As more Americans can do their jobs from any remote location, a trend has been to relocate from urban and suburban areas to lower-cost, rural areas, according to a report by the Center for Rural Innovation.
Being something of an expert on the subject — my home is on a hill outside the suburbs in Pittsburgh, Pa. — let me share some insights.
I grew up the suburbs, which were invented by people who wished to isolate themselves from the world.
While kids in the city were raising their fists, we suburban kids were taking piano lessons.
While kids in the country were rebuilding truck motors, we were doing our algebra.
The only thing we knew about the city and country kids was that both could beat us up.
Before I moved to the country, I envisioned myself working the fields with a hoe. I would tear off porch roofs and rebuild stone walls. I would raise barns with other men, as grateful women and children would bring us sandwiches and lemonade.
But after a few decades of country living, I see that I’ve deluded myself.
For starters, my rural neighbors are still suspicious of me. I told them I’m a writer who works out of his home. But they’re certain I’m in the witness protection program.
And I don’t blame them. After all, I don’t own, nor have I ever fired, a gun. For years, I drove a four-door, four-cylinder Japanese sedan, not a 4 x 4. And worst of all, I hire people to do work on my house, instead of doing all of it myself.
As a new rural homeowner years back, I got a flat tire on my wheelbarrow. I strapped it into my trunk and headed up the hill to my neighbor’s ranch for help.
As I neared his home, I saw him with his friends: the first friend was the guy who bull-dozed my driveway, the second, the guy who painted my house, and the third, the guy who gave me an estimate on my gutters.
I saw in their eyes a look of sickening distress. These fellows had never seen a grown man in a four-door Japanese sedan hauling a flat-tired wheelbarrow.
And while my rural neighbors are suspicious of me, my suburban friends don’t like to visit.
I recall grilling dinner on my deck for one attractive lady from the suburbs. I’d hoped to impress her with the view from my deck. But as night descended, we were overcome by bugs. During her flight into the kitchen, she was hit in the forehead by a large moth.
“It’s a bat!” she shouted.
I reassured her it wasn’t a bat, but to no avail. That was the last time I’d heard from her, though a friend of mine told me she was so impacted by the incident, she had screens installed in her car windows.
It’s this simple: people raised in the suburbs don’t belong in the country.
We belong in the suburbs, where the porches are screened, where bugs are fewer, and where a man is not shunned by other men for hiring a landscaper to mow his lawn.
If you’re dreaming about moving to the countryside, I encourage you to reconsider.
Unless your wife likes bats.