[mafitz]

Hello, we are moving to Harrison area in mid- to end of June. It depends on how soon I get our house ready for sale out here in SC.

I can't wait to finally be there, because we will finally be able to have a life, and there is so much to do in the area that we love.

I have hunted on the net to get more info on Northern AR from people who live there and have noticed a lot of ultra conservative groups in the state. I had never thought of the state as a militia-type anti-gov state, but the people who post on the net from there seem to be.

We are very moderate and do not fit into the conservative or liberal stereotypes because of the way we think. We moved to SC because it was supposed to be getting progressive, YEAH RIGHT, and have found this bizarre blueblood mentality out here that basically views anyone who is not from this area as a "yankee".

Is it worse there? My mom and dad live there and they are very down to earth people, my dad would probably be called a hillbilly by people from other parts of the country, but they are just good people who are trying to get by. We are similar to them except that we don't go to church.

We just want a good small town without the my poop don't stink attitude, for our daughters to finish school in, that really does place value in the family, especially the kids, and for us to lay down roots in.

Any insight available from people who live in the Northern part of the state that have also lived elsewhere? We tend to keep to ourselves, its a habit from moving so much while in the military, and we believe in live and let live (to each his own), instead of harrassing neighbors who don't mow their lawn every weekend. Will this weigh against us there too?

[RogMar]

Originally Posted by mafitz

Hello, we are moving to Harrison area in mid- to end of June. It depends on how soon I get our house ready for sale out here in SC.

I can't wait to finally be there, because we will finally be able to have a life, and there is so much to do in the area that we love.

I have hunted on the net to get more info on Northern AR from people who live there and have noticed a lot of ultra conservative groups in the state. I had never thought of the state as a militia-type anti-gov state, but the people who post on the net from there seem to be.

We are very moderate and do not fit into the conservative or liberal stereotypes because of the way we think. We moved to SC because it was supposed to be getting progressive, YEAH RIGHT, and have found this bizarre blueblood mentality out here that basically views anyone who is not from this area as a "yankee".

Is it worse there? My mom and dad live there and they are very down to earth people, my dad would probably be called a hillbilly by people from other parts of the country, but they are just good people who are trying to get by. We are similar to them except that we don't go to church.

We just want a good small town without the my poop don't stink attitude, for our daughters to finish school in, that really does place value in the family, especially the kids, and for us to lay down roots in.

Any insight available from people who live in the Northern part of the state that have also lived elsewhere? We tend to keep to ourselves, its a habit from moving so much while in the military, and we believe in live and let live (to each his own), instead of harrassing neighbors who don't mow their lawn every weekend. Will this weigh against us there too?

Welcome.

The state of Arkansas is very diversified and you'll meet every type of person and personality.

I'm originally from Southern Illinois, my parents were both southerners who settled there. I went to the Chicago metro area to work, and experienced that for a very long time. There, I very much found the "My poop don't stink" attitude you speak of.

Currently, I reside with my wife in the hills of Izard county, and am very much what one would call a "hillbilly". Folks around here are really pretty proud of that. Understand that the "hillbillys" here are bound to be as educated, and make as much money that people anywhere else you've been do. They just try to hide it real well.

We have areas that folks from the north have moved to seeking Arkansas's lower taxes, better climate, and beautiful scenery. A lot of times they tend to congregate in their own chosen areas, and don't understand those who choose to live out here on the dirt roads, nor want to.

In the same sense, there are locals who are bible-thumpers, and don't fraternize with the kodiak-dippin', haggard-listening, pickup truck afficienado, cattle ranchers that I tend to hang with.

You won't have a problem.

You'll find plenty of folks to socialize with, and a lot you don't want to, just as anywhere else.

Locals will weigh heavily on your parents, and asssociates. If they know and like your parents, they'll quickly say, "Oh..you're <Henry's> boy!", and open their arms and house. Same if you're so-and-so's friend.

Harrison is not that small of a town, and there'll be something for everyone.

When I moved here, the phone lines on this hill buzzed, everybody knew everything about me overnight, and neighbors started comin' callin'.

Be good and honest with folks, and they'll return it.

BTW, the term "yankee", is earned around these parts, and you can be a Georgia yankee as easy as a Michigan "good ol' boy". Ya know what I mean?

Enjoy Arkansas, it has a lifetime of discovery waitiing and is constantly adding more courtesy of mother nature.

[mafitz]

Thank you for the insight. Around here the yankee thing is a derogatory, but people are not friendly at all for the most part. We lived around that snobbery you talked about when we lived on the outskirts of DC, and then again when we were in Tacoma, WA.

