shaler-butler-clarion-what a coincedence! hey joe-this is too wierd! i grew up in ross twsp, and one of my cousins is a dentist who lives/works near butler and bought property and built his dream getaway place in clarion!! when the california ratrace gets to me i fly in to see him and spend some time at his place in clarion. quiet, deer, turkeys, porcupines etc etc. also, tomsriv-im just over the hill in thousand oaks, if you have never lived anywhere else, you oughta try it. im really wanting to move to ne tennessee, but my california born and raised bride is terrified to try anything else.
Yes, this is wierd!!! Where abouts is your cousin's slice of heaven?? My place is in Miola, 5 miles from town off of (you guessed it..) Miola road. About a mile from the elk farm (damn things are noisy). It's true about the wildlife in this area. Many a time I was piddling through the weeds when I walked up on something. Couple of years ago I about stepped on a fawn. I got out of there rather quickly, though. I didn't want to meet mama.
More of a bumpkin than a slicker here... but both in me. Grew up in Grand Ledge MI... small town about 5mi west of Lansing. 2acres of land, surrounded by 36 acres of corn on the back and sides, dirt road in front... and another 56acres of corn across of that talk about privacy.... Just outside of city limits so I could target practice in the back yard all I wanted:blast: p Not so small of a town now tho... really boomed since I left 4yrs ago (gee, was it me.. :laugh: ) Now I live on a 100' X 100' lot.... in a city of 150,000 during the "Off" season... probably 215-250,000 during the winter. Man, I miss "nothing".
slicker yearning to be a bumpkin we live in a suburb just north of Chicago. Our business is in the Loop and on an average work day it only takes us about a half hour to make it downtown.I love the dirty looks we get from our uptight white collar neighbors when we do test and tune around the hood.We used to live so close to the "jungle" that back when the Bulls were winning all those trophy's in the ninety's you could hear the small arm fire whenever they would clinch another championship.We are longing for the day when we can pack it up and move up north to the Illinois chain o lakes region.How sweet it will be when I can walk out the back door and go bass fishing with the boy. Just hope we can do it while he's still "the boy" D.
what would you call a place where the whole county population is about 85,000, surrounded by miles and miles of national forests, farms, and rednecks, environmentalists, ex-big city imports,college kids, lumberjacks [forest products workers, excuse me.]and a lot of local old timers with a real "NIMBY" attitude tword change of any kind? i live in the 2nd or 3rd largest "city" in this state, and we still get a LOT of wildlife strolling through town. anybody see the craig killborn show where they showed the bear bouncing off the trampoline? that is missoula. this is why i call it "montucky" :ball:
Re: slicker yearning to be a bumpkin I lived in Forest Park back in the Bulls heyday. Back when the basketball season was only 11 months and 15 days long :eek2: , I was driving into town from the Nats on the night of the Three-peat. I had no idea what the hell was going on, but I was a bit concerned...
just as I thought Seems like the country boys have it. I appear to be the opposite of the majority here. I was born in western PA about 5 miles from the nearest 3 traffic light town. It was very condusive to the gearhead thing but we also got in alot of trouble 'cause there was nothing else to do. When I got out of highschool there where no jobs to be had so I started driving toward the city applying for jobs and didn't stop until I got a job on the edge of the city (Pittsburgh). I few months later I moved into a dumpy apartment in Westview, rented a garage for my car and I've been a city boy ever since. Now I live in an "Intown" neighborhood in Atlanta and My wife and I love city life. Yeh, I don't have room for a bunch of cars right now but I'm working on that. My wife could live in the country or small town as long as we had an old victorian or craftsman style house but I'm thinking more of just moving to a smaller city like Asheville NC when the kids go off to college (in 12 years or so) We could still enjoy the quirkiness of city life but be just 15 minutes from real country. Now I just have to figure out how we will support ourselves when we do this.
Well, what's this tell you about my neck of the woods? At my grandmother's house, their is still a "functional" outhouse:grin: She also has a wood burning cook stove just off her kitchen that has a fire going in it from right about this time of year up until the end of May or so. It's usually enough to keep her whole house warm. For all our modern luxuries, there's still nothing that can warm you to the bone on a cold day like that old stove:TU:
Problem with living in Chicago area is that there isn't much country left until you you get out past Chrystal Lake or Wauconda on the NW side which I'm most familiar with. My main residence is Palatine (when in USA), and to most of the posters here that would seem like a cement jungle, while to a Chicago person it's the suburbs. I'm a little surprised that we're not hearing from a few city racers. I remember when there was some fierce racing going on in the city back in the late 60's and early 70s. Grand Spaulding Dodge was putting some pretty freaky cars on the street back then, and racing for car titles wasn't unusual. Remember the greasers vs the 'dupers' (non-greasers)? If anyone N of Chicago is a country bumpkin with some space for cars in a barn I'd like to hear about it. If you're wondering about China, there is no 70s metal here at all and no track car racing of any sort that I've been able to find in seven years (HK & Beijing). It would be very interesting to start up a drag strip here in BJ, and am laughing at the thought of what people might enter into competition. We could start with horse drawn wagons and work our way up to the new car classes. Getting them to wait patiently in line as opposed to cutting in front would be another obstacle. There is a cross country race in 4WD annually if you want to call that a race. There's a lot of rough country around here.
