We’d gotten the pickup washed in town, but after 5 miles of white rock road you couldn’t tell it was ever clean. “It’s the price we pay to live in paradise,” Bruce said, and, yes, there are advantages to living at the end of the road. The sign by our gate warns, “Go away.” One in the kitchen says, “I want to be where the people aren’t.” Humor aside, we don’t feel isolated. Reliable vehicles make it possible to have as much social life as we choose, and we’ve gotten used to most of the amenities that modern life provides. But the bubble is about to burst. Services we took for granted are slipping away because it’s all about the bottom line for providers.
Despite claims that broadband service will be upgraded for rural communities, the companies that provide fiberoptic say it’s not profitable for them to run cable in places where homes are several miles apart, so folks in those areas will have to make do with cell phones. Guess they’ve never been out here where cell service is spotty, at best. We keep a land line, but the company who provides that service won’t upgrade the forty-year-old equipment because people are too far apart for it to be profitable. Phones in my early years were strung by hand, on tall fence posts, and maintained by the people on that party line. When the phone went out, wives raised a fuss and sent their men right out to find, and fix, the problem. We can’t even get a live person in order to report an outage.
Nursing homes are closing. There may be a hundred miles between facilities that care for the elderly. Like it or not, we may soon be back to moving granny in with us and becoming a caretaker. The medical field combines services, which makes it necessary to drive long distances for tests or surgeries.
Due to school consolidation, students travel many miles and hours to participate in sports. Valuable class time is lost, not to mention concerns over the health and safety of young people on the road. Maybe it’s time to go back to using school time for scholastics and separating sports from education. It was normal, a generation or two ago, for kids to live away from home during the school year. Home schooling is on the rise, which may be a better solution for us out in the boonies. Fuel prices are also a factor.
Mail delivery will be erratic when the postal service moves operations to big cities but lately, it’s about efficiency, rather than service. Already, the entities who claim to deliver anywhere are backing up. We get calls asking if they can leave packages in town so they don’t have to drive out here.
Many years ago, graded roads and narrow oil strips began replacing the two track trails we were used to. There’s little maintenance, and some ag-related drivers refuse to beat their equipment over the potholes and ruts. Upgrades to existing roads carry so many federal regulations that counties can’t afford to fix them, and don’t qualify for grants.
We’re backing up folks. We pay a high price to live in paradise. How long will people be willing to pay it, and will the last ones to leave turn out the lights?
Meet me here next week and, meanwhile, do your best. Somebody might like it.