Postcards From The Edge

I am a mostly broke adult and used to be a mostly lonely child. This inevitably led to an idea of the world that was mostly informed by books and TV. Thus, when I as an exchange student at the University of Arkansas was asked what I had expected southern American life to be like, I was mostly joking when I answered I was a regular True Blood fan.

My religious Christian friends were not amused.

In retrospect, a joke comparison with a vampire show is probably more accurately descriptive of Fayetteville than any of the college town ranking lists that highly recommend it. The perfect embodiment of the escapism that underlies that genre, Fayetteville is the Lynch-ian suburbia of your nightmares and the cozy cubby-hole backdrop of a quirky family sitcom. It was here at a local festival (‘Bikes, Blues and BBQ’, where bikers alá Hell’s Angels gather in a somewhat apocalyptic fashion) that I was politely asked by a friendly middle-aged man if I would like to ‘blow him’.

Mostly though, Fayetteville is the home of the Lights of the Ozarks.

Although more of a significant tourist attraction than a hidden gem, the real magic of the Lights eludes you unless you get the timing right. You have to wait for the festivity and prospect of suffocating crowds to dim before you decide to go. You walk down Dickson Street with your friends past mounds of shoveled snow, lampposts swathed in green-and-red tinsel and Hammontree’s, which serves the best grilled cheese sandwiches you have ever had. You walk past a Bank of Fayetteville branch, stopping to admire the miniature town set up in the display window. The accuracy of it amuses you – there is even a small Chick Fil-A.

Then you turn to face the square in all it’s freshly snowed upon glory.

You are Alice – this is the neon-splotch explosion of your LSD-induced dreams; the remote winter wonderland of your childhood books. The trees are lit-up by a thousand fairy lights and the square itself distant and magical under the un-ploughed snow and orange haze of the misty streetlights. The World Peace globe fountain has frozen over and jagged ice sparkles near its bottom. The shops are closed and except for the occasional wanderer, you have the square to yourselves. This is where you forget all the noise from your home – in the unsettling quiet, surrounded by the friends you love and capturing the last memory you want to share with them before you all leave.

This is where Fayetteville hacks off a part of you and keeps it.