What (if anything) is good about rural America?

In My Humble Opinion
61

I think a lot of this has to do with who the person is, and what specific rural area is being considered. Both individual people and rural areas vary a great deal. Rural places aren’t a monolith that all have nothing but Trump supporters who make nothing interesting and eat nothing but boxed instant mashed potatoes. And some people are only happy with crowds around them, while others may run screaming mad if they can’t get away from the crowds.

I’d a whole lot rather smell cow shit than car exhaust. I’d rather hear Coyote singing, or even the zon guns keeping birds off the vineyards in season, than police sirens. I find trees and farms interesting to look at and infinitely variable; but I find most modern or semi-modern buildings either boring or actively ugly. Old buildings I often think are neat to look at – but not neater than the hawk circling the field I’m mowing, or wow will you look at that maple tree in October – or in the first week of May or in mid-July, for that matter.

I don’t have to smell what the neighbors are cooking. I don’t have to listen to the neighbors’ choice of music. It’s no skin off my nose how often they mow their lawn, and they don’t care how often I do or don’t mow mine.

I’ve got my own good well water, no need for chlorine (yes it’s been tested.) I’ve got a hand pump on the old well and a wood stove in the center of the house and plenty of storage room; if the power’s out I can do just fine. I can have as many cats as I can keep fed and patted, up to three dogs without a kennel license and more than I’d ever want with one, horses and/or goats and/or chickens and/or llamas or pretty much any livestock I feel like having. I can walk out the door on my own at two in the morning and not think anything of it. The neighbors don’t bug me, but if I yelled for help they’d be right here.

When I go into town, people know who I am. I’m partly faceblind and terrible at names, so I often don’t know who they are – but I can explain that and most are all right with it.

There’s more stuff going on around here (in a halfway normal year, and in a different fashion even now) that I’d be interested in doing than I could possibly get the time for. If I were primarily interested in Broadway shows, that wouldn’t be true; but it’s true for me. We get some pretty good shows within a reasonable distance, though; and lots of excellent music.

We’ve got artists in wood and clay and metal. We’ve got family owned restaurants doing their own cooking, some of them using local ingredients, and a lot of them with local wines. We’ve got active progressive and Democratic groups – in the minority, but most certainly not afraid to let the neighbors know we’re here. We’ve got, not all that far off, a couple of very nice rehabbed theaters worth going to just to look at the building. You can buy generic standard furniture, or you can get it custom made and discuss the design with the people making it. You can buy your food at the grocery shipped in from wherever just like in the city, or you can buy it from the farm grown pretty near to order. Or you can grow your own. Nobody’s going to complain if you plant veggies instead of lawn, and pretty near everybody’s got room to do so.

I could go on, but I do still want to get some beans in the freezer tonight –

62

Not my hometown. They have no Mickey-Ds, or W**-***t or any other major chain other than a Safeway. The town of less than 2K (the county seat) has a smaller major suburb which has even fewer chains. The nearest place you can find one of the above mentioned places or anything similar is 64 miles down a winding road that may be open all winter long.

But they do ok up there. They have what they need. And when we lived there, my mom was very happy to see Bishop Pike visit town (he was quite well known at the time).

63

I have a local cinema like that (sans cigars, of course). Big armchairs and couches, cocktails and proper food on offer, and a mix of mainstream and obscure films on offer. It’s quite nice. But I live in a metropolis.

64

Nothing because they’re not like me. Is that the answer you’re begging for?

65

No. Read the thread.

66

I can’t be arsed to. I was responding to the OP directly. Sorry if there was a miscommunication.

67

Not in my case. No chain restaurants at all. Well, I think there is a Subway sandwich shop. I’ll admit that it’s a little different situation being a ski resort community, but we have some very good restaurants. A real fun playhouse and movie theater. That town is 15 miles away. Population 5000. The bad news is that during the height of ski season, it gets quite crowded.

Now the little town 4 miles away (400 people) has one locally owned bar that has some real good food too. Admittedly, one bar doesn’t give one much variety.

Just adding this data point because everyone seems to think all small towns are the same. They aren’t.

