01/13/03
I was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, but at 2 months old, was relocated to Arkansas. My family is originally from
Arkansas and Louisiana, but mainly Arkansas. Growing up, I lived in Fayetteville and then Little Rock until
the age of 10, at which point my mother and I moved to the Washington, DC area, where I spent most of the next
24 years.
Arkansas was always home. I don't know why or even how to explain how I perceived that. It was simply
a fact. I was and still am an Arkansan. Now I'm just an Arkansan who lost his accent.
I love Arkansas for a number of reasons, besides just the family roots. You will never find friendlier people
anywhere in the world. I feel perfectly at home even with complete strangers here. I'm told that many "northerners"
feel uncomfortable by the way people are here. Even my mother admitted feeling a bit uncomfortable for a short
time after she returned. A lot of this comes from people asking a lot of questions and knowing a lot about you.
Many northerners mistake this for nosiness. Down here it's simply polite to ask people about themselves. But
these same people will be happy to tell you their life stories if you ask. It's hard for many northerners not
to be suspicious of that. After all, if someone started asking me the kind of in depth questions people ask here,
in the D.C. area, I'd be thinking, "What do they want from me?"
I think the reason it doesn't bother me, even after 24 years up North, is that I've always associated that quality
with Arkansas. To me, it just reminds me of "home." I went to Wal Mart today to buy a wool cap for jogging, and
asked a woman who worked there where I could find one. She dropped what she was doing and took me across the store
to where they were. I needed gloves too. "Oh, we don't have any mens gloves, but a man came here earlier today
and wanted gloves, and he got these woman's gloves, here let me take you over there. They're black and one size
fits all and they don't look like woman's gloves, so if you want them, nobody would know..." and on and on she went.
$2.50 later, I had a black wool cap and 2 pairs of black wool gloves (they came two pairs at time. A pair of a pair,
I guess.)
Well, I won't go into too much more about why I love this place. Instead, I'll just show you the pictures and
do the rest with some pictures and text, the way the web was meant to be...
Clarksville (where I currently live)
Some shots between Clarksville and Booneville (where my family is from)
Booneville
