“I don’t know what you do in New York, but around here we don’t give a man a funeral unless we’re pretty sure he needs one.” – Green Acres
I think I ran over Schrödinger’s cat. Not sure if I feel guilty or not.
Growing up, Green Acres was one of my favorite television shows. I was far too young to have seen it in the first run, but the local television station showed reruns that were on after the school bus made it all the way to the top of Wilder Mountain. The bus rides were long, but I learned a lot about kindness – one time I saw someone give up their seat for a blind student. In retrospect, the bus driver probably showed poor judgement in letting that blind girl drive.
For those of you that haven’t seen it, Green Acres was about a New York attorney (Oliver Wendell Douglas) that decided he was through with city life. Mr. Douglas quit his big city life and moved to the rural town of Hooterville. The show never discusses exactly where Hooterville is, but the best theory is that Hooterville is in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri.
The show was funny in a way that television isn’t now. Oliver always tried to fit in, but never could quite adjust from his city ways. A lot of the humor was making fun of that disconnect between Oliver and the humorous cast of townspeople, though the relationship between Oliver and his wife was loving, strong, and funny. Here’s a scene when there were looking for clothes to donate:
Oliver Douglas: Why don’t we give away this one?
Lisa Douglas: No that’s the dress I graduated from high school in.
Oliver Douglas: How about this one?
Lisa Douglas: That’s the dress I wore the first day of college.
Oliver Douglas: [holding a black, low-cut dress] What about this one?
Lisa Douglas: That’s the one I got expelled in.
Why do I bring this up?
If I ever get a barn I’ll make sure I have an Internet router in there, so I can have stable wifi.
This weekend, The Mrs. and I were snoozing and were listening to the Watchdog on Wall Street, a radio show about investment. In the latest episode/podcast (Expedition New York – LINK), the host advocated what he called the Sam Kinison solution. Give good people U-Hauls® so they can leave the cities that are turning into scenes from Mad Max. “The reality of many urban areas is . . . it’s going to take a long, long time to come back.”
“Move.”
I was slipping in and out of sleep, but discussed the show later with The Mrs.
“He’s right you know. The era of law in those big cities is over. The District Attorneys in those large metropolitan areas have been bought and paid for by the far Left (LINK, LINK, LINK and I could go on forever with links). The DAs are no longer concerned with Justice,” I said. “These DAs are concerned with Social Justice. Try to defend yourself in a lot of these large urban monstrosities, and you’ll find out what the inside of a jail cell looks like pretty quickly. And that scares me because my brother got stabbed in jail. We took Monopoly® just a bit too seriously when I grew up.”
“Well, they can’t move here. We’re full.” That’s not exactly what The Mrs. said, but I can’t repeat it exactly since this is a family-friendly blog.
Although The Mrs. isn’t a social butterfly, she doesn’t exactly hate people. And it’s not new people moving to Modern Mayberry that was bothering her. It’s Leftist ideas.
I donated $50 to a Leftist group the other day. I hope they find a cure.
“They residents of those cities are the reason the cities are in the condition that they’re in. Then they’ll move here, and want to turn Modern Mayberry into what they left.”
The Mrs. is not wrong. Here’s an example.
My brother, John Wilder had this problem in his midsized town. (Yes, his first name really is John as well. Our parents were caught in a soap opera episode and got amnesia and forgot they had him and named me the same thing by mistake.) He was at the neighborhood homeowners’ association meeting when they were selecting a trash company. They recently had an influx of people from the United Soviet Republic of California who had gotten approval to leave the state from the Supreme Soviet.
“Well,” one transplant said, “we certainly must be environmentally friendly. We should pick the trash company that offers the mandatory recycling. They only cost $35 more a month.”
After about an hour, my brother talked the homeowners’ association into picking the cheaper trash company. Is recycling bad? Not at all. Junkyards have been recycling cars for decades. Aluminum recycling makes beer cans cheaper. But in my brother’s town, the only thing that was really recycled was aluminum – the rest of the trash went into the dump whether or not it was neatly sorted.
That’s what scared The Mrs.
I always get sad after crushing aluminum cans – it’s soda pressing.
Modern Mayberry is nice because it doesn’t have those things the big cities have, including all of their problems.
And the economy appears to be in a pretty bad state. The dollar bubble appears to be in the first phase of ending. The gold bubble may be inflating, and inflation will follow a deflation of the dollar, which is exactly as I predicted, but it’s about six months earlier than I had expected.
The median price (right now) for a house in San Francisco is $1,108 per square foot. In Modern Mayberry, I couldn’t find a single house that cost more than $100 per square foot. Sadly, you have to do without all of those San Francisco amenities like people pooping in the streets, riots and the San Francisco 49ers™. On the plus side, the Oakland Raiders® have moved, and if San Franciscans are lucky, what goes to Vegas stays in Vegas.
This is a true statement.
If I were in Seattle or Portland or New York or any of a dozen other large cities I would be moving if I had children. The best time to move is ten years ago. This gives you time to build the relationships and integrate into the community. In Modern Mayberry, I’m still one of the New Guys, even after a decade.
