I know it's hard to believe this, but the buzz is that our next-door neighbor, DeSoto County, is "the next big thing."

DeSoto County? Little DeSoto County? Impoverished DeSoto County?
One and the same.

Real estate investors and trendspotters are predicting that this area is set for explosive growth, with new subdivision developments about to pop up in every direction from Arcadia. All the indications are in place. Huge chunks of land have been bought, and the coastal counties are filling up and/or becoming too expensive for many folks.

But old-timers here find this all too funny. Arcadia? Who would have thought?

It wasn't all that long ago that this place had a CB radio nickname that described it well. Tune your CB to Channel 19 and you'd hear, "Hey, good buddies, this here's the Road Runner truckin' south from Cigar City, dropping off a load in Cowtown."

Cigar City was Tampa, of course, But Cowtown? That's what CB'ers called Arcadia.

And, with massive development still a few years away, the name remains fitting in many ways.
At its heart, this is a cow and citrus town.

I've known Arcadia for a long time. Once dated a girl who worked behind the soda fountain at Arcadia Drug Store. And I've worked here daily since Hurricane Charley blasted through DeSoto County on Aug. 13, 2004, and touched just about every life. I like it just the way it is. Many of the 33,000 residents here do, too.

There's no bumper-to-bumper traffic. No rush hour. Crime is low and serious crime is so rare it's always front page news. You want big news? A pit bull attack is big news. And the crime of the century here was some honor students at the high school vandalizing school buses as a senior graduation prank.

In many ways this is still Mayberry.

Lunch gossip has a Lake Woebegone quality about it.

"Someone tried to get my water pump again."
"Nooo."
"Pried my gate. Third time this year."
"You call Vernon?"
"Nah. I didn't file a complaint, just mentioned it to him at Rotary."

And so it goes.

Go to a Web site devoted to DeSoto gossip, however, and the sleepy community reads more like Peyton Place. I can't even repeat the allegations about what young clerks do on their lunch hour. Mercy.

But all looks tranquil on the surface. Kids dive from an abandoned bridge into the Peace River, where fossil hunters comb the banks for million-year-old bones. Tractor-pulled sprayers work the orange groves lining most major roads. Cows riding in long trailers moo loudly on the way to the slaughter house.

I won't go there. I just ... can't.

DeSoto just got a Wal-Mart distribution center, you know. It was a huge deal. Word around town was that Wal-Mart was going to pay $12 an hour for manual laborers. Actually, it was $12.50!
That's like striking gold in a county like DeSoto.

It's also a measure of how poor DeSoto County is. A third of its residents are Hispanic, many of them field workers, some here only seasonally for the orange harvest. The county had the recent distinction of achieving the second-highest teen pregnancy rate in Florida. There's nothing to do here, the teens say. There's one rundown movie theater with two screens, but no bowling alley, no videogame arcade, no mall. Nothing.

The public swimming pool closed back when integration became a fact of American life. Some say the pool's closing was a consequence. But today's Arcadia has a City Council with two elected black members. It has a city marshal —called a police chief in other places—who is black. That's more than simply progress in Arcadia; it's a social revolution.

If I had to tell you what Arcadia is like in a single sentence, I'd say, "Arcadia is what Florida small towns were like 50 years ago."

Sarasota, Venice, Fort Myers, Naples, Lakeland, Orlando. They grew up. Blew up. Then there's Arcadia. Not much has changed here in the last 50 years.

The changes that did come were made east of the downtown, along State Road 70, a coast-to-coast, east-west route that brings trucks through Arcadia. Car dealers moved out to S.R. 70, then fast-food chains and shopping center tenants that come and go. Not long ago, a Sonic and a Chili's opened east of town. Still, when Arcadia wants to party or shop, it drives to Charlotte County.

This is an old place, you understand. Arcadia incorporated in 1896 and was named after the daughter of a prominent citizen. It's a lyrical name, certainly prettier than Bertha or Martha or Mildred. At the time of its birth, Arcadia was a timber, cattle and citrus town. A downtown was growing nicely, and wood was so plentiful it was the construction material of choice.