It’s 3:40 a.m. and I can’t sleep. I’m at a motel in Arkadelphia, Ark., about a five-hour drive from my friend Trish’s in the Angelina National Forest outside teeny-tiny Zavalla, Texas.

The trip so far (I left Chicago late Monday morning) has been filled with unexpected surprises. I guess the biggest thing was driving through Missouri yesterday afternoon on I-55 through that unbelievable wind storm. I didn’t witness it happening, but a semi tipped over just moments before I passed. I could tell it just happened because of the way the traffic suddenly slowed up.

Thirty miles later there was another semi in the center median, all slammed into the ground and crumpled up on the driver’s side. You just wonder how either one of these truck drivers made it out without injury, but they did!

Myself, I’ve never experienced anything like it driving. It wasn’t as unnerving as driving on black ice or in freezing rain or through a snow white-out (all things I’ve done many times having lived on the Pennsylvania/New York border and working as a bureau chief for the Elmira Star-Gazette newspaper), but my Isuzu Rodeo was being tossed around in the lane quite a bit.

I had to keep a real firm and steady hold on the steering wheel and then wait for the sudden jolting wind gusts that I could see making the tractor-trailers swerve all around me.

*****

The neat thing is when I got to Memphis (where they said traffic lights were out all over town and I had to avoid rolling city trash cans and fallen signage, etc.), I took a dinner break in the heart of downtown, actually finding an open parking spot only a block-and-a-half from Beale Street!

Shortly after sitting down inside a German bier haus-style place, I struck up a conversation with a young man on business from Chicago who told me his last name was Meland!!!! He’s 100% Norwegian and has family on his mom’s side from Bergen, Norway, where I also have relatives!

Anyway, when I told this guy about my church, he said he already knew all about dispensational bible study and grew up under the teaching of a long-time grace preacher in Park Ridge named Craig Massey!

He didn’t know a thing about Jordan—or J. C. O’Hair or C.R. Stam—but said he might check out Shorewood’s website, etc. The weird part was having him tell me his parent’s were long-time close friends of Bill Hybels, the mega-preacher who started Willow Creek church.

When I told him I thought Hybels was a “huckster,” he said he didn’t know what I meant. I said, “Well, he’s one of the major predecessors for all the Rick Warrens and that Purpose-Driven baloney. He’s not like any Robert Schuller, by any means, but he definitely sold-out.”

*****

Having lunch today in downtown Little Rock (inside the River Market District on Bill Clinton Avenue), I got talking to a native who told me I should definitely visit the new Clinton presidential library before hitting the road again.

He said, “People come from all over the world to see it.” When I responded, “I can’t stand Clinton,” he said, “Yeah, nobody around here likes him. If you remember, he didn’t even carry this state when he was first elected president. He hurt a lot of people here with his policies as governor.”

What was especially amusing is that when I strolled around the downtown I passed a series of sidewalk blocks where famous people had put their signatures in the wet cement. Only a few down from Clinton (signed in 1986) was Ronald McDonald, identified on the little bronze plaque next to his John Hancock as “the world’s most famous clown.”

At the motel where I’m staying, I picked up a free Arkansas tour guide book that listed the major attractions for the state, including the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock.

The promotional text boasted, “The Clinton Center is in the form of a glass bridge to symbolize President Clinton’s theme of ‘Building a Bridge to the 21^st Century.’ The Clinton Center contains the largest archival collection in American presidential history. However, it isn’t like some dull, stodgy library you may have known. . . ”

In a box were these listed highlights:

· The collection has 10 saxophones, 94 individual golf clubs and 148 rugs.

· The oldest item in the collection is a Greek Siana Cup, ca. 560 B.C.

· Letters on display addressed to the President from Elton John, John F. Kennedy Jr. and Mr. Rogers.

· A distinctive collection of Elvis memorabilia.

· There are 112 walking canes which were sent to the President after he injured his knee and was seen walking with a cane.

· There are 260 watches in the collection.

· There are 535 portraits featuring and/or including President Clinton.

*****

My brief Little Rock experience reminded me of two of my most interesting celebrity sightings while living in New York. One was Clinton himself. I was walking eastward on Central Park South one bitter cold winter evening when a uniformed woman on the sidewalk outside the Essex House Hotel ordered me to stop.

I thought, “What is this?!” After looking at the curb and seeing a stretch limo, I determined, “She’s asking me to stop so some stupid movie star can make a grand entrance!”

Upon starting to walk again, the woman thrust out her hand and yelled, “NO, STOP!” The next second I see Clinton—all hunched over with a Secret Service man just behind him—come out of the limo and pass right in front of my eyes, his body only several feet from mine.

I thought, “Boy, he looks old and beaten down.” I remember it was shortly after his bypass surgery and he had already turned off Manhattanites by making a bid on a super-super-expensive apartment above his beloved Russian Tea Room in Midtown, wanting to use it as his official ex-president’s office to be paid for by tax dollars. As you know, he settled on a space in Harlem after the public outcry.

*****

My other Clinton-related story dates back to when I first moved to Manhattan in the fall of 1999. I had to go into my office in Greenwich Village one Saturday morning and decided to stop on the way for an espresso drink.

Standing in the carryout line at the tiny Grey Dog Coffee cafe on Carmine Street, I looked down and saw a young woman at a table by herself, eating granola, yogurt and fresh fruit.

She had laid out in front of her all the major newspapers—the New York Times, Daily News and New York Post—which carried on their covers large photos of Bill and Hillary, who had just made their move to their house in Chappaqua, Westchester County.

Since she had on no makeup, and her hair was pulled straight back to give her the look of a fresh-faced teenager, it took me a few seconds of, “Who is that? I know that face,” before I realized I was standing next to Monica Lewinsky!