According to Yahoo News, North Dakota is one of the best places in the United States to live. Yes, you won't get a lot of 5 star celebrity sightings, and it's 8 hours to the nearest pro sports venue. But the state is in great economic shape, land is cheap, food is plentiful, the women are beautiful, the men are strong, and it's a sportsman's paradise.
Growing up, for the most part, in North Dakota was idyllic. My home town, counting all of the farm families that sent their kids to school in town and used the grain elevator, had a total population of less than 2000 souls. Everyone grew up together and raised their kids together. Kids would leave the house at sunset, play outside all day, have lunch and maybe dinner at whichever relative's house we ended up at, and be home before sundown for a bath and no-one batted an eye. My 1st grade class was about 20 children, and those kids graduated together 12 years later. Of that class, there were exactly 3 little girls that would have been in my dating pool if my family had stuck around. I was closely related to all of the others. In the spring and summer, we went fishing several times a week. In the fall, school would let out for a week or two to let the kids help out with the harvest and go hunting with their dads. In the winter there was sledding and ice fishing.
After a few moves to different places in North Dakota, we followed my step-dad to wander the Mountain West until we eventually settled in the Bay Area, which is about as different from rural North Dakota as you can get. I've spent the last 25 years trying to find a way back. However, I've found the love of my life, and she is definitely not moving to North Dakota if there's any way we can stay in Louisville. She's a wonderful lady, and she's worth waiting to go home. Eventually, retirement will come, and I plan on buying myself a nice stretch of prairie where I can lay in the tall grass or the deep snow and watch the clouds race each other across the sky for the rest of my life. Of course, I'll be drinking some of the Bluegrass's finest corn squeezings when I do. Hey, you can take the Norwegian out of Kentucky, but you're not gonna get the Kentucky out of the Norwegian.
2 comments:
Sounds great, except for that winter thing. I'm sure I couldn't manage to find a job that would allow me to show up only when roads were completely clear. After my experience of snow driving it's something I do my best to avoid.
The winter's aren't that bad, and you get used to the driving conditions and the cold. Hey, with as low a population density as you have outside of the cities, you have lots and lots of empty road to practice on!
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