68

Not surprisingly, I disagree that I missed your point, it wasn’t terribly complex.

My point is that both country and urban people both make sacrifices to live in places that are about something rather than in generic suburbs. Part of the sacrifice people in the country make is that they don’t have access to the same variety of services as people in the city, but they have other benefits that they have decided are more important. Similarly, people in the city make certain sacrifices to live somewhere that they find interesting. Both places require a little more effort from their inhabitants.

69

Rural America is a great place to visit when you want to get away from the activity of modern civilization.

I grew up in a relatively rural area, and though I haven’t moved, it’s much more suburban now. Where I sit now was a field less than two decades ago.

We still have a number of people that moved out here when it was nothing but farms. They complain a bit of the traffic and the noise, but not so much about the hospitals and the convivence of having pretty much every shopping and eatery place available to them.

When I would visit my grandparents, in very rural Ohio, it was interesting. Very flat, with few buildings to break up the horizon. When I went up there for my grandmother’s funeral earlier this year I was reminded how different it is to be able to see that far.

It was quieter, which was nice, but, when I would visit for a week or so as a kid, we’d usually go to the grocery store at some point. It was a 45 minute drive, and was a quarter the size of the grocery store back home. I remember having a bit of an obsession with a particular brand of cheese, and they didn’t carry it, which was a bit disappointing. I made a point of bringing some with me when I visited.

They probably are a bit more sedate and slow paced, but, like I said, when it takes 45 minutes to get to the grocery store, everything else seems to be less immediate as well. When I could get to the store in 5 minutes, you had less need to be careful about planning your trips.

I think that people in rural areas are relatively friendly, but so are urbanites. Both of them will tend to be very friendly to those they know, and somewhat suspicious of outsiders, but in the urban areas where everyone doesn’t know everyone else, that’s not as easy for people to do.

I do know that when I was visiting, there were a couple of plots of land that I was warned to avoid, as it would not be unlikely for someone to take a shot at trespassers.

Handyman skills? Not really. I know lots of urban and suburban people that can work on cars and build a shed. Many that enjoy camping and hunting. I’d say about the same in rural areas.

I don’t think that the people are that different. They have their problems, just as urban people do, but they all do the best they can with what they have.

And it’s a good change of pace to mix it up. I do like being out where you don’t hear cars all day, where you can go most of your day without encountering anyone else.

70

Mod Hat on: Not a warning. Please don’t threadshit. Even a small browsing of the thread will show and actual exchange of ideas happening in this thread. Be arsed next time.

Remember, this is just a note, nothing officially recorded.

71

What’s your definition of a ‘small town’? You won’t find an Applebee’s or Denny’s in a town smaller than 15,000, but virtually every small town has at least one family-owned diner or restaurant.

My Kansas hometown of 20,000 (bigger than a dot-on-a-map, I think), does have an Applebee’s, Wendy’s, Mickey D’s, 2 Subways, and a Panda Express, but it also has 3 Mexican restaurants, 2 burger joints, 2 delis, 2 oriental food places, and an Italian restaurant that are all family owned.

Oh, and we also have a used bookstore that has far more nonfiction books and reference materials than cheap romance paperbacks. And, gosh, about 20 years ago we got high-speed internet.

72

Aldis and shop on line.

73

When we moved back to Wisconsin, chose to live in a small village. Didn’t want to go back to Madison., it’s gotten so big and is having increase in crimes. We live now, 30 plus minutes away , in our little village has its own brewery, five taverns that serve pretty good food. A couple pizza places and restaurants. Travel 15 minutes to a larger town with plenty of restaurants and stores. Perfect for the old geezers we are.

74

I just came back from picking apples in upstate New York. I would prefer to describe the farmland here as not very exciting, but in a good way.

75

I’m not gonna tell. Don’t wanna spoil my Jimmy!

76

I’ve lived in a relatively small, rural town for the last 20 years here in Connecticut. It’s very different from my birthplace of Houston, Texas.

