Somewhere in Arkansas...
“Were” does not refer to location as it is referring to the past tense of the subject in the sentence, but then again I am not an English teacher/professor.
In the age of typos and lackadaisical spelling, I could see how you would confuse “were” for “where. Even then the sentence doesn’t make sense if you replace “where” for “were” without adding an “are” into the sentence.