# People don't steal in Fayetteville


So I just got off the bus in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a little town half
an hour from the Wal-Mart world headquarters, and two hours from Bill
Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock. It’s a tiny bus station,
not Greyhound like I’m used to, but Jefferson Lines. I am not meeting my
hosts for a few hours, so I go in and ask the man behind the counter if
I can store my luggage there for a few hours. He tells me to put it
across the room on one of the benches. I ask him if he would keep an eye
on it. He says: “People don’t steal in Fayetteville. Besides, nobody
would bother with that big thing even if it was full of 100\$ bills.”

Not really my normal modus operandi, but I took out my mp3-player of the
bag and trust my laundry with faith… Hopefully it will still be there
when I return in an hour.

(I still have stories from Denver and Kansas City, but they’ll have to
come in non-chronological order).

*Update: Three days later, as I went down to the station in the morning
to take the bus out of Fayetteville, another man with several bags asked
the same Jefferson Lines’ attendant whether he could leave his bags
behind the counter. He got the same reply, that nobody steals in
Fayetteville. When he pressed the issue, he was told that being in
Fayetteville is like being in a mother’s arms, and that someone had once
left a bag for two weeks there, without problems. (Apparently he forgot
where he left it.)*

Stian\
 (from the friendly University Library at Arkansas U)