Immigrants from all over came to Noel for jobs and a better life. But some locals aren’t ready to embrace them.
NOEL, Mo. -- The Elk River makes the turn under the overhanging cliffs at the edge of this Ozarks town to flow just below the quaint business district.
On a recent afternoon, customers shopped for fresh eggs and calf feed in Landon’s Feed & Seed. A man touched his brim to two women coming out of the cafe. Senior citizens chatted in front of the post office.
Then a young man’s shout filled the street: “F… you, n…..r!”
He jumped in a pickup where a friend waited and sped away. Inside an old storefront, now an Islamic mosque, those preparing to pray carried on.
It happens here, the n-word. Other slurs for other people, too. From the heart they come — loud, with spit.
And the river keeps rolling. Doing what it’s done for decades — bring visitors to pretty little Noel, nicknamed the Christmas City.
But now, amid all this Ozark Mountain beauty and down-home charm, people fight for the soul of a town.
“Some people don’t hide the fact they don’t like what’s going on here,” said Mayor James Carroll, who tries to keep things calm.
There’s no denying a seething undertone of discomfort bred by a mixing of cultures. The town gets too quiet, with too many stares. Some people are scared.
In recent years, hundreds of immigrants have come to Noel to work in a Tyson Foods chicken plant. The town counts among its 2,000 people several hundred each of whites, Hispanics and Africans. Throw in the Pacific Islanders and Asians, and Noel is its own little melting pot with a main drag no longer than a couple of football fields.
“You can sit right here and watch the world go by,” fourth-grade teacher Susan Brisco said from a bench under the feed store’s awning.
People walked past in Muslim hijabs, straw hats favored by Hispanics, kufis, Asian paddy hats and, yes, John Deere caps.
An African store sits next to the train tracks. The mosque, in what used to be a hardware store, faces a Mexican restaurant. And what kind of small town would it be without something like a Lonnie’s 66 service station?
Many of the town’s old guard seem welcoming toward the newcomers. They know the influx has angered some of their neighbors and burdened the school district, but they know, too, the town wouldn’t amount to much without them. They also realize the horror that brought some of them here. Civil war, genocide, famine ...
From the far side of the world, new arrivals have found a measure of peace in a tiny Ozarks town.
“There is hope here in life,” Abdul Rahaman Nur, a Somali, said in the rear of the African store where many of the Somali men take evening meals. “You can build a future, live without fear. That is all we want.”
But some locals think sharing their town takes something from themselves. Foreign words scrape the chalkboard. Ethnic garb clashes with their neighborhoods, and their lives.
“I never thought I’d see the day when a man would walk down Main Street wearing a dress,” a coffee drinker said in Kathy’s Kountry Kitchen in reference to African tribal wear.
Two other people told The Star they wouldn’t care a lick if the Tyson plant and its 1,500 jobs burned to the ground. Some here think more of those jobs should have gone to locals.
Last October, about 130 mostly Somali workers walked out of the plant during a dispute with officials over prayer time. As they gathered on Main Street, fear grew that the incident could turn violent. Several armed local men were stopped by law enforcement, according to Carroll, the mayor.
A dozen Highway Patrol troopers and sheriff’s officials arrived in force.
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