The South and the Waltons

Arkansas is one of those states that are in the middle of nowhere. It's not the classic American South like Virginia and Carolina, nor is it the Southwest like Texas. Somewhere in between. And hot.
If there is one image of the American South for me, then it is the rocking chair. Maybe I watched too much „The Waltons“ as a kid...but white rocking chairs are THE symbol of the South for me. I was totally blown away when I discovered dozens of rocking chairs in the airport waiting area on a layover in Charlotte, North Carolina....beautiful, relaxing. Whether Southerners developed a different mentality than Northerners BECAUSE they spent so much time in rocking chairs or whether the rocking chair was an expression of the different mentality - I don't know.
Now I'm in Fayetteville. Half a century ago, it was a sleepy little town. The wife of a businessman told her husband he could do what he wanted, she would support him. On the one condition that she would live in a town with a population of no more than 20,000. So they moved to Fayetteville. And from the middle of nowhere, her husband built his business. His name was also Sam Walton...he named his company after the first letters of his surname: Walmart.
The company headquarters are still here in Fayetteville.... the city has grown somewhat in the meantime. Not least due to the managers of the supplier companies, who all had to open offices here - it was a condition of Walmart. They built chic villas in the neighbourhood, which stand next to run-down farms and cow pastures. Despite the chic houses and cultural facilities, everything here is still very rural and provincial.
I'm here to visit Amy, who I've known for 15 years and whose husband died suddenly last year. (I wrote about how much this moved me in my book „The Hut and I“). She hasn't lived here very long...I've known her and her husband longer than all the other people she knows here. She told me yesterday how good it was for her to talk to someone who had known her and him for so long.