The second best time is now. The worst time to move is after the bottom drops out and escaping from New York looks like something that even Kurt Russell couldn’t do on his best day.
And, if you decide to move, here’s hoping that you find a place as nice as Hooterville. I hear they have good hotscakes there.
Remember that the worst time to move is one day too late.
But what about my 401k and health insurance? I have to stay in the city to keep my job! How can I survive without living in a cubicle doing meaningless work?
Just being honest, if you don’t already know you need to get out of the city at this point, you are probably so dumb that we don’t want you moving out to the country. We will have our hands full keeping our family alive without taking on city slicker dependents.
There are still far too many people who think they can stay in the city until the last possible moment and then they will grab their bug-out bag and flee….at the same time everyone else is fleeing. As a wise man once wrote: the time to bug-out is right now
https://www.arthursido.com/2019/04/bug-out-now.html
I left the big smoke in NZ (Auckland: HGTV promote it as livable, and it is not) a decade ago. I now live in a village where if you have not got three generations buried in the local cemetery you are still new. Some of the old families don’t like us.
But the main problem we have is the university, who import American academics and want to be internationally famous. They reliably vote green: the speed limit in town is now 20 kph (12 mph).
Learn from us. Turn them away.
Concur. Not only do they vote left, but in parts of the US, the bulk of the agitators are probably students or professors.
Look at the agitators attempting to march through a suburb in Springfield, Oregon yesterday. And then consider, what’s around Springfield, Oregon? Well there is the University of Oregon… Same thought applies to Portland, Oregon.
12? 12?
Yikes. Pugsley does that at a trot. Does everyone have to wear bubble wrap?
Green Acres was WAY beyond being just another rural comedy. Much more than a bizarre and surreal comedy that routinely broke the fourth wall and parodied the margarine commercials that sponsored it, Green Acres was a political platform that addressed the growing social unrest across America…
…discussing Vietnam…
https://tv.avclub.com/the-amiable-madness-of-green-acres-1798231385
…civil rights…
…student protest…
…the welfare state…
…and much much more.
Altho I watched Green Acres occasionally as a kid, I liked Gilligan’s Island far more and grew up to be a version of The Professor. Looks like the people who liked Green Acres grew up to write bizarre and surreal political blogs. 🙂
Regardless what old TV programming/programs (I admit there were some we enjoyed)
the time to leave violence, poop on sidewalks, and crazy priced housing surrounded
by downtown syringe piles (but the restaurants are so trendy) was a decade ago.
Small townies are terrified of “city ways” and it gets channeled into resentment. There remain
certain freedoms/to be left alone, for one big advantage. Do not try to change things or impose
city “values.” Tip: Express your gratitude for the privilege of living in a beautiful environment/
sans constant sirens, and shrill noises. The tourists’ $$$ is welcome but remember they are just
visiting. Adjust your attitude to the tone of the town and be sincere about it. Eventually, some of
the people will be glad to see you. And please, no virtue signaling. Be virtuous, don’t talk about it.
Good luck to city dwellers. I had some tough challenges but I never ever contemplated a return
to a city.
But that was also when a joke could be a joke, and, for instance, when Arnold was drafted, it was still, well, funny.
Mary Ann or Ginger?
Well stated, sir.
The effective people on the right have mostly moved out already. Most of what we see now are moderates leaving the termite mounds. And we know that moderates always, always shoot right. The believe their programming. At this point, they’re indistinguishable from the Leftists of 5-10 years ago.
When I worked in the Imperial Capitol (AKA Mordor on the Potomac), I lived 65 miles away in the mountains. In that region, it’s a 5 hour round trip to work every day. But it was worth it to raise my kids as far away as I could from that cesspit of scum and depravity. We have since moved back to Midwestia, thank goodness. The rot was spreading out to where we used to live amazingly quickly.
I used to be worried that Iran would build nuclear weapons and send weaponized container ships to America’s great ports – New York, Boston, Baltimore, Miami, LA, San Franshitsco, Portland, Seattle, Houston. Now I consider that to be a feature, not a bug.
Well stated, sir.
Remember – Moderates always shoot right. At this point, they’re indistinguishable from the Leftists of 5-10 years ago.
They do. And people on the center-Right shoot Right, too.
Please pen a follow up urging those in these cities to go north to Canada. We don’t need any more of them in our town. California is emptying out into where I am in southern Utah. They’re an invasive species. Please no more articles urging migration. I think that I need to go further north where the cold scares them off.
Cold is good. It freezes out all sorts of insects.
I hope most of us have read Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy. I live in “Trantor”, about 10 miles (60 km 😉 ) from the obelisk, and I’m planning to stay here. We’re in a mid-century suburb: 1/4-acre lots within bicycle distance of church, groceries, and Home Depot. The vegetable gardens get more productive every year as the soil improves. (Squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs, and deer eat a lot of the produce. That’s fine with me; if/when things get spicy, either I or someone else will eat those varmints.) We’ve got reliable Internet, electric power, water/sewer, nat. gas, and a good hospital about 15 minutes away. Of course, all of these things could disappear, but my sense is that they’ll disappear sooner in almost every other place than here.
