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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Here is the rest of Chapter Four from my book:

Boomer burnouts/urban refugees

Solitude is impracticable, and society fatal.
We must keep our head in the one and our hands in the other.
The conditions are met, if we keep our independence,
yet do not lose our sympathy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

America’s baby-boomers have met middle age—and they are not ecstatic  
about the introduction, never mind the relationship. Boomer burnouts  
are rejecting corporate ladders and choosing fruit-picking ladders.  
They’re talking health, longevity, ecology, sustainability. They’re  
reconsidering family, community, safety, security, the purpose of  
life. Many of the 76 million boomers have boarded the wagon train  
leaving metropolis for the boondocks.
Urban refugees are moving to the country as well as away from the  
city. Often unequipped with country skills, many move to fringe areas  
and small towns rather than real country. In the aftermath of mass  
layoffs many have redefined their work ethic. Working to live is  
accepted—living to work is passé.
This group’s collective profile is: married, above-average education,  
affluent, zero-to-two children, homeowner, long-distance commuter, 60- 
hour workweeks, fantasizer of better quality life with more time to  
spend with family. Those couples who have ever thought, “We just had  
sex, so it must be Saturday,” may fit into this group.

Concerned  parents

Plummeting academic standards and achievements, schoolyard drug  
dealers, guns, graffiti and hoodlumism pervade all but the top city  
schools. Concerned parents are homeschooling or moving to carefully  
selected rural school districts with high standards. The introduction  
to rural school discipline can be shocking to ex-city kids accustomed  
to rowdy classrooms.
 If you fit into this category, be aware that many rural school  
boards have budget challenges as serious as their city counterparts.  
Also, not all country communities place a premium on education.  
Identify several areas you like, then contact school principals with  
questions regarding class sizes, curriculum, gifted and special  
education programs, percentage of dropouts and percentage of graduates  
who go on to college. Query county clerks on voter response to school  
bonds and taxes. Shorten your list, then visit schools and observe the  
attitudes of teachers and students. Don’t be put off by modest  
physical facilities; although few one-room schools still exist, they  
often do a superior job of educating up to high school level. No wonder 
—by the time students reach the eighth grade, they’ve already heard  
the material seven times!

Environmentalists

Seventy-six percent of all Americans
describe themselves as environmentalists.
There is precious little else
about which we so thoroughly agree.
 Joel Garreau
Edge City

Conservationists, ecologists, environmentalists, Greens—however we  
label ourselves—constitute the surging swell of citizens who  
understand that Spaceship Earth is suffering from bad management. We  
are informed people who believe in taking greater responsibility for  
our conduct, who understand that we are in fact “all in this together.”
Environmentalists cite cities as inefficient and wasteful of energy  
resources, generators of greenhouse gasses, acid rain, toxic waste and  
enormous accumulations of garbage. Some stay in the city to effect  
change from within. Many move to the country to lead simpler lives in  
tune with natural laws.
This group has the greatest age spread, the highest idealism and  
perhaps the greatest potential for rural life disaster. If you  
identify most strongly with this group, I recommend you spend  
substantial time in your chosen area before buying. Rent or caretake  
for a year. Learn country skills. Live with farm families, perhaps  
with alternative communities. And do not expect to change the  
attitudes of the natives. Show beliefs by actions, not words. You will  
find similar souls who have preceded you.

Retirees and cashing outers

Once the gold encircles the wrist (what—they don’t do that anymore?)  
and the long-dreamed-about check appears in the mailbox, there is the  
challenge of what to do between naps. There is also the freedom to  
live wherever that check will cover expenses. The usual scenario is to  
sell the city house for big bucks, buy a country cottage for a third  
as much, then fish, golf, garden and entertain city friends who come  
to vacation rent-free. Today, many retirees are breaking the Sunbelt  
syndrome and moving to the so-called Cloudbelt—places of spectacular  
scenery with moderate-to-cold winters where they find low prices and  
taxes, no crowding and satisfying lifestyles.

Retirement destinations are no longer limited to the popular stereotypes
of Florida and the Southwest. Widespread in-migration has occurred
in the Ozarks, the New England coast, the southern Blue Ridge, the
Texas Hill Country, the Puget Sound area, the Upper Great Lakes,
the Sierra Nevada foothills, western Oregon, east Texas,
and the Tidewater areas of Maryland and Virginia.
All of these locations involve dispersed settlement,
and not merely aggregations of people in towns.
Calvin Beale

Cashing outers was coined by Faith Popcorn, who wrote that cashing out  
“is a dream as old as America itself: give me a piece of land to call  
my own, a little town where everyone knows my name. It’s a dream we  
are dreaming with a new heart-and-gut-felt urgency. More than the  
romance of the country, it’s a promise of safety, of comfort, and of  
old-fashioned values.”
 Cashing outers buy or create bed-and-breakfast inns, ink small-town  
newspapers, mix goat-milk ice cream, raise sheep and weave wool  
products, operate fishing resorts, throw pottery, craft furniture,  
consult. They often work harder than they did for the corporate cats,  
but they don’t commute, they don't wear suits, they don’t lug  
briefcases, and they call their own shots.

Survivalists

So-called survivalists (aren’t we all?) deserve better press. While a  
few seem to suffer from a Rambo complex, most are level-headed  
citizens, many are sincere passivists. What all share is a fear that  
senseless crime, riots, bombings and the fragility of urban food and  
utility systems are precursors to chaos—and that when city systems  
collapse there will be a mob exodus to the countryside. Alvin Toffler  
wrote in Future Shock that “Great cities are paralyzed by strikes,  
power failures, riots.” The New York garbage collectors’ strike, the  
1965 Watts riots, the 1992 L.A. riots, the 1994 L.A. earthquake, and  
the Blizzard of ’96 were examples of near paralysis that illustrated  
the dependence and vulnerability of city dwellers when systems break  
down. It is at such times that the social condition of a place is  
magnified and clarified. In the first 30 minutes of the 1977 New York  
power blackout, looters had stolen $150 million in goods.
A dramatic example of a national paralysis began November 24, 1995, in  
France with a strike by civil servants. Railroad workers, mass-transit  
workers, mail sorters and utilities workers nearly shut down the  
country for a week. Cities were choked with traffic jams and millions  
of people were forced to walk, bicycle or hitchhike to work. The  
economic cost was hundreds of millions of dollars per day (Time,  
12-11-95).
Survivalists buy land far from highways, strive for self-sufficiency,  
often homeschool. The more militant arm themselves heavily, but they  
usually make peaceful neighbors. Their complaints typically focus on  
federal and state government, not on locally-elected officials.

In addition to one or more of the above you may find yourself labeled  
urban dropout, urban flighter, rat race escapee, yupneck, or new  
American pioneer. The diversity of labels shows that the wagon train  
is composed of diverse, unique types. The common quest is high-quality  
life. Welcome aboard.

Pop quiz

So now, do you know who you are? Did you quickly identify with one of  
the above groups or, more likely, did you find something of yourself  
in two or more? That’s fine, of course. You pass. What this chapter is  
about is getting you thinking about your basic and vital motivations,  
your needs and your wants.

Final thought

Country living is conducive to fresh thinking about values. Donald  
McCaig, in An American Homeplace, quotes Scott Nearing: “The only  
thing more cowardly than a million dollars is two million dollars.”  
Nearing lived his words: he and wife Helen refused inheritances and  
when they left Vermont for less-crowded Maine they sold their  
homestead for only the value of the cash and labor they had invested  
in it, one-fourth of its market value. That says a lot for who they were


> Gene GeRue

www.RURALIZE.com