I am so spoiled. Every time I visit my family in the research triangle area of NC I am reminded of why I love living where I do. Remote. Population lite. Beautiful (my husband refers to it as eye candy everywhere you look). Still wild in most places and everywhere in spirit.
Now not everyone is cut out to live in rural, upstate Pennsylvania, on the final ridges of the Appalachian mountain chain. Actually enjoying the cold weather and tolerating the sometimes impassible roads in winter is a prerequisite. Beautiful fires in the fireplace or wood stove are not for pictures to be reproduced in House Beautiful but for generating some serious heat. It only took us four years to figure out exactly how many cords of wood we needed to order, BEFORE it got cold. Learning to live under the haze of SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, is an acquired taste to be sure, but with the right interior lighting and a very good support group its tolerable. Its amazing how little one cares about how one looks in any particular hat as long as it covers the ears (snugly, very snugly) because when you venture outside in the single digits, which is the high temperature for that day, and the wind is blowing in directly from the Arctic at 50 mph all you're really thinking about is how to keep your nose attached to your face - or at the very least - being able to find it in the snow in order to reattach it once it freezes, cracks and falls off - which you never felt because it was numb within the first 10 seconds you stepped outside.
Ah yes, home sweet home. Visiting populated areas now, after several years of life in the rugged north, reminds me of everything I both miss and loathe. Having lots of places to shop is a plus, having to pack your lunch to travel across town to get to THE shopping place you wish to go is a minus. My little town has two lights (a plus) and only one choice in shopping (Wal-Mart) a minus in theory but actually a mixed blessing if one is honest. It's one thing to proclaim that the store is Satan's spawn and actually be able to boycott it for longer than a week at a time. Only three people I know are able to achieve this level of discipline and two are married to one another and have no children; the other is a man whose wife does all the family's shopping (she shops Wal-Mart). The rest of us curse it for all the publicized, obvious reasons and shop there anyway - and are darn glad we didn't have to drive into the next state for groceries, a ream of paper and light bulbs (I'm not exaggerating). But all this frenzy of capitalistic activity makes me as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. How can there be enough people to feed all of these businesses? The car lots here look like small cities in themselves - I'm blown away by all the choices every where you go. I have lived in big cities before, though many years ago. And everything I remember about them with not so fond memories I have relived in one way or another on my visits south twice a year.
This year we had a chance to revisit an old friend who I have not missed in the least these last years; the auto rip-off artist. We were buying my parent's car now that they are unable to drive. Unfortunately, their decision to relinquish the car was preceded by my father's wrecking it. The damage was minor but some body work was required before we could take it home. We could have moved it but it wasn't quite done when we went to get it and we had to return north. No sweat we were reassured, not a problem, "we've got plenty of space." Six months later we went to have it moved to the mechanic to have the engine checked out before taking it to its final destination. A $2000 bill awaited us - storage fee. Didn't sign for this, didn't agree to this, weren't told of this. The only words I can use to describe my feeling about this are not permitable on this site - but I assume you are familiar with these deep emotions. My husband actually spent the next day throwing up and was unable to get out of bed - a coincidence perhaps - but he was actually able to do what I was feeling. Did I mention the car is only worth a thousand at best?
I can't wait to get home. After some negotiating we've paid $1000 to settled a bum bill, but not before time ran out, again. It will be another six months before we'll be back to try to take it north, again. Another plus of rural, small town life is that people like this don't make it in business very long. In order to survive one simply must act according the ways of the Golden Rule. The consequences of not doing so are that however much you cheated your neighbor will be done to you, in spades. Small town people are not well-known for how well they get along, but honest business dealings are not optional. In urban life, the tactics of survival include learning to never trust anyone, take no one at their word and always remember that the sucker born every day includes you and that sooner or later you too will feel the sting of the rip-off artist. Its not that there aren't honest business people, its that finding them is so rare, a pearl in the oyster - who has the time and money to burn looking? Definitely a minus.
Well I've moaned and groaned, chopped the guy apart in effigy while cutting up chicken wings for dinner this evening, made confession; fantasized about how to get even; made confession again; complained, yelled, spit, and called friends to cry over spilled milk.
I have small town friends too; wonderful friends who have listened to me confess my darkest violent wishes on this scam artist and then joked about why the pastor (that would be me) would be unable to be reached for the next couple of years as she was doing time for these various fanciful acts. Good friends who advise: Pay the money, give your husband a hug, because he too is feeling really badly, (have I mentioned I have not helped that situation?), and come home. Come home to the several inches of snow that has fallen since we've been away; to the stunning still beauty of the miles of endless mountains riddled with bare trees; the tops of all their branches painted white. Come home to what is rugged, untamed and undomesticated; where there are no malls or grocery stores but only a single Super Wal-Mart. Come home to where the preservation of what it means to be truly human is a tangible and worthwhile objective; where the measure of a person is not by what they have managed to acquire or even how well they manage those acquisitions, but by their hospitality, generosity and acts of love for their neighbor (though, admittedly, this is sometimes limited to one's actual neighbor - no one ever said this place was perfect). Come home to lick your wounds, to regroup, to strengthen and rebound. Come home to what is safe and familiar and known. Come home to where you belong.
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