He paid little attention although he knew of the men’s intentions. He had noticed a few men loitering around the building and in the nearby woods that surrounded the rest area on one side. Howard parked his car and entered the men’s toilets. The fact that a great many men used the space for anonymous sexual encounters was not lost on Howard, nor was it lost on local law enforcement officers. Howard stopped off to use the public toilets at the Morgan Rest Area, sitting roughly halfway between Conway and Little Rock. By the time he left his last client on February 1, 1991, it was almost 11:30 p.m. He usually worked late, to accommodate clients after their workday.
He now ran his own business, Self Image, Inc., a licensed massage and beauty service that offered in-home services to clients, some in Conway about 30 miles northwest of his home in Little Rock. In 1991, Robert Howard found himself on the road making his regular commute from Little Rock to the smaller bedroom communities surrounding the city. The Morgan Rest Area was at that time one of 36 rest areas in the state.
From that point, it was 138 miles east to Memphis on Interstate 40, which now runs coast to coast. It sat near mile marker 146 on Interstate 40, meaning it was 146 miles from the Oklahoma border to the west. The Morgan Rest Area was opened in October of 1973, at a cost of almost half a million dollars for this very purpose. The highway rest area offered travelers services to aid them in their journey, including toilets, picnic facilities, tourist information, and other services along the interstate highways. The interstate highway system, the great victory of the automotive lobby, begun in the 1950s, soon symbolized the postwar economic boom, connecting far-flung cities and the citizens therein, and the American love affair with the automobile and leisure in general.
0 kommentar(er)