A comparably-sized small, rural town in Texas would likely be >2 hours from a decent-sized city, because everything is bigger and more spread out in Texas. In my experience, this means that the political persuasion in a typical rural town like this is pretty monolithically conservative. This is contrasted with the cities, which lean progressive and typically vote Democratic.

Here in Connecticut, even though I live in a fairly rural area, I’m less than 30 minutes from four cities, including the capital city of Hartford. This means that the population of my town is a mix of mostly-conservative folks who have lived here for generations, and newer arrivals who typically commute to work in one of the cities or surrounding suburbs. The latter folks tend to be somewhat more progressive-leaning. So basically as far as politics are concerned, I live in a fairly purple town.

I wouldn’t want to live in a much more rural area, as it would greatly diminish my job prospects, nor would I want to live in a city here in Connecticut. The cities are too crowded and noisy for my liking. It is nice to have them at arm’s reach like we do, though.

One downside is that our restaurant and takeout options here in town are pretty limited. We do have very fast broadband internet speeds, though.

(Sorry if this post is a little disjointed. I didn’t get much sleep last night.)

77

I would disagree with that. The rural towns along the NJ/PA border seem to have their fair share of drug-related crime and just general sketchiness.

Yes. It’s not New York City obviously.

I would say this is a wash. Obviously living in a major city, there will be a larger percentage of people you don’t know. And in the Northeast, the convention is to generally not bother people you don’t know.

I would say the advantage of large cities though is that you can find a group with similar interests. In more rural and suburban areas, you tends to be less diversity. You either fit in or you don’t

They like to think so, but my in-laws for example don’t know how to fix shit. Most rural people aren’t living frontier style. They call handymen, plumbers, electricians, etc just like everyone else.

78

I’m just a part-time rural guy these days so I can’t say what it’s like to live out in the sticks all the time. I agree that there are fewer ‘interesting’ places or lack of variety but there are local/family owned places that are pretty excellent (or were). Our place is a couple hours outside of NYC and there are pizza places in surrounding towns that I enjoy more than most of the neighborhood ones in the city. The chain places are usually on a strip off the interstate. Maybe there’s a McDonald’s or Dunkin Donuts further in that have survived the financial disasters of the last 12 years but there are rotting husks of other chain restaurants that didn’t make it.

We have a little weekend house in a hollow and unfortunately after 18 years it was broken into and a bunch of my music stuff was stolen. The thieves were pretty picky. We have 4 acres and there are 3 other houses within a few hundred yards. The woman renting the mobile home across the street had an abusive druggie boyfriend so I suppose it was a matter of time. That place has had many tenants over the years and the last ones I knew were a family. Of course in typical druggie knucklehead fashion the boyfriend hid much of the loot in the women’s trunk so it didn’t take long to solve the crime.

One thing I learned early on while indulging my living alone in nature fantasies is that while I enjoy the peace and the woods and mountains and the sounds of the outdoors, after a while I really need the stimulation of being around other people. And I’m quite introverted and socially awkward. I don’t even need to talk to people. I just need to be around them.

I don’t mingle with the locals much except for the annual carnival and whatever business transactions I need to make. The deputy I dealt with for the break-in was basically nice but couldn’t keep from slipping into the occasional conspiracy theory during our couple of hours together.

Since I don’t drive very often, piling my now teenage daughters into the car and driving 30 minutes to the store and maybe the ice cream place is actually kind of a special time I look forward to.

79

I’d say an alternative to this thread is “What (if anything) is good about Suburban America?”

I grew up in the Northwest 'burbs of Chicago (Arlington Heights, Mount Prospect,Palatine, Rolling Meadows, Shaumburg , etc.), and I’ll state there was little good there. An endless landscape of sprawl, poor traffic and urban planning, little or no culture with a bonanza 7-11’s, Marie Callender’s, gas stations, malls – endless corporatization of the human existance. And shitty weather to boot. 100’s of square miles of this endless mediocrity surrounding the core of a large city, probably like many outer layers of urban areas: bedroom community hell.

80

Suburbia is what you get when you privatize planning with an eye towards maximizing profitability for the planners.