A different place

On Monday, after buying about 300 rounds of handgun ammunition in Little Rock, I took K, our exchange student, through Woodson and Hensley, two small communities about three and five miles east of our house. K needed to see another side of Arkansas not in the status of those who are host families to exchange students.

Appropriately enough, the road to Woodson is called Woodson lateral. The road is raised after crossing to the east side of I-530. Thick forests extend several miles either side of the road. Trees are around six inches in diameter; the area must have been clear cut, or the trees grow on what once was cotton land. Houses near the raised road are priced, I would guess, at $150,000 and up.

After a mile or so, the road begins several curves. As you near Woodson, value of houses drops considerably.

We drove past a burned-out house trailer. K said, “That is terrible!” My guess is, she had never seen a burned house. She said, “What will the government do about that?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s the homeowner’s responsibility. If he has insurance, then the insurance company will pay for removing the house and maybe buying another.” Another guess – More than a few homes in Woodson are not insured.

In the last three-plus years, I have seen half a dozen burned homes in Woodson and Hensley. Most have been cleaned up, and superseded by weed-covered vacant lots.

We drove by several unkempt houses and trashed yards.

“In (her country) this would not be allowed to happen,” K said. “Why do people allow their houses to become like this?”

That took some explaining; an inadequate amount, I think. I talked about income, jobs, how a person was raised. I mentioned growing up poor – although not as poor as some families here.

“But,” I said, “I knew I could get out. I knew I would not have to live like that forever.” For me, the Army was the way out. My brother and sisters got more normal jobs, and they made it out.

“Some people,” I said, “do not have the family background that lets them see a way out. They think things will always be what they see every day. Their parents thought that way, and their grandparents.”

We drove to Hensley. The community is about the same as Woodson.

I looked up Woodson at Wikipedia. The population is around 450. Demographics say the population is around 74 percent black or African-American and 25 percent white. I also learned that the community is named after Ed Wood, Sr., who after buying land in the 1880s became the state’s first black plantation owner.

Hensley has a population around 150 – 65 percent black or African-American, 34 percent white. Of those older than 64, 29 percent have incomes below the poverty line.

In K’s country, income tax rate is 40 percent. She said everybody gets free medical care and free college education. That is all well and good in a country where people expect to work and are expected by everyone else to work, and where everyone anticipates education.

There is a world of difference between there and here. Sometimes the differences are not pleasant, sometimes the differences are good.