The dirt roads are exactly what we want, desparately! We want to get some land and build a house on it, enough land that my husband and dad can go hunting, and enough that the neighbors will be a drive instead of a walk away.

I think we might well be the "hillbilly" that you described, good or bad, but we just want to do our own thing and not have to deal with haters that think something is wrong with us because we don't want to conform to anyone else's standard.

It sounds like you have found exactly what we want! My husband chews sometimes, I know who Merle Haggard is, (hell I grew up listening to him, Don Williams, the Hank Williams Sr. and Jr.), but where I originated we were just called red necks. People all over the country seem to share a common ignorance on how that term came about, but in AZ the term was used to describe the laborers because the only part of their body that got any color was the sun burn on the neck.

My dad (legally step dad) and his family come out of Southern Missouri. He and my mom settled in Harrison and my hubby and I just fell in love with the whole area. I can not even begin to describe the longing we feel everytime we talk about the mountains, creeks, and lakes. It is so flat here there is nothing to see except for endless miles of litter strewn highway. And being able to find land that we could disapper on is a dream.

Out here its just the opposite, its expensive to live, and we are a one income family, so it makes it even harder, but the biggest turn off is that you don't get what you actually pay for. The real estate is overpriced, good for us since we are selling our cookie cutter house in this tidy little subdivision, but bad if you want to put down roots here. We are in the upper middle class tax bracket but have little to show for it, because we pay a small fortune between the taxes and health insurance costs. So if AR's taxes are lower than what we pay here that is just going to be another benefit!

Socially here people are just plain mean, rude, and its been hard dealing with the lack of simple manners and common courtesy. We thought it would be different when we moved here, but lord have mercy its bad. In Harrison the people always said Hi back, and they stopped to help each other out regardless. My dad and mom are that way, its how my husband and I are as well, but out here they treat us like doormats because we are that way.

Not everyone has been like this, we have met some really good people here too, people that we are going to miss a lot, but it sure would be really nice to be living around more people who are just good people, at the very least just good mannered and respectful of one another.

Sorry I am so chatty. But thank you very much for the info..

[RogMar]

No need to apologize. I know what it's like to search for a place you can be yourself and not get ridiculed for it. I think you and your husband will be pleased with what you find.

Dirt road properties can still be found reasonably priced. I bought mine 15 years ago, so certainly I flinch at current prices.

Unimproved land, which is what they call it, is currently going around $1400-$2000 an acre, depending on amenities like ponds, if electricity and a well already exist, etc. Septics, wells, and electricity are no big thing.

There's a lot of stuff with a house on 5 acres kind of thing. I needed a little more than that.

I took all-wooded secluded land, and carved out a 4 acre yard with house and shop building, and it really wasn't as tough as expected.

You'll see listings higher than others, but, hey....there's always folks who think they've got a silk purse, not a sow's ear, y'know?

You can start checking properties through the United Country website or get their catalog, they have a plethora of realtors/properties. That'll give you a little familiarization with the area.

However.....what I highly reccomend, is go to the area you want, do a little research, talk to some folks, sniff the air, so to speak. There are some very good deals that are local only, and sometimes folks want to sell a little land for whatever reason, and it's just word of mouth because they don't want to pay the realtor fee.

Yes, I have been ecstatic here since I bought, andwhen I finally moved in, well....I'm still doing the "snoopy dance".

No place is without it's detractors, and we have them here. As I mentioned in another thread sometime back, my wife and I belong to two supper clubs (Ya have those in dry counties). One is in a pretty much all-southern-all-the-time
town, and the other is in a retirement town that is largely.....more like *wholly*, occupied by retired folks from the north.

The club in the southern town is cool, and unpretentious. The other one is a source of amusement for the little lady and I. We talk quietly, so folks at another table usually don't catch my "Y'all" accent. We can easily overhear other tables conversations. The waitresses are local. We frequently hear, "I wish these people would learn how to talk", after the waitress walks away.

We heard a couple having dinner with visitors, and the visitors asked how they liked Arkansas. They replied it would be perfect if they would just get rid of the hillbillys.

I think you get the idea.

Because I'm dressed like them, and they can't hear me, they think they're safe from catching, "Hillbilly cooties", or whatever the heck it is they fear.

Gosh darned "undercover hillbilly". Give it a name.

So, you'll run into detractors, as I said, but that's alright, wether in NWA, Little Rock, Fayetteville, the Delta, or anywhere else in this state, there's enough Arkansas for all of us.

