By Libby
Moving to Colorado from Arkansas has been quite a change for me thus far. Though I have lived here in Pueblo for less than a year, I have already noticed many differences between my home state and my new wild west playground. Here are some observations I have come across between the two so far.
Things that I heard about, every day in Arkansas, but rarely in Colorado:
1. Walmart
There are three Walmarts in our area of Colorado—two in Pueblo and one in Pueblo West. One of the ones in Pueblo, and the one in Pueblo West, are two of the biggest Walmarts I’ve ever seen. They are humongous! Walmart has also installed a Neighborhood Walmart on the southwest side of town—a part of town that can use all the input it can get.
Walmart came to several towns in Arkansas in the late 60s—24 opened by 1967. Van Buren had one of those early stores. My mother took me into the new Walmart kicking and screaming. I didn’t want to go at all. I wanted my clothes to come from the places they’d always come from: W.B. Smiths, Hayes and Graham’s, Mode-o-Day. And from afar: Montgomery Ward’s catalogue, to be picked up across the river in Fort Smith. I didn’t want Walmart. I could see the writing on that wall. My mother wanted to dress me in cheap clothes. I had never required Dillard’s, but I didn’t intend to easily let-go of my beloved local shops.
Back to the present: you rarely hear anything about Walmart here. It's here. It exists. It’s just quiet. You don’t hear anything about the Waltons. The grocery market in Pueblo is very competitive. There are lots of mega grocery stores—King Soopers, Albertsons, Safeway. They appear to give Walmart a run for its money.
Walmart is here, but it's not part of the cultural or political landscape like it is in Arkansas. Walmart is a non-factor here, I’d say.
2. The Weather
Everyday in Arkansas is a commentary on the weather. It’s funny: everywhere I’ve ever lived, people threw out the phrase "If you don’t like the weather today, just wait until tomorrow." For some of the places I’ve lived, that is blatantly untrue. Wisconsin would be an example. One early Spring day of my early 90s Wisconsin sojourn saw the sun shining brightly, glistening off the snow like small lasers—sunglasses required. As I passed a colleague in our changing-of-the class pathway, I said “Wow, it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” He replied, “That’s why we live here.” I have spent years thinking about that response. Was it sardonic?
In Arkansas, there are probably reasons for the obsession with the weather. Part of it may do with the fact that the weather in Arkansas is quite variable. It sits at the crossroads of weather impulses coming up from the Gulf of Mexico, meeting with weather impulses coming from the north and west. There, folks are as likely to get ice as snow. They’re as likely to get a deluge, as opposed to a gentle spring rain. And then there are the tornadoes. Tornadoes are one of the factors that keep Arkansans living on the edge—like their highways through the Ozarks. Live or die, who knows? It’s bound to be interesting, though.
Another reason for Arkansan’s obsession with the weather probably has to do with its agricultural economy. My father was a farmer, and he was obsessed with the weather. When the weather was good, he was in a good mood. When it was bad—and this could mean any number of conditions, depending upon the season—his mood corresponded.
In Pueblo, I haven’t heard a single person—save perhaps the weatherlings who report these things for a living—say, “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”
I think beautiful days are just taken for granted in Pueblo. The sun shining brightly, regardless of the season, is the norm. With just over 14 inches of precipitation expected annually, and a good bit of that coming from snow, Pueblo stands as a beacon to the sun most of the time. That is truly a beautiful thing, but it's so common as to avoid continual commentary.
3. Drug Busts, or Pot Busts
I bet you thought I’d say I'd say that! Not true; they happen all the time here. Drug arrests are the #1 cause of arrest in Pueblo, Colorado.
Most of the drug arrests we see in the local newspaper we assume to be drugs such as cocaine, crack, meth, and narcotics—heroin and pharmaceuticals. But we just assume that. When a drug bust is made, they don’t say what type of drug the person had. We do see, though, on the local news, busts of grow houses. We have seen these from Denver and Colorado Springs. The police will find, in a residence, a large marijuana grow. They go in and cut down the plants. The other day they busted an illegal grow house in Colorado Springs that had dozens of mature plants. They made quite a pile outside when they were cut down and removed from the house.
It's clear that making pot legal for medical and recreational consumers does not eliminate the black market of pot production. There's simply too much money to be made.
4. Puppy Mills/Dumped Pets
I don’t know if it’s just that the south really is the home of puppy mills…or what. But I haven’t heard of a single raid on a puppy mill in Colorado since I’ve been here. (I’ll have to check on this one.) Is it because the Ozark/Ouachita terrain is just conducive to the type of secrecy that has to exist for one of these to survive without notice. Here, it’s hard to hide anything. There is really no place to hide. Everything is flat, out in the open, for all to see. Trees are scarce. In the Ozarks, around every turn is a nook and cranny, beyond eyesight. Is this the reason that people in the south have more puppy mills?
I read that Arkansas is #1 in dog ownership, per capita. Why is this? Is this a good thing? We rarely see a stray dog here in Pueblo. We saw one yesterday that appeared to be a stray, and we were going to pick it up. But as we went back that way, it was gone. I expected, since we live in a rural area, for people to dump dogs/cats around here. I have not found that to be the case, so far. One day a woman came to our door with a dog on a leash and asked if the dog was ours. She said the dog was wandering, and she was determined to find the owner. In Arkansas, seeing/dealing with dumped dogs was just part of the landscape.
5. Humidity
Damn humidity – In Arkansas, ½ of the conversations about the weather are about the humidity. It’s both a cliché, and it’s not at all a cliché. There is actually something there. There is something to the bitching. Some days in Pueblo our humidity is 7%. I don’t think there is/has been/ever will be, a humidity reading that low in Arkansas. 30s is a low humidity day for us. And it really does make the heat almost unbearable. My favorite line about the humidity (and I’ve used it many times in my Arkansas life): “Oh my God, I can’t take the humidity any longer. It's killing me. I can’t breathe. My clothes are wet and I can’t get dry . . . But my HAIR looks FANTASTIC!” It has it’s plusses and minuses.
6. Rain
Lots to talk about in Arkansas; just not so much to talk about here. 42 inches of rain a year compared to 14. It’s a totally different way of life. We had rain today in Pueblo, and it's the first rain we’ve seen in the 6 months that we’ve been living here. One day, when Mart was driving me to a massage, we had a few drops fall on our windshield. Other than that, though, we’ve seen no rain fall from the sky. Snow we’ve seen; rain, no. We live in a cold desert, which means we receive most of our precipitation in the form of snow. No real reason to talk about the rain. When there is rain forecast, the probability is usually @10%. Still, it would be interesting to see a good rain here. The streets in town are designed to drain the water when there’s a rain; it’s why you have to slow down so much at many intersections. They make the roads dip very far down to drain the rain. So far, though, there has been nothing to drain.
Stay tuned for Part Two, which will check out the flip side of this equation: the things I hear about in Colorado that never came up in Arkansas.