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It’s a sweltering afternoon, with the temperature above 100 degrees, and Vivian Lambert is standing in the cool air at the counter of the Benton Senior Activity Center’s gift shop.  Garland Nipps tosses a bean bag toward the target holes this week at the Benton Senior Activity Center, where seniors frequently go for entertainment and hobbies — and cooler, indoor temperatures. Watching Nipps, from left, are Ed Holford, Sonja Thacker, Violet Harris and Ernest Bray.
Lambert has been visiting the center for at least 12 years, she and her friend, Mae Clark, decided.
Both women quilt at the center to remain active and cool.
“People bring their own quilts in — we quilt them and the money goes to benefit the center,” said Clark, sitting beside a large wooden frame holding a quilt with stars on it.
 Mae Clark is part of a group of women who frequently quilt at the Benton Senior Activity Center. Clark has been quilting since she was a young girl and was taught by her grandmother. All the money the women make from quilting goes to benefit the center in some way. A quilt is also being auctioned at Old-Fashioned Day. “I have so many quilts of my own,” Clark said. “I need to have a sale.”
“And we’re cool,” Clark added.
Clark learned to quilt from her grandmother when she was a girl, after her mother died. “[My grandmother] had five kids, and none of them wanted to learn how to quilt. So she taught me,” Clark said.
Many senior residents also visit the center to socialize.
Hazel Davis said she keeps cool by simply “staying inside.” She sings every Monday at the center with her husband, Eugene.
Davis has been playing the mandolin and the accordian, among other instruments, since she was 12. She said she often sings one of the 214 songs she has written during her lifetime.
“Most of them are gospel,” Davis said.
Davis and her friend, Bennie Thomas, agree that the center is not only good for cooling down, but “a nice place to eat a meal for a $1.50 and to visit, and to shop at the gift shop.”
“I run from one cool place to the other,” Thomas said.
Virginia Wise and Emil Caple are part of a large group at the center who play bean-bag baseball, an indoor sport that has many of the same rules as regular baseball.
The Benton is so talented, center members said, that it won silver medal at the Senior Olympics last year in Hot Springs. A group of 10 will go again in September.
When she’s not at the center, Wise said she likes to watch television at home to stay cool.
“I sit on the couch and watch Animal Planet,” Wise said, adding that she especially likes the show “Pet Star” in which pet owners show off the tricks their animals can do in hopes of winning prizes.
“[She sits on the couch] while I’m outside sweating,” Caple joked.
Caple said he works in his garden, where he grows a variety of vegetables, including tomatoes, green beans and okra.
“I stay active,” said Caple, who is 90.
Caple also said he has mowed his lawn before in the middle of the day, when temperatures are at their highest. “I stay in the shade, though,” he pointed out.
Lambert, like Wise, also likes to stay inside and watch TV when it’s hot, but loves to fish when the weather is nicer.
“I have a buddy who goes with me. We have friends that have stock ponds,” Lambert said, recalling the time they found a turtle “as big as a No. 3 washtub.”
‘[It’s] too hot for me to go fishing,” she said after she had a discussion with the women around her about temperatures hovering around 100. “I’ll wait for cooler weather.”
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