Indulging A Fantasy Which Keeps Creeping Up
Swett, South Dakota is for sale. $400,000 for a bar, a workshop, three trailers, and a house. Swett is two hours south east of Rapid City is sort of where the highway ends and the Wild West begins according to a local bar patron. The Swett Tavern is the only place in a 10 mile radius where you can get a drink. The joint serves cowboys and wheat farmers.
My mother's family comes from Grund, Manitoba. It's not the end of the earth but if you have binoculars you can see it. I used to get the United Farm Catalog which listed houses, farms, ranches, and businesses that seemed to be miles from nowhere. I've bought and read the book, Miles From Nowhere: Tales from America's Contemporary Frontier, by Duncan Dayton.
I looked at a 70 acre goat farm in Williston, North Dakota before the fracking boom. Crime in Miami in the late 70's kind of freaked me out for a while and I thought it might be time to blow this pop stand. Being a financial aid counselor at Williston State College was a possibility.
A quick conversation with a college friend asked a good question. Why would you go from Miami to Siberia? I had no good answer and became much more careful about locking up the house and car and closing windows. And so it goes, thirty five years later I live in an urban neighborhood within walking distance of grocery stores, restaurants, stores, banks, and just about everything I might need or want to do. I can even walk to a train station that can get me to slot machines, card games, horse races, and other entertainment or the airport.
Getting away from civilization is something I still wonder about doing. I've become sort of junkie about all things Alaska on various cable shows. I don't think being a homesteader is in the cards but I do watch with more than a little interest folks looking for property way up north, digging for gold, and the Alaska State Patrol tracking down hunters and investigating drunks, bad drivers, and all sorts of miscreants.
I guess this is just a case of the grass always being greener, somewhere else, but I guess that is also a big part of what being an American is about. Even if we don't move around a lot we probably wish we would.
My mother's family comes from Grund, Manitoba. It's not the end of the earth but if you have binoculars you can see it. I used to get the United Farm Catalog which listed houses, farms, ranches, and businesses that seemed to be miles from nowhere. I've bought and read the book, Miles From Nowhere: Tales from America's Contemporary Frontier, by Duncan Dayton.
I looked at a 70 acre goat farm in Williston, North Dakota before the fracking boom. Crime in Miami in the late 70's kind of freaked me out for a while and I thought it might be time to blow this pop stand. Being a financial aid counselor at Williston State College was a possibility.
A quick conversation with a college friend asked a good question. Why would you go from Miami to Siberia? I had no good answer and became much more careful about locking up the house and car and closing windows. And so it goes, thirty five years later I live in an urban neighborhood within walking distance of grocery stores, restaurants, stores, banks, and just about everything I might need or want to do. I can even walk to a train station that can get me to slot machines, card games, horse races, and other entertainment or the airport.
Getting away from civilization is something I still wonder about doing. I've become sort of junkie about all things Alaska on various cable shows. I don't think being a homesteader is in the cards but I do watch with more than a little interest folks looking for property way up north, digging for gold, and the Alaska State Patrol tracking down hunters and investigating drunks, bad drivers, and all sorts of miscreants.
I guess this is just a case of the grass always being greener, somewhere else, but I guess that is also a big part of what being an American is about. Even if we don't move around a lot we probably wish we would.
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