Where do you live? And why?

[bikerdoc]

People from up north just don't get it when it comes to all the fuss about being from the South (I know I used to be one of them). It's more than a place to live, it's a way of life. I love the south and hope it will always be my home.

True words.

I got here as soon as I could because of my 2nd wife. After 22 yrs as a northern cop, we came here when I retired I had to be reeducated and assimilated. I learned the values of her people, guns, god, guts, family first, helping others, talking polite, and working hard.
I can shoot every day on our properties, open carry, crime is low, and the air is clean.
Ya, it is a way of life.

[Ramone]

I've found, as a New Yorker living in the south (Being a New Yorker is like being a Marine- there is no "ex"), that somewhere between Kynoch and Bikerdoc (ahoy neighbor!).

Just as I have found my Euro friends to assume that all of the USA is the same as what they visited (or have seen on TV), 'The South', to those of us that have traveled it, is a Damn Big Place, with a great deal of variation in the local culture.

There *are* places in the south (as there are in 'the North') that I would would be happy to not have to claim as part of My Nation- and there are others that I just love to pieces...

For me, having grown up in the shadow of the Greatest City (516, Represent!), and being of a Marine Corps family, I find the south in the vicinity of a large Naval Base suits me to a 'T' (which, for me, explains my orbit between Jacksonville FL and Norfolk VA). I find that the cultural impact of Americas True Mixing Pot (the Military) bringing service personal and dependents to the otherwise insular South makes for a vibrant, cosmopolitan populace.

Though, to be fair, there are equal bits of what my old Dad always refered to as 'Northern Hospitality and Southern Efficiency'.

[ottohund]

I have lived most of my life in the South of the USA (whenever I was not overseas). I have lived in PA & MD for about 2 years total. I currently live in San Marcos TX, and I very much enjoy being here. I am fine with people having a negative view of the South. You are absolutely correct, stay where you are. It is much better there.

[Rexster]

I am in SE Texas, living about 30 miles from where I grew up. My mother has ancestors that settled in the Huffman area during the land grant period, before the Republic of Texas. Huffman is not an incorporated city, and part has been annexed by the city of Houston. My father's parents were from Crowley, Louisiana, and moved to Texas during the Great Depression, to look for work. My parents met at First Baptist Church in Highlands, and that is where I lived, mostly, from 1961 until 1998. Huffman and Highlands, as well as most of Houston, are in Harris County, which is quite large, about 1800 square miles.

I doubt I will move very far from my present location, unless perhaps my wife retires from public service, and gets a private sector job that would require relocating. I would certainly not mind relocating to a rural area, or smaller town that is not surrounded by urban sprawl. My wife likes the idea of moving to San Antonio, near her brother, though I would rather not live IN San Antonio; I would rather be in a more conservative county, and away from the urban sprawl growing along I-35.

Texas may not be the most handgun-friendly state in the union, but we have it pretty good here, and while still an active peace officer, I have it VERY good, being able to legally carry just about anything, anywhere. Life is good!

Edited to add: BTW, Texas is not the South!

I grew up Southern Baptist, but my wife is Catholic. I tease her about about being an idol worshipper, and she teases me about being a snake handler. As for prejudice, well, I am blue-eyed, Scot-Irish on one side, and mostly German on the other, but blessed with a French surname. My first wife was an olive-tan-complexioned Hispanic, which is where my son got his permanent suntan. We presently live near one of the largest synogogues in the USA, and we love our Jewish neighbors. Life is good!

[Dixiejack]

I was born and raised in South Georgia and North Florida. Twelve of those years on the Georgia/Florida East coast. That was back when one could ride or walk for miles and see nothing but pristine beaches. Now you can't see the ocean for the houses.
Why would I want to retire in the South when I was raised here? My wife and I have our hopes set on moving to SE Indiana around Madison. It is beautiful there and the people are friendly and it is clean.
You don't see garbage on the side of roads or Walmart bags fluttering in the breeze along with gnats and love bugs like you do in South Georgia.
Where I live now, the parking lot at Walmart is 1/2 full of privately owned surplus school busses that have brought Mexican farm workers to town on the weekends. The drug industry has gone out of sight. Ten years ago the county I live in would maybe have 5 or 6 killings a year, now we have 2 to 3 drug related killings a week and all related to gangs of Mexicans. A town of 50,000 that is 18 miles from me is in the FBI top ten of unsolved murders--most drug related.
If you want to retire to the South for good Ole' (pronounced O-lay) South of the Border hospitality, I got two houses for sale on adjoining lots and we got liberal gun laws for even the criminal population.

[sgtstryker]

Dixiejack, I feel your pain. South Ga. in general has changed alot in the last few years. My wife's family is here and we are settled. My intention was to be further north, so, we'll ride it out. Lots of shooting buddies and good hunting nearby, takes the edge off. At least Al, Tn and the Carolinas are close, good motorcycle riding..

[MoreIsLess]

Originally Posted by ottohund

I am fine with people having a negative view of the South. You are absolutely correct, stay where you are. It is much better there.

Ha ha, that's a pretty good one. I totally agree, stay put!

