The ‘best little scrub’

Region’s best feature? Being NW Arkansas

It happened again. Another internet “ezine,” as they’re called in crossword puzzle clues, has published a piece pegging our pretty Northwest Arkansas acres as a surprisingly desirable place to live. And as is common with such, this plug from Thrillist.com came with sideways compliments: Fayetteville is a hippie NPR-listener enclave and Bentonville, whose tastes have finally caught up with its dime-store billions, is Middle America’s answer to Bilbao, that off- the- beaten- path Spanish art Mecca.”

I chuckled a bit at the Fayetteville take. There is some truth to that when considering our otherwise typical SEC college town. But the Bilbao comparison was off at least from an architectural standpoint. The Moshe Safdie lookslike-it-belongs- here- in- the- woods complex that is Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is serene and organic. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim complex in Spain is an explosion of tornado-ravaged galvanized stock tanks reclaimed from a Tractor Supply Co. parking lot.

We locals are thrown into the same category as Salt Lake City, another of the 10 surprisingly livable cities profiled right before Fayetteville- Bentonville, as the article apologized for the Latter Day Saints cultural influence with “Less than half of Salt Lake City is made up of LDS members and, well, they’re usually pretty darn nice anyhow.”

So hillbillies and Mormons make darn nice neighbors. Who knew?

Whether in a Money magazine “bang for your buck” article or a lifestyle web site featuring art festivals and farmers’ markets, Northwest Arkansas has been on someone’s up-and-coming, soon-to- bedis covered, great-place-to-live list every month or so for nearing 30 years. This begs the old family station wagon road trip query: Are we there yet? Are we approaching the level of desirable notability where we circle back to some mundane but new status quo similar to when people only trekked up the hill for Razorback games and craft festivals or relocated here to snuggle up with Wal-Mart?

Invariably there are comments posted following these articles from clueless ones who are hip, urbane or regentrified elsewhere ( or fancy themselves as such). “Arkansas? You ARE kidding?” is typical, followed by some variation of you couldn’t pay me to live there.

I used to get defensive, posting responses touting the virtues of our cities, hills and streams. I’ve stopped. No need to invite yet more Interstate 49 traffic or longer waits for tables at Theo’s and Table Mesa — let alone Olive Garden. I confess and beg forgiveness from our area tourism councils as sometimes I’ve fashioned responses to the snide ones: “For God’s sake don’t come here. They don’t sell beer on Sundays!”

Yet there is an even greater issue. Why the inevitable comparisons to other established places with high marks on the cool-quotient scale? Are New York and Boston the standard this month and Austin and Portland the next? Really now. We can’t all be Manhattan or Carmel-by-the-Sea.

I am reminded of a poem my late father carried with him, folded tightly in his wallet during his service under Gen. George Patton in Europe during World War II. Neither my siblings nor I knew of this poem until plans came for his funeral. My sisters decided the grandchildren, not we three children, should speak tribute at our father’s service.

My youngest son Tim was assigned that particular poem, read from a copy of his grandfather’s tattered page. His interpretation and diction were perfect, thanks to his participation in the outstanding performing arts programs at Bentonville High. But there I go again, touting our local assets.

The poem, Douglas Malloch’s “Be the Best of Whatever You Are,” includes the words “If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill, be a scrub in the valley — but be the best little scrub by the side of the rill. … It isn’t by size that you win or you fail —Be the best of whatever you are!”

“Whatever we are” that makes us Northwest Arkansas is what it is. We are most decidedly middle America flyover country. In spite of our growing ethnic diversity, we are forever in the southern Bible Belt. With our stunning art museum, and exciting new dining and entertainment venues, we still owe most of who we are to Tyson’s peeping chickens and Walmart’s beeping scanners.

So if yet another distant travel writer sends us up metaphorically as some beautiful pine on the top of the hill, then we should take the compliment graciously and humbly — then move about our business being the best possible little scrubs by the side of our rills. And we’ll continue to surpass others’ expectations.