It Was Not a Noose Day at the Fort Smith National Historic Site

I'm pretty bummed that the Fort Smith National Historic Site no longer hangs a noose on the gallows on the anniversary of an execution. It was always kind of fun to be driving by with friends and say, "Hey, is it a noose day? Let's go see!"

In case you ever wondered what it was like to grow up me, lol!

I just like anniversaries and recreations and "on this day in history"-type stuff, but I do see how the practice was probably objectively morbid, and how the park rangers probably got a wearisome amount of inappropriately looky-loo questions and comments on every anniversary. We can't ever seem to have nice things, sigh.

Ah, well. The day we went wasn't an execution anniversary, anyway, and at least the reproduction gallows itself remains!

It was a beautiful day to not have an execution anniversary, and the sun blazed such that my poor, pale family was fraught with sweats and gasps and complaints as we browsed the local farmer's market and then the grounds of what used to be a fort and town on the border between the United States and Indian Territory.

As for me, I was growing increasingly certain that one of the underwires in my bra had broken free of its channel and was digging into my armpit, and I was not looking forward to the ordeal later of recombobulating myself in a public restroom--putting on a sweaty bra while one is also sweaty is almost as tough as putting on a wet swimsuit while one is also wet!--but did I complain?

No, because if you grow up in Arkansas, you grow up weird, poorly socialized to the wider world, and a bit uneducated in some shocking ways, but you also grow up tough!

Anyway, the history of Fort Smith is a little confusing, because it went through a few distinct phases. The first phase is after the government started throwing native nations off of their ancestral homelands and forcing them to emigrate away to encroach upon the established homelands of other nations. So the Cherokee had to encroach upon the Osage here, and this caused enough discord that the government, having bought the whole place off the French so it felt like everything that happened there, up to and including wars between nations (that, to be fair, they also did cause), was their business to stick their nose in.

So, boom! Fort!

Or rather, the footprint of a fort, I guess. This first one was abandoned in 1824.

But what a view it once had!

One of the many very special things about my youth that I did not realize were very special was growing up next to this river:

These days, there's a trail that allows you to walk or bike the entire riverfront as it borders the city, but back when I was a lonely young weirdo with a part-time minimum wage salary, a driver's license and my Pappa's old 1980 Lincoln Town Car (god, I miss that monstrosity!) to use it on, and most of the summer at my disposal, there were really only a couple of proper places in town to access the river, and this was one of them... provided that you bushwhacked your way through a ton of chigger-filled brush, crossed an active railroad track, and then bushwhacked a little more.

Tangent, but later on this day we'd be eating lunch with my high school best friend, when my older kid would mention brushing through some tall grass and weeds that morning (she's a full-grown adult and yet forever my feral wildling!). My buddy gasped and was immediately all, "Did you wash off your legs?!? You're gonna get chiggers!!!" The kid cracked up, because I had reacted the EXACT same way when it happened, and she did not understand what the big deal was.

So then for her crimes she got to sit there eating her pho and listen to my buddy and I relaying our Top Ten Worst Chigger Encounters. Mine is when I sat with my back against a tree once when I was around nine or ten and then spent the next two weeks in an agony of itching from a thousand chigger bites, only 900 of which I could reach, all down my back from neck to butt.

ANYWAY, these days you only have to battle chiggers on your way to the river if you're a feral wildling and wander deliberately off into the weeds. 

Here's my favorite spot on the river:

It's just at the confluence of the Arkansas and Poteau rivers, and this rocky shelf lets you sit and sun yourself as comfortably as if you were on a lakeshore. One benefit to the bushwhacking was that this spot was quite secluded when I was young, a fact that I made ample use of to the tune of LOTS of interpersonal mischief, but I do also like to see it so lovingly tended and clearly well enjoyed:

Anyway, a decade or so after that first fort was abandoned, this area got another fort thanks to the Indian Removal Act of 1830:

This one's also mostly a footprint. But a bigger one!

Interestingly-ish, then future president Zachary Taylor was in charge of the fort for a while in the 1840s. The commissary from that time is still standing, and is the oldest building in the city of Fort Smith:

Imagine stopping here to supply your wagon train at the commissary, because you're on your way to California--there's gold in them there hills!

Like most self-respecting American forts, this one also played a small part in the Civil War, when it was captured by the Union in 1863. I have randomly spent so much time in the Civil War this summer!

