Wednesday, May 26, 2010



3267 Hwy 167, Fordyce AR 71742. This is my house and it is for sale. It's not a house that I own but one that I grew up in. I would buy it if I could. I spent twenty-two years calling this house home and in the back of my mind, when my thoughts wander to "home" as an idea, a notion, this is the property I am really talking about. It is a run-down, dingy, little shack perched on the side of U.S. Highway 167. It is a house that sways gently with the breeze of wide-load trucks that pass by at seventy miles per hour. Should any itinerant internet blog-reader buy it (it's selling for a mere $20,000--less than a new Honda Civic) I want to warn you that is an odd place where you are bound to have odd visitors. When I was a child playing with gravel in the front yard while my dad and his friends whooped it up with beer and music in the car port, we heard a loud thunderous engine whir over our heads and we watched in wonder as an airplane landed in our backyard. According to the pilot of the little yellow bi-plane, he was following along the highway and "had to take a piss." When I was fourteen, I found an emu standing in a dignified posture in our front yard, his eyes warily watching my sister and I as we disembarked from the school bus. Whoever owns this house must prepare themselves for sweaty summers spent outdoors (there is no air conditioning), for children who have no television to watch so they spray paint the walls and build club houses out of old chicken coups, for the weary travelers who show up along Arkansas' backbone--Hwy 167, for the honk of my car horn as I greet the house I was raised in each time I visit my parents. I hope it is sold to a good person who will fix it up and treat it properly. It is a house that builds character. Here is a listing.