SunnyJim
Well-Known Member
Now, now. I'd like to hear him out. A statement of fact can always be supported by evidence.
Rural America.
- Thread starter Unclebaldrick
- Start date
Unclebaldrick
Well-Known Member
I already asked him albeit far less articulately. Radio silence. We already know why. I hope he responds, but we know he won't.
Good to see ya.
SunnyJim
Well-Known Member
I genuinely hope his rebuttal doesn't contain the term 'no-go zones', like "I went to Birmingham/Paris/Cologne years ago and it was really lovely, but now because of immigration policy, the whole city is a no-go zone." This would signal the end of the discussion.
Great to see you too, UB3.
Unclebaldrick
Well-Known Member
It sounds somewhat better than where I am. Good ingredients are not impossible to get but they cost you an arm and a leg for no apparent reason. There is a small, very expensive liberal arts college here but the students and faculty play virtually no role in the town. They exist in something akin to an island. I am guessing the grocery store gouges on non-perishable "luxury" ingredients because they figure that the college staff will pay for it - and they will.
Local cheese? Um, no, not really - except swiss and colby. Local veggies? Yeah, at the farmers market. There is a co-op but it is the worst co-op I have ever shopped at. They buy local stuff and literally double the price. Awful bread - all white of course - for about $7 a loaf (I read an article in the NYT last week about how much effort the "super-rich" put into hiding what they pay for stuff from the help. One woman didn't want anybody to know she pays six dollars (!) for a loaf of bread - "six dollars, that's obscene!" It made me laugh. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/opinion/sunday/what-the-rich-wont-tell-you.html) There are a large number of Amish here and their tastes are pretty much the same as a soft/bland diet at a hospital. They run one of the fancier and more successful restaurants. Huge place in a very large converted barn. People rave about the salad bar. I know exactly what the kitchen must look like. Rows and rows of shelves filled with industrial size cans of things like "three-bean salad" and "potato salad with mayonnaise" or "fruit salad". Next to these are about a half dozen industrial can-openers and a few mixing machines for getting the jello and kool-whip mixed together. Then there is a huge walk in freezer full of large plastic bags of factory made chicken cutlets or breaded country fried steak pieces. And a wall of deep friers to cook them in. There is literally nothing fresh in the hyuge salad bar and no other lettuce but iceberg. And the place is pricey, very pricey.
It is amazing that the place is successful from my perspective but it makes sense. But I guess they are serving up food just like the locals grew up with in the 1950-70 era and they literally eat it up. Especially when Red Lobster isn't running their all you can eat shrimp special.
Unclebaldrick
Well-Known Member
I got very drunk in Cologne last time after I walked into a kegelbahn room out of curiosity. We ended up all singing songs together. Then I ate about a quarter of a pig. It was near Christmas. Good times. Too bad it is all gone now due to shariah law.
MichiganMedGrower
Well-Known Member
Our omish market has tons of fresh ingredients for cooking from scratch. A great deli and fresh pies I have never had the equal of.
And normal prices. But they do block me while driving on the road with their horse and buggy. Or their bicycles with no chain drive.
But of course they go to the nearby city for red lobster. That's a night on the town.
And they never miss taco Tuesday which is Thursday in the next country town over.
Your town sucks apparently. But you can't rope all of the "heartland" together just like Anything else.
This is the middle of town where I live. If I walked out of the woods here I would still be in the neighborhood.
A protected river full of salmon and steelhead and a land area (protected for butterflies) is right in our town. With a campground and tons of open land to play in with DNR maintained trails all over.
The people here meet much of your original descriptions. But most are healthy and happy instead of what you are implying.
River through town. Many nice families and friends spend much of the summer floating here.
Yeah. Many of them get drunk while doing it.
Justin-case
Well-Known Member
Our omish market has tons of fresh ingredients for cooking from scratch. A great deli and fresh pies I have never had the equal of.
And normal prices. But they do block me while driving on the road with their horse and buggy. Or their bicycles with no chain drive.
But of course they go to the nearby city for red lobster. That's a night on the town.
And they never miss taco Tuesday which is Thursday in the next country town over.
Your town sucks apparently. But you can't rope all of the "heartland" together just like Anything else.
This is the middle of town where I live. If I walked out of the woods here I would still be in the neighborhood.
A protected river full of salmon and steelhead and a land area (protected for butterflies) is right in our town. With a campground and tons of open land to play in with DNR maintained trails all over.
