I believe I’ve had enough life experience at my advanced age to answer the question ‘City Versus Country, Which is Safer Place to Live?’ Upon pondering this question, the answer surprised me. Allow me to explain. City Versus Country
I have joined the demographic fondly known as the elderly, aged, age-challenged, covid-preferred, ‘I fell down and can’t get up-ers’, or more fondly referred to by my daughter as the old fart. Anyhow, the point is that my path to this extinguished group included raising a family. As the father of three daughters, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to keep them, my wife, and myself safe. This included careful consideration regarding where we should live. City Versus Country
Since I began my career working for the federal government, and I did not have sufficient funds for my own private plane or helicopter, we started out in the city. I’m originally from a small Midwestern town, so city living was a new experience. I discovered many dangers to my family, as well as to myself. City Versus Country
One of the hazards of small children in the city is keeping track of them when you go out. Our daughters all learned to run before they learned to walk. So, taking them shopping made for treacherous times. When shopping in the city, I had to hang onto their hands the entire time. The traffic was terrible, the crowds thick, and danger of being run over by a car or kidnapped by a stranger lurked everywhere. I am six-foot-seven, and I remember the backaches from walking around slumped over, holding the hand of one or more of my little ones. Taking them anywhere required constant hypervigilance. City Versus Country
The massive shopping malls were the worst. I remember one time our middle daughter managed to break away from me when she was five or six. She decided to run up a down escalator, and I followed. By the time I reached the top, crashing into several fellow shoppers along the way, she had gotten into an elevator and headed for the third floor. When I finally caught up with her, she was fine, while I had pumped enough adrenaline to kill an elephant. At that point, my wife and I had a serious discussion about buying a ‘child leash’, which was a thing back then. Instead, we decided not to take the child shopping again until she was thirty. City Versus Country
At that time in history, the Washington, DC area was growing by leaps and bounds. The crowds and traffic just kept getting worse, and crime of all types (break-ins, muggings, car theft, drugs) kept increasing every year. We had someone try to break into our house one night by entering the attic through a carport access panel. They failed, but it was a sobering experience. So, we moved to the suburbs in an attempt to survive. City Versus Country
When we moved to the bedroom community in the suburbs, there was only one other subdivision and a bunch of cows. By the time we left ten years later, the place looked like Los Angeles. During those ten years, my wife lived near her work and our daughters lived a relatively safe life attending a nice, suburban, nearby school. However, I developed a serious case of PTSD from my daily commute on the Washington, DC Beltway. City Versus Country
I lived in Virginia and commuted to Maryland every day. I had to leave for work by six AM, or my commute would increase from forty-five minutes to two hours based on the increase in traffic. By then, the traffic turned out to be lethal from the Dulles Toll Road to I-495, and then onto I-270, another interstate to Rockville, Maryland. My first near-death experience occurred at six AM while taking the exit off the toll road to get onto I-495. City Versus Country
Some genius had designed the intersection so that three lanes had to merge into one to reach the exit. I remember being half asleep when I was rudely awakened by the roaring engines of a Corvette on my left and a BMW on my right. Both were determined to fill the same spot directly in front of my minivan. (Yes, as a father of three, I drove a minivan back then. Sigh.) As we approached the one-lane exit, the two sports cars continued to play chicken. I hit my brakes, closed my eyes expecting imminent death, and when I opened my eyes again the Vette and BMW were lined up in front of me. To this day I have no idea how we survived. City Versus Country
The next near-death experience occurred when I was driving home from work, flying up I-495 at seventy, clear sailing ahead. I rounded a curve, came to the Potomac Bridge, and found traffic at a dead stop. Forced to slam on my brakes, along with a hundred other cars, I barely avoided driving into someone’s trunk. I left a few thousand mile worth of tire rubber on the highway in the process. As I crawled across the bridge with half of the population of Northern Virginia, I discovered that the traffic had come to an abrupt standstill because an attractive young woman was bent over on the side of the road, changing a tire. Her derriere almost cost me, and a lot of other commuters, our lives. City Versus Country
