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On a winter day in 1992, Brooks Blevins walked into a cramped, windowless office in the attic of the Alphin Building on the campus of what's now Lyon College in Batesville. The man I consider the authority on the Ozarks had no idea at the time that he would spend his career studying the region.
I wrote last year about a trip I took with Jamie McAfee, the chef at the Pine Bluff Country Club, to the legendary Dixie Pig in Blytheville. After reading a column about Dixie Pig, McAfee contacted me and said his father once worked at the Blytheville Country Club. McAfee had been told that his father helped Dixie Pig's owner come up with the restaurant's signature blue cheese dressing recipe.
When we began the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame in 2017, we decided to keep it exclusive. I can think of almost 100 restaurants in Arkansas that deserve recognition, but we knew this needed to be something special. Only three restaurants a year are inducted.
It's a gray, drizzly April morning with a distinct purgatory feel. Clouds hang .on the tips of trees and the world is damp. It's Edgar Allen Poe weather, dropping a layer of melancholy on the day.
Andrew Rogerson, the chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, announced his resignation in August 2019. It was a time of declining enrollment and large budget cuts at UALR. Surprisingly, there wasn't a national search for his replacement.