Country Mouse City Mouse

A few comments got me thinking about the difference in mentality between urban and rural people. FYI suggested reading T-Bolt’s post on Metrocons.

Now I’ve never lived in a BIG city. I did live in several densely packed urban neighborhoods where there was no yard, there were tenants on all sides of your dwelling and there was public transit a short walk away. Medford Mass, and right off of Congress Street in Portland Maine are the best I have. I also haven’t truly lived in a truly rural area, I’ve certainly lived in areas where I needed to drive 20 mins to the nearest grocery store (and that was an IGA the size of my basement in the most rural). Still I know lots of people who live pretty far off the grid. Know lots of people who haul their own trash and poop in septic tanks. Know a few who have a diesel generator that produces their home electricity.

So I’d like to say I’ve seen it all, and I’d like to pose what these different lifestyles do to how you view the world and your fellow man.

If you live totally off the grid you are dependent on EVERYTHING! You need to tend your septic tank so your poop has someplace to go. You need to haul or burn your trash. You need fuel for electricity and heat. If you don’t work from home you’ll need to trek out in your vehicle (often a very long commute) to get to work. Also while there is technically no place in the nation where there is no law, if you live out in the back woods of Maine there might be one local cop, or the County Sheriff’s office might cover the huge area around where you live. Police response time is likely hours not minutes.

Now if you live in a high-rise in a major city, there’s a dumpster for your trash or maybe a trash chute, the power is supplied by the local power company. The heat is supplied by the building. Bodily wastes goes into the city sewer system. You get to work via public transportation, and likely you have a quick commute. Police response time (barring incompetence) is in minutes, and if its a large building it likely has some form of security of its own.

The only somewhat similar aspect is both need to supply food for the pantry, tho the person living in the sticks can farm their land, or hunt their land, and the urban person certainly can swing by the supermarket every day after work for supplies for dinner, and the person off the grid might pack up a month’s worth of groceries if with commute it might be an all-day affair to hit the supermarket.

So now think of how that must affect a world-view. If you live in an Urban environment you are dependent on others. The end, full stop. I don’t live in a huge city now, but let’s face it, my house is on sewer, I have a gas line piped into my house for heat and cooking, I have power lines from the local power company, and if the grocery store stops stocking food I’ll starve, as my tiny yard won’t feed me or my family. Furthermore while I’m Mr. Self-defense I’m walking distance to my local Police station.

If you’re off the grid, if you don’t get it, you don’t have it.

Now have a thought on how that might effect various people in either environment who consider themselves Democrats or Republicans, or Conservatives or Liberals. I know some rural Democrats that have lots of guns, and a freezer filled with meat, and a pantry filled with canned veggies grown in their garden. And I think we’ve all seen the “Metrocons” who seem to not mind a little government nose into your personal business and can’t understand hunting, or wonder why anybody would have a semi-auto rifle.

Its just a cultural thing, and for those who have only seen one side of the coin, they might not understand what the other side is like.

Of course its all of our best interests to help each other understand the vast diversity of life and lifestyles in this vast nation.

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0 Responses to Country Mouse City Mouse

  1. North says:

    So how is this communicated? How does the city mouse learn about the country mouse? Media? Television? All city-centric. All biased in a way that looking down an urban nose at the rural lifestyle is acceptable.

    If you are so ‘city’ that you think meat comes from a grocery store, then you have no use or interest in the country. Except to fly over it. And you’ll never really learn.

  2. Woody says:

    I live on a dead end dirt road in the woods. For the first half of my life I lived in the city. I have a power line coming to the house but I had to pay serious money to get the power company to do it. Everything else (water, heat, septic) I supply myself. I spent the first 30 years 0f my life trying to get out of town and I never intend to go back. I grow a lot of my own food and hunt for a major portion of the meat I eat. I heat with wood I cut from my property and have a propane kitchen stove, tankless water heater, and clothes drier. I make a trip to Sam’s Club about every 6 weeks to stock up on paper goods and staples like flour, sugar, etc. I do most of my routine shopping at small rural grocery stores (about once every couple of weeks or so).

    I am now retired but previously I was a field serviceman for a company with a big blue logo. I drove several hundred miles a week while working for them. With the price of gas being what it is I mostly say home these days. Life is mostly good.

    My advice to city dwellers is, please stay where you are. We have spiders and snakes out here. Spiders the size of dinner plates! There are bugs everywhere. And did I mention bears? Bears are everywhere, too! I won’t even mention the skunks, porcupines, foxes, coyotes, weasels, and other vicious beasts. The nearest bus stop is about 50 miles away. Call the police and it will be at least a couple of hours before they show up. The worst part is that it’s impossible to find a good latte’, and a decent Chardonnay? Forgedaboutit.

  3. bluesun says:

    It is an interesting thought–I notice it sometimes even with all you eastern gunbloggers. I share many of the same political ideals with you, but sometimes I read something about “took an hour drive to [insert location three states away]” and I think, “why, that’s positively yu-ro-pee-an!”

    • Weerd Beard says:

      LOL, yeah some of our states are small and skinny. Tho it takes about 3 hours to drive from the south end of Maine to the North end if you take the highway the whole way. You wanna venture into the western mountains of Maine its much longer and hopefully you have 4-wheel drive.

  4. Jennifer says:

    It would be quite entertaining to watch the police respond in minuets. Their delicate dance mesmerizing the criminals away from nefarious activities…
    Sorry, couldn’t resist. So easy to transpose a couple of letters.

  5. Sailorcurt says:

    You hit the nail on the head my friend.

    I grew up on a farm where we raised virtually everything we ate. If something broke, we fixed it, because there wasn’t a plumber, or electrician, or mechanic that was going to trek all the way out there for less than an arm and a leg.

    After High School I joined the Navy. I’ve lived in cities of various sizes ever since.

    Although there were plenty like me in the military, among my civilian friends, it was always amazing to them that I could do all the stuff I could do.

    And it was just as amazing to me that they couldn’t.

    I still have a lot of that in me. When something goes wrong, my first instinct isn’t to call someone to come fix it, it’s to take care of it myself. Often, after busting my butt fixing something that needed fixed, my city raised wife will ask me “why didn’t you just call the [plumber/electrician/mechanic/etc]?” At which point it generally strikes me that it hadn’t even occurred to me that that was an option.

    Sigh.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      Certainly it seems that the Country Mouse has no problem moving into the city (with maybe the exception that Country Mice don’t know what streets are the gang turf, and what are safe) but city mice don’t do terribly well when you take all their amenities away.

  6. Suz says:

    This is where freedom comes in. People should make the effort to understand different lifestyles, and smart people do. Understanding folks who live differently is good for all of us, but if we don’t have the time or inclination, it shouldn’t be necessary, as long as we RESPECT EACH OTHERS’ RIGHTS to live differently. I chuckle over how much “The Left” and “The Right” overlap without noticing. “Do your own thing,” and “Live and let live,” may be liberal hippie slogans, but they are also the absolute essence of conservative freedom.

    Whether we understand each others’ needs or not, we have no business restricting each others’ rights. Both liberals AND conservatives will forget that in a New York minute, when their own power is at stake.

  7. Pingback: Freedom Ranking | Weer'd World

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