I'm personally most interested in the fort's early history, but the next part of its history is objectively the most famous: for a very specific amount of time, Fort Smith operated at the border of established colonizer settlement, and was subject to a Wild West-amount of crime and cowboy-style crime enforcement. Hence this guy:

And this guy!

Just between us, Judge Isaac Parker definitely had some autism. He was a black-and-white thinker who personally hated the death penalty but was firmly committed to executing the law of the land precisely as written, and therefore, thanks to how profoundly crime-ridden this area was, got himself the nickname "The Hanging Judge."

But first he had to get the criminals out of Indian Territory and into his courtroom. That's where this guy came in!

There are several famous U.S. Marshals of history and pop culture, depending on how interested you are in Westerns. As a kid, I watched a lot of Westerns with my Pappa, and I went through my own Zane Grey phase as a teenager (fun fact: the Fort Smith Public Library had an entire section for Westerns, they were so popular, but the books themselves were kind of notorious because they ALWAYS came back to the library absolutely reeking of cigarette smoke). Basically, the marshals tracked down suspected criminals exactly the way it's depicted in the Westerns (both versions of True Grit are partly set in Fort Smith, although sadly neither were filmed there--Pappa would have LOVED to have met John Wayne!!!)

Fort Smith has a whole entire other museum just for the marshals, so this site focuses more on the criminals, the jail, and the court:

old jail, located underneath Judge Parker's Courtroom so the smell would waft up and also make the courtroom noxious

"new" old jail, which stacked prison cells like cordwood but at least met minimum hygiene standards

Judge Parker's courtroom, destination of many, many, many public school field trips

Fun tangent: We were watching the orientation film in the visitor center--because you've ALWAYS got to watch the orientation film!--and I kept thinking, "Who is this narrator? He sounds so familiar!" So obviously I stayed to watch the credits so I could see, and of course! It was Bur Edson, newscaster for Channel 5 News for my entire childhood! Mamma and Pappa were devout local news buffs, and we watched the news at 5:00pm and 10:00pm--we did not watch the morning news, because that was when Mamma and Pappa sat at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, drinking coffee, and chain smoking. 

Visiting your childhood hometown is so weird.

Also, please listen to the dulcet voice of Bur Edson, former local celebrity:

This "new" old jail exhibit wasn't around yet during my five billion grade school field trips here, so it's always exciting to see displays that I haven't yet memorized:

This is a VERY noose-forward historic site!

Spotted our old friend, the clay pipe, in an exhibit of archeological finds at the fort!

Okay, so this entire brief trip actually had a purpose beyond sightseeing and visiting with old friends and mooching around my former childhood haunts. The reason for the whole trip was this:

My favorite stage director is Rachel Chavkin, and she has also, not coincidentally, directed my two favorite Broadway musicals, Hadestown and Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812.

So obviously when I found out that she was workshopping a musical only a nine-hour drive away, and only an hour from my childhood hometown, I grabbed anybody who couldn't hang onto the furniture hard enough, threw them into the car, and off we went. A nine-hour road trip is NOTHING if you live in the Midwest! Heck, it takes twenty minutes just to get into town!

And that's how we found ourselves having a little cocktail or two--

--then finding our seats and checking out the set--

--and then watching Eugene Onegin, a Bluegrass musical based on a Pushkin novel in verse and set in my home state of Arkansas in the 1940s:

It was wonderful.

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I Saw a Unicorn and Got My Playbill Signed By the Gods in New York City

New York City is a crazy place. Why is there everything that you'd ever want to see or do there, and it's all easily accessible via public transportation? And people just LIVE there like that's a completely normal way to exist!!! 

A place like Indiana must seem absolutely fucking miserable to a New Yorker. When a New Yorker is bored, they can go get cheap dumplings or ride the subway somewhere cool or visit a museum or go to a show or just walk around and people watch. When I'm bored, I have to resort to stupid shit like poking around in my garden or taking the dog for a hike or wandering around the mall and not buying stuff. Our lives are NOT the same.

Ah, well. One more full day to pretend to be a real New Yorker by doing all the touristy, non-New Yorker things I can fit into the schedule!

On this day, after the obligatory bagels for breakfast (you put too much cream cheese on your bagels, New York!), my partner polled the kids to see if they'd rather go see Stonewall National Monument or the unicorn tapestries. I think they'd have loved both, but unicorns were the winners this time. 

