Editorial
Front Page - Friday, July 17, 2009
Are We There Yet?
Conventions present and past
Jay Edwards
Chaos is a friend of mine. – Bob Dylan
I was in Northwest Arkansas most of last week for the Arkansas Press Association Super Convention. Highlights were a day at Lost Springs playing golf (we tied for third at 10-under par); a night at Arvest Stadium watching the Naturals play San Antonio in the first of their three-game series (the home boys won two); and another day of golf at Stonebridge Meadows in Fayetteville with Fred (more about that next week).
The last night of the convention found some of us standing outside the room where the silent auction was being held. Someone came up and told us about some sports celebrities at a Wal-Mart function in a nearby room. Since none of us are famous we decided to check it out.
We stood around for a bit trying not to look like we were looking for someone famous. We probably didn’t fool anyone but it paid off because we soon saw the stars; some retired jocks you may or may not have heard of, like Joe Theismann (1 Super Bowl Ring), John Elway (2 rings) and Emmitt Smith (3).
They were there for the Walmart First Tee Annual Golf Tournament at The Blessings Golf Club (Theismann’s team won). I also saw the Detroit Piston’s great rebounder John Salley. Someone said Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain were there too, but if I saw them I didn’t know it. My loss.
Supposedly the cost of a team was $35,000. I was thinking about playing next year, if they have 350 players on a team that is.
The convention ended with our own Rebecca Brockman winning an editorial award in the tourism category. Way to go Rebecca!
We did manage to get through this year without any fire alarms or sprinkler systems being set off. I refer to what happened back in 2006 at the Memphis Peabody, and then in 2007 in Ft. Smith.
In Memphis the fire alarms went off all three nights. Supposedly it was to get a look at Steven Seagal, who was staying at The Peabody. I never saw him, but after the third false fire I got to ride back up the elevator with Wilford Brimley. After making “The Firm,” I guess he decided he liked Memphis.
The next year in Fort Smith I was jolted from deep dreams by the clock radio’s alarm on the convention’s first night. Not awake and pretty disoriented, I saw that the time was 12:15. The alarm continued its deafening scream, so I responded calmly by beating the top of it.
That just made it mad and it seemed to grow louder. It was the loudest alarm clock I had ever heard, and I thought it sounded more like a fire alarm than a clock radio.
I grabbed it from the nightstand, intending to rip out its cord from the wall, when suddenly a deep mechanical voice broke through the noise, saying, “This is a fire alarm!”
Then the voice began giving other instructions that I’m a bit fuzzy on. But I do remember releasing my death grip on the radio and getting out of the bed to make my exit.
With the Peabody fiasco still on my mind I wasn’t too concerned about being burned up. So I put on a shirt and some shorts and walked outside my room, looking for Seagal or Brimley. The hotel had one of those huge atriums, with the lobby’s ceiling at the top of the building, and the rooms along each side. So when I walked out from my fifth-floor room I could see the entire lobby below.
Looking down I saw some of the hotel employees rushing around. Other spectators like myself lined the edges of every floor, watching the chaos below; like Romans in the Coliseum.
Soon, from every corner above the lobby, streams of water began falling onto the ground floor. The source was many of the hotel’s fire-sprinkler heads, located in rooms on the first and second floors.
Over the next twenty minutes the water kept coming, as dozens of wet guests from those first two floors could be seen walking with their luggage through the water, past the front desk and out through the hotel’s glass doors.
At last, thirty minutes and thousands of gallons of water later, the waterfalls stopped.
I took one last look at the huge mess below and walked back into my room. It was 1:30 a.m.
The next morning I received a short apologetic letter from the hotel’s general manager. In it he recapped the events from the early morning and told me to please be his guest for a complimentary breakfast in the lobby restaurant.
So I had that going for me, which was nice.
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