January 18, 2010
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City Mouse of Country Mouse?
Country Mouse or City Mouse? - A Featured_Grownups writing prompt. has suggested this as a topic.
I am a Country Mouse who enjoys the convenience of the city. Along with most of my peers, I try to "countrify" my urban home and get away to the country whenever possible.
The most successful I ever was at "Countrification" was to purchase a twelve acre tract with the house completely hidden from the road by trees and distance and from my neighbors by creeks and ravines. This was in Bloomington, IN and if you've ever been there, you know what I'm talking about. My drive was a quarter-mile long! Unfortunately keeping all that land up became too much for us and we had to move back to FL - but we did move to the Tallahassee outskirts which have a lot more trees than people. We still keep our place in the Maine woods - there every summer since 1970- and that is REALLY rural. We did not get electricity until 1982 and access is several miles down dirt roads and jeep trails.
Comments (8)
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Now I want to go to Maine, but you probably don't go there in the winter...for good reason!
I've had a fascination for Maine for a long time. I'd love to see the fall color, but unfortunately, because I'm a teacher, that will probably have to wait until retirement ... sigh.
LOL at poison...
My wife and I were teachers until we retired (would you believe in 1985!). We had spent some summers in New England (MA,NH and ME) and decided in 1970 to buy a place in downeast ME - all we could afford was a half-built tarpaper shack with no road to it, much less utilities; but it was right on the shore of a large sparsely populated lake. We bought it and the next summer vacation we began rebuilding it - windows, floors, shingles, a water system (with hand pump) bottled gas for cooking and Aladdin kerosene lamps for light. We finally managed to get power in 1982 along with a road more or less to the place. We would fly up the day after school closed (in FL) and fly back the day before it opened. We scrounged up an old VW bug (1957 slide-top - I loved that car) which we left in a friend's barn every winter.
We would take a long weekend and fly up during the Fall and in 1975, took a sabbatical - stayed in the place until November. Bathing in the lake in late October was rather brisk.
One great thing about teaching was the free summers - which we took full advantage of. Several times we combined our Maine vacation with a trip to Europe. We didn't have any kids which made travel, etc, more affordable.
The place in Maine sounds like a wonderful place to relax!
Dear Dick,
I've got a tip for you, re your comment above to another commenter. If you click "reply" to the right of the commenter's username, he/she will get an email alerting them that you've replied to their comment, so they will be sure to see it.
I guess I'd be a "city mouse" since I've lived in Los Angeles for over 50 years, but the great thing about the southland (when it isn't underwater) is that within an hour's time, one can get to the beach, the snow (in winter) or the country. Two hours out of town and you're approaching the famland of the central valley. I used to love to drive around the Palos Verdes peninsula, and I've created a couple of "video blogs" detailing my drives, but as the years pass, most of the "country" had been developed, and it's getting to look more and more like tract homes for as far as the eye can see.
I'd love to be able to have two residences, or to take a trip to Europe, but that won't happen any time soon.
Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool
@tychecat -
I always thought it would be wonderful to have a mate who was also a teacher so we could enjoy the summers together. Alas, my husband has very irregular hours and can't take long stretches of vacation. Your summer routine sounds amazing! We've talked about one day buying a small cabin in the local mountains where I could go to escape the heat in the summer ... a cabin we could rent out during ski season. But, that's only if that kind of money materializes and we don't end up fleeing this place altogether before it happens.
I'm a city mouse by location, but would love to be a country mouse.