June starts getting pretty hot, we've had some 90's recently, and by August, it's time to enjoy the ol' air conditioner most of the day. However, I absolutely guarantee you that the rest of the year way more than makes up for that.

When you're able to sit on your deck in the morning and have your morning coffee with all the birds singing and eating bugs, and the deer in your yard enjoying your grass, you could care less that it's gonna be hotter than all get out in about 4 hours.

I think you'll find the locals very accepting. Since you've spent time in S.C., and have relatives from southern MO ( a fact you don't want to be bashful about mentioning), you'll slip right in.

Don't buy that hype about the KKK being in Harrison. They are not in Harrison, they're in a little town a ways away, and what there *is* of them, they get together to do their secret salute or whatever, then, I dunno, get home before dark or sumpthin'. They are legends in their own minds.

Lots to do around and not too far from Harrison.

Great fishing, hunting, cookouts, sunsets, clean air, and down-home folks.

It don't get no better than this.

Y'all come on down now, ya hear?

[RogMar]

Originally Posted by mafitz

but they are just good people who are trying to get by.

I had to grin at this.

In my "neighborhood", there are people that live by working on other peoples cars, to ranchers running 1000 head of cattle. They all look and talk the same. When I see any one of them, and ask, "How y'all doin?", what do they say?

<ball cap comes off-sweat wiped from forehead-a spit of dip out the window>

"Man....I'm just tryin' to get by". <serious look on face>

Aren't we all?

[mafitz]

Ya know I wonder what they would be saying to us at that there supper club. We have lived here long enough that we have that accent, and our two youngest daughters have it in a big way. So much that people who don't know our 10 year old was actually born in Bethesda, MD, talk about what a perfect little Southern Belle she is!

You and your wife have the piece of heaven me and my hubby want so bad. It is priceless! Lord knows there can't be anything better than to wake up in the morning and be able to watch the birds go about their routine like that. My dad and I got in the habit of doing that exact same routine when I went to visit them. The coffee outside in the morning and just watching the birds.

We will not be lucky enough to get the deer to come close enough to us when we get our land though, because our two boys are a couple of goofy boxers. Beta and Omega. Beta is daddy's boy, and Omega is a mama's boy.

We are going to rent a house in Harrison first, just so we can take the time to find exactly what we want. We are thinking to just pay rent for a year on a little house, and spend that time looking around.

Our finances have taken a real nose dive out here in the last 4 years and while we got our bills caught back up, we were 30 days late on the mortgage enough that we need to take a year to get our credit score back up to where we can get a good interest rate on another mortgage.

We are still painting the house and getting it ready to put on the market, and this is the first time we have ever done anything like this so we are taking it slow and worrying over everything. We lived here for 6 years in this house, it is our very first house, and we had just come out of military housing, so we just had to paint every room to get rid of the white walls. We didn't know a thing about what not to do when you pick colors for rooms, and instead went with southwestern colors for the main rooms. They are like dark little caves. It turns out you are not supposed to put dark colors on your walls if you have dark colored flooring! Then of course with daughters, I had to make them a "glamorous princess" bedroom, which means that I glazed the walls of one room with glitter, and it bled through the heavy latex primer we are using, so we have ended up having to spackle the walls in that room just to cover the glitter.

Its not expensive work at all, its just that it takes time, and is frustrating. Plus we have about 6 years of junk accumulated that we have to get rid of, and we are getting rid of everything except for 3 computers, clothes, important paperwork, and memorabilia. The only thing out of the kitchen I am keeping is a stainless steel stock pot.

Then I have to sod the backyard that our dogs have so kindly kept grass free for us, replace window screens, get a new bathroom vanity for the girls' bathroom, and replace the carpet. Then we will be done.

Now all we have to do is quit procrastinating and just finish it!

We are hoping to get the house sold within a month and the market may not be cooperative with that desire, but it goes on the market at the very last week of June, the best time to sell a house is in the summer, so it may well happen for us.

We have all the cookie cutter subdivision seeker perks that will be going in our favor, we live at the end of a cul de sac, back to wet land, have a fire place (it never gets cold enough to use it but people like just being able to say they have one), the screen porch, and we are just down the road from the elementary school.

We are going through a real estate agent that knows my dad to rent a house there, and its that "oh your billy's daughter, yeah, I can get you into a place" thing you spoke of, and we are going to rent a house for no more than $500 a month, so we can take the extra and save it for our land. We will make between $10 and $20 grand coming from the sale of this house, so in a year we will be standing strong to get exactly what we want on a new place.

