I moved from a busy suburb to a country house for a few years because my parents dream was to live quietly for the rest of their lives. We all ended up moving away after a few years back to a suburban neighborhood because they figured out it wasn’t for them. There are a few things to get use to:
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it is extremely quiet, almost no noise unless coyotes are nearby then all you hear is howling all night at random times during the year
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mowing the lawn takes all day
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there’s no one to talk to, unless you bike several miles away to hang out with another kid, and you may not like them but tolerate them because you have nothing else to do.
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snow turns into huge drifts, and the forts you can make are amazing
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people in small towns have nothing better to do than to gossip and talk trash, so when you are new they all judge you for the first year then decide if they’re going to treat you like shit.
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ignorant white kids saying really dumb things about minorities, which is information they got from their parents. They got really upset when I told them they were wrong and told them stories about friends I use to have before moving. They get really offended and hurt when someone uses facts and experience while having a discussion, especially when you disprove something they say.
There’s a bunch of cool stuff about living in the middle of nowhere, but the worst part of it is the people who live there.
Don’t let the dog out after the septic sprinklers just ran.
Small Town Texas here
- Shitty Internet
- Friday Night Lights Ghost Towns
- The smell of the rain
- Country Road parties
- Driving for an hour and not seeing another car
- Small Town Festivals
- Knowing everyone business and everyone knowing yours
- Snakes are your friend
- Dead Coyotes hanging from fence posts
- The sky at night is inspirational
Driving and transportation. I grew up “out in the country” and currently live “in town”, and I’ve spent time in major cities. When I first did traveling to a large cities, I would rent a car because I didn’t want to get stuck somewhere. But soon learned that the car was more of a hinderance, when I could just simply walk to half a dozen restaurants or get a ride if it was further out. In a city, driving is a privilege and oftentimes a nuisance. In the country, driving is a requirement, something you need to sustain life. In a small town, you might be able to get by with walking/biking, but you’ll spend a lot of time doing it.
If you live in town, you might be able to get pizza delivery. It’ll probably be a Pizza Hut or Pappa Johns. If your town can sustain it, maybe both. If you want pizza from the third pizza place, you can call it in and go pick it up in your car. Same with Chinese.
The town might have a local hospital only 15 minutes away, but the rise of larger regional hospital systems may have shut down most of the services, so if you want to give birth to a baby in a hospital, that’ll be the larger hospital 30-45 minutes away.
If you’re having elective surgery during the pandemic, you need to drive 45 minutes one day for your consult, then drive up a different day for your covid-19 test, then 3 days after that for your surgery.
On the plus side, if you want to have a campfire in your yard, just scrape out a bit of a hole or put some rocks in a circle and build a fire. If you want to avoid a city-wide riot, the nearest one is 2 hours away, so you’ll be fine.
Quiet. Solitude. Slow pace. Peace of mind. Genuine smiles. Good neighbors.
There is an episode of Andy Griffith, where a big-city business type has his car break down in Mayberry. He’s in a mad rush to get to his big meeting in Raleigh. Gomer can’t fix the car, and his boss doesn’t work on the weekends so the the business man can only wait. Which really isn’t in his plans. He finally slows down and ends up enjoying his time in the bucolic setting of Mayberry, sitting on the porch with Aunt Bee and Andy and Barney singing old folk songs, napping and eating ice cream-even after Gomer has fixed the car. He slowed down and reset.
Being in a rural place means you take your time, there’s no mad rush. You sit and listen to the crickets and the creek bubbling by you. You can hear your neighbor’s kids laughing while they’re playing in the back yard. Where I’m at, we can hear the bear dogs howl when they find their prey. It’s a place full of manicured yards where just about everyone sits out on their porch of an evening and they wave at their neighbors as they drive by. Main Street is still full of Mom & Pop shops (which are closed right now, thank you Covid-19) and we have Christmas parades and music festivals and a summer carnival and our whole town comes together and honks their horns when the high school sports teams come back the conquering heroes.
I spent nearly 15 years of my life around the DC Beltway and I came here to this little town (and few other little towns like it before I settled here) and I wouldn’t go back to that grind for any amount of money. The peace of mind and the connection to my community are too precious to me. Yeah, I sacrifice some income to live where I do, but you know what? It’s worth it to me. I still live a comfortable life and I don’t have to worry about all the things that are going on outside my door when I lay down at night. This place is home. It’s roots. It’s where I look forward to returning when I’m gone on vacation or a work trip.