And, you know, somebody’s got to establish a Foundation or two…
16 km = 10 miles. Far too close to the city.
The bad metric conversions are a feature of the blog. I am responsible, and Chuck was speaking my language. I CAN do metric conversions but I love kidding people who are metric-philes.
You’re deep in enemy territory, my friend. My best to you. Last time I was there I saw James Carville, er, Hari Seldon jogging.
You’re right – they’ll stay there longer. Again, be safe.
Another city / rural ‘Fish Out of Water’ comedy was Northern Exposure (CBS 1990 -1995). City Doctor receives an endowment from a retired astronaut in Alaska. The students payment is having to be the doctor for this village for a period of time (I forget what). If you haven’t seen it, it might grow on you if you aren’t careful – Dr. Joel played the role well.
The Mrs. was a fan – I’ve never seen an episode. Might have to give it a look. Thanks!
Speaking of moving to reach safety from the actions of Marxists, ya gotta feel for those people in and upstream of Wuhan China who are rolling the dice again this week. 2020 is just not their year. First they unleash COVID-19 on the world. Now, due to extremely heavy rains last week through this week, there are a literal half million people there in danger of drowning without warning if the Three Gorges Dam collapses after alleged CCP mismanagement of water release due to political considerations.
https://youtu.be/5O1w2UelZZQ
https://youtu.be/1AeCyM0DfoM
In “Brother, Where Art Thou?”, a traumatic flood is allegedly caused by the creation of a dam. That was nonsense; the lakes behind new dams fill very slowly as the area of the reservoir increases as the water rises. But when a dam breaks, it’s a different story, and your videos show massive flooding just due to controlled releases from the 3GD. 45 million people already affected, and the water continues to rise.
Thanks for the links.
Yeah, I’ve been watching that. They have a LOT of water this year. If the dam goes, then what??
Living close to a Red State Capitol City that is experiencing the enrichment improvementation. Bus stops and street lights are going up so that the comrades can sally forth and spread diversity hither and yon.
Particle board apartments are going up to house the replacements and driving is even more fun now that ten times the amount of people are jammed into a small county on the outskirts.
Those who vote for a living elected a CPUSA mayor and his teevee ads show that he knows who put him in office
There are no creepy azz crackas in those ads. Sorry for the blunt language.
I grew up here and won’t be moving. If hot lead dispensing has to occur in defense of my turf then so be it.
Because I live here that’s why.
God love ya’ – I do understand your not wanting to move. However, it might be a good idea to buy a small piece of land with access to water, where you might be able to move a small trailer, and use solar for what electricity is necessary.
Use it for SHORT periods, while the situation is particularly bad. However, if you chose to just stay, know your neighbors – who you can trust, who you CAN’T trust, and who has skills that might be useful. But, yeah, make it clear that you are NOT to be f****d with.
More important than being in a ‘safe’ place, is to know who is around you.
That is so critical Linda. Having a place away from the city is great but if you don’t know anyone around you, you are going to be in trouble. Moving permanently allows you to begin building relationships. A lot of us get caught up on having the right gear but who you know is at least as important as what you have.
Fair enough answer.
Wolverines!
I just got back from my bug out location. Buried more supplies for the future. I noticed 3 new spots within a mile. A old 5th wheel sitting in a clearing of recently pushed over trees, with a motorcycle parked outside. A new shed sitting in a 10 acre field with one tree to provide shade and a truck. Also a tee pee sited almost on the road with a mountian bike and trailer. Yes, people are getting out.
It’s happening. Time is going to move ever quicker.
Done a couple of years ago and in the United Soviet Republic no less!
I’d like to say it was clear insight into our unfortunate political mess, but I was also sick of the commute, the hamster wheel and simply wanted peace along with reduction of the run to a walk.
When we left Houston it was big and such a relief. Human size, human scale.
I have been digging around on the internet (Zillow specifically) to try to figure out where I might want to end up. I live in a small town between two large cities and although we don’t really have any issues here, I can see where this state is headed and figure it’s time to think about getting out. Funny thing is that it was fine four years ago. Gun rights propositions passed overwhelmingly, tax rollback propositions likewise. Then suddenly it just went to hell. R party lost control of the state senate, no one was blocking bad legislation, gun restriction proposition passed overwhelmingly, riots started in the major city and have pretty much continued on and off for the last four years.
I am lucky in that my skill sets (math teacher, Harley mechanic) are both pretty transferable. Although I really like where I am living and the school at which I teach, I figure I could probably get a job doing either, both, or neither pretty easily. Turns out its not that easy to figure out where you want to live, though. I moved here because of family, I moved everywhere else because of jobs or friends. Picking a small town at random (or property outside a small town) is much harder because of the plethora of choices. I read an article some time ago that suggested that the human brain shuts down when confronted with too many choices. Ask someone if they want A or B, they will pick one. Ask them whether they want A, B, C, …, X, Y, Z and they will dither and frequently fail to choose. Perhaps that is what Gozer the Gozerian got right. It didn’t ask the Ghostbusters to choose from a list, it just told them to choose. The guys were then free to choose from the very small list of whatever popped into their heads.
Things are moving very, very fast. One year too soon is better than one week too late.