Content area
Full Text
`He realized that you can't fix all the problems of a place like the Delta at once.' Betsey Wright, Clinton's former chief of staff
The Ouachita River is the color of mud as it drifts through this vast territory of beat-up trailers and shotgun shacks, flowing down from the hills into the decaying Arkansas cotton belt.
In this tiny town, Bradshaw's Cash Grocery is the only commercial establishment to speak of - the only place to go for excitement short of jumping into a car and driving Route 67 into Arkadelphia. And, frankly, Bradshaw's isn't all that exciting: During a 15-minute visit during the middle of the day, not a single car passed by on the town's main street. Not one customer came in.
For nearly seven years, Gum Springs - like most of this state - has been mired in hard times. In 1985, the Reynolds metal plant over at the industrial park shut down, leaving nearly 500 people out of work. A year later a second plant closed, sending several hundred more people scurrying for jobs. Some workers were transferred away. Some moved out on their own. Some went reluctantly on public assistance.
These days, with the Arkansas economy still stumbling, the people of Gum Springs (pop. 255) view the whole situation with tolerance. Like the Ouachita itself, they seem to move slowly but relentlessly through their difficult lives, expecting little of others and blaming no one.
"We're poor here in Arkansas," says Doyle Bradshaw, who has lived for 62 years on the hill where his store now sits. "I'm sure Bill Clinton did what he could, but the truth is, we've always been poor before he got here, and we'll still be poor when he's gone to Washington."
Before this year - and perhaps again after November - few Americans could remember the capital of Arkansas or whether the state was rich or poor or who was its governor. Its rare appearances in the news served only to reinforce a hazy impression that it was a backwoods dogpatch, where hogs and chickens outnumbered a population of hillbillies, rednecks and dirt-poor tenant farmers.
In 1933, for instance, the Nation magazine described Arkansans as "the kind of folks that pirates terrorize and merchants...