Birding and Squirreling
Quiet. "I just like to sit on the patio and listen to the birds birding and watch the squirrels squirreling." My sister used to say. Quiet...where she was, where we are.
My daughter for the Fourth of July this year had some of her in-law relatives for company. Have I mentioned how intimidating it is to live out here in the middle of nowhere?
One year we, Old Fuzzy, Young Fuzzy and I went with a group doing mission work in Mexico. I don't remember the city, but after we were done with the work we had come to do in the big city we went to a 'ranchero'.
It wasn't far from the city miles wise, but the city wasn't easily accessible for the ranchero residents.
The Mexican ranchero was a little village, maybe an hour, give or take from the large city. They would be considered rural, and for the most part they look poor.
It runs in my mind, in their small community, they had a modern looking school, a small store, and a church. It was a small rural town, but not comparable to our small towns.
We residents of America are of a different mindset than the rest of the world. In America, we have cars and we know how to use them...Many workers from our small towns car pool and drive an hour into larger towns for jobs.
At one time we had two ranchero style stores within a mile, mile and a half of where we live now. But, since people are in the larger city for their jobs, they do a lot of their shopping there.
Our small town stores dried up not being able to compete. Our communities rely on our farmers, but we have fewer and fewer farmers.
It became a 'get big, or get out' mantra. Larger farmers bought up the small farms and got bigger. Small farmers sold out and left.
We still do a lot of living out here, but it isn't as obvious what's going on. Like the proverb says, time and tide wait for no man. Time marches on.
