UNBOXING ARKANSAS: What It's Like Living in ARKANSAS

does everyone in arkansas shop at walmart did bill clinton ruin arkansas's economy no and does arkansas have some of the prettiest countryside in the south now we're going to answer those questions and a whole lot more so get your buggies out we're gonna unbox the state of walmart also known as the state of arkansas okay here we go we're at the best place in the world for retail shopping where you can get practically anything you want where you can get into a fight over a flat screen and see people shooting up in the bathroom where you can park your rv for a week and nobody will care where you can get a job at 70 and earn lousy wages where there aren't any real cashiers anymore where you can get a whole outfit for church for 30 bucks of course we're at walmart now walmart's the butt of many jokes and it doesn't have the reputation as being a very glamorous place to shop but it's cheap and convenient and 95 of americans spent money here at some point last year and you were probably here sometime last week more people spend money at walmart than any other place where you can spend money so say what you want about walmart but it's definitely a big part of the us culture we're here at walmart because we're in arkansas and arkansas is where the first ever walmart was opened way back in 1962 but as you may be aware walmart has a bad side many walmart employees make up the bulk of the arkansas welfare rolls as many of its workers are among the ranks of the arkansas working poor they don't pay people very much and walmart's dominance here in arkansas has meant tens of thousands of lost jobs from smaller retail locations which just can't compete with the global giant many areas of arkansas have a frail economy and there's parts of the state you would never want to live in if you're deciding to move to arkansas or just want to know more about this state you want to know where the good areas are where the bad areas are and where all the rednecks live this is arkansas now you could split this state up into a few different ways but there's no way better than like this there's one part of arkansas that's doing very very well but most of the states challenged in ways that i'm pretty sure you've heard about before like up here where we'll begin up in northeast arkansas so the whole eastern third of arkansas is dominated by what's called the mississippi delta a region along the mississippi river that's been a really great place to grow crops the soil here along the mississippi is very fertile and land here is very flat this side of the state's very poor and it's also very rural and it's pretty sad actually there aren't a lot of good jobs on this side of the state and there really is no reason why you would ever want to move to eastern arkansas this is also the only part of the state that votes democrat so you wouldn't want to live here for that reason too the eastern side can be divided in half with the upper delta and the lower delta region the upper delta region is far more populated and far more dangerous a lot of the upper delta of arkansas has some of the most dangerous and run-down parts of the whole state a lot of what makes up the eastern half of this state are just large stretches of farmland typically soybeans rice and cotton in fact there's a pretty good chance when you eat rice it came from arkansas rice paddies like this before we get to the bad places to live and talk about depressing stuff let's briefly mention a sort of highlight on this side of the state batesville here in independence county isn't too bad a place to live it's sort of safe and far less run down than many other areas of the upper delta the population here is only about 10 000 people and there isn't much to do but it has a nice small town feel to it for perspective homes here average about a hundred and seven thousand dollars which is pretty much as low as you're gonna find in any small town in america we're gonna see this statewide if arkansas has one thing going for it it sure is cheap pal that's pretty much it on the nice places to live on this side of state sure there's gonna be small places like batesville where you're not gonna get shot or robbed which are also kind of tucked out of the way but they're too little for a mention arkansas is the fourth most dangerous day to all when you measure property and violent crimes per capita and much of that's because of this part of the state now we're going to go through about a half dozen such places in the upper delta and briefly mention them but we won't stay too long because you know you're wanting to know the places in the state where you can actually live are jonesboro is perhaps the best of the worst in northeast arkansas it's college town home to arkansas state university yes there is an arkansas state university they're in the sun belt conference and there's 9 000 students here jonesboro is kind of small with 76 000 people it's actually growing here being a college town you're going to find some culture and things to do but jonesborough is also 7th in the state for murders per capita and crime here is going up there's a lot of meth abuse here as there is statewide something we'll talk about later a home here is about 163k which is still pretty cheap overall jonesborough isn't terrible when you compare it to other places in this part of the state you know places like west memphis this place has 25 000 people and going down it's like memphis but a much smaller version here you have a 1 in 50 chance of getting attacked or robbed every year 1 in 50. that's like somebody on every block 10 of the population hasn't worked a day in their lives if you're curious homes here are about 80k on average but they're that dirt cheap for a reason there's a dog racing track here so if you're into that you'd be entertained i guess but just don't move to west memphis we may never hear from you again the west memphis suburb of marion is a much better option but then again why are you moving to this part of the state anyways similarly terrible is nearby blightful population 14 000 and dropping not just because of all the murders people are just leaving statewide arkansas is it's hanging on with our population growth the number of people who live here kind of ticks up every year but not in this part of the state no a lot of the little towns on this side of the state are the worst in arkansas for crime and poverty examples are a little newport here in osceola over here along the river both are small towns of 7 000 people that are really run down and bad for crime places where two-year-olds get shot for no damn reason helena west helena has 10 000 people and folks are leaving here in droves too this is just about the worst place to live in the whole state one in five people drops out of high school here and crime is just out of control it's just so depressing in so many areas of northeast arkansas now it's sort of better a teeny bit in the lower arkansas delta region down here southeast arkansas is also very rural it's safer than the northeast part of the state but it's also much poorer too a lot of the area down here is just small farm towns holding on seems like everyone but the farmers and sharecroppers left this region a long time ago it's slow and quiet and can be peaceful if hardly anyone around is peaceful