Van Buren

[laughs]

The gentleman from Van Buren, Arkansas, is with us once more, complete with folding bazooka, and I might add, a very stylish coat of tan.

Yeah, Bing, and I wanna tell you, it goes clear down past the high-water mark.

[laughs]

This beautiful world, dear, is full of your tender charms.

You're here, you're there, but never in my arms.

Too long missing from the drafty halls and corridors of the old hall has been the echoing and the re-echoing of the fanfare and the heraldy that announced the coming of that most errant of knight errants, Sir Robin Burns of Van Buren, Arkansas, with news of the doings in old VB.

So lower the drawbridge, Jimmy.

Here he lived several years and mastered the Spanish language.

Not long afterward, the emigrating fever again caught him up and he journeyed to Van Buren, Arkansas.

While living there, he studied law and was admitted to the bar.

Shortly thereafter, he removed to Paris, Texas, from which he was elected to the Texas legislature as representative from Lamar and adjoining counties.

I know the trees Zacchaeus climbed up in.

I mean, I got, I got about 10 summers in a row of vacation Bible school at Van Buren.

So take that.

[clears throat] Uh, uh, okay, let's see.

Well, okay.

She was once paid $140 a day as a substitute teacher.

She does not look like any substitute teacher I had growing up at JJ Izard, uh, Elementary School [laughs] in, uh, in Van Buren.

I can tell you that.

Um, Fort Smith for the year, as you noted, um, court Smith is down about 13% in its permits, which is the bulk of, of the permits for the region.

Um, uh, for, uh, excuse me, Van Buren.

However, they're up almost 59% for the year.

Greenwood is up a little over 3% for the year.

Some of y'all caught that.

She owned a gym called Fitness World in Van Buren, Arkansas.

That's where I'm from.

All right.

Can anything good come from Van Buren? No.

No. Jury's out.

So Sue owned this gym called Fitness World.

[upbeat music]

Uh, Bass Reeves was born in Arkansas as an enslaved person in 1838, near Van Buren, Arkansas, and he was enslaved to a family of Reeves.

William Steele Reeves was the patriarch of the family.

And when Bass was nine years old, they moved to Texas, and they lived there, uh, the rest of their life, the family did.

Quite bloody.

And so Bass evidently came through that.

And then after the war, he served as a scout and a guide for the deputy US marshals who were working out of federal court at Van Buren, Arkansas.

And he was the first African American to build a home within the city limits.

I want to bring up something I saw.

I'm so glad I read all of the Democrat Gazette today about Van Buren.

Yes.

About one of the greats.

Appreciate him.

Yeah, I don't know if you saw it, Roger.

I was looking, and I read through the whole article and happened to get to the very end, and I saw Van Buren pointer, and I

thought,