...They put together a PowerPoint presentation, boasting of a union-free labor force in a town where a solid three-bedroom, two-bath home sells for less than $50,000.
"Our greatest asset is the psychological loyalty of people who left here," said Dr. Don Crilly, a retired vascular surgeon who returned to Superior 10 years ago from the San Francisco Bay area. He and his wife, Sylvia, moved into the biggest house in town, a plantation-style mansion that had been owned by Dr. Crilly's father. The town welcomed them, they said. They were charmed by the easy pace, the friendships, the lack of cynicism.
A place like this sounds like a good prospect for a guy like myself to RETIRE TO.
In some ways, it fits - generally - the kind of county I'm looking for:
* Rural - completely away from _any_ city of any size. The "middle of nowhere" is great if you're an avid motorcyclist, as I am.
* Likely quite conservative. Need I say more?
* Homogeneous (the county is 99% white) - not much "diversity" here. That's _exactly_ what I'm looking for (sorry if that offends you).
* Cheap - $50k for a 3-bedroom, 2-bath house? You can't buy a garage for that around here.
* Near medical care - having a hospital nearby is certainly a consideration when you're aging.
I could sell out where I am now (northern Fairfield County, Connecticut), take the one-time capital gains exemption on the sale of my home, move to a county like this, buy a retirement home for a fraction of the proceeds I reap from the sale of my (older, in-need-of-work) my current home, and invest the balance (which I will certainly need as a single, retired guy for my remaining years).
I suspect there are a great many more soon-to-be-retirees like me looking to find a "place away" from what American society has become (degenerated to?). Something that hints toward the life many remember growing up in the 1950's.
Case in point: myself. I grew to age 10 in a small, rural Connecticut town, with farmer's fields just recently abandoned, separated by stonewalls, in a house my dad (a carpenter) built himself on land selling for $800 an acre. Today, those former field are overgrown with trees (the young people of today probably have no inkling of the open fields they once were), populated with enormous homes selling in the $700,000+ price range.
I can't "go home" again to the rural Weston of my youth. It no longer exists.
But I _could_ go "home" to a new-found rural community such as Superior, with little regret or looking back.
Cheers!
- John
P.S. Another thought (off-the-wall, perhaps): if the Islamics ever succeed in smuggling and detonating a nuke in an American city, watch the "middle of nowhere" places like this fill up across the country like rain barrels in a flood...