So, do you consider yourself a prepper of sorts? How can you not like the city? I do not like the urban areas of cities, but suburbs are awesome. I have visited people living in what I call the "boonies". They have to plan their trips "to town" so that things are consolidated into a single trip. Stuff like trips to Costco or Walmart which take more than 30 minutes. And there are septic tanks in the yards, and lots of solar. But then at night there are sparse lights, usually no streetlamps or signal lights (cause you don't need them), and things I take for granted like a local In N Out or 7-11 are not available. I like it, but I still prefer the suburbs!
how did i miss this?....
well, lets see:
grew up in one of the suburbs of suburbs-- NE NJ and ll of its "rat races" into and out of THE City (NYC)
Lived in West Orange
Now, if W orange were in a place where i am now-it would not be so bad
but up there, the"boundaries" between neighboring towns and cities is realistically non existent' this house is on west orange and the house feet away from it is in Newark-or Montclair, or E Orange, etc
the "green areas" the parks and forested areas that remain, serve as trash dumps and drug hangouts-in short, the places were sent aside for kids and families, but they could barely be used by them
the houses are set so close together that there were many times when we sat at our table to eat and we looked out of our dining room table directly into the house next to house--again feet away--to see what they were having
deep and narrow lots; my parents had a deep enough lot to put in one of the old fashioned above ground pools (the ones ppl used to get before the cheapies WM has now?) and a small garden in between the house and the pool
and that was it! no room for anything else
then whenever we were in the pool, we got to hear the schizo lady in the house directly behind ours; constantly yelling and talking with no one
the only 'blessing' to give us a bit of space is that directly across from us was one of the largest cemeteries in North Jersey
the ppl? tribal-broken down into the Italian and Irish neighborhoods, the polish one, the jewish one with blacks and Ecuadorians (i still do not know why so many ecuadorians had came to west orange) all mixed in between
even as kids-belong to the wrong "tribe" (it didn't really matter what you were but who you hung out with/where you lived) and be in the wrong area? get rocks and bottles thrown at you, bike stolen, tires slashed.etc.etc
the best memories i have of the place are my parent's pet shop, some of my friends, riding bikes down to Nutley to famous Amos' cookie shop and-when we would leave every summer to come to where i live now-my parents hometown
and then living in tight spaces like in korea, or el paso while in the army, just made me firm up my belief that cities or suburbs were not for me
we have so much space here where we are, we don't have "nosy neighbors" but if we needed their help they'd be here
we can plant the flowers/shrubs in our yard without worrying about violating some neighborhood compact or what ever the f they are called
given the way it was where i grew up, i would never go back to a city or any suburb to live
this is where i grew up-look at the density of the houses-its on watchung ave, our house in the one just to the left (south) of the one with the pool and driveway---look at those sardines!:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/W...3a15ba40269dd0!8m2!3d40.7985699!4d-74.2390828
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