Quaint Little Town

Oxford SignpostFor two years I attended the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi. While I was there, I never thought much of the place other than, “I live here.” But looking back on my memories of the town, all I can remember is how truly picturesque it was. When we talk about a “sense of place” the word “charm” tends to be thrown around, and there is undoubtedly an Oxford charm. In a five minute drive around town, one will pass William Faulkner’s house (Rowan Oak), John Grisham’s house, the historic Ole Miss campus made noteworthy for its law school and James Meredith, and Square Books, one of the most famous independent book stores in the country (and if one was there in 2008, he would have been able to see the 2008 Presidential Debate between John McCain and Barack Obama.)

As a college town, Oxford naturally has a strong sense of history and community. The University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss, is a University with a strong sense of family history. I once met an eighth generation Ole Miss student in a literature class. The same is true of the town. Driving along Old Taylor road, one will see plantation style homes (on smaller lots, of course) with a magnolia canopy overhead. In the distance is the courthouse acting as a focal point at the end of the street. Around the courthouse is “The Square,” what Oxford is most famous for, and what I consider to be the ideal place.

As I read Kunstler’s The Geography of Nowhere I noticed that he would always describe what is wrong with a certain place, but afterwards he would inevitably describe what things work about a place, and what a “good place” incorporates to make it so (generally offering a hypothetical place to prove his point.) Because I’m a visual person, I would always have to try to visualize a place I know in order to understand what he was saying, and how that place, be it hypothetical or not, would “work.” Why does that ideal town have a strong sense of place? Why does Kunstler idolize those types of places. Inevitably, every time Kunstler wrote about those elements of a good place my mind would go straight to Oxford. It seemed to me as though Kunstler was, in fact, describing Oxford when he was describing these ideal places.

The Geography of Nowhere first starts with an argument for correct city planning. Kunstler abhors the grid for its monotony and failure to comply with the mind’s reaction to the pleasantry of focal points. Instead, Kunstler prefers winding roads and the positive psychological effects of seeing roads “come to an end.” He uses the national grid pattern of states west of the Mississippi river to prove his point: A grid disregards natural landscape patterns, but razes and levels the land to meet the requirements of the built environment. When I apply this to Oxford, once again I see how his argument would lead him to favor this town. Oxford has no grid, and does not disregard the natural landscape at al

l. Set in north Mississippi (less than an hour from the Tennessee border) Oxford lies in the lower areas in the middle of the foothills that start the Smokey Mountains. Therefore, the roadways that make up the arteries of Oxford curve around the hills rather than disregarding them. The curved roads also make Oxford ideal by Kunstler’s sense of the word, because a curved road means much lower speed limits, making pedestrian traffic much more possible in neighborhood areas and town centers.  But curved roads are not the only positive aspects of Oxford’s city planning.

In Kunstler’s text, he discusses the city of Savannah and the pleasantries of the plan of squares in the city’s central business district. If one can picture that, then imagine only one square in the center of a city, and one can imagine Oxford’s traditional town square. Small Southern towns are no strangers to the “town square,” at one time they would have been a necessary part of a resident’s day: work at the courthouse, mail letters and the old post office, shop at local department stores, and meet and greet your fellow citizens. At one time it was a very common scenario, and in Oxford it’s still a common sight. The Square at Oxford is the quintessential place Kunstler describes as ideal. Because the roads are forced to curve around the central knoll where the courthouse rests, the cars that drive around must drive very slowly. In fact, to see a car driving around the square is an ostentatious site. They simply don’t fit. Most locals (myself included) park their cars a few blocks north or south of the square and then walk to the square. There people go to readings at Square Books, eat at the plethora of local restaurants, and shop at Neilson’s Department Store (the self-proclaimed, “first department store in the U.S.) If you have ever read a William Faulkner novel, then you are familiar with the Oxford town square. Faulkner’s fictional town of Yoknapatawpha is hardly fictional at all. It is a thinly veiled version of Oxford (in fact, it is purely Oxford in everything but name. As the story goes, Faulkner only used a pseudonym for fear that he would upset some of the citizens in his portrayals.)

But this scene poses a question: If so many small towns have a “downtown” district, why does Oxford’s stand out? And, more importantly, how has it managed to stay intact? I went to the ProQuest Database via NYU’s Research Library and typed in “Oxford, Mississippi” just to see what types of articles I might retrieve. I was surprised at the amount of scholarly articles in-between the many newspaper references. Apparently, Oxford is consistently ranked one of the top 25 best small towns by various studies, which has led to ample writings on the place. One scholarly article in a University of North Carolina academic journal entitled Southern Cultures attempted to answer my questions, and did so successfully. If a place like Oxford were built today—laid out the same, had a college, the same people, and identical building facades—it would fail to have the same sense of place as Oxford, Mississippi. The article points to the necessity of history to build community. In some ways, it reminds me of J.B. Jackson’s argument for Istanbul. Jackson’s description of the “dirt” is in some ways an argument for history.

It takes years of use and interaction to build up that amount of “dirt.” And the same is true of argument, according to the Southern Cultures article. It took years of use and interaction to build up the sense of community in Oxford. The article points to the importance of the University in building this sense of community, and points out that of the consistently ranked “best small towns” in America, 45% of them are college towns. It is very common in a town with a population of 35,000 or less that has a college to center itself around that college as a center for culture and town identity. As I mentioned previously, there are students at Ole Miss who are eighth, ninth, even tenth generation students. Entire local families are centered around a single place, and have interacted with other families for generations past which enable a very strong sense of community. Most Oxfordians are connected to the University in some way—students, teachers, staff, patrons of the arts, football fans, etc.—and all are in some way interwoven with each other. Over the past two hundred years of the University’s history this has undoubtedly built a strong town community.

It is this same sense of community that allows local business to thrive. Because of the intactness of Oxford’s community, there are actually more local shops and restaurants than there are chains. In fact, five years ago a Chili’s restaurant chain opened on the opposite side of the town (away from the square) along Interstate 55. After four months the Chili’s closed because of slow business. The history of the town is in its shops: Square Bookstore (Oxford does not have a chain bookstore), the “first” department store founded by the Neilman family (who still live in Oxford and operate the store), Uptown Coffee where students study (Oxford still does not have a Starbucks or any other coffee chain.) Now that I have moved away from Oxford, I can look at it more objectively, realizing just how ideal of a place it actually is. I never bothered to think about it while I was there, but after reading Kunstler’s book, and really thinking about why some places “succeed” and other’s fail, I’ve come to see Oxford in a new light. It continues to exist as a haven among the post-modern world of highway driving, suburban culture, and homogenization of culture within our American sense of identity and place. Courthouse Square Ole Miss Campus More Ole Miss Campus Faulkner's Roof Rowan Oak (William Faulkner's Estate) Sardis Lake

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