ForumGarden

I live where I live because I am only 5 minutes away from two great golf courses, basketball/tennis/volley ball courts, table tennis & billiard tables, swimming pool(indoor & outdoor), well equipped gym, first class restaurant & bar, well stocked library, a lovely park. 10 minutes away from two super markets, three banks, dry cleaners, barber, beauty salon.

15 minutes from a large shopping mall with all the major stores, 22 cinema theaters, a hospital and medical center, a large river, many ethnic eating establishments.

I am 20 minutes from a large city, two universities and a large lake. I am 80 minutes from the ocean and 80 minutes away from 7,000 ft. elevation. People have asked me how I have time to do all the things that I do on a daily basis and the answer is that I don't have to travel great distances for different activities. I have lived in many places in my lifetime and chose to live here when I retired. I am fortunate to have had the choice.

Well, I live smack dab in the middle of a town of about 21,000. Bank, one block. library, one block. Barber, two blocks. Bars and restaurants up the bazoo in a four block area. Park and Mississippi river, two blocks. Public safety complex, 3 1/2 blocks. Mall, two miles. Super Walmart, Same. Three churches within three blocks. Grocery/drug store, eight blocks. Medical center, 1 1/2 miles or less. Beauty shop, two of 'em in 1/2 block. Gun shop, two blocks. Once I lived in a much smaller town. It had about one of everything. I liked it much better.

If I had a lot of $$$ when I was young and single, I would have loved to have had about a 1,800 sq. ft. 15th floor apartment in San Francisco with a balcony deck and a view of San Francisco Bay, Golden Gate Bridge. Oh, I can hear those fog horns as the fog comes crawling in at 4:30 PM on some afternoons. Off to North Beach for a good Italian meal. But the reality was that when I was young and single I shared 800 sq. feet with another bachelor and a view out the window of a blinking neon sign that said "Jesus Saves". I could hear police sirens and honking horns and occasional screams, but it was only two blocks to a Chinese joint where you could eat a big meal of questionable origin for $1.25.

When I was young and still single, I would have been perfectly happy back on a farm. Always loved the rural life and the lonely places. But, after highschool, I worked in factories, hoping to save enough money to buy some land and build a one room cabin to call home. Then I met wifey and kids started coming. Did get a house and large lot on a hilltop at the end of a dead end street. Neighbors only on one side. The rest was wooded hillsides. I liked it there, as far as towns go.