Olde Puerto Vallarta which is like Wildwood, NJ except in Mexico, and it has fewer people who look as if they’re related by blood, marriage, or time spent in the buffet line to Governor Chris Christie. While people were out having fun, if there was Bacchanalian revelry going on, I certainly missed it. (It wouldn't be the first time.)

I had a fantastic meal in an upscale Thai restaurant, of all places. It even had Wi-Fi.

When I’d had given up on the idea of debauchery and had enough of the colonial charms of Olde Puerto Vallarta, I decided to take the bus back to the resort rather than to take another creepy cab ride. I called up the directions on my phone and found what looked to be a bus stop. Trip Advisor told me to wait for the blue and white bus that was going to the Marina, so I waited and waited and waited some more while lots of other buses came and went. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably really six minutes, my bus came by.

As soon as I boarded, I decided that the bus had been a washing machine in a former life. And not a Maytag either, but an East German 2-cycle washing machine that ran on whatever toxic waste there’s a surplus of in Dresden. After the bearings were shot, it was repurposed in Romania into a bus. I have no doubt that it shuttled Olympic athletes of indeterminate gender identity to and from their dorm to the Peoples Gymnasium #7 where they practiced the 250 meter rhythmic dodge biathlon, a sport that combines the floor exercise from rhythmic gymnastics (as in the wacky event where women cavort with the ribbon tied to a stick that calls to mind fly casting) with target shooting and dodge ball. It was considered perfect training for Communist bloc agents who were sent to the United States under deep cover as female gym teachers. But I digress.  

I’m not sure if the bus had an actual suspension, but as we sped down the cobblestone streets, it felt, well, as if we we’re on the love child of the square-wheeled train from the Island of the Misfit Toys and an industrial strength Magic Fingers. I sat there, glad that my nephew was a dentist. If my fillings vibrated out, I’d at least get the family discount on some new ones. On the other hand, the fare was less than 10 pesos, and no one on the bus was remotely creepy. What wasn't to like?

The next day, after a breakfast almost as good as that of The Buffet at Wynn Las Vegas, and enjoying an hour or two of the best weather of my trip, I flew back to the U.S.

When I was waiting in O’Hare Airport for my flight to State College my phone came back to life, easing my DTs (digital tremens). I could now get back to the important stuff in my life, like following Lee Radziwill on Twitter.  I’d had a great time in Mexico, reconnecting with relatives, seeing a new part of the world, and being thankful that I‘d waited as long as I did to get stung by a jellyfish.

Art in the Ozarks, Part 2

The whole point of the trip to NWA was to go to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. B and M and I went twice—on Friday evening and again on Saturday afternoon. My apologies for no decent building photos--it was raining like mad when we were there.

The Moshe Safdie design is quirky and doesn’t really shout Palace of Culture in the way that some museums do. There’s no grand portico and entrance and instead, you enter by taking an elevator from the parking lot down to the lobby level. Once in the lobby, they ask you to fork over your zip code. That’s it. The place is free. They don't even take your photo ID if you use one of the museum's acoustiguides!

"Kindred Spirits" by Asher Durand, 1849

"The Lantern Bearers", Maxfield Parrish, 1908

 The galleries are large and handsome; I loved the permanent collection.

"Worth the Wait" by Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman

The State of the Art exhibition was fun, too. I was pleasantly surprised to see the work of my friend Nate Larson in the show. State of the Art seems like such a super idea--it makes you wonder why no one had the idea to travel across America in search of cool non-New York art scene stuff previously.

I can't recommend the museum and the exhibition highly enough. 

An unexpected highlight of the trip was the Daisy Air Gun Museum in Rogers, Arkansas. (You didn't think I could skip it, did you?)  The museum is just a couple of rooms worth of stuff but nicely done. The exhibits are mostly you guessed it, Daisy Air Guns, but there were “didactic materials” i.e. text panels that explain the history of the company. Interestingly enough, the company started as a sideline for a windmill company in Michigan but as rural electrification put windmills out of business air rifles became the company’s bread and butter.

I loved the old art from Daisy advertisements. The modeling agency offered the boy in the red vest an actual Daisy Air Rifle and much to his dismay, his mother wouldn't let him accept it.

There was a gift shop, or a gift nook, actually, where they sold seconds of Daisy Air Rifles, ammo, and slingshots too. The clerk told me that they couldn’t ship slingshots to certain states- New Jersey among them. Presumably this is because Gov. Chris Christie makes too tempting of a target.

At the Daisy Air Rifle museum I picked up a rack card for the Rogers Historical Museum and immediately said—lo and behold!—they have an exhibit on Victorian funerals! It was just two blocks away—how convenient.

The funeral exhibit was only slightly larger than the gift nook at the Daisy Air Rifle Museum, and if you were in elementary school you might find it interesting, but it really wasn’t directed at adults.

The museum maintains a Victorian bungalow as a house museum in addition to its modern exhibition space. We took the house tour, but I think our docent would have done better with a different audience. The extremely gracious woman insisted on walking us out to the car in a heavy rain with her golf umbrella. I have to admit, I was a tad scared she was going to get in the car with us. I think it was a slow day at the museum.

