December 10, 2002
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I’ve been thinking about security lately. By many standards, we don’t have much. After all, we have no health insurance, no life insurance, no homeowners’, and no collision on our cars, only the state-required extorted minimum. Being self-employed, I have no real idea how much I might be making in any given period–I earned maybe $50 so far this month, may earn nothing more the rest of the month. Still, I now feel more secure than I ever have, even back when I had a cushy gummint job and more money than I knew what to do with (I mostly pissed it away–like one weekend with nothing else to do, I flew to Iceland.) Why?
For one thing, Kathy and I own three dwellings (humble but pretty much fit for human habitation) and a couple acres of land, so I know that I will pretty much always have a place to stay. We have a pantry full of canned goods and several cords of firewood in the yard. Then there’s domestic security.
I kinda snicker when I see a show set in a big city and people have deadbolt locls on their doors. We do not have a lock on our front door. Lock? Hell, we don’t even have a doorknob, just an old tea towel stuffed into the doorknob hole. One of our cats can open the door, for Pete’s sake. (She never shuts it properly, however.)
Thing is, there is almost always someone here and awake. If anyone could magically get into our yard or in the house without our dog Koji giving us plenty of warning, the foolish hypothetical intruder would have to deal with 70+ pounds of very protective doberman/husky/whatever. Anyone who survived the dog would next face Kathy or Doug, who would be armed with a .357 magnum or a 12-guage shotgun. Anyone who got past them would finally face me–I’m the guy with the .44 magnum loaded with 300-grain Hornady copper-jacketed hollowpoints.
Another nice thing security-wise, is that there is very little traffic here (except for summer, of course, when we get a few tourists wandering around). As a rule, only two vehicles go by and we can distinguish them by the sound. Just to give you an idea of how sparse it is out here, there are exactly 7 businesses within an 8-mile radius of home. That works out very roughly to one business per 30 square miles. We consider the owners to be neighbors and friends, for the most part, now that the carpetbaggers from Colorado sold out.
The general store in Talkeetna has a sign that says that one of the nice things about living in a small town is that if you don’t know what you ought to be doing, someone will. I might add it also means you never have to bother with turn signals when driving, since everyone who sees you will know where you’re going. More than that, there is the small-town security of knowing that if you get in a jam, someone will be there to help you.
Comments (5)
I grew up in the country on a small farm and your description fits that of my childhood perfectly. I longed as a child to move to the city, meet people that were not the “same”. I now live in a big city and miss that small town life so much. I often speak of how my children do not know what real fun is. Soon I will be away from this fast pace life, soon…
I don’t care how many mansions are scattered over the world. What you described is living large.
that’s not unlike my place in grassy cove, tennessee. we not only don’t lock our doors, we figure that, if anybody steals something, they obviously need it more than we do….
I like the idea that you don’t need much money, or feel the need of it. though every little bit helps, I’m sure. It sounds cozy and reminiscent of a distant more comfortable past the way you describe your settlings. As an answer to why you went to Iceland, I think it was to see the ice, or what was there. Not much, hey? I heard it was pretty.
And I know you all can take care of yourselves but I still am gonna hope no bear figures out that dang-near swingin’ door. Unless you like bear meat, assuming it’s not a big brownie.
Good that you have a nice big dog. The kind of place the big kid in me would love.
You do make your location sound comfortably rural. And attractive.
Sounds like what you & SuSu have is almost complete freedom! As for insurance, that’s another government-supported public money-drain, filling the pockets of the rich & stealing from the poor! Most every state that has madatory auto insurance has a clause that if you have a net worth >the minimum value of insurance required to carry (say $100K), you don’t have to buy insurance. I know this is true in Texas (only need $50K value there), because I asked my agent when I lived there. I wanted to know if I could buy a bond at 10% of its value to put up as my insurance, rather than continually soaking money into the insurance companies’ coffers, but he told me I didn’t even need to do that! If I’m not mistaken, it’s true here in Hawaii too.