Since skydiving was once again rained out (farts), we made some pretty good time heading to Little Rock, Arkansas, our next destination. Our first stop in Little Rock was a bit of a strange one:
This is a mall in Little Rock. Standard mall with standard stores and standard hillbillies. We went to this mall, following the GPS, for a reason. I needed new sneakers, so we headed straight here:
We were in luck; sneakers galore. I picked out a pair that I am not happy with (I am likely the pickiest person on the planet when it comes to sneakers. It’s embarrassing), paid the fellows and we were out the door.
The question is, why did I need new sneakers? I had been wearing the same pair of grey Nike Air Prestige Lows for the entire trip without discomfort. I hadn’t complained about foot or leg joint soreness while wearing them. Surely I didn’t actually need them. Right? Here’s the story behind our trip to a footwear store in a mall in Little Rock Arkansas:
Unfortunately, my car couldn’t (and probably still can’t) run on wind power, so we occasionally had to stop for gas all over the country. Here’s the strangest place we stopped:
This place was strange not only because it was a Burger King/Exxon station, but because of how well the gas pumps there work. Well, at least one of the gas pumps, I didn’t get the chance to try all of them out.
I pulled into the, um, bay or whatever, stepped out of the car, stuffed my debit card into the machine, put in my PIN (please do not use the word “number” after PIN. If you do not know why you shouldn’t, maybe you can work for my old employer, as they like hiring grammar tards), selected the fuel grade, inserted the nozzle into my car’s gasoline hole, flipped down the whatever it’s called on the gasoline pump handle and got to work cleaning off the windshield with a squeegee .
Since I had flipped down the whatever it’s called on the gasoline pump handle, the gas was steadily flowing into my gas tank without my help; I merely initiated the pumping. While I was busy squeegeeing (this word looks ridiculous) away on the passenger’s side, I started to hear a very strange sound. I stopped cleaning the glass for a second to process it, then made my way quickly to the other side of the car.
Usually, when one flips down the whatever it’s called on the gasoline pump handle, when the tank is full, the mechanism automatically stops the flow of gasoline. At this Burger King/Exxon however, something was amiss with that mechanism. To my incredible surprise, the gas tank on my car was full, but the flow of gasoline had not stopped, or even slowed. Since the tank was full, but the flow had not stopped, you can imagine where all of that gasoline was going. It was spurting out of the gas tank fill hole and shooting into the air. I ran over to the pump handle, slipped a little bit (a lot) in the apparently very slippery pool of gasoline forming next to my car, grabbed the handle and finally stopped the gasoline flow manually.
Luckily for you, the second the gasoline started to shoot out of the tank, while I was still cleaning the glass on the car, I had set up the camera on its tripod and timed the shutter. Miraculously, I timed it perfectly, not knowing that anything was going to happen. I figured I would have a super great picture of me using a squeegee for you, but instead I have an even better photo of what happened. I think it came out great:
Once I had finally stopped the car geyser, the woman who worked on the gasoline sales side of the Burger King/Exxon came rushing out informing me that she had turned off the pump. Phew. Thank goodness she was fast enough to turn it off after it had shot out of my car, pooled below it, I had slipped it in and had gotten it all over my arm. What a pro.
After everything calmed down and I had stopped laughing in disbelief, I headed into the store to use the restroom. The good news? I used plenty of soap and hot water on my gasoline covered arms and hands. The bad news? The restroom smelled like person feces, probably because there was some person feces on the wall. Yup. A great place to get clean.
When I had cleaned up/gagged, I headed back into the, um, lobby of the restaurant/gas station and the clerk who rushed out started talking to me. I was cracking up retelling the story, while Amanda cracked up listening to it (despite what that real time picture above shows, she was in the presumably feces free women’s room during the happenings). The clerk however, was not laughing. She said that she “refused to laugh at it”, since it could have been a dangerous situation. I told her that it was OK to laugh at me, because, well, it was hilarious, especially the poor footing, but she wasn’t taking the bait. She was one of the Southerners that didn’t laugh at the expense of others. I call those Southerners dumb, but whatever,
As soon as she finished saying that she wasn’t going to laugh at me acting like the fifth stooge for a few seconds, she was reminded of a person that she did laugh at once. Her sister. After surgery. Yup. She told us that her sister was just home from surgery of some sort, her first day back, and used a wheelchair to get around. Since most houses aren’t made for wheelchair exploration, the sister was forced to stand up every once in awhile. One of those times, she fell on her face. The clerk laughed at her.
This cracked me up. I’m glad she told us the story.
All in all, it was the strangest gas station ever in history. Ever.
Oh. Back to the sneakers. In needed new sneakers because I got 87 octane gasoline all over the ones I was wearing. They reeked. We had to crack the windows for the rest of the hours on the drive to Little Rock. After the shoe purchase, we grabbed some food (Subway) and headed to the hotel (by car).
