7.The Arkansas River

7.The Arkansas River

My step grandparents were Al and Eula Mae Cornwell Clinton. Poppy Al, as we all called him, came from Dardanelle, in Yell County, a beautiful Juicy Couture Handbags wooded place seventy miles west of Little Rock up the Arkansas River. He met and married his wife there after her family migrated from Mississippi in the 1890s. We called my new grandmother Mama Clinton. She was one of a huge Cornwell family that spread out all over Arkansas. Together with the Clintons and my mothers relatives, they gave me kinfolk in Juicy Couture Tracksuits fifteen of Arkansas seventy five counties, an enormous asset when I started my political career in a time when personal contacts counted more than credentials or positions on the issues.
Poppy Al was a small man, shorter and slighter than Papaw, with a kind, sweet spirit. The first time I met him we were still living in Hope and he dropped by our house to see his son and his new family. He wasn't alone. At the time, he was still working as a parole officer for the state and he was taking one of the Juicy Couture Laptop Cases prisoners, who must have been out on furlough, back to the penitentiary. When he got out of the car to visit, the man was handcuffed to him. It was a hilarious sight, because the inmate was huge; he must have been twice Poppy Als size. But Poppy Al spoke to him gently and respectfully and the man seemed to respond in kind. All I know is that Poppy Al got his man safely back on time.
Poppy Al and Mama Clinton lived in a small old house up on top of a hill. He kept Juicy Couture Wallets a garden out back, of which he was very proud. He lived to be eighty four, and when he was over eighty, that garden produced a tomato that weighed two and a half pounds. I had to use both hands to hold it.
Mama Clinton ruled the house. She was good to me, but she knew how to manipulate the men in her life. She always treated Daddy like the baby of the family who could do no wrong, which is probably one reason he never grew up. She liked Mother, who was better than most of the other family members at listening to her hypochondriacal tales of woe and at giving sensible, sympathetic advice. She lived to be Juicy Couture Dog Carrier ninety three.