I grew up on 4.8 acres of land in Dormansville … 🚜
That probably seems like a lot to the city or village dweller, but it’s really not compared to many other parts of country. It means having neighbors nearby and having restrictions on your freedom as your neighbors are close enough to hear you shooting your guns, smell your livestock and burn barrel. Or smelling their hogs or poop-filled diapers in their trash fire. Or the pow-pow of their AR-15 or the roar of the pickup truck without a muffler.
When I own my own land, I want have more acreage, less house and material stuff and more freedom to do what I want on my land. Less of a chance to be a nuisance to them, or have to put up with their nuisances that come along with rural life and freedom to live one’s life as you should. Land is expensive, but the farther you are out in the country, the cheaper it is. And if you give up a nice house for a shed-to-cabin or a trailer, you can afford much more land that can provide a buffer from between you and the neighbors. Live and let live.
See what you need is bariatric surgery … 🫃🏻
Insert pregnant man emoji here. I had to giggle a bit when I saw that ad the other day after I rode my mountain bike up the State Street Hill from the suburban office in Menands to the Alfred E Smith Building and hiked up 17 flights of stairs prior to the the Friday meeting, then rode my bike home.
Oh, Oh, Ozempic the Advertisers Sing, 🎶 and I don’t even own a color television and I know the marketing slogan to morbidly obese who spend their time eating Cheesy Burgers 🍔 while watching the Boob. 📺 Or internet at home, the last time I brought my laptop home was sometime in January. 🌬️ With that wind today and snow squall I’m not sure if I am going anywhere today, I might put off going to Wally World until tomorrow, or maybe I’ll just wait until later on, ride out to Schiffendecker Preserve, 🐸 then shop and be home before dark. In evening around 6 PM, Wally World tends to be a lot quieter. Mostly I want to get lemons, 🍋 as I was inspired by lemon Mom gave me other day for chopping up and using in blueberry pancakes.
But mostly it’s just a quiet 🤫 somewhat stoned Saturday, 🪨😁 reading and studying the newspapers about the smelly trash fire known as the Middle East 🗞️ and watching the YouTube. And maybe pushing through some more of the library books. Trust me, I know about stinky trash fires, as there is been many years I’ve gone to transfer station once a year. 🗑️ I am refusing to turn the heat back on my apartment but I did have the space heater out a little to warm my hands and certainly used my electric blanket a bit last night. Maybe tonight I’ll turn the heat to prevent the pipes to get from too cold, though I’m not sure there is much risk at this point of the year. I just want the days to return when I can have the window open and enjoy the fresh air. 🪟 I should be studying trucks and making my next move, as I will be pretty busy on Monday, but I am kind of undecided and feel like much less of rush as I watch the Iran 🇮🇷 situation play out. Do I really want ginormous Godzilla truck 🐲 ? And I can’t imagine them flying off dealer lots.
Honestly, if gas is going to be $5 or $6 a gallon, maybe this is not the year to be planning to drive out to Michigan in an HD truck. 🏕️ I’m not saying, not to buy the HD truck, ⛽ but maybe I would just have just as much if I disappeared for the week to the Green Mountains, in my nice new camping rig, and just hung out, read books and relaxed. 📚 Really need like a week and half for a good Michigan trip, and I don’t want to deal with a lot of work crap while I’m on vacation, so maybe this is best done in 2027. Though, I do worry the time to get away is getting short with my parents getting old, and I’m not sure that I won’t be tied down with responsibilities much too soon. Trick is to find some place with cell service for streaming media on my phone, 📱 a quiet place within a short bike ride from swimming hole. That could be a good summer vacation without burning too much gas. I don’t think I want to Finger Lakes again this year, though I guess that option but I didn’t get a state parks pass this year. 💳
Don’t you know it’s foolish to rent
I get tired of the endless advertising and posts that tell you how foolish renting is and how it’s better to be in hock to a bank then a landlord because in a few decades you’ll have some equity in a dumpy old house that you still have to pay property taxes on or the government will seize it. Advocates for home ownership seem to always forget the high cost of commuting in an automobile compared to a bus or bicycle, not to mention all the costs of building and yard maintenance. Or the cost of electricity to light and gas to heat a vast space. Or the endless appliances, carpet, roofs, windows you have to go through as a homeowner. Or the furniture you need to buy. I hate those plush sofas and EZ-Chairs that you see in so many houses covered with cat hair overlooking the 900 foot wide smarty televisions connected to internet. All shit you have to buy as a suburbanite house owner.
Mortgage companies always like to promote their options and assistance for those needing help with a down payment. You shouldn’t worry if you don’t have enough cash up front. Don’t you know renters are super poor, depsrate people. But that’s certainly not my problem. I could buy with cash today if I wanted to pay the Capital Gains tax. A lot of off gridders are quite poor, the emphasis seems to be on cheap rural land and the affordability of building a small cabin. Don’t you know if you build a small cabin by hand, you could have something for under $10k. Framing ain’t that hard, and if it’s not perfect, if it keeps you dry and warm, you can survive. But for me that’s not the issue, I make a good salary at my position and have been saving and investing for decades now. If I wanted to build something fancy, I probably could, especially if my savings and investments continue to grow over the next decade.
Maybe my adverision to homeownership is purely that I can’t move out to country and have a burn barrel and burn a lot of stinky plastic trash without having the cops up my ass. Or that I can’t just walk into a store or garage sale and buy a handgun that I can shoot at targets off my back porch. Or that I have to comply with building and health codes, which are pre-supposed to prefer landfilling over anything else. But I actually think it’s more then that – I don’t want to be tied down to New York State – and I want something simpler close to a hunting cabin on acerage in a small rural area, far away from any big city. Where nobody is going to care, where I can live my life without all the gadgets that constantly wear out and need hauling to landfill and replacement like is common in the typical suburban house climate control and flush toilets and sinks. I don’t want to have to deal with constantly handing big wads of cash to plumbers and mechanics, nor do I want to spend my weekends messing with a lawnmower engine, cutting grass and painting walls.
But maybe I am a bit jealous of my friends and colleagues who do have homesteads out in the country, or those celebrating their first home purchase, but I just can’t my find myself committing to New York State like that.. I want to get out, to wider open spaces, maybe not next week but I want to keep my options open especially when early retirement is an option less then 13 years away at this point. Which is not a long time – Big Red just turned 13 1/2 years old – and it seems like yesterday when I got that truck new. I guess to reject the dream of the suburban single family house in favor of a hand-built shack on acerage in a deep rural area of a freer state is just a sign of my severe mental illness.