The next morning was the real reason we were in Little Rock. We woke up, had some hotel breakfast, showered up and dressed appropriately for the activity. We headed to our destination, were waved into the parking lot by a traffic cop, parked the car and headed towards the building. Here’s what we saw:
It looks like an elementary or high school or something.
Perhaps teachers on their way to Sunday school or something?
Wait. What kind of Sunday school would have a coffee bar? Or food court for that matter (see the last picture of the last post)? Or this diverse a group of students/teachers? We headed into the main auditorium and took it all in (and I took pictures, discretely):
Oh. OK. So it was an early morning concert. We hadn’t seen any live music music yet on the trip, so maybe this was our first sit down and listen to music experience in the US. It turns out that that’s not too far from the truth.
In the days before, knowing where we would be on our trip that day, I had researched mega-churches to attend. I was hoping for a huge gathering of people all raising their hands, palms up, testifying to a yelling/charismatic preacher. I found this place: Fellowship Bible Church.
Walking in, it was like walking into a large auditorium for a multi-media presentation. There were two video screens, a stage, an enormous sound system and a crew of ten or so people behind mixing boards, video monitors and laptops to control them all. On stage was a seven piece band, with two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer, and keyboardist and two back up singers. Loud, peppy electronic music was being pumped in through the speakers.
Once the background music faded away, it was time for the show. The band started a three song set of Jesus-loving songs and folks were singing along and clapping. Luckily for us, the lyrics to the songs were displayed on the two large screens that flanked the stage, so we could really get the message. When there weren’t any lyrics? Close ups of the band members rocking away (or rather, soft rocking away):
This was ridiculous.
After the songs were over, we all sat down again and it was time for people to talk to us. The first guy up there was some director of something something and he told us about all of the programs going on at the church. Including the brainwashing of children groups and the help with addiction groups. Hooray.
After that guy pimped the church services (including the bookstore, which was in the food court area), another fellow, bald and built like Sergeant Slaughter, took the stage with his over the ear microphone and it was time to learn our lesson for the day. He went on and on and on, using inflection effectively, praising Jesus and teaching us a valuable lesson through a story. Basically, don’t let some activities that you do, which could be good ones (volunteering) get in the way or dilute your more important responsibilities (voting Republican)(just kidding)(raising your family). Hooray.
He used a Bible verse to set up the story and then talked for half an hour about i. It was super boring, but everyone else in the church seemed really into it. At one point, the woman sitting next to Amanda, offered to share her Bible with us. We politely declined. We were, literally, the only people in the room without a Bible.
Also of note: during the long and boring, but well delivered speech, I noticed that everyone in the room was jotting down notes throughout. Why? Well, that’s easy. Have you ever been to a church that doesn’t hand out little pamphlets with Mad-Libs style fill in the blanks on the back page? Me neither. Oh wait. I have never seen that before.
On the back side of a two page pamphlet, which are apparently printed for every Sunday service, was an activity to complete during the speech. Basically, you follow along with the preacher and fill in the words as he says them. I remember doing that kind of thing in, oh, 3rd grade perhaps? Everyone was following along and everyone had brought pens to this, um, service. We were out of place for sure.
Once he had finished up with his workbook related lesson for the day, a lot of people left the room. Apparently, everyone loves beating traffic at this church. We however, stayed put, as the show wasn’t over.
A few more Christian Rock songs later and it was time to go. Please note that I was dying to film the whole thing, but knew that Amanda wouldn’t have been super uncomfortable with that. I didn’t bring my camera, but was upset to find about seven video cameras set up all over the place, so mine on a tri-pod wouldn’t have been out of place.
After the songs were over, we filed out to the parking lot without stopping by “The Living Room” where you could talk faith with “The Elders”.
I spent a lot of years at two catholic schools. I went to many church services in those years. I had never, and hopefully, will never again, seen or experience anything like that. It was unlike anything I’ve ever done. It was basically a few hundred people politely clapping along to a concert for middle aged white people. Only the songs were about how super great Jesus is (not was, because you know, he’s not a dead person or something). The intermission of the concert for honkies was a speech about living the Bible.
While I am not, by any stretch, a religious person (I think it’s all ridiculous), I think that there is something to be said for the tradition of church. Its all very grand and deliberate. This, however, was not religion. There was no tradition, no pomp, no etc. This was, as I see it, very cynically I admit, a great way to draw kids into a place so that they will one day be hooked to it, feel a sense of belonging and eventually donate to your bookstore every week. It’s a great business plan for sure.
Whatever. Back to business.
On the way out, I snapped a few more pictures. Here’s a shot of a few people and their very own Bibles:
And what church is complete without one of these?
Nothing says personal worship like beach volleyball! These people are insane people. But rich ones. I really wish I had the moral ambiguity to take advantage of the dummies that fill this place up every weekend, because they have money to burn and are willing to do pretty much anything that a bald man on stage says. If you’re up to it, I suggest moving to the south and opening some sort of exploitative venture to prey on these dunces.
That was a little harsh. They might be halfway smart people, but I doubt it.
After church, we headed to our next destination in Tennessee. It was completely awesome. Here’s a hint:
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