We'll pay our respects next time, Stonewall!

The Met Cloisters was quite the hike from our Times Square-adjacent hotel, but I think it might be my favorite place in New York City. Y'all know what a freak I am for the Medieval period (if you want me to send you Margery Kempe memes message me your cell number!), and here was a lovely little museum simply chock-full of Medieval and ONLY Medieval art! 

I'm especially fond of Medieval depictions of critters, such as this completely realistic lion that the artist has definitely seen before:

Spanish, Castile-Leon, circa 1200. My favorite part is its mustache!

Also, a dragon that is literally eating a guy!

North German, circa 1200

Another dragon, but this one's got chicken feet and a very sassy expression on its face:

Spanish, Castile-Leon, circa 1200

We apparently don't quite know what the deal is with this particular two-headed critter, just that William of Orange is stabbing it:

There are two types of museum-goers in my family. The first type looks at everything really fast and then sits around, bored, and contemplates killing the rest of us. Thank goodness for my museum buddy who's also of the second type!

We look at EVERYTHING. AND we read its label. And we take each other's pictures looking at the best stuff so we can prove we were there. 

King Arthur!

This is supposed to be either Hector of Troy or Alexander the Great.

I also like Medieval manuscripts:

The Romance of the Rose, French, 1340

This stained glass window apparently used to live in Canterbury Cathedral!

Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, 1180

But here's what we really came to see:

The Unicorn Defends Himself

These were astounding, although I wish the unicorn would have kicked those hunters' asses rather than getting killed. I love how it's depicted as A Definitely Real Unicorn That Really Exists, and in the corner of the gallery was also displayed a narwhal tooth, which I would certainly have 100% believed was a real unicorn horn if nobody had told me about narwhals.

I'm so curious about this mending. It's very visible, so perhaps it's also historic, or perhaps it was done purposefully so you could see the evidence of historical wear:

The Hunters Return to the Castle

The peaceful scenes are the best, though. Fuck those hunters!

The Unicorn Rests in a Garden

The Unicorn Purifies Water

Love this guy:

As the other two were finally dragging the big kid and I by our ears out of the museum, my partner said, "I wonder if anyone ever comes here twice?", thinking, I guess, about how out-of-the-way and very much up-the-hill it is. But I swear that if I lived here I'd come to the Met Cloisters every day just to say hi to the unicorns, maybe take a little peek at St. Michael slaying the demons, sneak into a guided tour or two, and then head back down the hill and down the block for this huge slice of pizza that was so freaking delicious and I swear to god it cost four dollars:

Sufficiently fueled, we took the subway back downtown and back to this Times Square-adjacent location just cattycorner from our hotel, because no matter that I'd already seen unicorns and eaten pizza--my day was about to get even better!

This trip was the coming together of a couple of dreams. Y'all already know that I love musicals, and that Hadestown has long been my favorite by far. Y'all don't need me to start waxing tearfully poetic about how meaningful I find this work of art that celebrates the beauty of knowing that your efforts are futile, but nevertheless trying as hard as you can. You don't need to do something because you think you'll win--you just need to do it because it's the right thing to do. Also, the beauty of telling the same story over and over, even if you don't like the ending, because the meaning isn't in the ending--it's in the telling. 

Ugh, you guys, I just love Hadestown so much.

And currently, the little kid's favorite actor is playing Orpheus. How could we pass up a chance for her to see Jack Wolfe in person, and for me to see Hadestown again, and for the other two to also come and hang out with us in New York City?

Money comes back, but life is made of memories:

Jack Wolfe didn't come out to the admittedly absolutely madhouse-level stagedoor afterwards, which was a bummer but omg COMPLETELY understandable, because OMG that crowd! However, we were super excited to see Paulo Szot--

--and Kurt Elling--

--and Allison Russell--

--which means that we got our playbills signed by all the gods!

Interestingly, the news just dropped last week that this cast's final performance of Hadestown is March 1. As the little kid and I were talking about it, I theorized that wouldn't it be cool if Jack Wolfe was headed back to the West End, where The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is now running. Wolfe played The Balladeer in a previous run of the show, and I joked that if he ended up as The Balladeer again I'd have to start looking for plane tickets.

"You wouldn't go without me?!?", the kid gasped.

Money comes back, but life is made of memories!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!