Say you were born in the Bronx and had been working in Manhattan and the only reason you moved to Arkansas was because your husband had been hired there. Your naturally reticent New York self comes up against a culture of friendly inquisitiveness, where strangers demand conversation and really do want to know more about you. How long do you last?
So far, it’s 16 years for Rita Sklar, who a year after her arrival found her niche as the executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas. She’s earned her Arkansas cred by learning to eat catfish and what it means to “float” the Buffalo.
“One of the things that impressed me the most,” Sklar said over a cup of hot chai at the Laughing Moon Cafe, “was that when people encounter other people it’s a real encounter. You’re not invisible the way you are in New York.”
Unskilled in the ways of small talk that doesn’t stop, Sklar — who described herself as the stereotypical New Yorker — had to learn how to make conversation “from the ground up.”
Her work has served her well. It’s not easy heading up the fight for civil liberties in Arkansas; it can be lonely at the legislature. But in a place where good manners make for good relationships, where people are genuinely interested in one another, people get along better, so Sklar can work cooperatively with people in many camps. “It’s not as easy to demonize a person” in such a small world, she said; it is easier to be effective.
Now, when people new to town are having a time adjusting, Sklar is sometimes called upon to give them a pep talk. Here’s what she tells them:
The countryside feels wilder.
Time is slower.
Your commute to work is virtually hassle-free.
When you want to go to a play or hear music, you don’t have to camp out to get tickets. “In New York, everything is an ordeal.”
Your children will get a good education. “I could not have wished for a better high school [than Central High].” She said her son, Franz Spillenger, is getting a finer academic background here than she got in the Bronx.
It’s a lot easier to “live a decent life” in Little Rock than in the City, a comfortable life, in a house that looks like a mansion to your apartment-dwelling friends back East.
The restaurants in Little Rock have improved exponentially in the past 16 years.
There is no such thing as anonymity. Don’t expect to get out of the grocery store in under two hours, because you’ll run into everyone you know there. In fact, since you know you’re going to run into everyone, you better brush your hair and put on something clean before you go.
The “put in” is the place you get into a river in a canoe. The “take out” is where you get out. In between, you’re “floating.”
Even the stereotypical New Yorker, used to getting a bagel and a schmear and being left the hell alone with her New York Times, can navigate a pretty much loxless Little Rock. And be content.
— Leslie Newell Peacock
