I am from Arkansas. Yes, that’s right: A-R-K-A-N-S-A-S. I am one of those people who are called hicks, hillbillies or rednecks. However, I am one of the few that take pride in the name. I am a redneck in every sense of the word. I was in 4-H, raised pigs, and have fair ribbons to prove it. I have the southern accent and I even tuck my jeans into my boots.

I grew up in a small town called Gravette, a small town I hated until I moved to Joplin. It was a town that I thought had absolutely nothing exciting about it except for Friday night football games. Now, I am a firm believer that small towns are a lot more fun than big cities because there are just some things you can’t do inside of the city limits. OK, I know to some people Joplin may not be a big city, but to someone coming from a town of 1,500 people, it is huge.

I will give Joplin credit for having a mall, Wal-Mart, bowling alleys and movie theatres, but that’s only fun until you run out of money. Nothing in Gravette costs money because there is nothing. So, we make our own fun.

Only in a small town can you get away with tagging a police officer’s car. Only in a small town does the police officer give you permission to do it. “Country” kids get away with a lot more than people think and that is why small towns tend to be more fun.

Take my sophomore year in high school, for example. I decided it would be funny to bring a screwdriver on the bus and unscrew the window. I remember walking off the bus with the window in my hands. Of course the bus driver wrote me up, but when it reached the dean of students all I got was a pat on the back. His exact words were, “You’re not in trouble. Simply because you had enough guts to do that and you came up with it before me.”

Now, if I were to do this in the Joplin School District, I would be kicked off the bus and possibly suspended from school depending on how much damage I caused.

Living in a town the size of Joplin is fun until you realize you know no one when you go somewhere. Going home is like a Homecoming every weekend. Everyone knows you, your life story, and loves reading about you in the local paper. I can go anywhere in the town of Gravette and be able to name anybody in the room, partially because I spent the last year as Miss Gravette and I worked in the grocery store for well over a year.

In Joplin, I can go to the mall and be lucky if I can name one person. It is a big lifestyle change going from knowing literally everyone in a town to knowing just a few select people. So, I would gladly pick the small town spotlight over the city streetlights any day.

To put in the words of country singer Miranda Lambert, “everyone dies famous in a small town.”