The people here meet much of your original descriptions. But most are healthy and happy instead of what you are implying.
River through town. Many nice families and friends spend much of the summer floating here.
Yeah. Many of them get drunk while doing it.
View attachment 4012440 View attachment 4012441
Dude, stfu and go get a job at your local chamber of commerce, where somebody might actually give a shit about honkey ville USA.
MichiganMedGrower
Well-Known Member
You admitted you won't even read my first post because it is too long. Yet you put down others for their education.
So much for your "educated" opinion.
Unclebaldrick
Well-Known Member
Certainly you cannot paint all rural areas with the same brush. I have always found Michigan to be far more progressive than some of the surrounding states - especially the ones South of you. You seem to live in a place that many people would actually like to move to - whereas that is not the case here. We came here for one reason, to put our young child in close proximity to his grandparents. In that respect it was worth it - but that has been the only thing good about it. It seems like an intellectual vortex where those who aspire to experience other things quickly spin out and away leaving the vast majority stuck here and developing some sort of time capsule of "traditional American values" that I find rather hypocritical especially given the very non-traditional aspects of their families. I cannot even tell you how many people I have encountered that end up with their first kid before they are 18 and have a complete handful by the time they leave their twenties - all without the benefit of marrying anybody. My Coors light drinking neighbor has his grandson over quite a bit and he plays with our son. He has a crush on my wife (the kid is 4) and he could not believe, and was disappointed, that my wife was married. He knows me. He knows we all live together but still it kind of blew his mind that we were married and only have one kid between us.Our omish market has tons of fresh ingredients for cooking from scratch. A great deli and fresh pies I have never had the equal of.
And normal prices. But they do block me while driving on the road with their horse and buggy. Or their bicycles with no chain drive.
But of course they go to the nearby city for red lobster. That's a night on the town.
And they never miss taco Tuesday which is Thursday in the next country town over.
Your town sucks apparently. But you can't rope all of the "heartland" together just like Anything else.
This is the middle of town where I live. If I walked out of the woods here I would still be in the neighborhood.
A protected river full of salmon and steelhead and a land area (protected for butterflies) is right in our town. With a campground and tons of open land to play in with DNR maintained trails all over.
The people here meet much of your original descriptions. But most are healthy and happy instead of what you are implying.
River through town. Many nice families and friends spend much of the summer floating here.
Yeah. Many of them get drunk while doing it.
View attachment 4012440 View attachment 4012441
The kid is a hoot. He is very direct and asks a lot of questions. I suspect that he will be moving out of here by the time he becomes an adult. We will be moving on far sooner than that. I don't expect to move back to a proper city though - probably some place similar to Ann Arbor where you can get some decent Thai food or some pho.
420God
Well-Known Member
Wisconsin is nice and has a lot of culture being a vacation state. You can find any type of restaurant within an hour from almost any area and for most of the Summer you see more out of state plates than regular ones. Lots of farmers even have open house for the tourists from the cities to see what the simple life is all about. Definitely not all rural areas are as "retarded" as the area you live.
Fogdog
Well-Known Member
Rural-Urban divide has always been around.
City life is fast paced, complex and competitive. In a city of hundreds of thousands or millions, you will find the very best at whatever their trade or profession is. Competitors will notice, learn from the very best and bring up their own standards. Those that can't compete are washed out. And so, food, culture, and the mundane such as car repair are simply better in the urban areas. Not saying excellent everywhere, just people have more choices and they won't come back if they can get better service or better deals elsewhere. The environment is fast paced, stressful, crowded, dirty, and ironically with all those people around, isolating, especially for newcomers.
Rural life is slower paced, simpler and cooperative. In a town of a couple thousand (maybe less), cooperation is a way of life. Neighbors helping and watching out for neighbors. And, key to what @Unclebaldrick is saying, striving to be better than others is viewed as a negative. Value is placed on being viewed as a good old boy, one who helps others, not the top performer. I've seen both the excellent and the atrocious in rural towns. Certain specialties based upon local ingredients and recipes honed for generations are excellent. Barbecue, for example. That bottle of sauce is crap. Home made sauce from the family recipe with slow cooked ribs or beef brisket are about as good a comfort food as any can be found. A mess of greens well cooked are ambrosia. And then, PBR beer by the case. Not everyone appreciates or can afford boutique beer. Not to mention the squalor of the hoarder's house that everybody just drives by and ignores because the person that lives there is a good old boy has a few quirks. Isolation and abuse are as bad in small towns as in the city. The difference is that the whole town knows about it and looks the other way. Cooperation has it's downsides.