a lot of people down here shoot at ducks and stick a pole in the water back in the day arkansas's delta region was booming i mean the civil war days this part of the south was considered the deepest of the deep south and this was a wealthy region with all the cotton production going on but modern mechanization and corporate farming have turned much this side of the state and to die in small towns you know how the midwest has the rust belt with all those depressing small towns well this is the rock belt it's the same thing but in the south this is where you'd find a lot of trailer parks and meth use those two arkansas stereotypes definitely hold true in the southern part of the state the state ranks ninth in the nation for a number of trailer parks per capita and one report that just came out said arkansas leads the nation for meth use one study said 28 of everybody tested in arkansas tested positive for meth can you believe that 28 that's just unbelievable put the pipes down and get a job but if arkansas wants to live their life like that they're going to have to live with the stigma other stereotypes are arkansas folks are poor overweight rednecks well they certainly are poor more than 16 percent of the state lives in poverty putting it at the fourth poorest of all that's not good arkansas is the fourth most dangerous and the fourth poorest but it's sad one in four kids here is food insecure and they really are unhealthy as a state this is the third fattest state where nearly four in ten residents are obese i mean they'll eat anything fried down here and most of their diet consists of catfish bbq beef pork sweet tea salt and pepper ketchup and ranch arkansas ranks 11th in the country for a number of single moms at home at 8 percent and in terms of the whole redneck stereotype thing yeah the state is plumb full of rednecks even wikipedia acknowledges stereotype saying many arkansans are known for being lazy rural poor banjo-playing racist cousin marrying hicks damn wikipedia that's so mean but you could find a ton of people here live in that stereotypical redneck lifestyle i'll tell you that of course you're going to have a lot of people in arkansas who will defend their state and say stereotypes aren't true especially in certain areas of the state but you will find way more people here who will agree with the stereotypes and say yes we are like that we're proud of it by the way if you don't like it then good stay out we're just fine the way we are we don't want any west coast or northeast liberals moving down here in ruin in the damn place good for you arkansas it's kind of hard to get rid of the modern arkansas stereotype since you don't hear a lot of differing views coming out of this state there aren't really any major cities here most people who visit the state are either coming down to hunt or visit the mountains so there's not a lot of first-person knowledge of the natural state it's gonna just be viewed as a rustic backwoods region out of touch with mainstream america however there's two things that are interesting about arkansas worth discussing arkansans aren't necessarily dumb nor are they unhappy there isn't a single ranking online that shows arkansas on the bottom 10 for intelligence so that's a bright spot and i recently published a video that cited many statistics and polls which show arkansas the 10th happiest day in the country too if you're thinking about moving to arkansas know that the weather here is miserably hot and humid for five months of the year but autumns are very nice and pretty they get some snow every year and tornadoes are a big deal most people here have tornado shelters or brady holes as they call them down here [Music] this part of the state's had a huge impact on the music culture in america especially when it comes to blues and gospel music down here is kingsland home to johnny cash he was really rich but just about everybody else down in southeast arkansas is going to be poor they're going to live in a small town of less than 10 000 people monticello is the only real hub down here it's a small college town i guess you could move there over here is stuttgart which many call the duck hunting capital of the world i cannot overestimate how important hunting and the outdoors are for arkies they love them a good hunt and they're really good people some of the best hunting and outdoors is in the south down here in arkansas i'll tell you over here is el dorado population 17 000. it's really a bad place to live for crime and poverty and drug use once again this is also kind of the dividing line between the southeast and southwest part of the state this side of the state's really quite different when it comes to terrain the eastern side is very flat and doesn't have any trees but western arkansas is very hilly and has a ton of expanses of forest it's really pretty over here on this side of the state and folks come from all around to see arkansas's forests and mountains sure there's a lot of smaller farm towns on this side of the state and many of the areas here are also going to be very small and very poor these places are less farming towns and they're just towns the ouachita mountains and national forests are in this region of the state this is a great place for hiking camping hunting and everything else you can do in the mountains down here this is actually the oldest national forest in the south there's a lot of lumber mills around the area too a lot of people rave about hot springs located in the middle of this national forest that's because well there are natural hot springs here it's more of a tourist draw but there's also a horse track and a casino here 39 000 people make this home and it's one of a few places in rural arkansas with a growing population it's actually really pretty here there's a ton of outdoor stuff around but because it's a tourist draw crime rates are high in fact hot springs has one of the highest property crime rates in the state but if the mountain town in arkansas is your thing home prices are only 230k a lot of people who live here say they like it despite the growing crime numbers texarkana is down here along the texas state line there's actually two texarkanas the texas one is way better the arkansas one has 30 000 people it's kind of dangerous mostly inexpensive and really boring there's a lot of drug use here but the mexican food's good you probably wouldn't enjoy it for your new home hope arkansas is here another smallish place kind of tucked among farmland in between the forest this place really isn't much to look at and it's very poor and certainly not very exciting but it is notable as being the birthplace of former arkansas governors mike huckabee and bill clinton of course mike huckabee tried to get the republican nomination for president in 2016 but bill clinton was president twice bill clinton grew up here in small town arkansas then he ran off to law school on the east coast where he met and married his wife hillary then the two returned to arkansas and he became governor in 1983. he had a good run at it and was then elected to president many say clinton used the north american free trade agreement or nafta to open up trade in the americas and as a result his own home state of arkansas lost a bunch of jobs some say the beginning of arkansas's economic slide began with nafta and