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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Bev, tell your snooty neighbors that in the upscale east of New York and 
Connecticut, a house on a dirt road has country cachet and commands higher 
prices than homes on paved roads.

Give us advance warning of when you are coming. We will invite Don & Trishia 
over and I will make pizza.

Gene

On Oct 15, 2010, at 12:35 PM, EarthNSky wrote:

> My homesteady neighbors, George and Nancy, are moving and have bought a 
> house in Arkansas near the Bull Shoals dam.    This is the guy who taught 
> me to gut a deer, render lard, hunt...OMG, just know I am going to miss 
> them. They invited us out for a vacation and I told Ron that I wanted to 
> go.   They are both extremely talented artists.  Nancy can do anything with 
> paint and George is equally talented but also makes knives and forges other 
> metal artwork.  He was a friend of Mr. Nelson, the guy in the Foxfire books 
> that makes the horse carriage.  They are  good people and I am so sad that 
> they won't be my neighbors anymore.  They gave this valley character, and 
> it is really hard to see them leave, but I totally understand that this 
> place has changed in the years since her daddy bought all this land.  It 
> has changed just in the 12 years we have been here.    Granted, the changes 
> are slow, and I still say that I made a good decision on picking land with 
> a 15-20 year buffer against new developments, but it definitely won't be 
> the same without George living on Rock Creek.
> I know that is really, really close to you, Gene, and some others on this 
> list that I would like to see, so I think we will heading to 
> Arkansas/Missouri sooner than anyone knew.  I definitely want to fish on 
> the river and see some old friends and meet some of you fine folks.  Ron's 
> monk brother lives nearby in Ava as well.
> 
> The new guy who bought George's place is a rich architect from Atlanta.  
> They plan to use the house as a weekend getaway so that their kids can ride 
> 4 wheelers and experience the country.  They mistakenly think they can ride 
> them on the forest service roads and land..they are in for a rude 
> awakening.  I have heard all kinds of things about them...they ripped 
> native flowering vines out of a small tree...they did not know what turnip 
> greens were when they saw them...the kids were not minding the parents and 
> were extremely unruly and disrespectful...they were playing with George's 
> axes and throwing them, causing him to have to resharpen everything.
> I am holding my breath and I'm trying not to prejudge, but what I have 
> heard is not good. The winds of change are blowing...
> 
> Speaking of changes, it is kind of a joke...
> A mile or so down the road there are 3 or 4 'new neighbors' all Atlanta 
> escapees who have moved here in the last 4 years.  One of them started a 
> petition to get our road repaved.  It really was the most horrific paved 
> road I've ever driven on and you literally drove an obstacle course 
> swerving to hit only the shallowest of potholes instead of the larger, 
> deeper ones.   We live at the tip of the loop, which is 3.5 miles in from 
> either direction.  Most folks only had half that distance to drive, but I 
> ran the full gauntlet.   It was tearing up peoples' suspensions in their 
> big trucks..lol...  So anyway, they took this petition around and from peer 
> pressure, I signed it.  There was only one resident, the local 'crazy' guy, 
> who refused, and I really should have joined him because I was thinking 
> that if the road was paved better then there would be more traffic, more 
> dope dealers, more teens racing, and more development.  This is a 7 mile 
> long loop, and there are 5 or 6  ritzy houses on the other side of the loop 
> that had a decently paved section of the road.   They even have a fire 
> hydrant (county water access) and DSL other there.  Alas, though, we are 
> back in the hollow, the poor hill billies, and the county has overlooked us 
> more than once, which really is a blessing in many ways.   But I digress..
> 
> So we sign the petition and less than a month later, a new sign goes up at 
> the entrance to the loop-"Loose Gravel", and within a week, they are 
> ripping up the road surface and laying gravel.   They have packed it down 
> and it is better than having all the potholes, but everyone hates it.  All 
> the new people, including the rich folks on the other side of the loop that 
> did not sign the petition are now up in arms because the county has left us 
> with a gravel road..lol..I actually this is hilarious and once it rains 
> good and settles the dust I think the new gravel road will be fine.  At 
> least no one will be racing and no one will get their trucks damaged.  It 
> is horrible for our bikes, though, and the rich people will probably get 
> their way and have their little half mile repaved.  It has to be a sign of 
> the times that a paved road becomes a gravel road.  I could be a conspiracy 
> theorist and say that the rumors for this valley long term might be true..I 
> have long heard that this might become a new reservoir for drinking water 
> for Atlanta..it makes me wonder if this valley and my home might be 
> underwater in 100 years...maybe I should move to Arkansas or Missouri, too.
> 
> B
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> EarthNSky Farm        34.498N 85.076W
> SISU! (Finnish--There is no single word in English that encompasses
> all that sisu means, but it combines the following ideas: guts, pep,
> determination, stubbornness, perseverance, hardiness, stamina, go, do,
> nerve, spunk, pluck, and grit.  It's like "Just Do It!"&  "Go for It!")
>                               
> 
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