Just saying neither setting is perfect and there are reasons why each environment produces a different type of person.
What I think Baldy is also seeing is the economic collapse of the rural world. The demand for cheap food and farm products, produced by automated farming is destroying the economy of the rural community. This isn't new. The trend began about a hundred years ago. The rural Mississippi county where my family lived for generations is practically empty now. None of my immediate family live there. My dad left there seeking a better life as soon as he could. He eventually found it in California and we never went back as a family to visit. I only ever saw the place when I drove through on a road trip. What's left is the remnant of a community that was robust and proud more than a hundred years ago. It's not an ideal place to live anymore, and wasn't when my dad grew up there, from what he said.
The people left behind in many rural communities are the least able to leave. When people don't have a good education and good income, family support is a survival strategy. Grandparents watch kids when parents are working. When your beater of a car needs to be repaired, your cousin has one to loan you while you get your own running again. The vegetable patch, fishing and hunting help make up for low income. That sort of thing. It's a hardscrabble life but the move to the city isn't necessarily the best choice for those suited for country life.
And do we really want everybody living in more and more crowded urban areas? Why should people have to leave a nice environment where they know their neighbor, have family connections and leave mom to age alone simply because people want cheap mass produced and awful tomatoes or wheat grown at the lowest possible cost on non-sustainable highly automated farms? On the Urban side, people learn to live well in close quarters with others. A good life can be found amid the fast and varied pace in the city too. Baldrick is missing the city. He moved to the country, why? I'm guessing the reasons are based upon what the country life had to offer. Just saying each place offers different ways of life. Not perfect, just different.
City life is fast paced, complex and competitive. In a city of hundreds of thousands or millions, you will find the very best at whatever their trade or profession is. Competitors will notice, learn from the very best and bring up their own standards. Those that can't compete are washed out. And so, food, culture, and the mundane such as car repair are simply better in the urban areas. Not saying excellent everywhere, just people have more choices and they won't come back if they can get better service or better deals elsewhere. The environment is fast paced, stressful, crowded, dirty, and ironically with all those people around, isolating, especially for newcomers.
Rural life is slower paced, simpler and cooperative. In a town of a couple thousand (maybe less), cooperation is a way of life. Neighbors helping and watching out for neighbors. And, key to what @Unclebaldrick is saying, striving to be better than others is viewed as a negative. Value is placed on being viewed as a good old boy, one who helps others, not the top performer. I've seen both the excellent and the atrocious in rural towns. Certain specialties based upon local ingredients and recipes honed for generations are excellent. Barbecue, for example. That bottle of sauce is crap. Home made sauce from the family recipe with slow cooked ribs or beef brisket are about as good a comfort food as any can be found. A mess of greens well cooked are ambrosia. And then, PBR beer by the case. Not everyone appreciates or can afford boutique beer. Not to mention the squalor of the hoarder's house that everybody just drives by and ignores because the person that lives there is a good old boy has a few quirks. Isolation and abuse are as bad in small towns as in the city. The difference is that the whole town knows about it and looks the other way. Cooperation has it's downsides.
Just saying neither setting is perfect and there are reasons why each environment produces a different type of person.
What I think Baldy is also seeing is the economic collapse of the rural world. The demand for cheap food and farm products, produced by automated farming is destroying the economy of the rural community. This isn't new. The trend began about a hundred years ago. The rural Mississippi county where my family lived for generations is practically empty now. None of my immediate family live there. My dad left there seeking a better life as soon as he could. He eventually found it in California and we never went back as a family to visit. I only ever saw the place when I drove through on a road trip. What's left is the remnant of a community that was robust and proud more than a hundred years ago. It's not an ideal place to live anymore, and wasn't when my dad grew up there, from what he said.
The people left behind in many rural communities are the least able to leave. When people don't have a good education and good income, family support is a survival strategy. Grandparents watch kids when parents are working. When your beater of a car needs to be repaired, your cousin has one to loan you while you get your own running again. The vegetable patch, fishing and hunting help make up for low income. That sort of thing. It's a hardscrabble life but the move to the city isn't necessarily the best choice for those suited for country life.