clinton's policies here began a process that would help ruin his own home state's economy and that is not good his presidency was marred by scandals and his wife wasn't liked by a lot of people but looking back he did leave with the highest approval rating in like 60 years and a lot of people say he did a good job so there's hope people of arkansas maybe one day you can rise to fame and wealth too and there's also hope you can get rich without becoming president that's because arkansas is home to crater of the diamond state park here in pike county only 30 miles from where bill clinton grew up this is the only place in the world where diamonds are found in their original volcanic environment outside of south africa and this is why the state flag has a diamond on it this mine doesn't produce very many of the world's diamonds but it does produce some of them it's a major tourist draw and people from all over come here to look for diamonds sometimes they find them and if you do you get to keep them every now and then somebody finds one worth more than a hundred thousand dollars hey that'll buy you a house in west memphis of course you're gonna find lots of churches in this part of arkansas this is the fifth most religious day to all and most folks are baptists and protestants now religion and politics are supposed to be separate in this country but it's kind of a gray line here in arkansas about half the state's counties here are dry meaning you can't buy booze and on sundays you can't buy booze anywhere in the state lots of other stuff is closed on sundays here too and look at that welcome sign when you come to this state they ain't messing around when it comes to abortion and there's all sorts of other laws here you know there's one about limiting medical treatment options for transgender kids and there's one that outlaws the teaching of critical race theory in favor of teaching creationism so if you lead an alternative lifestyle or you're a minority you may not feel at home in many parts of arkansas that's just how it is if you moved here and you aren't a church goer your new neighbors will likely invite you to church they'll invite you to church a lot and they'll keep inviting you to church and if you don't go with them they'll pray for you until you do or they'll just keep inviting you until you finally break down okay so enough of the negative stuff right i mean arkansas can't be all bad can it well before we get to more of the state's woes we should talk about the fastest growing most economically exciting part of this whole state this is northwest arkansas this is way different than the rest of the state and this is likely where you'd move if you made the natural state your new home now if the rest of arkansas seems very southern northwest arkansas seems more midwestern believe it or not this region was the 13th fastest growing metro area in the country over the last decade there's lots of jobs here there's a ton of new companies moving in and new suburbs are popping up all over this is where the middle and upper class live in the state and where crime is super low when you compare it to everywhere else northwest arkansas is where arkansas stereotypes go to die and where kids drive really expensive redneck pickup trucks to school this whole region has a lot of great white and blue collar jobs there are six fortune 500 companies located here everything from retail to energy and transportation to food i mean a reputable news source called northwest arkansas the fourth best place to live in the nation once and hey they'll even pay you 10 grand to move there so get in on that people of course northwest arkansas is not going to have the diversity or the culture that many other major metros have and you won't see any tall gleaming skyscrapers it isn't hustle and bustle here that's why it's a good place to live you could really kind of pick anywhere along the i-49 corridor and be fine up here bella vista has a bunch of nice homes and lots of places to be near nature there's not a lot of nightlife but it's only 20 minutes away and homes are only 230k everyone down the road's bentonville which is well known as being the headquarters of walmart homes here are four hundred thousand dollars that's a lot for arkansas bentonville also has the crystal bridges museum of american art funded by walmart money walmart's presence is all over the state and they give away a lot of money i mean they pay for the walmart school of business here in the region and arkansas people definitely return the favor there's 132 walmarts in this state and arkansans spend the third most per capita at walmart every single year the average arkansas resident spends more than 116 dollars a month at walmart if you're curious oklahoma and south dakota spend more per year per capita some say the walmarts in northwest arkansas are the nicest walmarts in the country and people here aren't ashamed to shop at them who would ever be ashamed to shop at walmart nearby rogers is also nice it's more affordable than bentonville where homes are about 250k down here is fayetteville where homes are also pricey for the state at close to three hundred thousand dollars now fayetteville is where the university of arkansas is there's a lot of smart people who graduate here this place is a big deal in these parts you know since arkansas doesn't have a professional sports team of their own the u of a is really good at baseball and other sports they're decent at basketball but they're not very good at football right now no matter their fans are rabid and if you moved here you'd have to learn how to do the arkansas hog call all game long [Music] [Applause] fayetteville's just about as close to a hipster enclave as you'll find in this whole state and it's college town so there's a ton of stuff to do here springdale might be the only sort of not nice place up here there's some corporate chicken plants in the area and so there's a lot of immigrants here and parts of town are run down and crime is higher than most other places in the area drug use and gangs are also around here too now way over here is eureka springs it's a neat little town of 2000 people and many are hippies it's more of a tourist town modeled after a victoria era swiss village really neat place way out here in boone county is harrison which is the headquarters of the kkk there's always some controversy going on up here we'll just move on and leave it at that now south of the metro area you have the ozark mountains there's tons of outdoor stuff out this way too supposedly the clampetts from the beverly hillbillies from this part of the state remember that show casual fetch in my stove so so i can get some videos to cook you have a beautiful stove thank you fix it in jab you scare up some wood ellie no no i mean you have a stove already installed in the kitchen where's that and that certainly didn't help change arkansas stereotypes very much i'd say huh and then we have fort smith here along the oklahoma state line which is also a bad place to live there's 90 000 people here and city-wide you can get a house for about 129k but the north end of town sketch and there's drugs and crime all over and it's getting worse all the time welcome to what the rest of america is going through fort smith then you have the arkansas river valley that flows from fort smith and