I'm in a weird place. I moved from the edge of a city, which is a suburb of Seattle to the middle of a bigger city (also a suburb of Seattle). Yet when I'm in my neighborhood, I feel more in the 'burbs than the previous place. I grew up in the outer suburbs (about 25 miles north of Seattle), yet I work right in the crotch of Seattle (it often smells like it, I'm not kidding!). ...now if they could only move the 1320 a little closer to the city! o No:
i think part of the problem with being a city kid and interested in cars is there are few garages [or barns, or back yards, or shade trees to work under] to encourage spending any time working on the cars. if you live in the country there is always space somewhere to stick the old hot rod and work on it the afternoon before going out and cruising friday and saturday nights. and small towns always had the standard drive in or burger joint to hang out around. while citys had a lot more streets to cruise on and more pavement to burn out on, you had to have a place to park the car at home. my formative years as a weekend warrior were in a town where the main drag was only about 10 to 15 blocks long, depending on where you liked to turn around at. but the long dark stretch where the real racing took place was a good 12 miles from town. how far do you have to go to race WITHOUT GETTING CAUGHT in the city?:bglasses:
country racing vs. city Since I have lived in both I feel I can comment here. Growing up in the country we had a few places that we raced but the problem was that they were all two lane roads. Oncoming traffic, narrow lanes, cross roads and driveways made for dangerous conditions. The small town and rural (township) police had nothing else to do so they made it a top priority to bust street racers. When I moved into Pittsburgh there were two places that we raced on my side of town. Both were limited access 4 lane roads. The best one was where 4 lane Ohio River blvd. terminated into a 2 lane surface street. It was near the state pen. so late at night it was deserted. A finish line person(s) /spotter would go a 1/4 mile up the 4 lane and the racers would start were the 4 lane just kinda started outa nowhere. Some of the cars that ran there were just race cars with head lights and the action was nothing short of amazing. I don't remember there ever being an accident or anyone getting busted but I did hear that after I moved away that the police did eventually crack down. Here in Atl. however I don't know. I did hear that there was some serious racing in an old industrial part of town but that the police shut it down last year?
Country Bumpkin I live out in the country on 11 acres,7 of which are woods.I have ample room to store parts cars to say the least.I have built a parts shed & now have things so my cars are pretty well hidden.The ones that sit out are out of view for the most part. On the plus side i'm only 10 minutes from town so i can run to town & pick up stuff without having to drive a hundred miles. I really like where i live,nice and peaceful.Except when i bust a knuckle!:ball: Then anyone within a half mile might hear a string of cuss words:eek2: Your liable to see any type of critter when you are around my house,deer,turkey,rabbits,squirrels,all kinds of wildlife abound. I usually get barked at by squirrels while i'm pulling parts:blast: No thanks i just couldn't live in town or a city,but that's just me.
Yeah we have them wild here too. The elk farm raises them for their antlers. It seems that there is a market for them in Asia and its hard catching a 600 lb animal in the wild and trying to cut its antlers off. There's still an outhouse at my grandmother's old farmhouse in Clarion Pa. No one uses it, though. She has a friend that lives a couple miles away who does not have electricity. She has an outhouse, a hand dug well, and a gasoline powered washing machine. However, she does have a phone line, so she isn't Amish.
I can vouch for Joe. Its true. I've seen the dryer.........crazy looking thing. There is one thing I would like to clarify. The suburbs is not the city. I live in the city.........lower Beaver Falls, PA. The heart of the American Rust Belt. I've heard my freinds jokingly call my car a "ghetto sled" which does bother me(I guess that's why they say it). I've had two shootings, 1 stabbing, 1 dented hood & roof, one drug bust, 2 resident hookers, and 5 bars all within a two block radius of my apartment. I've had pushers confront me twice. I've been mistaken once by the police for a individual who threw a brick through the magistrate's window at his office. (Nothing like being picked up by the cops for something I did not do!! "Well the suspect had a dark complexion and was wearing a red shirt and blue jeans and you are wearing a red shirt and black pants") Plus Habitat for Humanity is fixing up a house on my street on my block!! I am not proud of this. I want to get out of here!! I'm tired of hearing people's car radios and shouting profanities at night. I'm tired of seeing people litter. I'm tired of replacing chrome valve stems on my car. I need to get out of here. I haven't moved because I'm always at work on the railroad. I can't find the time. Needless to say, I am jealous of every one of you who live in the suburbs or the country. It is a rough live, but I will say is this. Homeboys love the BUICK!!:TU:
I'm in 'da burbs now, but am moving more toward the sticks tuesday. :grin: I don't like the regulations and such that cities put on you, so i'm moving out north of chisago lakes MN. I have a red neck side that does not jell well with continual urban contact.
Ratroaster Damn! I always knew that the lower end of Beaver Falls was the hood but I didn't think it was that bad. I guess things have changed for the worse since I've been there. From what I remember, there are good parts of Beaver Falls too aren't there? I have a cousin who lives somewhere in town there. I've never seen his house but I've been told that its very old and very nice. I guess I'm the only one who enjoys the city. I loved the city of Pittsburgh and I like the city of Atlanta. I like being close to everything that I like to do. I love the old neighborhoods with the victorian and craftsman homes and the big old trees. I also like being around people. There's nothing like spring in the city when everyone's out enjoying the weather. There's an energy in the air that I can't describe but it makes me feel good. I guess I just haven't experienced the hassles that others on here have. Sure, I've lived in some questionable neighborhoods but nothing too bad. I actually feel safer in the city. When I lived in the country I always had some redneck trying to pick a fight or someone vandalizing my car because they had nothing better to do I guess. Oh well, different strokes I guess. But if I had to choose it would be city then country but never suburbs. Too generic for me, no character or soul. But that's just me.
