Is it just us?

Parking where there is no designated space.

We've been in Arkansas a couple of months now and have decided there is a subtle but very real difference in the way we and our neighbors* process information and interface with reality.

With a few notable exceptions, it seems that the farther east you go in this country, the higher the vibration at which people function. New Yorkers who visit Indiana find us remarkably laid-back and slow-paced. Conversely, my visits to New York left me with the impression that most New Yorkers are tweaked up and exploding with nervous energy.

And so it is for us in the upper right corner of Arkansas. We noticed it first in people's driving habits. Nobody seems to be in a hurry to get anywhere. I'm not known for jackrabbit starts from stoplights, but I have yet to be beaten off the line by anyone here. There is consistently a five-second or more time lag between the appearance of a green light and any forward motion by a vehicle with an Arkansas plate. If the driver is on a cell phone, it takes them even longer to wake up and move. And if it's an old person in a Buick, you can expect them to be just slightly faster than a house plant.

When it comes to cornering, people here creep around corners like they think they're on black ice. Nobody accelerates through a turn. And when turning into a parking lot, they often come to a dead stop at the end of the turn, presumably to decide what to do next. God help you if you just started a left turn into that same lot and are left hanging in the oncoming traffic lane.

Of course, hardly anyone uses turn signals. They must think that projection on the left side of the steering column is there for decoration.

The people, we have found, are nice to a fault. They can be maddeningly naaaas ("nice" in Arkanese). Workers in fast food joints welcome you enthusiastically and wish you a naaas day when you leave with such conviction that you feel compelled to respond.

And damn near everyone wears camo. We had lunch at an all-you-can-eat catfish buffet and had a contest to see who could spot the most items of clothing in camouflage pattern. Counting jackets, caps and shirts, I came up with more than 10. You see whole families in camo, even little toddlers. I bought a camo hat at the Boomland fireworks store/gas station as a joke, but it's a joke nobody around here gets. I just look normal to them. There's even a hunting/outdoorsman store here called the Camo Store.

People here are crazy about hunting, especially deer hunting. The local paper runs whole pages of photos of hunters hunkered down next to the deer they killed. There was even a story about a 4-year-old girl who almost accidentally drilled an eight-point buck through the forehead with a .22 while sitting in a deer blind on her grandmother's lap.

This is also the "buckle" of the Bible Belt. About 89 percent of the folks in this county who claim a religious affiliation belong to Evangelical Protestant churches and the overwhelming majority of them are Southern Baptists. A professor at the local Arkansas State University campus, who just moved here from the East Coast, remarked to my wife that the first thing people ask him is, "What church do you go to?"

As Catholics, we're probably regarded as Satanic agents of Rome, so we avoid discussions of religion.

There are, of course, some quick, witty, alert people here - folks with a bit of an edge to them - and we delight in discovering them. And we're looking for more of them.

 

*When I say "neighbors," I don't mean our next-door neighbors. We don't know them well enough to include them in this rant and, therefore give them the benefit of the doubt.