sort of separates the ozarks from the watchtop mountains and flows directly into the last region of our state the center of it all there's three main places of note here in central arkansas we'll begin with the best conway here in faulkner county is actually a pretty nice place to live there's about 65 000 people here and it's growing if you needed to work at the state capital of little rock this is probably the best choice since there's actually a lot to do in the area a home here is only 181 181k making this like the best bang for your buck it's way better than nearby mortalton which is filled with drugs and criminals but sadly if you move to conway for work you'd likely have to commute into little rock for state capital this place is really depressing there's 200 000 people in little rock and it's not grown at all you could live here for like 161k but crime is just outright terrible here like for every year you lived here you'd have a 1 in 10 chance of being a victim of some sort we don't need to go over all stats this is just one of the worst places you can live in the country it's terrible here there's gangs and drugs and poverty and desperation there's going to be plenty of jobs in the area but if you're not 25 and looking to party you're going to want to live in a nearby suburb pine bluff down here in jefferson county is even worse than little rock if you can believe that they call it crime bluff it's basically the worst place you can live in the whole state and one of the worst places you can live in the country you want to know how bad it is in pine bluff a home here is fifty thousand dollars at one point a few years back pine bluff was second only to detroit for violent crimes there's very few bars or restaurants here a lot of shops and movie theaters shut down the mall sucks there's nine prisons and 90 churches in town the kids that actually do graduate from pine bluff schools they can't even fill out a job application correctly who's going to hire them the east side of towns filled with drug dealers and gangs it's sad that a place like this can exist in america but here you go one resident called pine bluff a land of emptiness covered in graffiti and crime this college kid who lives in pine bluff says if i had three wishes i'd ask for three more wishes and then use all three wishes to get away from pine bluff forever it's really sad in pine bluff because it used to be a great place but not many people have the energy to fix this town up anymore as arkansas tries to improve the areas it can improve it continues to battle the stereotypes that have defined it for a generation now and sure a lot of those stereotypes do exist here but poor uneducated unhealthy people are in every community and every state but changing people's perceptions means you have to have a new identity and arkansas is kind of a mut state there's not really any arkansas music or arkansas food or arkansas destinations or arkansas big cities for the most part it's just a hybrid of many nearby states they're making progress here the state's public schools are improving in many areas so that's good and another good sign is the migration rate for arkansas is low meaning a lot of folks aren't moving away to find a better life they're sticking around folks in arkansas tell you they live in the prettiest day to all they'll tell you that their state's filled with solid honest folks and they'll point the improvements they're making in job growth but they don't want to correct you too much if you assume this is a backwards simple place unworthy of your attention because that helps keep the riffraff out they kind of like it the way it is down here they don't want you to come down here and change it well that was pretty cool we learned a lot about arkansas didn't we there's a lot of stereotypes in this state but there's a lot of other stuff going on here too good lord this is a beautiful state we could have talked for another hour about arkansas with all the small towns and the history and all the other nature stuff to explore but we gotta go not cause walmart's about to close they never close because it's morning time and i ain't had a beer yet here's a good song about arkansas father what have you made me done you got me living in a cabin and no internet how was this fun mother why'd you make me wear this stuff we're eating possum armadillo with some squirrels too and even a skunk [Music] living up the dream at the mart you know i'm gonna fill that car cause that's what the family do who when we live in a state like you it's arkansas it's such a redneck place it's arkansas they're a different race mega hats no democrats mullet hair they don't care they just want you to leave them with their prayers [Music] living up the dream at the mart you know i'm gonna fill that car cause that's what the family do who when we live in a state like you living on another dime making my check go tight cause that's what i have to do when i live in a state like you okay so i was a bit hard on arkansas but they're a great state and most people here are super awesome and kind and generous everyone i interviewed for this video is a good kind human being you'll see that soon when the interviews at the end start but ultimately it comes down to brain drain if you grew up in arkansas and left for success and want to come back home to a more simple life they sure need you come back to arkansas where you belong you've been missed here and i'm sure there's a part of you that wants to come back home forever hey guys if you learned something new about america or what it's like to live in america great you should think about subscribing and turning on your notifications you can also click one of these videos or playlists for more you can also now buy my songs on itunes and other formats click the link in the description thanks for watching and remember while we all might have different views we should all be nice to each other and try to make the u.s a better place in a positive way this is sage nyx manager this has been a corner house entertainment production and are you looking to move and need advice i do consulting that's right i'll sit down and talk about where the next perfect place for you and your family should be i do it all the time together let's find you a new home that's safe and checks all your boxes you can get my email in the description to find out how i can help you find your perfect relocation yeah well we you know ours kind of went downhill can i say clinton error clinton maybe after that we started kind of on a downhill slide um commerce left a lot of jobs left just like everybody else you know they went out of country lost a lot of jobs in comes the meth and the drugs and the oxys and the stuff and you know that's killed not just arkansas but everywhere i know what was it about the clinton era like what what went on back then in the late 90s that you think well there's you know actually he was he was a pretty good governor because he was a governor and then he was a senator and then he was a governor again um but it ended up being a lot of shady stuff some bad real estate deals his uh brother roger was getting into starting to get into trouble uh things like that and there are some still some crazy stories that go around whether any of them are true or not who knows but um yeah pretty pretty crazy