Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Growth
My wife and I lived in the Chicago area for a few years, first going to school and then working. First we lived in an apartment in the inner city (Obama territory, to be exact). We tolerated it all right, but it quickly became clear that dense urban living was not our cup of tea. When the opportunity arose, we bought a small house in a near working-class suburb. We couldn’t afford much, but it was a decent house in a decent neighborhood, and it sure beat paying rent.
Within a couple years, an opportunity arose to move back home. I got obscenely lucky in getting a job with one of the few employers in my field in the area, so we jumped at the chance. By this time, we were firmly set on rural living. The company that I would be working for is about a twenty-minute drive outside the city itself, already in a fairly rural area. My commute in Chicago had been one hour, so I set my commuting tolerance in our new location at half that. We drew a thirty mile circle around my new place of employment, and looked to see where the land was the cheapest while still being suitable for our intended farming operation. We ended up a couple miles outside a town of three hundred people, ten miles away from the nearest grocery store, and thirty minutes on the freeway away from the nearest big box store. It’s rural, all but the main roads in my area are dirt, but close enough to town to be convenient.
That has been the situation for about six years. But times, they are a-changin’.
My first clue was a couple months ago when on the way home, I began to notice something new. Luxury cars, driven by 50-something grey-haired men in suits, going about 80 miles on hour on the country roads, illegally passing anyone who happened to be in their way.
The invasion has begun.
We call them house farms - big fields that used to grow crops, that now contain a bunch of big, gaudy, modern houses with no trees, Lexuses and BMWs in the garage, and 3 acres to mow. I don’t mind new people so much. It’s the attitude they bring with them. The self-important arrogance of busy city life.
Growth is inevitable, and to fight against it is foolish. We did our analysis to determine where to live - it is only reasonable to assume that others will do likewise sooner or later. The same rural atmosphere with access to suburban convenience can’t stay a secret forever. But, as it is discovered, it is virtually guaranteed to disappear. We’ve known all along that eventually we’d have to move farther away, and doing so is already built-in to our long-term plan.
Though growth is inevitable, it is still somewhat sad to see the local atmosphere change. It is like innocence lost, never to be regained. I hadn’t realized how much I had taken it for granted.
Comments
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Three or four rural area I have lived in have gone that route- and as you say, it is not just the houses and shopping centers, it is the cultural changes that really transform a place-going from a place you can walk down the road with a .22 rifle and the neighbors stop and chat, to a place they call the swat team on you.
Most sickening of all, is the tendency to cover up good bottom land with tract housing and giant box stores- someday we will wish that topsoil was still there.The retirement of the boomers is going to exacerbate the situation, as the tie to a city for jobs is no longer necessary -so very remote rural areas are subject to the same growth. And unfortunately, the newcomers have a lot of money and time and numbers, thus allowing control of the political process. Bitter complaints are heard from rural dwellers who are reduced to serving coffee drinks or pumping gas, because the new powers will not allow any industrial development at all , in order to preserve their newfound “country “ living.
raven | 5/21/2008 11:08 AM CDT -
for a short while yet, I am in what was a rurual area ... some 7 miles away from work and 6 miles away from the city limits. The rural atmosphere was quickly dying even as we moved here 10 years ago ... the roads are (now) all paved, and almost all of the road frontage has been sold off for house lots. I used to pass about 4 houses during the last 2+ miles home ... now there are DOZENS.
What I was used to in Alberta was privacy ... my closest neighbor was 3 miles away, and I have hundreds of square miles of “crown land” at by back to suplement my 160 acres.
What we’re looking for now as retirement property is mostly privacy. Enough cleared land so my wife can keep her hayburning pets, and enough uncleared, rough land under our fence to keep people at a distance. The problem will be finding that AND being close enough to medical and other needs based on our advancing age ... LOL.I know how you feel about the inevitable encrouchment of the city slickers. It’s funny how they don’t seem to realize that they are actually screwing up what they think they want ... country gentry life.
pete in Midland | 5/22/2008 10:25 AM CDT
