Ever felt like you had a kick me sign on your back?  I’ll tell you, the joys of living in a small town used to be very numerous.  You know that “everyone is friendly here, we wave at everyone who drives by, and things are hunky-dorey” thing that people talk about?  That’s how my town used to be.  Everyone knew everybody, you waved at every car because you knew who it was.  People helped out people in need, they watched each other’s backs and appreciated the diversity that came with living in a small town.  My town was always poor, we live in a county that is poorest in the state, but it is gorgeous here among the mountains and that has attracted people.  Granted, our population hasn’t severely swelled, though our property values have.  We’ve attracted people from the “bay area” of California and southern California, in the big cities.  They wanted to move here to escape the city life style, the hustle and bustle, the traffic lights, sidewalks, paved everything, and exchanged it for fresh air, green grass, trees, land, water, and peacefulness. 

I’m on a rant because of those people.  Now, not all people from the city are bad, I realize that.  I also know that not everyone who moves here likes to cause trouble.  But it angers me to no end when people move here to retire and enjoy the country only to end up wanting to change the way things are run in the town, how people live, and what you do with your property!  It’s almost as if they have nothing better to do with their spare time than look for things to nit-pick.  It drives me up a wall!

I grew up in this town, I was born in the Big City an hour from here.  I lived on the same piece of property my whole life until I got married and moved three miles down the road to this place my husband and I have now.  I knew how this town was, how friendly and lovely it was.  People were like family.  Now, people are untrustworthy, ungrateful, backstabbing, underhanded, and anything else I can think of that is down right bad. 

Our property borders the main road into town, we almost live in a fish bowl except you can’t see our house from the main road.  You can, however, drive on a private road that guts our property to some houses in the back of us.  We do live in a private fish bowl.  When we get another animal, everyone knows.  When we want to build a pond, everyone knows.  When we want to build a barn, everyone knows.  And did you also know that we have the third best property in town?  Yep, everyone knows and to some it is threatening and irritating.  And no, my husband and I are not retired, won’t be for another thirty years plus, thus we have to work for our money in which to improve our property.  We do not have a little income that just pours in from other sources in which we can fund our barns, pastures, animals, fencing, landscaping, etc.  So there are things that are prioritized and set aside until we can deal with them later… such as landscaping.  Now, we do water our grass and it is lush and beautiful… but beauty is in the eye of the beholder eh? 

We have some people in town who like to tell everyone else what to do.  If they lived in a city, they would live in one of those neighborhoods where your house color was decided for you.  Eck!  No thanks, and move back to where you came from please. 

For example, we are trying to build a pond.  Yes, we have an abundance of water and we can harness it to irrigate and make our pastures gorgeous year round but we can only take it one step at a time.  So, what happened?  Someone called the Army Corp of Engineers on us to complain that we were building a pond in “wet lands” (by the way, we’re okay on our pond).  The same week we got a letter from the Resources Conservation District wanting to help us with our water, drainage, irrigation, and noxious weeds (that grown in ‘wet lands’).  Now we have someone complaining about some industrial mining equipment that was going to be stored on our property (in the back, off the main road — can’t see it from the road) until the owner could buy his own place to keep it (had to move it off of land he is selling).  Oh boy!  You can’t store things like that on your property!  Oh my goodness!  How dare us! 

I’m just so sick of people sticking their noses in other people’s business.  I am tired of people moving here to the country and then try to regulate the way people live.  No, our place is not ugly but it sure isn’t fenced with white vinyl fencing (what a dream that would be!).  We can only afford so much at each time and vinyl fencing isn’t that high on the priority list. 

So do me a favor, when and if you retire, please do not move to a quaint little town out in the middle of no where and then get bored in five years only to want to change the place you moved to because it was quiet and peaceful.  Leave the people be and stay where you are in your town house if you want to do that sort of thing.

Rant over, thanks for listening.

Signed, your friendly neighbor.