[Johnny Dollar]

I think we should all take a step back and relax. This is a relaxing thread,a place to exchange stories about our childhood homes, or places we migrated to and found happiness..

This is not a thread for turf wars and name calling. In the words of that immortal Californian,"Can't we all just get along?"

Starting now.

[jim in Anchorage]

Exactly. The threads about why you live where you do, NOT about why the other guy is a jerk for living where HE lives.

[Shinbone]

I think that all parts of this country have advantages and disadvantages. I wish I had the time and money to check out the South, the West and other areas for myself. I've never been to the South, other than Fort Polk, courtesy of Uncle Sam or to the West Coast, but I'd sure like to visit all these areas. And I'll bet Vermont and New Hampshire and upstate New York are awesome, from pictures I've seen.
Oh, I was in South Carolina for about a month on a job. Fantastic eating down there. Love that southern cooking.

[bergmen]

Originally Posted by Shinbone

I think that all parts of this country have advantages and disadvantages. I wish I had the time and money to check out the South, the West and other areas for myself. I've never been to the South, other than Fort Polk, courtesy of Uncle Sam or to the West Coast, but I'd sure like to visit all these areas. And I'll bet Vermont and New Hampshire and upstate New York are awesome, from pictures I've seen.
Oh, I was in South Carolina for about a month on a job. Fantastic eating down there. Love that southern cooking.

Being a Californian I would highly recommend a visit to the west coast as a vacation. Take a week and fly in to San Francisco and rent a car to drive up the coastal highway to Mendocino and you really won't believe the breathtaking beauty. Take time to cross the central valley and see Yosemite, mind boggling.

The east coast is fabulous as well (only visited, Boston and region). Lot's of history there, people are fantastic and just a great place to visit. No need to rent a car in Boston, great public transportation and it's best to just walk the city. Fabulous, and the lobsters are to die for.

Dan

[Tempest 455]

Born in MI. Moved to WI at 4. Spent much of my life in WI and moved outside Nashville 7 years ago. Wish I would have moved here a long time ago.

[Kyle M.]

Born in ohio, still stuck in ohio. No real reason to move, no real reason not too.

[smalls]

Oh, I was in South Carolina for about a month on a job. Fantastic eating down there. Love that southern cooking.

I was down there for two weeks on vacation a few years ago. I damn near started putting out applications for jobs, just so I could eat that seafood every day!

[DesertFox]

Currently located due to proximity of mother-in-law, formerly due to the proximity of grandmother. My parents are most likely going to migrate up this way. Wife and I graduated from college here - nobody else we graduated with could afford to stick around. This area has been extremely cruel to me over the years; an obvious sign of my own self-inflicted punishment. However there is a job, there are mountains, rivers, hunting, fishing, outdoor activities that keep me here, away from the vast majority of everyone else. Now if I could do something about that pesky job, I could do a lot more fishing and hunting...

[jim in Anchorage]

Where is TBD?

[Teachu2]

In the words of that immortal Californian,"Can't we all just get along?"

He died a couple of months ago...

I was born in Bakersfield, CA and spent all but five years of my life here. We're a generally conservative oil and ag community 100 miles from everything - the Sequoia mountains, the Pacific, Los Angeles. We're two hours from Yosemite. It gets hot here, and we have a bit of winter fog.

We also have 300+ days of sunshine, lower housing costs than most of California, and fresh produce in abundance. The wife and I have good jobs, a fine house, and lots of shooting opportunities. We also have three parents, two siblings, three sons, two DILs, and four grandchildren here.

Just like everywhere, there are positives and negatives. If I won the lottery, I'd move - until then, I'm happy here.

[Curator]

S,W. Florida is not paradise but close to it. Well, except for the occasional hurricane, but nowhere is perfect. Great weather, good gun laws. Right to work state, but plenty of liberal-thinkers and other fools to provide minor aggravation. Not a good place to raise kids, but a great place to avoid giving your tax money to socialist politicians (this coast only!). Plenty of illegals to go around but some of them will actually mow your grass. Not enough public ranges but we're working on that. Good fishing, OK hunting (no woodchucks) if you like little deer and feral hogs. Lots of public land and Marco Rubio. What's not to like? A former tax & regulation refugee from Western New York, I am happy as can be here!

[Johnny Dollar]

He died a couple of months ago..

I know.His words are immortal,he was not. It's been 20 years now.A long road.
The California I loved in the early '60's is gone. At least my home town of Castro Valley in the East Bay and its environs has changed beyond recognition.

As Thomas Wolfe said "You can't go home again." But I'll always love the Golden State in my memories. Like the song goes,"They can't take that away from me."

[Friendly, Don't Fire!]

I live on Earth because this is the place in which I was born.

[Larry Ashcraft]

This is not a thread for turf wars and name calling.

Exactly. I've deleted some posts to clean this thread up. I'll start deleting members if it flares up again.

No more warnings.

[jim in Anchorage]

Exactly. I've deleted some posts to clean this thread up. I'll start deleting members if it flares up again.

No more warnings.

Thank you. Enjoying this, was really disappointed to see it going downhill.

