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Last Updated: Aug 22, 2008 - 12:10:50 AM |
Only a small part of the East
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The news is bad. There is the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the credit crisis, the housing bubble crisis, and the mortgage crisis. And if all of that isn’t enough, it seems a few crises are made up just for fun in this year of a presidential election – or for profit with Volvo advertising a heartbeat sensor that will tell you if a murderer is lying in wait in the backseat of your car (I’m not making that up).
It’s enough to make people want to run home and pull the covers over their heads. Or, at least, it’s enough to make them run home.
Sometime in the mid-1990s a rural renaissance began. People started leaving the cities for small towns in noticeable numbers. One demographic researcher said that it was the first time in 200 years that such a trend could be seen. It is probable the housing boom of the last few years interrupted the relatively small migration but now that’s over, I suspect it will again pick up steam. Believe it or not, you can actually buy a book from Amazon.com with “instructions” on how to move to a small town.
From my own experience, Marengo and Victor are much more city-like than the suburb of Tampa I left behind. My wife and I can walk to stores – something completely out of the question in the Tampa Bay area – and there is a heartbeat and bustle here that was completely lacking in Florida.
It is hard to care much about or get involved in the fate of a soulless, sprawling suburb. In such places, people tend to be more focused on protecting their own little piece of it. But it’s easy to care about what happens to Victor and Marengo. These are our towns – this is our place.
The first person we met here was our realtor, Tom Sandersfeld. As my wife and I piled out of our stuffed to the rafters sports car with Florida plates, he probably didn’t exactly consider us hot prospects. But if that was the case, he didn’t show it – he told us about the town with a definite tone of pride and he told us about the winters, in far more accurate detail than we were to hear from anyone else. He also told us that if the property taxes seemed high, it was because the town had invested in things to make the place better. We took an immediate liking to Tom.
As we stood outside of the home on that beautiful July day, we listened to Tom and noticed that people driving by waved at us. That was weird. Not a single passing car was blasting out bass tones loud enough to shatter glass and there were no obscene gestures. Weirder still. We took an immediate liking to the town, too.
A month later, we bought the house Tom showed us. We joined the migration from the city to the small town.
We aren’t alone. Eric Zehr moved to a small town – and has invested considerably in it with his business, Victor Appliance. Susie Turnbull has done the same with her business, Red Dog Black Dog Studios. People like Tom Sandersfeld in Marengo, Mel Uridil and Fred Stiefel in Victor and the Huedepohl’s at Victor Lumber work to keep the towns working. Not only for business reasons but because they actually care. And it is because of all of them and many others that these towns will not only survive but prosper.
Despite what you may have heard, there aren’t necessarily a lot of conveniences to living in a big city. A trip to Target required at least a two hour commitment – and the resolve to fight heavy traffic. A trip to the grocery store required at least 45 minutes – and a willingness to wait in a long line for the cash register. In our home and cars, the doors were almost always locked. Nothing that we felt an attachment to was left outside. I constantly reminded my wife to exercise caution when walking to her car after dark (and for good reason). The schools have armed deputies.
In Marengo, a round trip to the grocery store can be completed in 10 minutes. Target still takes nearly two hours but the traffic stress is much less – and the lines are much shorter. We don’t have locks and alarms on everything – nor do we need them. I’d be surprised if anyone here has a car with a heartbeat sensor to detect murderers. A small town isn’t necessarily utopia but it’s not far from it. And the conveniences of a city aren’t so convenient if it is a constant battle to partake in them.
People wave. It’s no longer weird – it’s nice to see. If there are crises to be faced, I can tell you with certainty, I’d rather face them here than in a soulless, sprawling suburb. But somehow, just being here in a small town makes them seem more manageable. This is the place people think about when they refer to the “Good Old Days” of America. It’s not gone, it is still right here in these towns.
I have no doubt that more and more in the coming years people will be returning home. The friendliness, convenience and safety of the small town trump the bright lights of the big city any day.
That secret is just now getting out.
© Copyright 2008 by The East Iowa Herald
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