However, somehow I had pictured you and the Misses and the critters in a more rural local. Maybe it's all the baking MJ does. I pictured her in the garden picking her fresh apples, pears, apricots, berries.
We have what could be said to be a country house in the city. It feels and looks as if, from the inside, it's on much larger land. We will only live in small towns or the country ~ no Portland for us, though we have done it ~ it's just TOO inefficient. I want immediate services and friends. This place is like ~ all mine. It's like I own the whole place. Know what I mean? As though the whole place is managed just for me. We have incredibly efficient and beautiful surroundings.
A two and a half million dollar library, three blocks away, thru the park. Next to City Hall and the Police Dept and the swimming pool. And the museum. It's a really beautiful park, along the creek, of which we have a few. This is a Renaissance Town, if there is such a modern thing. It is imho, without a doubt the nicest place in our state. If there were a nicer place for us here, we'd be in it. Because we selected this place from the whole state and just up and moved here.
I think it's the type of place, that if it were practical, everyone on this thread would live. It is as ideal as American life gets. There may be other high-lives which are equal, and of a different type, but of all the places I've see in the West, which is literally almost Everywhere I kid you not, this is un-topped.
It is ridiculously, absurdly, easy to live here. In a lot of ways it's like staying at a very expensive hotel, for years on end.
It can, and will, be ruined. In probably twenty years. We're actually surprised it's lasted this long.
But, to heck with the truth; dream on.
Amazingly, they continue to make it nicer and nicer, really, nice, which of course when contrasted with the Outside World, will bring more people here to escape the Hells they have created. When they were given their own chance to do so, they did. And now they would rather have this, that we fought to build this way.
Myself included. We "own" a bunch of this town. And we fought against the crap that makes places crap, and won. For instance, the Comprehensive Plan has a lot of my work in it. (As well as a bunch of other good people, of course.)
It's funny, I'm giggling when I think back, how much throw weight we've used. MJ and I and our elders and peers. It's like an ancient Greek city democracy. And it's worked incredibly well. Just amazing.
I think you would like it. Pretty much everyone who doesn't need to live in a city would.
When it comes to our lot and house, it is very much like a country place, but it is two blocks or so from "Downtown."
This is River City; the American Dream.
I guess I'm bragging, but that's not the way I mean it. |