We took in a second E. Fay Jones chapel, the Mildred B. Cooper Memorial Chapel. Another glass lantern in the woods, it was similar to Thorncrown Chapel. There was no funeral home music—just the sound of heavy rain on the roof. There was no custodian about, so I was left wondering about snow removal. This chapel, built 11 years after Thorncrown Chapel, was more elaborate and therefore probably had a plow on a garden tractor or even a snowblower instead of the plain old snow shovel with wheels that they have at Thorncrown Chapel. 

Of course I couldn’t go to Bentonville w/o stopping in the Walmart Museum, which is behind the façade of the first Walton’s 5 & 10, on the main square in Bentonville. It’s from this little speck of a store that a mighty empire (or cancer, if you prefer) grew.

I know people of my age and socio-economic stratum, whatever that is (as in doofus hipster-wannabes) tend to think that Walmart is a manifestation of hell on earth and that we should steer or our Subarus and Priuses to Mom and Pop stores where the stuff is made in a better class of Chinese prison, the employees belong to the Beer of the Month Club, and so on.

I shop at Walmart from time to time and I’m mostly grateful to Sam Walton & crew for building a better mousetrap. Yes, there are things I’d like Walmart to do differently, but the same goes for Apple, Google, and lots other Fortune 500 companies. What's more, without Walmart, we wouldn’t have the website People of Walmart.

The Walmart Museum is just a few rooms and tells the Walmart corporate story in direct and unassuming way. The largest single display is Sam Walton’s office, displayed just as it was when he died in 1992. It reminded me of seeing John Wanamaker’s office preserved in his namesake Center City Philadelphia department store when I was a kid.  I think Sam Walton’s  office looks remarkably like Jimmy Stewart’s preserved office in the Jimmy Stewart Museum.

The Walmart Museum doesn’t have a gift shop, but there’s a faux 1950s soda fountain, with the friendliest soda jerk-ettes ever.

Saturday night we’d planned to go to the gala tree lighting in the Bentonville town square but it was rained out. We did, however manage to walk through the square on our way to dinner just as the lights were turned on. The lights are great; I can only imagine what all the entertainment and whatnot would have been like.

Dinner was fine, and afterward we had a couple of drinks in the finally open 21C Museum Hotel bar, hosted by Brandon, a bona fide hipster who makes his own mustache wax, and no I am not making that up.  He’s also an Anglican priest (seriously) and through the power of God transubstantiated C₂H₅OH into the body (or was that the blood?) of Jim Beam through a ritual involving vigorous agitation of a cocktail shaker. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at this since his business card identifies him as not only a mixologist and craft cocktailier but also a "retrotender".

After sampling Brandon's handiwork, I was racking some Z’s on my last night in Arkansas when at 2:30 am Sunday morning I was awakened by someone pounding on the door across the hall.  I went to the peep hole and saw a short woman in a stretchy black top, black yoga pants and neon running shoes pounding angrily on the door immediately across the hall from my $299 per night (plus tax and valet parking) room.

GIVE ME MY FUCKING PHONE!!   (This is a direct quote.)

She kept pounding on the door.

GIVE ME MY FUCKING PHONE!!

Exercise clothes and running shoes. I couldn’t imagine where she would have gone in Bentonville, Arkansas at this hour dressed like that. Hell, I couldn’t imagine where she’d go in the daylight dressed like that. I’m a strict constructionist on this issue—and think that you should only wear workout gear on the way to and from the gym. But it does seem to be the outfit of the moment of women of a certain age and social class. One size fits, or rather more often doesn’t fit, all.

Since I valued my personal safety especially those parts covered by my Lilly Pulitzer boxer shorts, I passed on the opportunity to open my door and offer her unsolicited fashion advice.  Even though she really needed it.

Whoever was in the room must have been completely deaf or be the type of person who starts smoking just for the joy of quitting. She pounded relentlessly but no one opened the door. She wasn’t about to be deterred. 

GIVE ME MY FUCKING PHONE!!

Good lord, was that her entire vocabulary? She was like a living, breathing Arkansas Chatty Cathy and that little record inside her was stuck.

I said to myself, Fuck this noise. (Another direct quote.)

I picked up the phone by the bed and pushed the button for front desk. A woman picked up.

“This is Rick Bryant in 202. There’s some sort of disturbance in the hall outside my room.”

The woman said, “Yes, we know, we’re taking care of it.”  I thought, well, you might already know about it, but you’d have a hard time making me believe that you’re taking care of it.

Since World War III was still going on when I hung up, I went back to the door to check out the action.  The woman in the black outfit had been joined by hotel staff and a man who looked like James Gandolfini, only larger and not dead.  He wasn’t wearing a shirt. Not a pretty sight, but, in retrospect, it did add a grace note—make that a few bars, actually---of Ozarks white-trashiness. 

Unlike me, the J.G. look alike (only larger and not dead) didn’t seem to have body image issues. I’m embarrassed to take off my shirt on a New Jersey beach and here’s Large Marge’s cousin in all his shirtless glory in the middle of a donnybrook outside my $299 (plus tax and valet parking) room door.

