I’m Jill Varvell, a Realtor, blogger, podcaster and homemaker. This is my first blog for Dixielands and this excerpt represents a homecoming. I was born in Louisiana, and my earliest memories of the deep south include hearing my relatives use slang like “kin-folk” and “ya’ll”; running barefoot through the bayous of Maringouin where my mom grew up; eating fried catfish w/hushpuppies; and gazing at row after row of stately brick houses. While I was very young, my dad, an engineering graduate of LSU took a job at Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale, CA. So my family of 6 packed up our red Chrysler and drove from our home in New Orleans, LA to Campbell, CA where I grew up. I lived most of my life in the Bay Area where I met my husband, raised our three children, and worked over 20 years in the real estate industry.

But California stopped feeling like home as the Santa Clara Valley gradually became the Silicon Valley. The sprawling farms and orchards of my youth were developed into soulless business parks, sprawling highways, and high efficiency apartment complexes.  Simultaneously, a new breed of power-hungry politicians implemented more invasive policies, while the cultural melting pot was fractured and divided by progressive rhetoric. So my husband and I moved to Washington State, bought a home w/a few acres, and thought we’d create a new life and new memories in the Pacific Northwest. But through time and circumstance, we learned that God had other plans. In the Fall of 2021 while traveling to work, a vehicle crossed over two lanes of the highway and crashed into my husband’s vehicle leaving him critically injured. He was airlifted to the closest major hospital and by the grace of God survived. Based on the opinions of the doctors and wrecking yard attendants, he was a walking miracle.

 With a new lease on life and a reminder of our mortality, my husband and I decided to go on a cross-country road trip through the American South where our families were from. We traveled though Oregon, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. And we were pleasantly surprised by what we saw. It was a place we knew through our families and hazy childhood memories,  but didn’t really know for ourselves. The “fly-over” states had the best climate, culture, food, people, and outlook on life. While Washington State was mostly locked-down with misguided and ever-increasing new monthly mandates; this other part of the country remained free and functioning. Churches met in person, restaurants remained open, and people weren’t living in fear of a virus or each other. Encouraged by the normalcy, I began earnestly searching for homes. Like the rest of the country, the housing market here was hot but unlike the West Coast, the South was more reasonably priced. So in an unusually impulsive move for us, we bought our home sight unseen in Fayetteville Arkansas.

We’d seen a lot of states on our trip so how did we choose NW Arkansas? We were looking for a sustainable state where we could grow a garden and raise animals. The weather is ideal for agriculture here, and unlike other areas we considered like Idaho,  Wyoming and Montana, the South’s weather allows for a longer growing season. While it rains frequently, averaging 49 inches a year, it’s dispersed throughout the year, meaning there isn’t much of a rainy season, and it’s green almost year round. Although we get a lot of lightening with booming rolling thunder, even during storms, it’s not so cold you can’t walk outside. It’s very temperate, and in the case of a natural disaster, and even in the absence of electricity, one could reasonably survive.  From a financial perspective, the economy is doing quite well. Real estate is booming, construction is constant, and industry is steadily increasing Many large companies are relocating to the area from other states. According to the Wall Street Journal and Moody’s Analytics, Fayetteville and the surrounding cities in Northwest Arkansas have the 3rd best job market among metros w/less than 1 million people in the nation. https://www.wsj.com/articles/best-cities-job-market-2022-11650639572 There is plenty of shopping, a burgeoning arts scene, and excellent museums like Crystal Bridges. https://crystalbridges.org/ If you ever need an even bigger city, Tulsa OK is only a couple of hours away.

So why did I choose Dixiecast/Dixielands?  I spent a few weeks searching for domain names that encompassed the Southern Culture I’d fallen in love with. I wanted a comprehensive name that not only embodied the South, but I was hoping it could also embody a little piece of myself as well.  Not only does Dixielands evoke the memories of my childhood, but I liked the plurality. I think there are many different cultures here in the south, and Dixielands allows me to explore all of them. No one really knows where the term “Dixie” came from, but most scholars suspect, it came out of New Orleans, Louisiana where I was born. The word Dixie likely referenced currency issued by the Citizens State Bank in the French Quarter of New Orleans and then by other Louisiana banks. These banks issued ten dollar notes labeled Dix on the reverse side which is French for ten. The French pronunciation is “Deese,” but these notes were known as “Dixies” by English-speaking Southerners. The French speaking parts of Louisiana came to be known as Dixieland and eventually the usage of the term expanded to refer to the Southern states as a whole.  There are many roads, places and businesses in Arkansas using the name and despite its non-racial origin, I was told that some may have a negative association of the word Dixie.  I’ve concluded Dixie is as much a geographic term as much as it is an historic one. I’m of Sicilian decent, was born in the Cajun capital of the world, only minutes from the French Quarter and intend to highlight the positive connotations and rich culture evoked by the term. Dixielands is another name for my home, my memories, and the life that I am gratefully cultivating here in Northwest Arkansas.

 The best part of NW Arkansas is the people. I’ve heard of Southern hospitality my entire life but never experienced it until I moved South myself. I have my own personal ideas as to why it’s so prevalent but I’ll save that for another blog. Suffice to say there are an abundance of churches here, and many God-fearing folks and traditional families who fill those churches. Though I’ve travelled many places in the last 30 years of my life, Northwest Arkansas has some of the kindest, most polite, and most helpful people. Your neighbors aren’t just neighbors, but friends who want to be a part of your life. The sense of community is strong here. For example, upon arriving at our new house, we needed to quickly build a back-yard fence for our German Shepherd but our tools had not yet arrived. So my husband began digging fence post holes by hand. Our next-door neighbor, whom we had not yet met, observed his inefficient efforts. A few hours later, he rode over on his tractor and asked to help. In what would have taken him perhaps 2 weeks, took maybe a couple of hours. Our neighbor refused any compensation, he was just being neighborly. Similarly, in under two months, we’d already met most of our neighbors, I’ve been invited to participate in the local women’s club, and have been regularly updated about local weather conditions, runaway animals, and recommendations for the best local farms and food.

I’ve named this first blog “Homecoming.” The idea of “coming home” is cherished and sentimentalized in American culture. We see it glorified in movies and we hear it in music. Miranda Lambert’s “The House that Built Me” poignantly epitomizes the idea of home is the place responsible for forming our identities. https://youtu.be/DQYNM6SjD_o Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes puts it even more succinctly “Home is wherever I’m with you.” https://youtu.be/DHEOF_rcND8  Coming home is a return to the past and a warm memory of the things that shape who we are. Home can be a place, a community, the scent of a long-forgotten but familiar fragrance or even the taste of beloved food. For me, the idea of “home” comprises  all of these things but most of all coming home means a feeling of contentment and hope. It’s a combination of my past and the values instilled therein and the way that I view my future. Home is an acceptance of where you are and if you’re fortunate, a glimmer of hope for the things to come. As a Christian I fully recognize that my home is in heaven and the best parts of things on earth are but a foretaste of that future time.  By God’s great providence, home is Northwest Arkansas and I hope pray it remains the free state that has so charmed me. Welcome home. Welcome to Dixielands!