If You Build It, They Will Come...

My good buddy, who moved from my neighborhood last year was kind enough to invite us out to his "new" place for a cookout...well, no need to twist MY arm....I'm THERE!

His place is out by the DeKalb County line (within a hundred yards in fact), which is far ENOUGH from Fort Wayne to suit MY taste (these days), and smack dab in the middle of some nice farms and Amish folks. As I like to say...it's acres and acres of...acres and acres.

Nestled on almost FIVE (count 'em 5) acres of land, complete with a pond stocked with blue gill, sunfish, bass, and catfish, it's a nice place for a couple with no kids (grown up and moved out long ago) and their 2 horses. He's got a two-stall barn, as well as a shed for his lawn TRACTOR (and even with the tractor, it still takes a couple of hours to mow), and another shed for lawn tools and a workshop.

The nearest neighbor is "within shooting distance", but no body's up against your fence...sweet, huh? The house is a nice ranch style w/ 2 car garage and a FULL basement (think bowling alley size), and even on the HOTTEST days, is always 20 degrees cooler down there with NO air conditioning. Again....nice, right?
Well, there IS that pig farm across the road...and when he wind blows "just right", you just HAVE to shut the house up, but the good thing is that all the PIGS THERE have FOUR LEGS...not TWO. And it's OK to send the four-legged variety to SLAUGHTER...can't say the same for those two-legged ones in my neighborhood.

So anyway, we trek up there and while the BUFFALO BRATS (you heard me right...damn tasty too) were sizzling, we took a stroll around the "Ponderosa". They've been doing some nice landscaping, as well as planting some SERIOUS vegetables. Their grass is about AS BROWN as ours down here, but with little rain, what can you expect? Farmer Ric (as I call him now) has everything from green beans to cabbage to HOT peppers to carrots...and then some. And it's nice to see beds of flowers that people don't feel the need to trample across because you live there. I'm still trying to get grass to grow on my front lawn, thanks to kids running (wild) all over the place.

But the ONE, BEST thing I noticed was the QUIET. Even with a 20 mph breeze (it IS breezy there...almost all the time), you can hear a pin drop...OUTSIDE! Now that's a form of "culture shock" I can live with. I asked how many "boomcars" they heard since moving there last year....the answer was a resounding ZE-RO!
Cripes, I'd settle for less than TEN a damn DAY.
NO people dealing drugs in front of their place, NO boomcars, NO people taking a leak alongside the neighbor's house, NO kids running around UNsupervised, NO litter, and the ONLY noise would be is when YOU run your mower, the dog barks, or you peel out of the driveway. And sound CARRIES a lot farther out there...nothing to stop it.
Hell, even the CAT is "laid back"!
Amazing what DOESN'T occur when you have fewer PEOPLE around (especially black and white trash), isn't it? And we KNOW those Amish aren't going to cause any problems, unless you try trespassing on their property...that might get you SHOT (at).
If I lived up there, I could go around my house without a piece on my hip for a change...how novel.
As for fireworks...let's say a neighbor living a mile away from my buddy had a "show" that rivalled the ones that the city of LEO put up (they can see both from their new house). And no one was shooting them off at or over THEIR house either...astounding. Must be that "personal responsibility" gig we hear tell about when people treat one another with a modicum of respect. Around MY house...well, many view that as a ONE-WAY street....aka "Respect ME, because I'm not going to be respecting YOU, no matter what".

It's true that out in the "country", you have to deal with snow (and the lack of removal), and having to drive everywhere for everything, but what the hell...my wife and I can't WALK anywhere around here as it is....no decent person can, unless it's between 6AM and 11AM (when the assholes are still asleep from bothering everyone the night before). And even driving can become a chore, what with carjackings, people hitting your car, having to avoid groups of people just standing (and sometimes dancing) in the damn middle of the street, or even the suspicious car full of ethnics following you to your house on occasion.

Getting away from HERE...MY neighborhood, for whatever reason is ALWAYS a good thing, no matter for how long. The down side is that I hope to hell we still have a house TO COME HOME TO when we return (with all these suspicious fires around here). You have to have concern even when you're away from the house, and be vigilant WHILE you're AT HOME.
What a way to "live", huh? I call it more like "existing" or surviving, than living. But it's only because we've been threatened several times, had a gun pulled on me, had a chemical bottle bomb tossed on the lawn, a brick through a window, had the house egged, paintballed, and had several garage windows pocked-marked by a BB rifle.

Ahh...just "typical" behavior from those "typical" people, right? Lord knows that these morons around here have given me MORE than ample reason to bring their miserable lives to an abrupt halt on too many occasions...I just haven't taken them up on their magnanimous offer....yet.
And maybe, if my wife and I are REALLY fortunate, we might be able to get us some of that serenity (out there) that we "thought" we could eek out down here. It's much better to drown in solitude than to wade among those in the shallow end of the gene pool...LOL!

Or...the city could DO something about our area....NAH, that's a problem with too easy a solution, and we know the city would never succumb to doing ANYTHING the right (or easy) way.

They haven't for the past ten years, so what makes us think they'll start NOW?