stuff but that's that's the time when a lot of the the deals were struck when clinton got to be president and businesses started moving out of the country and everything and it kind of started in arkansas because that's where he was so i mean it looked good on paper and sounded good at the time um but we lost all of our jobs you know you're talking about like nafta yes yes you know and i mean it was kind of like i don't know arkansas was maybe experimental ground because he was governor there and uh kind of trying it on some of the businesses that were here uh westinghouse was one of them that went out of the country very early they were up in northern arkansas who else some of the smaller ones i don't even remember the names of them we had some you know shoe factories um some of the processing even over uh in our stuttgart area that processed rice and made oil from rice there was a company over there called chef way at one time i don't even think they're over there anymore but that that seemed to kind of be the start of our our slide and i talked to a couple of co-workers today about what went wrong with pine bluff i grew up here i've lived in a few other places but yeah it has a really bad reputation the population is probably half of what it was has you know probably half in the last i don't know 40 years or something it was a nice place to live people wanted to live here but you know we had some really big businesses like the international paper company and we that live here are used to the smell visitors can smell it from miles out i just tell people it smells like money you know so that's still one of the big businesses here uh one of the largest employers but uh other than that there's not much so arkansas was doing pretty good up until the mid 90s with manufacturing a lot of blue collar jobs and then they all started to kind of go away overseas and that started arkansas's downfall right a lot of it you know i think westinghouse if i remember right went to mexico we had several that went uh to mexico and i think that was something that was orchestrated during that clinton governorship era [Music] hang on sorry about that i think it's roger clinton is trying to get a hold of you he's like what are you talking about it's not hillary calling she's like hey we can hear you yeah that's that was all that was bad um you know sad situation [Music] the boys on the tracks of course that was a bad deal i don't know how much you've heard about that what now the boys called the boys on the tracks um supposedly it was uh one of the drug drops gone wrong and um two teenage boys ended up uh dead uh unfortunately and that has rocked on unsolved for literally since then since the 90s and uh very sad um two young boys from a small town wrong place wrong time kind of thing you know so what was pine you live in pine bluff i live just outside of pine bluff yes i grew up in town uh used to be a nice place little tree-lined streets and you know nice neighborhoods there were some more affluent than others of course but it was a nice place to grow up arkansas as a whole was a nice place to grow up and i don't mind being in arkansas i really don't um it's beautiful uh they're they're beautiful places the glory hole uh at ozone uh every that's should be a bucket list thing if you haven't gone there the lakes and hot springs there's areas over there that are beautiful uh petty gene mountain is one of my favorite places i love to go there but pine bluff has it's gotten rough and honestly since um and this is going to sound crazy since everyone has worn masks for covid it's almost made it very uncomfortable to go anywhere because you can't see anyone so you've got all the people with the hoodies and the hats in the mask and everything and all you see is is this and lots of places i don't go and i've lived here my entire life so you know not sure what happened except like i said no jobs when jobs have come in they've had the problem of absenteeism can't pass the drug test theft on and on same problems that i've heard in missouri that i heard the gentleman talking about missouri missouri no opportunities very little opportunities and as our kids graduate high school our grandkids now graduate high school they're gone and they don't come back my grandson just graduated high school he's on his way to new york to go to college there says he's never coming back i hate it breaks my heart so what's it gonna take just jobs trying to turn that all around again probably jobs opportunities the i mean i'm not gonna say there's no jobs but they're all they seem to be low-paying jobs not not a lot of tech all the tech stuff is in northern arkansas now up around uh bentonville fayetteville uh all of those little towns have just kind of grown together because of walmart a lot of kind of artsy districts up there in that area and you know that's a booming area while the rest of the state is just struggling so and that goes by leaps and bounds there and another city that's growing and doing really well is conway which is um i don't know about a half an hour 30 miles 35 miles north of little rock and it's college town there's like three colleges and uh they're doing great lots of new building lots of new jobs um a lot of tech and stuff it's all tech it has it means that when the tech moves in the people move in yeah that's just something that is not moved into this area we end up with things like a tyson chicken plant that makes chicken nuggets for mcdonald's you know who wants to kill chickens for a living because because that's what it is so do people in arkansas hold bill clinton responsible for the state's the beginning of the slide are there people that are angry about what he did to your state no i don't think so i i think it's it's more of a you know people will tell me that's my opinion well it's yes it's my opinion but i mean if you do the research and do the math that's when it all started kind of sliding um i'm not even sure i necessarily blame bill clinton because we've got representatives just like everybody else they just you know like i said it looked good on paper at the time sounded good looked good uh it just it just wasn't wasn't wasn't the right thing to do wasn't the right thing to do and i mean when they say look at all this money you can make if if the labor's cheaper so that let's send it to mexico your labor will be cheaper product will come back blah blah blah yeah but for a while maybe but you know and that's that's what you know what do you do once it's gone and they have cheaper labor they're not going to bring it back to to people to make the decent wages again it's not that's not going to happen it would you know take a take a miracle i guess wasn't trump trying to do that bring jobs back he was going to bring some jobs back and of course we were affected by the pipeline and everything that was shut down because arkansas was one of the areas of fracking and lost a lot of jobs there um [Music] i i i don't i don't know much about yeah fracking and everything uh whether it's good whether it's bad again it it just depends on who you talk to it's good for the people making the money but as far as how it is for the environment or anything i i couldn't even begin to tell you but regardless we were affected by that a lot of jobs lost there and that's just been very recent time