southern

So I’ve been bunked up in the deep American south these last few days, visiting my girlfriends family and friends. The south is a unique place. I think they actually hold the rights to hospitality; I’ve never eaten more, been waited on by hosts or been kissed and hugged by as many strangers as I have in the last few days. The people are fascinated by my world, asking questions about Kangaroos, Crocodiles and even Kevin 07. They have seasons here; right now it really is winter, and everything natural is dead…that is, except the rivers which look amazing and are everywhere. They should call it the river state. I experienced the coldest weather of my life on Thursday, a whopping 1.1 degrees; matched by the massive heat wave the next day…3.3 degrees…Celcius that is.

The south is the home of the small American town; after 18 months of living in LA and seeing only the big cities, I finally feel like I’m in the real America. There’s big trucks, thick accents, ribs for dinner, school buses, flags, trucker hats and endless amounts of space. It’s peaceful, simple, slow and beautiful. In so many different ways I feel like I’m in a movie; walking around Caroline’s family house, driving around the lake behind it, seeing the high school with it’s football field and wandering around central high school, the stage on which crucial civil rights battles were fought back in the day. They all invoke images I’ve been watching on TV for years. I never knew it was quite so real.

We flew into Fayetteville airport, which I’m told only exists because Wal-Mart is headquartered there. Allegedly they require all suppliers to have a rep living in the town, thus requiring an airport for all the Chinese plant owners to send those middle-class suits in. Wal-Mart is the pride of Arkansas from what i can tell; them and the razorbacks, who went down to Kentucky over the weekend. Everyone wants me to know that Arkansas is where the worlds largest supermarket chain started. Inside the new super-centres being built across the world, you have a McDonald’s, a pharmacy, a bank, groceries, TV’s, Garden centres and even petrol bowsers. I’m told they plan to open medical clinics too, so they can grab a slice of that lucrative USA Medical System. They just posted their first ever billion-dollar quarter profit, and I’m ashamed to say that, yes I’ve contributed; we needed a soundtrack for our road trip, and Wal-Mart was the only option for cd’s (which says it all really) but I promise you I’ll try never to do it again!

Wal-Mart seems to have become the anthiesis of the small town mentality which is so revered here in the south. The Waltons and their Marts move into small towns with local businesses and build their amazing centres of capitalist know-how. Because of their superior size and business acumen, they undercut just about every local supplier, from the butcher, the baker and yes, even the candlestick maker. Pretty soon, the only place to buy your garden hose, fill your car with petrol or get a job is, you guessed it, Wal-Mart. Without a local economy, small towns are crippled, people move to the next town (hopefully before Wal-Mart does) and the process starts all over. I will admit, I can see why they’re so popular; you can get just about everything you need. I have to wonder if these marts and other enterprises like them will end the American small town sometime in my generation, and see mega-cities take their place.

I’ve had my first ‘proper’ American church experience, complete will a 3rd story baptism, choir robes, cinema screens and a sermon about the destruction of America. They even had a flag on the stage! At times I thought I was in a Blues Brothers Movie…I wish I’d taken a photo. The preacher was obviously a talented communicator, speaking for around 40 mins without notes; however I was dismayed that the message was incredibly thick with moralism yet absent of hope. It actually made me reflect on some of the sermons I gave back in the day, and I realized I’ve learnt a lot about communicating in my time over here.

In two more sleeps, it’s all over. I’ve enjoyed the rest, the space, the food and the rides in trucks; I’ll miss it when I get back to the smog and chaos of LA. I couldn’t stay forever, but I hope I get to stay in the south again; if you’ve never been, you need to go. There are some ribs grazing in a paddock, waiting for you to arrive.