What's So Great About Anywhere But Here?

“We’re thinking about buying a house in Farmington,” I told my cousin back in 2005. My husband and I had been living in an apartment in Fayetteville for five months and were looking for a house.

My cousin, who grew up in Fayetteville, looked like she had just swallowed something nasty. She shook her head and lowered her voice. “You don’t want to do that.”

“We don’t?”

She shook her head. “You want to live in Fayetteville.”

I didn’t understand then, but over the years, I’ve begun to. True locals have something I can only aspire to and hope to cultivate in myself as the years pass: a certain defining disdain for anywhere but Fayetteville.

My husband and I love to travel, and during the past 11 years have gone everywhere from Honduras to Europe to Seattle. What I love most about traveling is experiencing the day-to-day life of locals in another city. I obsess about it and research transportation and local customs, so that when there, we fit organically into the local picture. I hate to look like I don’t belong.

This yearning to “fit” might be why I’ve adopted the local disdain for cities surrounding my dear Fayetteville. I despise having to drive to Springdale, or “Chickentown,” as my Fayetteville-born-and-bred friend calls it. Rogers? Come on, what is there in Rogers? Pinnacle Hills Promenade, you say? I’m not a big shopper, and when I do shop, I find my consumer needs well-met in Fayetteville at local businesses rather than big chains, when I can. Bentonville? OK, I do have to drive up there for work about once a week. But I will continue to marvel that my place of employment built their office all the way up in Bentonville and not in a more ideal Northwest Arkansas location, such as, say, Fayetteville.

I am inordinately proud my husband has been teaching for Fayetteville schools since 2005. As part of my work, I have observed teachers in classrooms across Northwest Arkansas many, many times. This has led to my conviction Fayetteville is the only place I would put my own children. Not because teachers in other districts don’t work as hard or have the same dedication — they do, and I admire every last one of them — but because Fayetteville schools manage to combine high expectations for teachers and students with that ever-so-vital concept of the free exchange of ideas. That is the heartbeat of this town. We are growing children to be responsible citizens of this city, this country, this world.

Both of my children were born in Fayetteville. I’m proud of this fact for them, and for me. I love all the opportunities available to them as they grow up here: workshops at the Fayetteville Public Library and other venues here in town, the feel of community at the Fayetteville Farmers’ Market and fun events such as the Block Street Block Party and Trick-or-Treat on the Square.

Are there places I enjoy going outside of Fayetteville? OK, yes, I admit it. I love the Arts Center of the Ozarks in Springdale (though I hate driving there; Springdale traffic stinks). I took my child to his first play there recently, and it was perfect. There’s the famous Crystal Bridges Museum, which I am still looking forward to visiting (no, I have not gone yet; I had a baby in January, so I get a pass to be out of the loop for a while).

I have friends who live in every city around here, even some who, in my adopted opinion, should know better than to live outside of Fayetteville. People who went to school here at the University of Arkansas or who lived here a good long while before moving to Bentonville or Rogers, as too often happens, for work. Do I look down on them for their choice? Let’s just say, if I had to drive to Bentonville every day rather than maybe once a week, I’d go crazy. So no, I don’t look down on them, but I pity them for what they’re giving up or for what they don’t realize.

I wasn’t born and raised in Fayetteville, but I am a native Arkansan, and I plan to raise my children here and be an active member of this community. And isn’t the feel of “community” what everyone is longing for? Fayetteville finds so many ways to bring together people of all different backgrounds and beliefs, and the great thing is, those don’t matter. Fayettevillains, or whatever you want to call us, are an open-minded, intelligent, a little bit hippie, caring community.

Yes, I include myself in that group, and that’s the best thing about this place; it accepts anyone who wants to claim it as his or her own.

SARAH CHANCE IS A NORTH LITTLE ROCK NATIVE, STAY-AT-HOME MOM AND PART-TIME TEACHER FOR HARDING UNIVERSITY’S BENTONVILLE PROFESSIONAL CENTER.

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