bluffs of course the pipeline wasn't in pine bluff or anything but pine bluffs unemployment rate is like 13 or 14 which is pretty high um i'm starting to notice some signs around town now that some of our restrictions have lifted uh help wanted but it also helped when our governor baby rejected uh they no longer get the additional uh unemployment payment in arkansas yeah we're having that problem here a lot of places couldn't open up because everyone was sitting on their stimulus money for way too long right get a job people get back out there it's like get a job and get back to work and everything but now everybody's just sitting around going come on graze my palm and and not still not doing anything so but again around here it's all low-paying jobs it's it's your dollar stores that are on every corner and the fast food and things like that because that's about all there is yeah so you know and we talked about how main street used to be a beautiful place and we have a a group go forward pine bluff that's trying to revitalize main street and bring in some things and everything and there's a very small portion that's been been redone but main street died when a shopping center went in the shopping center died when the mall went in now the mall is sitting over there empty um so there's nothing left there is a casino that has gone in i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing they've got a a big building project and if if they do what they say they're going to do we'll have a 13-story hotel and casino and i don't know how many restaurants and stages and all that stuff like that but i can't see that being a real good thing i i i don't know i'm not a casino person you know i just i just don't i don't do that so never been good yeah you'll get you'll get tourists coming it'll it'll stimulate a little bit of stuff but the problem is most of the people that are going to end up there are going to be the people that shouldn't be there they can't afford to be there from the local community that are going to be spending their paychecks and all their welfare money at the casino or whatever they're doing kids are going to be at home hungry and unguided yeah there had been some businesses and some groups of people that had bought some property along a street that was in awful repair that had some hotels that needed to be raised and they had plans to to bring it all back to life and to fix these little strip malls and shopping centers and put in some businesses and everything and a few things went in and they've already gone belly up because they said there's no business because everybody's spending their money at the casino and it's just i mean you can see it from that street and it's nothing that you know nothing so i i don't know what it's going to take palm bluff's crime rate is surprisingly when i looked it up right now right this minute we're not even in the top ten in pumbla in arkansas for high crime which kind of shocked me um where did you look that up um because sometimes um the one with the snacks the snack ability thing yeah home snacks i don't know that's my website so the problem with pictures yeah well so my they um they don't report a lot of times um the police will stop reporting for a year or two because it's so bad that they just don't report they don't turn their paperwork into the fbi at the end of the year so they're not counted so i'm sure that's what happened because durham north carolina used to do that too that's probably it you know at one time um when i was younger pine bluff was called little chicago because we had a higher crime rate per capita than chicago that's bad that's i mean come on i mean is it is it like property crimes like people are stealing cars or is it like just straight up is it beef between the local drug dealers that get into little gunfights or are they going into people's homes some gun fights going on there's a lot of bna um b and e breaking um just you know robberies um they've already had the casino hadn't even been open a year yet and there was a shooting there just because someone was mad because they were escorted out you know um go figure i don't know um you know there's there's shootings the teenagers have raised themselves um children are raising themselves parents or i don't know where they are i really don't um they're not where they're supposed to be and that's all i can say they're just not where they're supposed to be i don't know if the statistics are still that jefferson county is the most illiterate county it was at one time it also had the highest teen pregnancy rate at one time we've had a lot of milestones through the years of things like that and i hope that it's things that have all turned around because i like to put blinders on when i start hearing these things it's it's just when you live here as long as i have it's it's almost too much to bear when you see it just going and if you go to city council meetings and things like that sometimes it helps sometimes it doesn't you know because again there you get into the the clicks and the groups and the politics of it all and you know but you're sticking around you're you're not you're not leaving why is that i actually i was living in another place i had moved to texarkana um lived in malvern area for several years actually a little place called glen rose um for several years and due to some unfortunate circumstances i moved to texarkana for a couple of years uh moved to a little tiny place called taylor arkansas that has 450 people and it uh just a little tiny place right on the southern border of louisiana uh lived there for about a year and i moved back here because of uh aging mom and uh that was i don't know 10 years ago she passed at 99 last year so i'm still here i'm kind of waiting at this point on retirement and my husband is retired but he still works as a truck driving instructor i work with developmentally disabled adults and i love what i do that's my bright spot so yeah unlike a lot of the troubled youth they probably take direction this is true uh kids think they know everything there is to know about everything right now one of the problems they're having with the teens is uh racing car racing and doing the little donuts and stuff like that and they meet uh and literally in the middle of the night and do all this stuff and it's like how do people get the money for these kids to have cars like this i have no clue you know i don't know you see the fancy nails and the fancy hair and the fancy cars and the ebt cards yeah and that is baffling to me it's just baffling and the help wanted signs and i don't know i don't know what the answer is so like what do you tell young kids that grow up in the area if you get a chance to give them a little bit of wisdom there in your little neck of the woods in arkansas what would you tell them or what do you tell them about the future arkansas and what they can try to do to make that place better well the you know i i've told my grandson he's going away to college i said i wish you would come back and bring his smarts back bring his wisdom back and bring an army with him bring his friends with him and and do something um bring the tech back because that's an area that he's kind of getting into and if someone would do that bring some kind of tech company in maybe that would that would help i