[rice paddy daddy]

I was raised in South Florida (Palm Beach County), back when it was paradise - the 50's and 60's. Gradually it began to get crowded with people from other parts of the country ( and Caribbean). Lots of pavement, stores, condos blocking beach access, bales of dope washing up on the beach, skyrocketing crime rates, houses where we used to go shooting and hunting before, traffic, traffic, traffic.
My wife and I wished, hoped, and prayed to get the heck out - to a place that has more churches than bars.
Finally, thanks to a corporate restructuring that closed the warehouse where I was employed we managed to make our escape via a company relocation. That was 1995.
Today, I'm still employed, but with a different company, and we have a small farm on a dead end dirt road 6 miles outside a one stop light town.
She's got the horses and chickens she always wanted, I've got my very own patch of woods to roam. Life is good.
Cows make the best neighbors.

[ArfinGreebly]

North Idaho, CdA area.

Why?

Uh, well, there's a story . . .

Born east coast. Can't tell you much about that.

Early memories begin in Ohio. Trailer park, then a small farm. It was the early fifties. We went to school in Danville, which was a long-ish bus ride.

Around age seven, we sell the farm, buy an old school bus, convert to mobile hovel, complete with wood & coal burning stove for cooking & heating. Move to Alabama. Dad bides his time until he lands job at Redstone Arsenal, home of the Atlas rocket.

Around age nine, we follow Dad's career west. He works at Aerojet General, home of the Saturn rocket, putting dudes into space. However, even though it's a bunch closer, my parents elect not to move us to Sacramento, but instead to park the family in a little Sierra Nevada foothills town, Placerville, where we will spend the next nine years in a very outdoors-friendly community, with orchards, mountains, hunting, fishing, and all that.

My dad commutes fifty miles each way for nine years so that we can grow up in a small town rather than a metro area. Like any other kid, I completely have no grasp of the sacrifices my parents make for that child rearing environment. It will gradually dawn on me, but I will be in my fifties before it registers.

After I graduated, and the space program cutbacks began, we moved to Tucson, but I wasn't there long. We will skip forward over the Air Force years and the decade of overseas volunteer work, and resume with parachuting into Las Vegas in the early eighties.

New career, new town and, after a couple of years, new wife.

Twenty years later . . . work takes us to Phoenix for a couple of years, then back to Vegas. It doesn't take long for us to wonder to one another, "what are we still doing here?"

And we move north (and west, as it happens -- did you know that Reno is west of Los Angeles?). Carson City, commuting to Reno, for another four years.

We figured we were done moving.

Carson City is acceptably rural, the region is gun-friendly, it has a hunting/fishing/outdoor culture, and it is situated in a seriously gorgeous place. Half hour from Tahoe. Four real seasons. Mild winters, but a short drive from hard core skiing. What's not to love?

Well, we took a vacation, finally, and visited a buddy of mine with whom I had worked in Vegas but who was now living 35 miles from the Canadian border. We drove around Bonners Ferry, Sandpoint, Coeur d'Alene , Post Falls, and the Panhandle area, and we came to a conclusion: we agreed that, in the unlikely event we ever had to move again, this would be the place.

You know, sometimes you have to be careful what thoughts you cast loose in the universe . . .

A year and a half later, events had conspired to make it necessary for us to move.

And here we are.

We live in an area that is, seriously, all about the outdoors. We live among communities of people who are unwitting "preppers" -- survivalists if you prefer -- but who don't actually realize that their culture is a survival/prepper thing. It's just how they live. We've got significant populations of Mormons and Mennonites up here, and I'm totally fine with that. One bunch is all about being prepared, the other is all about living off the land.

The "Aryan Nation" crowd are long gone, and the folks here are surprisingly "normal," using the same measuring stick I would have used in my youth.

(Kind of a funny aside: when we came up here the first time, we were doing some window shopping for property up around Bonners Ferry, and one of the homes we looked at was being sold by the Mennonite family who had lived in it for years and years. I asked them why they were moving, after all, I said, they had ten acres that was ten miles out of town, with the nearest neighbors a half mile in one direction, and nearly a mile in the other. Their reply? "It's too crowded here; we're moving to Montana where we can have more room." Because, you know, ten miles to town and more than a half mile to your neighbors is way too cramped. Oh -- in a couple of the Mennonite homes we toured, there were rifles just kind of stood behind the door, leaning against the wall. 'Cuz, well, you might need one. I grew up with that; kinda never expected that I would ever see "casual guns" again.)

I keep my annual membership in the local (Fernan) shooting club up to date, even though finances and work have kept me off the range for more than a year.

I commute 35 miles each way. I am frequently asked why I don't just move to Spokane. I don't generally give a complete answer, and nobody I know in Idaho ever asks that question.


So, why?

Because it's gorgeous here, it's not the "big city," and I'm surrounded by self-sufficient people who, in the main, value gun ownership and gun rights as much as I do.

[jim in Anchorage]

Arfin- That was a great post, well written. I have been thinking more and more about leaving Alaska for the land of free shipping [lower 48.] I am getting a little old for Alaska hunting. What are the winters like in your part of Idaho?