I grew up in a small town, with a potato farm across the street from us. But I quickly learned to prefer living in a small city/suburb. Far more options, and lower cost of living.
I don’t think this is true at all. Time and money permitting, urbanites are all over weekend and day trips to campgrounds, hiking trails, oceans and lakes, pick-your-own farms, quaint bed and breakfasts, outdoor sports venues and the like. Among my friends, summer weekends are filled with camping, tubing, berry picking, crabbing, and other outdoor pursuits.
Another country dweller here. I like it for the same reason others have stated. Most of my city-and-suburb-dwelling brethren understand my choice just fine, even if they didn’t make the same choice.
I lived in a suburb for 15 years. 5 years ago we bought 12 acres about 45 minutes south of Downtown Kansas City and it was the best decision I ever made (except when its time to mow :eek:).
We built the home of our dreams, have a large pond with dock. My chocolate lab likes to dive in and catch fish and I am not in the process of building a 40x60 dream garage with car lift and office for my car addiction.
I now buy classic cars and have stored as many as 11, to fix, restore, resale, look at 
and none of this would be possible in the city.
Yes the 40 minute commute (each way) blows.
Yes my 10mb internet is considered “great” by country standards but laughed at by my nerd friends.
Yes I bought a gun (reluctantly) because I don’t trust response times for police out here and it is secluded.
But all you have to do is walk out on my deck on a clear night and see the sky… then you know why 
I’ve picked out the spot for our retirement home on the ranch. It’s high on the property but way back at the edge of a canyon. The views are 360 degrees and pretty awesome and there will be lots of wildlife moving through all the time. What I like best though, you can’t see evidence of another human in any direction for probably 5 miles, a whole lot more in others. At best there will be the plane contrail 30,000 feet above and no unexpected visitors because it’s so remote. We’ll entertain occasionally and there’s the TV, radio and phone if we need human comfort. Town’s about 15 miles away, a 45 minute drive. It’s quiet and peaceful, nature is everywhere and you don’t have to deal with a lot of foolishness. That I like.
On aspect of the City vs Country life that bothers me is:
Cities encroach on Country. You never hear of a City being overrun by country living. It CAN happen, and HAS happened to a very limited extent, but for the most part cities are taking over suburbs which are taking over country.
If it’s dark and rainy we let them pee in a jar and throw it out the window.
This is the kind of ignorant bullshit that sets my teeth on edge. This board cheerfully embraces pederasts, Holocaust Deniers many other types of slimeballs but if one states they like rural areas, you are automatically condemned as the type of folks in “Deliverance”. There’s no way that a similar level of prejudice and ignorance would be tolerated about gays, Jews, black folks and so on. But country folk? Yeah, they’re all inbred sodomites.
Fuck that.
I do agree that it is just another prejudice. How about that guy living in the city they caught recently that held the girl against her will for years? Yeah! What about that, City folk?
I don’t think it is a stretch to say that there is an even distribution of wierdos/jerks/etc/etc in the City, Suburbs, and Country.
Not all of us are gap-tooth ignorant racist hicks. Shit, some of us don’t even have teeth left to have gaps! (Ah-hyuck)
But honestly, it is no less offensive to say this kind of stuff about country folk than it is to say that city folk would run you and your family over if it saved them 2 seconds on their way to work while sipping down a Mocha Latte.
What do you mean by “You don’t need us…but we need you.”?
I don’t understand wanting to live in a city. I’ve been to NYC once, and I will never go back. I’ve been to Chicago countless times, but I can only take it in small doses. I can’t handle it. It’s like being in a shopping mall near Christmas time, you’re surrounded by an army of dipshits.
My dream is to buy ten or fifteen acres somewhere, and plop a house in the middle of it. I don’t want to see my neighbors, because I don’t want to deal with it if I can’t stand them. I want to be left alone. It’s the safest way.
Cities need country folk to survive. The food must come from somewhere, but country folk don’t need the city.
Cities also require a population basis to survive - jobs on jobs - the country doesn’t. You can be completely self sufficient, if you’d like. You don’t have to be - but you can.
If you tried to be self sufficient in the City you’d die by day 3 of thirst.
That’s a ridiculous attitude. If you get mauled by a bear maybe you’ll think about this conversation as you’re life-flighted to a city.
I didn’t say there weren’t drawbacks to living in the country, but you could (and should) have knowledge of what to do around a bear and aren’t likely to get mauled. That topic could go back and forth all day.
Ever heard the lyrics, “How you gonna keep em’ down on the farm now that they’ve seen Paree?”
It’s an excellent question, and the general answer is, “You’re not”, and there are good reasons for it.
Have you actually been to the country, at least anytime in the last 50 years? We have all kinds of modern conveniences like big grocery stores that are open 24 hours and hospitals and even casinos. If the grocery store goes away we can raise our own food; some of us do that already, and some of us grow the very food you buy in your city supermarket. Sure, we drive further to get places, but we’re smart enough (and ecologically aware enough) to combine errands to save fuel. We also spend considerably less time wasting irreplaceable fossil fuels while at a dead standstill than city drivers do.
There aren’t a lot of areas in the country any more that aren’t within driving range of a decent-sized town, so we have access to the same services and even some cultural opportunities, especially if there is a college town nearby. The only businesses that close early or on Sundays are the same type that keep limited hours in cities.
You might want to visit someone in the country sometime so you can dislike it for reasons based on reality, not old episodes of Petticoat Junction. Things have gotten real modern since they brought 'lectricity in.
This whole post had me rolling! It’s so true!
Yeah, my family has a farm in Appalachia. I go there a lot. If you want groceries, it’s a 45 minute round trip. If you want groceries at 9pm, you planned poorly and can eat in the morning, unless it’s Saturday night.
If you’re suggesting that your neck of the country has ample jobs, services, and shopping that don’t require spending a minimum of 30 minutes in the car per trip to access those things, then I’d suggest that you’re No True Countryman.
Sure. What if your kids gets leukemia. I guess you have knowledge about what to do around cancer.
Without cities your quality of life would degrade by several hundred years, that’s all I’m saying. You can grow your own food (although in my experience most people who live in BFE don’t farm, they commute to a non-farming job) but you can’t grow your own fuel injection system.
I don’t hear a lot of people say they can’t understand why other people live in the country. I hear people say that about the burbs, but not the country.
As has been mentioned, lots of people from the city go to the country for leisure. This weekend I’m going fly fishing if it will ever stop raining.