don't i don't know if it would or not um the closest thing they've had is i think they had tried to have one of the call center things that didn't work calling calling people to try to get them to move yeah i don't know i don't know they may have been selling the tire warranties who knows or the car warranties they may have been those worrisome people oh i thought you meant they were calling people like call center like will you please come to arkansas no oh they should do i mean fayetteville area though i believe it was uh the waltons had something to do with um giving people ten thousand dollars oh yeah yeah they're still doing that and they don't need they got plenty of good minds up in fayetteville they need to get people down and i wish you know from from our area uh it's it's a lot of farming area uh stuttgart is very close the duck capital of the world where they have duck calling competitions and uh that's where all the rice and everything is grown over there and there's uh rice lund is over there and it's literally shipped all over the world that's one of the few still thriving businesses um there used to be a lot of cotton and soybeans grown down south from little rock down it's just flat lots of trees but it's as far as the flat farmland you know the delta region so especially that that uh this whole southeast corner and uh pine bluff is just on the edge of it well i hope you guys can it's going to take a lot of heavy lifting to get you guys to start going the right direction you know what i mean it is i'll make my play hey if somebody can fix it y'all come on you know uh i make good cornbread come on come on that's funny because down in the kitchen i'll put you up for a while so uh yeah because that's that's what it'll that's that's the only thing i can see there's you know the tech companies that are coming in are in fayetteville and conway that maybe why conway's booming what was in little rock i'm not even sure is there anymore um but they are building uh a big amazon distribution in little rock that's that's the new thing now yeah amazon distribution uh there so that's probably the only new big business that i'm aware of just not around here schools are awful you know yeah schools are awful a lot of them have been taking taken over by the state because the grades were so bad and so poor and that's an awful indicator of what's going on they pay teachers poorly in your state like they do in some other states i yeah yeah it's it's not not too good i think they i don't know about i think they start out at about 30 000 a year something like that how does 30 000 go in arkansas cost of living is that like middle class barely making it you're not going to rent anything if you're renting uh you're not going to rent anything for decent to live in for less than seven or eight hundred dollars a month anything under that and yeah it's just in in areas that you really don't want to pay and a lot of rents even more than that um rent high it wages low um i think it's a lot of people that would say 800 or even a thousand dollars is yeah a steal i mean and you know you things have changed for this country in the last year a lot of people are realizing they don't want to be in the big cities they want to move somewhere that's more rural where they can work from home and raise a family with lots of land and space and they're they're headed to the south i mean they are headed to tennessee they're going down south carolina north carolina they're coming in they're trickling into places like where you guys are at well if anybody loves you know we're the natural state if anybody loves the the outdoor life of of the the hiking the camping the the uh boating the canoeing uh beautiful uh canoeing on the buffalo river up in in northern arkansas uh ozark national forest the camping trails uh you know the fishing the hunting uh all of that is is awesome it's it's wonderful and uh if if that's the kind of lifestyle uh yes we've got plenty of that um but the and she planned not so much you know but she might place their time maybe yeah but i mean you know people want cheap they want space yeah they want land and not cheap meaning bottom bottom dollar stuff but i mean if you were going to try to buy a half an acre with a you know 2 800 square foot home where your kids could run around you can't do that in very many places except for down in the south part of the country or you know out in the middle of nowhere but um you know there's not a lot of places where you got mountains that you can do that i don't even know in this area there's hardly even any houses that large i mean my house is a 3-2 and it's only 1700 square feet and it's pretty pretty average you know uh nothing nothing fancy not a fancy neighborhood it is out of the city limits a little ways nice quiet little cul-de-sac type neighborhood and but the houses outside of town are decidedly more expensive than the ones in town the ones in town you can get for a song but they're awful they look like they look like crack houses what can i say i guess they are i don't know they've set vacant they've had people squatting in them they're they're just bad just bad and neighborhoods are littered with it it's not just um not just the poor neighborhoods that are like that because somehow move into a nicer neighborhood then they're gone and that house just sits there and deteriorates and it brings down the whole neighborhood so yeah that's why people have moved out and scattered the countryside but you can't you can't get land inexpensive like you could at one time now if you can find land for 4 500 an acre you'd probably be lucky just to put a little house on it or something you know uh it's been you know bought up by the powers that be so before i let you go you did mention you had some there was all kinds of stories about the clintons and arkansas and oh lordy there's so many stories and i don't know if they're true is there one that you can share with people that um as an example of that uh it's mostly stories about parties and things like that and goings on and i ain't saying nothing else because i value my life if your phone starts ringing again i'm going to be a little worried for you i turned it off okay i turned it off i'm sorry i didn't do that before no it's fine yeah it's it's some pretty pretty bizarre stories that have floated around and i've i've like no way that can be true but i've had people i swear you know so who knows and this is coming from um some of the state troopers that were assigned at one time and things like that so i guess we'll just have to use our imagination yes well thank you very much for that that was really insightful and you know i just wish they had people with big hearts like you a lot more in your area because i feel like that could go a long way and just keep sharing that love and that wisdom and maybe you can help turn it around a little bit at a time if you're yeah you know it's like some of these smart kids just need to come back home instead of being enticed by big businesses and big cities and flashy places and bring it on home remember where they came from remember they're raising come back home to arkansas if you're watching it come back to arkansas come on back they need you hey we have sweet team cornbread come on yeah but you know you probably missed the fireworks and blowing