And do we really want everybody living in more and more crowded urban areas? Why should people have to leave a nice environment where they know their neighbor, have family connections and leave mom to age alone simply because people want cheap mass produced and awful tomatoes or wheat grown at the lowest possible cost on non-sustainable highly automated farms? On the Urban side, people learn to live well in close quarters with others. A good life can be found amid the fast and varied pace in the city too. Baldrick is missing the city. He moved to the country, why? I'm guessing the reasons are based upon what the country life had to offer. Just saying each place offers different ways of life. Not perfect, just different.
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whitebb2727
Well-Known Member
I love some Amish food. I grew up working for the Amish.Our omish market has tons of fresh ingredients for cooking from scratch. A great deli and fresh pies I have never had the equal of.
And normal prices. But they do block me while driving on the road with their horse and buggy. Or their bicycles with no chain drive.
But of course they go to the nearby city for red lobster. That's a night on the town.
And they never miss taco Tuesday which is Thursday in the next country town over.
Your town sucks apparently. But you can't rope all of the "heartland" together just like Anything else.
This is the middle of town where I live. If I walked out of the woods here I would still be in the neighborhood.
A protected river full of salmon and steelhead and a land area (protected for butterflies) is right in our town. With a campground and tons of open land to play in with DNR maintained trails all over.
The people here meet much of your original descriptions. But most are healthy and happy instead of what you are implying.
River through town. Many nice families and friends spend much of the summer floating here.
Yeah. Many of them get drunk while doing it.
View attachment 4012440 View attachment 4012441
whitebb2727
Well-Known Member
I have to say I like rural life.
I will also say there are a lot of closed minded people.
I will even say that I've said and acted in ways I'm not proud of. I've said some racist and bigoted things.
I was just parroting the things I heard growing up.
It wasn't until I went into the military that I let most of that stuff go.
Not all of us rednecks are racist bigots. People do change.
I will also say there are a lot of closed minded people.
I will even say that I've said and acted in ways I'm not proud of. I've said some racist and bigoted things.
I was just parroting the things I heard growing up.
It wasn't until I went into the military that I let most of that stuff go.
Not all of us rednecks are racist bigots. People do change.
UncleBuck
Well-Known Member
triggered much, bitch?
no one is trying to take your "bud sex" away from you, mouthbreathing breitbart sheep.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/white-masculine-rural-bud-sex.929972/
rkymtnman
Well-Known Member
shoo fly pie
MichiganMedGrower
Well-Known Member
The reality of my surrounding environment is 1 in 10 homes still vacant. Or worse. Demolished and still standing. Jobs quite limited and pay scales further limited. There is work. It mostly sucks.
The near city to me and the entire country area west of Grand Rapids and way north is one of the highest violent crime areas per capita in this country.
Muskegon Heights Michigan had as many reports of violent crime in a 14 block neighborhood as the entire city of Detroit 2 years ago when I was house shopping.
The people are staying safe in maybe the worst economic times ever. And again. They mostly seem happy and friendly to me. They even accept me and in its me to family gatherings. Everyone liked is always welcome. They will make you a plate too.
But it aint like my 65k lake subdivision house is going up in value. And the doors are kept locked.
Perspective is key. Things are fucked up all over.
English bro. Eastern European?
Also why do you hate education?
P.S. I have visited more countries than you have teeth. Discuss.
Also why do you hate education?
P.S. I have visited more countries than you have teeth. Discuss.
1945
Today's local headlines from Rural America
http://www.newsargus.com/news/archives/2017/09/18/police_failed_attempt_at_atm_theft_lands_two_in_jail/
http://www.newsargus.com/news/archives/2017/09/18/no_tone_here_victim_tells_police_her_home_being_shot_into_might_have_to_do_with_a_person_who_no_longer_lives_there/
http://www.newsargus.com/news/archives/2017/09/18/carver_elementary_loses_air_conditioning_student_sent_to_er_after_becoming_overheated/
http://www.newsargus.com/news/archives/2017/09/18/police_failed_attempt_at_atm_theft_lands_two_in_jail/
http://www.newsargus.com/news/archives/2017/09/18/no_tone_here_victim_tells_police_her_home_being_shot_into_might_have_to_do_with_a_person_who_no_longer_lives_there/
http://www.newsargus.com/news/archives/2017/09/18/carver_elementary_loses_air_conditioning_student_sent_to_er_after_becoming_overheated/