Home Sweet (Almost) Home

I spent the last few days in Bentonville, looking for a rental house with my mom.  It's become a sort of tradition.  When I went away for Grad school to Chapel Hill, NC, my mom went with me the first time, to find a place to live.  We had many adventures, and many good times, driving around the town together, trying to get our bearings.  To tell the truth, she remembers more of it than I do... or maybe she just remembers different parts.  But whether or not we remember the same things, it's an important memory we share together, and an important milestone in my life that she was there to help shepherd me through.

My dad is always there, too, I have to say.  Not physically, but very much in spirit, calling to check up on us, asking questions, worrying over us.  I'm not sure, frankly, why it's been my mom that goes and my dad that stays, but that's the way it is.

This time was reminiscent of the last.  I drove, so I'd benefit from the kinetic memory of the town that you get from physically driving it.  My mom navigated.  Unless I was turned around.  Or the map was turned around. Or we were all turned around.  I managed NOT to run over the woodchuck that scampered across the road in front of us on the first day, but I very nearly drove us into the front of a large construction truck while looking for a street address (thereby inspiring the ire of the driver, who was NOT amused when we crossed paths again a few blocks later and I was backing up in the middle of an intersection to correct a missed turn).  In the first hour I was so distracted, anxious and excited that I drove over a curb, stopped in the middle of more than one intersection, and was sneered at by a handful of truck drivers before I finally got my bearings.

The first day was spent just driving around, getting familiar with neighborhoods.  Bentonville, as the headquarters of Walmart, is a small town that grew very quickly.  So it has a charming town square and old center, with beautiful old homes on wooded lots, surrounded by modern suburbs that have developed in the past 20 years... and many in the past 10.  It's a strange juxtaposition of old and new, with very little transitional architecture.  In most towns you can see the old homes from the 1920s to 1940s, then the WWII homes, thrown up quickly to accommodate the GIs coming home. Then the groovy 60s and 70s homes, with their split levels, flat roofs, berms, guy-wires and groovy cast-iron railings... and then the 80s mcMansions, huge roofs, enormous overblown porticos, brick and faux stone... and finally the more most 90s starter homes, mass-produced by some low-budget developer expressly for new couples and people like me, starting over:  all made out of ticky-tacky and all looking just the same.

In Bentonville, you go straight from 1920 to 1980 with no steps in between.  That's an overstatement, of course.  But its clear from the layout and architecture of the place that the town was mostly stable through the 60s and 70s and exploded from the 80s on.  It's actually several towns melded together:  Bentonville, Centerton, Rogers, Little Flock, Bella Vista... all small towns closely spaced originally, now all one metro area with burbs and chain establishments in between.  A new dynamic for me.  Norman was founded on the Land Run and has grown steadily outward ever since. I'm sure if you plotted its architecture and growth, it would resemble tree rings.  Not so Bentonville.  It's like bamboo:  Ka Blam!

I'm rambling.  The point, and I do have one, is that once I came to terms with this fact of architecture, I was able to look for a new home there with a fresh perspective. I had imagined myself living in the city center, near the town square, in the old section.  Well, that's for when I've paid my debts and can buy one of the gorgeous old historic homes down there.  For now:  call me Suburbia.

The upshot is that I have turned in an application for a four-bedroom house with a walk-in closet the size of an airplane hangar, and I'm anxiously waiting the results.  I can't think of any reason why my application would be rejected, but the sheer fact of having to apply for the house presumes the possibility of rejection. So we wait.  By 5:00 last night they hadn't gotten the credit check back yet.

(Possibly) my new dwelling place in AR

The house is really great. Way nicer than anywhere I have ever lived, with the exception of the wonderful old house the X and I bought together a few years before the divorce.  This one has the edge even on that house because it's new, with things like modern plumbing and closet space, and without things like knob and tube electrical wiring.

I think I would have taken it for the walk-in closet alone, which is a luxury I have never had.

I will hold off on talking too much about the house here, for fear of jinxing it somehow.

Today  my mom and I are going to go walk the trails to the museum construction overlook so she can get a look at my future job site.  Then we'll wander around the farmers market downtown and then I suppose we'll head back to Oklahoma, whether or not we've heard about the house. I really don't want to drive back without a lease, but there's not much else I can do until I get confirmation or denial.

Wish me luck