A lot of people living in cities don't realize that rural USA is a lot like those third-world countries a politician might describe as ‘shitholes.’
In my tiny village(which is basically a few far-apart houses and farms gathered around a swamp):
-No municipal water (we have a well)
-No sewer (septic tanks)
-No garbage disposal (burn it)
-No public school (There's one in the next town over, bus leaves at 630am, gets back 430pm)
-No public college (there's one in the next county, that means you pay out-of-county tuition which is double)
-No mail delivery (I have a PO box)
-No police (I actually love this, no complaints here)
-No fire/emergency services (volunteers are notified by the town siren, closest actual hospital is an hour flight by chopper after you've driven 40 minutes to the rural hospital, which is basically just triage)
Where do I live? In Michigan, but you'll never find my address cuz it's not even on Google Maps.
@glittercleric For sure, it's suuuuuuper creepy quiet out here in the winter. But then in the summer it makes you realize just how loud nature can be and it's awesome!
@Cat_LeFey Somehow I knew this was about Michigan before I finished reading. Rural MI is something else, but I don’t have experience of similarly rural areas anywhere else to compare.
I moved from rural MI directly to a city across the country 11 yr ago and it full culture shock 😅
@Cat_LeFey Sounds like the Eastern Kentucky experience. Friends of Coal prevents clean energy from coming in under the guise of "protecting jobs." Then local governments offer outrageous incentives for developers to build prisons there to "bring in jobs," but it creates a pool of even cheaper labor for the community to compete with. Not to mention rural hospitals closing left and right. IMO it's gotten worse over time despite the "development"
@Cat_LeFey in a similar situation in Maine, although I do have a mailbox a quarter mile from the house and you can get to the hospital in half an hour after the EMTs arrive from 20 minutes to whenever. We do however compost, reuse, and pay a yearly fee to use a landfill that’s about 20 minutes away where the main attraction is the “stuff for free someone else didn’t want anymore” she’d.
People have NO idea.
@CatDragon Yeah that sounds pretty similar, and it's the medical stuff I worry about the most too. I moved out here from Chicago, so you can imagine what rude awakening it was, lol
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