Carmien Penny
Cultural Geography
J. Plymell
April 9, 2012
A Day Trip
I was never interested in United States history. I know it sounds bad, but I always found it dreadfully boring. A large part of this indifference I blame on my high school history teachers, who were coaches. They were all too obviously not interested in history, but had to teach a subject because of some weird rule our school had. Not only was I apathetic towards the history of the country I was born to, but I could not have cared less about the past of Arkansas.
This semester I had to take “U.S. History to 1877” and I was not thrilled. Fast forward to present time, and I'm a little bit wiser and a lot more interested in U.S. History. All I can say is I am beyond thankful for good teachers. I decided to go to the Historic Arkansas Museum located in downtown Little Rock for a few reasons. One was because I hadn't been there since I was in seventh grade on a field trip, and I don't remember a thing about it. In fact, now that I'm reflecting on it, I can't even be sure that that was the museum I went to. Two, I was actually excited about to a museum filled with exhibits and galleries dedicated solely to Arkansas history. I never thought I would be able to say that. Three, I live less than fifteen minutes from the museum. I had no excuses. So, I grabbed my boyfriend, Daniel, (much to his dismay) and we went for a day trip.
The first exhibit that we came across was dedicated to Gone with the Wind. I've never seen the movie, much less read the book, so I wasn't interested. It wasn't exactly a great start, but I walked around until I found an article that caught my attention, which happened to be a homespun dress. Apparently in the past Arkansas was quite proud of it's “homespun” clothing. I stood there for a while admiring the dress and wondering what it would be like to live in a time where a dress like that (considered today so homely/plain) would be my everyday attire. One thing...