Have you no pride? Put a shirt on for Chrissakes.

That didn’t happen. So much for the mental telepathy I thought I might have picked up at Christ of the Ozarks.

The J.G. look alike (only larger and not dead) seemed like the type of guy who wears black off-brand underwear. Unless he’s screwing someone who’s not his wife, then he wears the black Calvins that he keeps at the back of his underwear drawer since he thinks they mold his balls into an impressive wad. Were he gay, he’d have been a hit at Ozarks Bearfest. He’d bring not only the love handles but also the boyfriend drama.

Presumably the hotel employees were trying to bring peace to the warring parties. They had that deer-in-headlights thing going on and were not exactly taking control of the situation. The combatants were irate and perhaps irrational. I’m not entirely certain that there wasn’t a film crew for The Real Housewives of Arkansas just out of my field of vision.

Woman: Give me my fucking phone.

Man: It’s not her phone it’s my work phone.

Woman: I just want my fucking phone.

Man: Don’t you touch me. She touched me.

(Yes, this is what they actually said. I took notes.)

Repeat ad nauseum.

The players moved out of my frame but not out of earshot so I went back to bed and covered my ears with a pillow.

This wouldn’t happen at Wynn Las Vegas I thought to myself. Those clowns would have been thrown out in all of about 2 minutes.  And Wynn Las Vegas never has had a coffee stain in in the carpet in front of the credenza. Yes, I was entering the bitchy phase of sleeplessness.

‘Yeah, we’re handling it." That’s a statement that ranks right up there with “The check’s in the mail” and “Of course, I’ll respect you in the morning” and the famous third big lie that I don't need to repeat here.

I should have picked up the phone and said, "If you’re handling it, why does it sound the same as when you weren’t handling it?"

The noise came and went for a while. A sound night’s sleep wasn’t in the cards.  I wonder if the guy in 'Twas the Night Before Christmas felt this way when he sprang from his bed to see what was the matter? Perhaps I’m a curmudgeon, but I was in no mood to dash out a rhyming couplet or two in anapestic tetrameter.

The commotion heated up at 4:00 am so I peered through the peep hole again in time to see the desk clerk unlocking the door across the hall. Two policemen were with her, and the James Gandolfini-doppelganger (only larger and not dead) was there too. Ms. Yoga Pants was nowhere to be seen.

The desk clerk stood sentry holding the door open while the policemen watched the guy dress and pack his black rolling suitcase. He must be better at traveling lightly than I am because it didn’t take long before he was zipping his bag. He was escorted out by the police and the unhappy looking desk clerk.

The situation was finally over. I had to resort to the help of Big Pharma in order to get to sleep.

I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels. Not many cost $299 a night (plus valet parking), but there have been a couple. I’ve NEVER have I had my own personal community theater production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? before. Especially not with a 2:30 am curtain. 

Perhaps I should have intervened. I’m not sure what I could have done to get them to act like reasonable humans and not like two rude assholes. Perhaps the sight of my Lilly Pulitzer boxer shorts and my "Reason Number 23: Domineering Mother" t-shirt would have been enough to diffuse the situation. But I don’t think so. They were pretty intent on fighting.

When I checked out the next morning, I asked the desk clerk—a chirpy sort and not the woman who was on duty at 2:30 am—what had happened the previous night. The desk clerk  said that they didn’t really know what to do (duh) that the night auditor had to go upstairs and sort it out.

Nice. Mortimer Snerd to the rescue, I thought.

She told me that the police took the woman to jail, since she’d scratched the man. The police took the man to the airport. Frontier justice, Arkansas-style apparently.

Later that day, we spent some time in Fayetteville at a Confederate Cemetery and then flew back to Pennsylvania.

Except for that last night’s stay, it was a great time in NWA. I’d seen lots of great art, some wonderful architecture, met nice people and even laughed at a convenience store called Kum & Go.   Being kept awake by the couple fighting over the fucking phone at 2:30 am. in not something I'll forget. Spending a pile on a hotel does not guarantee a good night's sleep. 

P.S. I wrote the manager of the hotel the day I got home and said that I thought my last night should be comped or severely discounted due to the disturbance that kept me from sleeping. His response was, and I quote:

I would like to apologize for this unfortunate issue, our night audit team is indeed trained to try to defuse the situation and if all else fail as it was the case, then to call law enforcement as they did. Those situation are usually delicate and unlike hotels of much larger size like the one you mentioned we do not have a full security staff and we have to rely on the local police. 

I am at your service to answer any questions you may have and if you find it in your heart to give us another chance, please contact me directly as I will gladly extend a very special rate and a complimentary upgrade (depending on occupancy). 

A very special rate and complimentary upgrade (depending on occupancy).  Wow!

The web site of the 21C Hotels chain advises travel writers and bloggers to contact their Director of Corporate Communications. I wrote to her on November 25 and received an away message. I wrote again two days after her away message said she'd be back at work. She responded the same day and said she'd respond as soon as she was back at work at the home office in Louisville. I'm still waiting to hear from her.