We are beyond excited about finally getting what we want out of life, we want our daughters in a small enough town that people will know them and us, so if they get up to no good when they turn into teenagers, we will hear about it, and when we don't want to deal with the outside world we will just be able to disappear into our own small piece of the world. Right now there are 3 kids in this entire subdivision that we will even let our girls play with, and it really isn't because we are over-protective, it is the lack of parenting we have seen with the other kids, which means to us that our kids will just get up to trouble if they are around these other kids.

The only good thing we have for our girls here is the school they go to, even though the state rates their school as one of the worse, the teachers at their school are truelly the most dedicated educators around. They have provided a strong sense of community for us all, and have done so with very little funding.

The girls have no parks, no playgrounds, no community pool, nothing. The library in Harrison puts the library here to shame in a big way, and the pollution is so bad around here that the only good places to take the kids to go fishing or swimming require a drive of 3 hours and more, and are very expensive to get into. Perfect example, we could take them camping to a state park that is 5 hours drive away, but its $67 a night for a tent spot. Its depressing.

Its feels like we are living in a box, and have no air to breathe. Our 10 year old is a born fisherwoman, they might as well just jump on her hook the way she catches them, our youngest loves netting crawdads, we love to canoe, camp, hike, but we can't afford to do that out here. My husband lives to hunt, bow hunting, rifle hunting, and he is into brazilian ju jitzhu and boxing, in Harrison he can enjoy both of his loves. I can garden, grow pumpkins for my girls for Halloween every year, and watermelons for the summer.

It may not seem like much, but for us its everything. I don't know how people live like we do and live happily. I just don't get it. Its like all people live for around here is to go to the WalMart.


"In my "neighborhood", there are people that live by working on other peoples cars, to ranchers running 1000 head of cattle. They all look and talk the same. When I see any one of them, and ask, "How y'all doin?", what do they say?

<ball cap comes off-sweat wiped from forehead-a spit of dip out the window>

"Man....I'm just tryin' to get by"."

RLOL! My dad repairs people's cars, lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners, he paints houses, and repairs rental houses to make a living! You do what you gotta do to get by!

[RogMar]

I do not envy the task of moving at all. I am a fairly organized person, but it turned out to be chaos anyway. It is certainly worth it in the end.

You had mentioned the issue of people being a little too concerned about what your yard looks like, and you can be assured that folks on the dirt roads don't care.

Personally, much to the amusement of some of the folks, I decided I'd have a nice yard full of grass and shade trees with a few ornamental bushes. I will spare you the details of what lengths I went through to achieve that so that my lunacy cannot be affirmed, but suffice it to say that now, as I *mow* 3+ acres, I'm also beginning to think I'm a candidate for pharmaceutical therapy.

OTOH, I have a neighbor that is the "typical" stereotype of backwoods folks, and the vehicles, tires, machinery of all descriptions, all rusting nicely away, hide the fact that there's a house back there with people living in it.

Nobody cares, everybody minds their own business.

If you don't cut your grass, you're the one that's gotta walk through it, it don't effect nobody else. Unlike city living where the yard police will come out and give you a citation.

I built at the end of a small dead end road that borders my property, so you can see me from the county road, I can't see them, and if you come down here, it's to see me or you're lost.

I think your husband will feel like he's found his own heaven down here as the outdoor pursuits reign over all. It's not unusual for local-owned businesses to change their business hours or close entirely during deer and turkey season. They have regular signs they put up with "Deer Season Hours".

You're close to a number of recreational lakes there, and to the east of you is Mountain Home, which gets very heavy weekend usage from both tourists and locals alike. Table Rock lake, to the north of Harrison is also a huge recreational area, and has some of the clearest water you'll find.

Memorial day weekend, it sounds like a war zone around here. Cookouts usually mean you gotta kill some cans. They're sneaky devils.

[luvarkansas]

Originally Posted by mafitz

We will not be lucky enough to get the deer to come close enough to us when we get our land though, because our two boys are a couple of goofy boxers.

Deer? Lucky? And you like to garden? You're lucky to have the boxers to keep the deer run away, or you won't get anything out of your garden.

I'm with you on the simple living. I'm going to be out in the country some day....right now I live a pretty rural life right in the middle of a small town, but I long for a little more space.

[RogMar]

There are many methods of deer proofing, but what I use is 10' sections of 1 inch PVC, mouted around the garden at 45 degree angles, with baling twine stretched around it. Deer won't try to jump anything without an outward agngle, and they won't breach string or chord for fear of getting tangled.

Works perfectly.

[luvarkansas]

What about flowers and shrubs? Do you have any, and do they bother them?