up stuff and the mudding and the shooting and the hollering i've done my share of that along the way i've i've sat in many a deer stand and tromped through the woods with a little flashlight things like that yeah everybody hunts here and of course uh everybody's a card carrying razorback fan um go hogs like that's mandatory i say that somewhere along the way can you do your um suey pig thing that they do down there the the noise the the the pig yell that they do yeah yeah can you can you do that or oh please the razorbacks it kind of loses its flare when there's only one person doing it when you learn you're in an office with uh yeah some phones ringing it's not the same as when you're at the game or the tailgate old stuff behind me i look like i've got things going out of my head i will but like i said i live in rural area i don't get any service i don't even have wi-fi or anything available to me that's how far down i am so that's right now for uh living out in the in in the country in arkansas is you don't have things like wi-fi and broadband and things like that so you're selling dial-up internet at home i don't have any internet at home you don't have internet at your house nope how far out of the city limits are you about seven miles and there's no internet so no um because they there's some that's available but you have to get cable service i've tried to get it through att i can't get it hughes net is sketchy uh verizon said we don't service your area so here you go so all i have is my phone and i get very very poor signal until about 10 or 10 30 at night and until about 6 30 or 7 the next morning uh i can barely get a text or a phone call do you like being isolated though i mean is there something that's peaceful about no distractions or are you like hellmuth i'm used to it you know my kids know that if they call and don't get me that my is sketchy and they can keep trying or they can drive to my house and that's about it because uh we don't go out much after dark not into town anyway oh uh all right um they need to fix that problem hey hugh's now or not accusing that charter a t get a line out to these people yeah we have what is it cable cable links or something is down there and some of the neighbors have said oh yeah i get it it's great and then the one across the street will roll their eyes and say don't waste your money so i've never even attempted i don't even you know that's one more contract to me to stay out of we just go home do our thing yeah like we used to do before internet that's right life goes on wait we're not tied to it so that's great that's great my grandkids come my my three-year-old grandson says he wasn't coming back to my house because we don't have wi-fi what my three-year-old grandson told me [Laughter] just laughed and i said you are spoiled rot no he needs to come over and get a shovel and go out back and start playing with rocks and picking up sticks and playing with bugs we take him out and he swings and plays with the dogs and uh grandma spends a lot of time reading books to him so that's what we do and it works works for us so pine bluff will never be the same little place it was but i can only hope it doesn't get any worse that's my hope that's my hope well you hang in there and uh i wish you the best and i hope that pine bluff also doesn't get worse yes that's that's that's what i'm saying i hope it doesn't get any worse because sad [Music] i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry that you're sad that that makes me sad that you're sad well don't be you know it's okay it just uh it's like i'd said pine bluff gets a bad rap and people don't know how it used to be used to be a really nice place it was a nice place it just i went to heck in a handbasket and i don't know if there's any sight in it but i'm sorry oh you're okay does it make you sadder when people like me say point out that pine bluff is bad like there's a part in the video that i i'm almost done where i'm like pine bluff is just not a good place anymore i mean does that break your heart does it make you sadder does it should i leave that out i feel bad it doesn't make me sadder because you know i i know it's true and that's what makes me sad because i know it's true and i guess there were those of us that watched it get that way and didn't do anything and didn't do enough and now that i'm at a retirement age i don't feel that i have the the want to that i once did or the yeah you know you get to a place where you're just like i'm over it you know move on i'm over it but it it doesn't it doesn't make it any better that that it was a nice place it was a bowman place we had the you know the port and businesses and people came from all the little towns to pine bluff to shop you know because it it was on the way to little rock so everything everybody on the s south half of arkansas came here doesn't happen anymore it doesn't happen there's there's no place for them and yeah we got lots of pawn shops lots of liquor stores lots of ethnic restaurants uh and lots of churches and lots of lots of sad people without jobs and lots of people that don't care whether they have a job or not you know people that want a job want a better job and they're not happy with what's offered to them and so they pick up their toys and go and some of us old timers just keep sticking around will you hang in there old timer yep i'll be here a while i don't know where i'll i don't know if i'll stay you know i'll i'll get aggravated and say i am not staying here uh not gonna be a prisoner in my house after dark you know and things like that but then here i see it you know i've been here all these years and uh i really don't have any plans right now to go anywhere so um well you you're doing god's work doing what you're doing with those folks are helping out and you know hopefully those young minds will pay a little bit of attention yep y'all come on back come on back we're here we're here for him we've got there's adults that'll stand behind you and prop you up along the way there are those of us here that still have encouraging words and there are those of us here that are not going to say there's nothing here for you because even when i moved back to pine bluff to help my moms um uh there were people say why are you coming back here there's nothing here you know and that's the attitude everybody has taken there's nothing here it's sad there's nothing here who's going to bring it back if we don't no one will i wish i had an answer so don't you have a magic wand in your in your bag of tricks somewhere i can just draw attention to it and hopefully somebody will care yeah yeah that's i don't know what else it would take

Channel: Nick Johnson

Views: 111,467

Rating: 4.6951971 out of 5

Keywords: living in arkansas, arkansas, what is arkansas like, arkansas research, i live in arkansas, arkansas travel, what is arkansas, arkansas trivia, why do people live in arkansas, arkansas map, arkansas residents, arkansas culture, arkansas cost of living, moving to arkansas, arkansas realtor, arkansas mortgage loan, arkansas vacation, little rock, pine bluff, bentonville, walmart, fayetteville, rogers, wesst memphis, bill clinton, ozark, ouchita mountains, helena-west helena, conway

Id: QzJGvhzMuDI

Length: 76min 12sec (4572 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 29 2021