Living Inside the City Limits vs. Country Living

I grew up living in the country and couldn't wait to marry and move to a small town. I thought it would be nice to walk to the grocery and do all my errands without having to use a vehicle for everything. What an eye opening experience for me.

First of all, we raised our own vegetables, canned and processed them for later use. We also had a little red wagon to transport them from the garden to the house. While I had no such luxury living in town, or a place to store a wagon, the bags of groceries alone were almost backbreaking by the time I walked home from the closest grocery store.

Living in the country, I used to lie in bed at night and listen to the train whistle blow in the distance as it passed through the nearest town three miles away. It was such a comforting sound and one I miss. Our first home was next to the railroad tracks and at the time I didn't think too much of it when I saw them. The first night in my new home, a house trailer on his parents property, the train came rumbling by so loud that I jumped straight up in bed and banged my head on the ceiling. I was so frightened by the deafening noise it took a few moments for my new husband to calm me down. He said I would get used to it and the noise wouldn't bother me. I never did get used to the noise. We stayed there for a year while looking for a home to buy.

We found a small house in the next nearest small town that was within our budget to purchase. The house needed some restoration. There were also railroad tracks in town, but they were located several blocks away from where we lived. The houses on our street may have had a distance of fifteen to twenty feet between them and the neighbors seemed really nice. The sound I heard every night before going to sleep changed from trains to vehicles. I would listen to the cars bang over the man hole covers all the way up the street.

During the day whenever we were outside working on the house, there was always someone walking up and down the street wanting to stop and "checkout" what was going on. Even though restoration "duties" took twice as long to complete, we were gracious enough to take time out to "visit" with those who stopped by. It was a little disturbing waving at the neighbor doing dishes while I was doing the same.

Eventually we were able to buy a home in the country where a little more privacy is not to be taken for "granted." I raise a small garden; no train tracks are close by and the neighbors' wave and go about their business. Of course there are the pesky little critters that visit like the occasional opossum we find on the porch, a field mouse that has decided to move in, or the night I discovered a raccoon peering in the window. Of course we can't forget the squirrel that brings his food to our deck and leaves his shells behind.

Life is certainly different living in the country and I wouldn't trade it again for convenience.