Ready for Departure – 7:30 am Brake Job

Our time here at Maumelle Park outside of Little Rock is coming to an end.  Since we have a 7:30 a.m. appointment at DJ’s Auto Repair in Maumelle, about 20 miles away from the park.  I plan to pull out of our site around 6:30 a.m., so today we pulled out the RV, backed in the car, took the RV to the dump station, then backed it into the site.  I re-hooked up the electric, the water, and hooked the car up.  Put the slide back out, and we are sitting here ready to go.

This gives you an idea of just how long these sites are in the park.  One could easily get a 45’ motorhome in along with a tow car.  My only complaint about this and the Fort Smith Corp of Engineers Park is that the sites could be a bit wider…just three more feet would be so nice.  But hey, if that’s all there is to complain about….

Well, there are our new neighbors that I could complain about.   Although signs say, “No Parking off asphalt”, they have parked their boat out on the grass/dirt next to their site.  When this “redneck” pulled in, with his wife pulling the boat with the jeep behind him, and their daughter and grandchild out in the street, the said “redneck” starts backing up into the site before the wife can even get out of the jeep.  He then puts his head out the side window and yells, “Hey, I could use some help backing up here…”, and she gets out, runs over and starts to help him.  “Over to the left some more” she says as she motions with her hands too…   “I KNOW, I GOT THIS FAR BY MYSELF ALREADY DIDN’T I!”   Well, if I were her, I would just gone back to talk with the daughter…but she bite her lip, (which looks like it had been bitten many times instead of talking back) and continued to help him. 

This is the first time we have been back in this non-reserve area of the park.  It is also the first time we have been here over a weekend…boy, this place gets busy.  However, few cars drive through our area, but many RVs do because you have to drive through to get to the dump station.  I thought more folks would have cleared out of here by now (4 pm Sunday), only three sites have cleared out in our area, with the new neighbors filling one of them.  The folks who run this park have worked here for 13 years, and this is their last year.   They keep order, but are not 100% sticklers to the rules…which is probably a good thing.  I hope who ever takes their place does as good of a job as they do.

Saturday we met Jana and Mike at the Colton’s Steakhouse in Benton, which is southwest of Little Rock, for an early dinner.  As usual we had a great time visiting, were there for three hours, and can’t wait until our next visit.  Jana started at the Library nearly 20 years ago, and has been a full time worker for 18 years.  Her and Mike got married just a few months after Marcia and I did.  Although I had a lot of good staff members working at the Library, Jana was definitely one of the best.  She handled the Reference Floor which included 16 patron computers, the Reference Collection, the Genealogy Collection, the Periodical Collection and the older, sometimes referred to as the Rare Book Collection.  When she first took over as the Reference Manager she took charge of the Obituary Project I had wanted done where we entered all the deaths from the old microfilm and older papers we had on hand into a database.  She completed the project, which included nearly two hundred thousand entries if my memory is correct, in what I considered record time.  The library now gets weekly requests for copies of obituaries due to this online index.  Each filled request brings in around $7.50.  By the time I retired, this was bringing in around $2,000 per year in income, and helping people with their genealogy research, and from what we found out after offering it, lawyers research confirming the death of someone, and even people looking for birth parents due to adoptions.

Well, we hope tomorrow’s brake job solves our issue, is finished in time so we can travel east, and doesn’t cost us too much $$$$.  However, we are prepared to stay the night if needed.  Wish us luck…and you can bet you will get a review on DJ’s, that is for sure.