I also remember one wintry late Friday night. I had a Ford Expedition, a very large SUV, at the time. It had snowed heavily all day, and a work project had to be finished before the weekend, so I stayed late. I was very tired. I remember pulling up to the toll booth entering the Dulles Toll Road and tossing my two quarters into the bin to raise the gate. Unfortunately, the gate was frozen, and the arm did not raise up as expected. City Versus Country
I hit the brakes, but the vehicle slid on, the front of my Expedition met the gate arm, broke it off, and flung it to the side of the road. I was half asleep, it was late, there was several feet of snow on the ground, no one around, and I didn’t bother to stop. I’m just grateful that I was in a large SUV, and that gate made of wood instead of steel or cement. City Versus Country
I’m happy to say that I survived several years of this treacherous commute. However, the area around our community continued to grow and grow. We lived at the head of a cul-de-sac, and the neighbor behind us moved and decided to rent his house. The new tenants moved in one Saturday morning, a couple of attractive young ladies. That part appeared to be fine, until they chained a large pit bull in their front yard. Their front yard adjoined our backyard, where our children played during the day. The thought of having one of our daughters turned into lunch for a large dog did not thrill, and the backyard became off limits. City Versus Country
Then I noticed various cars, always a single male behind the wheel, driving up the cul-de-sac and into the garage at all times of the day and night. Each car would stay for about an hour and then leave. This suggested one of two things, either drugs or prostitution, or perhaps both. My wife and I became concerned about the children either becoming lunch or perhaps the victims of a jealous spouse or drug deal gone bad. Still, we hung in there. City Versus Country
Then the home invasions began. Apparently, a gang of thieves decided that the bedroom communities out near Dulles Airport would make easy pickins’. On two separate occasions, someone broke into our neighbors’ houses and robbed them while they were home in bed. To my knowledge, no one was hurt. But with three small daughters in the house, this raised my hypervigilance level to red-redder-reddest, akin to a potential nuclear war. I considered purchasing a bazooka to ward off any home invaders, but thought perhaps this might be an overreaction (actually my wife thought this might be an overreaction). City Versus Country
The final straw came when I arrived home from work one night to find out that a man had followed my daughter and a couple of other young girls from the elementary school bus stop. He apparently was following my daughter and one of her friends, and he chose to follow her friend when they split up to go to their respective homes. As it turned out, the girl’s mother was home and chased him away. An investigation revealed that he had come out to the suburbs from the city, hunting for young children. The incident made the local news, and a reporter came out and interviewed everyone involved. I decided there was no way I was going to raise my children in the city, or suburbs that were turning into city, anymore. So, we packed up and moved. City Versus Country
So, to recap, in the case of the city, in my experience the main dangers involved fellow human beings, and one large dog brought into our lives by human beings. There were large crowds of people, hazardous city traffic, drugs, prostitution, people trying to feed your children to their very large dog, and people trying to break into your house to rob you, or worse. My wife and I became weary of playing ‘bumper cars’ on the highway and ‘hold down the fort’ when we were home. Perhaps a less crowded place would be nice. Why not try country living? City Versus Country
After taking a somewhat circuitous route, which I won’t bore you with, we landed in the country on a mountain lake. A remote location in the middle of nowhere, it took almost an hour to drive to a grocery store, doctor, or any reasonable sign of civilization. Only thing nearby was a small country store and gas station, a half hour away. No city traffic, no danger of burglars (no one could find the place), no crowds of people, just a peaceful mountain lake. We enrolled our three daughters in a local country elementary school and a consolidated country high school. We had found peaceful bliss and safety. Talk about delusional. City Versus Country
So, did we find country living safer than city/suburban living? To find out more, read next week’s blog, part 2 of ‘City Versus Country, Which is Safer Place to Live’. Meanwhile, if you like a good murder mystery and need a few laughs (this election really sucks and is kind of stressful), you will want to go to johnjjessop.com and buy one of my comedy murder mysteries. Dr. Jason Longfellow, PI is a bit of a train wreck, but his nurse wife Chelsea is the real deal. See ya’ next Monday. City Versus Country