Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for August 30, 2024

Sticks and stones

40 acres and a mule?

Gus may be pushing them outside of their comfort zone.

People talk about having no neighbors in a positive tone as having great privacy. However, that can lead to dementia. We are social animals and need the social interaction. There are positive chemicals created in the brain when we are socialy active.

Stick to civilisation.

How about outhouses? Are you okay with outhouses?

I hope it’s not the last house on the left.

Sounds appealing!

The sticks = fine when you younger if you like that sort of thing.

When retired, getting older? Lack of nearby facilities (shops, medical, public transport), people (near neighbours for when you are less mobile), and probably a property and grounds that need a lot of maintenance? No thanks.

Not familiar with the term “exurbs”. Is that short for ex-urbanite?

Short for exurbitant.

I don’t think either of them will go for the idea of living in the sticks unless there are amenities close by.

I retired and lived out in the sticks for six years, closest neighbor was a mile away. Nice break from seeing people every day. The average dog is a better person than the average human and I had two greyhounds.

“Land spreading out so far and wide! Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside!”

Twenty years ago I retired from the Army. My wife and I bought 13 acres “out in the sticks”. We live off a well and have solar panels tied into the grid. When we first moved out here we had like five neighbors. We didn’t even put up a street light when they ran power out here. The road comes in and then loops around back out. It was about three miles of isolation. We’ve got two Amish families who do their thing.

Twenty years later the city has moved out to the sticks. Neighbors have been selling off farm land and now we’ve got dozens of families on our road which isn’t much more than a paved farm track.

Hopefully it won’t get much more crowded out here.

Seems like you’d ask that question BEFORE traveling to the coast.

The plot stickens.

I moved from the “big city” to the sticks. At times I miss the bustle, but love watching the bears watching me…

OOOOOoooo! I love where this is going!

Not just gators but now bears too?

Is that a banjo playing?

You can have the idiots. I have better conversations with myself than with lame-brain pseudo politicians. I never lose an argument with myself; at least none that I know of. lol

Living off the main stream has it’s downfalls. As a former professional plumber I refuse to drink well water and the issues that always surround that. Power goes out, no water. Even if you have a genny you need one huge enough to take the pull a deep water well pump needs and keep the fridges and furnaces running. the new regs for septic systems in central Ontario is ridiculous putting the cost of a septic system, if you live within a mile of a lake, which is everyone, at 18 thousand dollars. I live in the outer edges of a small city in a rural region and that’s just fine. And after 16 years I know all the neighbours within 12 houses.

Will have to see what the Stix means. People from the city don’t understand it doesn’t mean you have no neighbors, it just means your neighbors are farther away. No sidewalks for Janis to take her walks.

maybe even a little light fire arms in the early morning

There is no way Janis could survive in a place where she couldn’t flit about the neighborhood and gather intel so she can pass the gossip to Arlo: “The Smiths are building a new deck, the Ramsey family has had a strange car in their driveway for 3 days, there’s an old man who always says ‘hi’ to me when I walk by his house on Sunny Lane, I can’t believe the Darby twins are teenagers now…..Arlo, are you even listening to me?!?!?”

As I’ve gotten older having things nearer to where I live is a good thing. Having town (nearest gas, milk, etc) 30 min away gets old … much to my surprise!

Why move at all if they are not going to be close to the kids? That is the main purpose of the move.

I loved living in the sticks.

Let Ludwig decide.

Living in the sticks is nice, but problematic as you get older. Proximity to a hospital can be the difference between life and death. Fortunately, the “new” hospital was built about five minutes from my house. I still have to travel about ten miles to get to a supermarket or Walmart, but the Dollar General around the corner will do in a pinch.

All he does is blather about what appears to be his own life decisions. Not funny or amusing any longer.

My husband and I moved from Houston to Kingman, AZ, and built a house on 28 acres. It was beautiful and on top of a mountain. We had neighbors but they were not close by us. We were about 30 minutes away from town by freeway. It was nice until it wasn’t. In 2021, my husband suddenly and unexpectedly passed away from a massive heart attack. I called 911 and started CPR. It took the ambulance 45 minutes to find us and then to make it up the mountain. By the time they arrived, my husband was gone. I promptly sold the house and moved back to civilization in Houston where my kids are.

Note to Arlo – you’ve not lived until you’ve heard a bull alligator delivering his “mating” call from the back yard…

I thought I was moving into “the country”; and now there’s a Walmart Supercenter less than a mile away… sheesh.

We loved the four years we spent in an apartment in the city after decades of suburbia. A&J would too. Exciting to be in the heart of everything and be able to walk everywhere.

No place on the coast will remain “the sticks” for long. They might buy a rural home now and find it surrounded by new condos next year.

No harm in listening to what the man has to say ….

Out where I have a place in Maine there usd to be a man named Joe Pelham who used to talk about being out in the country and in the locals idiom made this charming excerpt about being in the sticks…. >

Guess it won’t let me post a link, just google Joe Pelham and the country to find it…

We considered retiring to the sticks in TN. Hubby liked the idea of having a newer, larger shop. It was a beautiful place with great views. The realtor and his wife would have been our nearest neighbors. I asked them what most people in the area did for entertainment. They answered immediately—’we don’t know, we travel a lot.’

But the thing that nixed the whole plan for me was how far we would have had to drive for ordinary things like groceries, or to find a library. Hubby was not pleased, but since then, he’s had a TIA and one heart attack which, had we lived in the sticks, he probably wouldn’t have survived.

“The sticks”… kind of nice seeing those old-fashioned words.

Wouldn’t “the sticks” defeat the purpose of moving to the shore?

I’d watch too much television without neighbors to watch.