***I finally remembered the town’s name: Altus, AR. ***
I’ve been there and seen the place! It was overcast and I got turned around and swore I was going South but I was going North! The wife never lets me forget it.
Ann worked for a small nonprofit in Maine and her boss was from the Midwest. She was a typical nonprofit exec, the left ideology in her bones, Birkenstocks on her feet, drove a beat-up Volvo, -- the works. Well, Ann gave them the nonprofit a notice and her boss was very nice about it, asked which route we were taking, and once we told her that we are going the Southern Route, that is, I-40 from Tennessee to Arizona, she literally pleaded with us to make a detour to Altus, Oklahoma -- the place had memories for her. Well, we didn't have Google Maps in the car, so the moment we crossed the Mississippi I was busy with a paper map to find the place, and I couldn't (It's right here, in Western Oklahoma, of course:
Altus, OK). But I found Altus, Arkansas and so I said, maybe someone got the state confused. We ended up in the Arkansas Altus, ate alligator nugget salad there, admired the place, and we never visited the Oklahoma Altus. To this day I don't know which one she meant, the one we visited in Arkansas would have fit her to a T.