Rural Southern Life Takes Some Getting Used To

There are some things about living in the rural south that just take some getting used to. First and foremost are the things that run across in front of you while you’re casually driving down the road. The lack of conveniences is challenging also.

I just drove home without much gas because it’s Sunday and the gas stations aren’t open early Sunday morning. I don’t think that it’s a Christian/church thing; I think that it’s just about not having the traffic to justify opening that early. This isn’t a Southern thing, it’s a rural thing. The gas stations also close at 10pm which means that if you going to Wal-Mart late so you don’t have to deal with so many people, you better get your gas before then or you’re not going anywhere. That brings up another point which is Wal-Mart. We have a Wal-Mart North of us, one South of us, and one East of us. They are all close to forty miles round trip. Once again, this is a rural thing and not a Southern thing. Some of the inconveniences promote unhealthy behavior.

I had heard of dry counties before I moved here but as a person living in a modern society you look at the concept of dry counties the same way that you look at someone that says they’ve seen Bigfoot. You think, sure, dry counties; I think that I read something about that in the National Enquirer. Dry counties are real folks, which leads me to take the concept of Bigfoot a little more seriously. Let me explain what a dry county is. A dry county is a place where you can have alcohol in your home but you can’t buy it in the county. This leads the business people that live in the neighboring counties to build beer stores just over the county line. What this means is that most of the hardworking people go out and earn their paychecks and they drive over to the next county and buy beer. Not everybody drinks beer here but most of the people that are upstanding citizens make their way to the beer store even when their neighbors don’t think that they do, and by the way their neighbors are doing the same thing and not making it very public because they don’t want everyone to know either. If most of the people are buying beer and doing it on the sly, then why hasn’t someone stood up and said, hey, I’ve seen most of you at the beer store just as you’ve seen me there, let’s stop giving our tax money to the next county over and keep it here so our children can benefit from it. Maybe we could even use that tax money to promote some industry so there are more jobs and people aren’t always complaining about not being able to find work. With the benefits from the additional tax money aside let’s look at how living in a dry county promotes alcoholism.  

When you live in a place where beer is readily available you can go down to the corner store and buy a 40oz or a six pack for that Friday night bon-fire or that movie you’ve been waiting to see. If you had a rough day at work you can buy an individual can and go home and drink it before dinner. When you live in a dry county you have to drive 30 to 50 miles round trip to get a beer. If you’re going to drive that far it only makes since to buy in quantity to lessen the cost per unit that the expense of the extra gas adds. Having extra alcohol in the house means that when you’re feeling lazy but you still want a beer, its right there. 

It is easier to say I want a couple beers tonight but I’m not going out in the cold to get some when you know that it is right there in the gas station on your way home from work the next day. Having alcohol in the house makes it easier to have a beer every day and that isn’t always beneficial to productivity if you tend to drink more then you intended. Limiting your alcohol intake is a lot easier when you don’t have it in the house.

I’m sure that there are those of you that don’t drink, and believe me, there are fewer of you than you think there are. You can say well you shouldn’t be drinking anyway. My reply to that is that I’m an adult, I served my country, I pay my taxes, if I want a beer in the comfort of my own home after the kids are in bed then I’ve earned the right to have a beer. I’m a firm believer in alcohol checkpoints set up randomly by the police. I think that we should have more of them. I believe that there shouldn’t be any bars. Bars promote drinking and driving. If there were a way to guarantee that nobody would drink and drive then maybe bars would be ok. One problem with bars is that when people drink it lowers their inhabitations.  If you have lowered inhabitations and you’re around a bunch of other people with lowered inhibitions it isn’t a good environment to promote healthy marriages. I guess I’m just not a fan of bars. If I drink, I drink at home where it’s safe and going to bed doesn’t involve keys, a car and possibly the sound of crunching metal and torn flesh.

Let me get back to what inspired this topic, getting used to Rural Southern life. This morning something ran in front of my four-wheel drive that could have gotten printed on the front page of the National Enquirer. It was the size of a small deer. Its ears were floppy and its fur was like that of a dog. I thought it may have been a Great Dane mixed with something fuzzier. It was too big to be any coyote that I’ve ever seen and I don’t know if we have wolves around here. It didn’t run like a bear but the fur reminded me of one. I don’t know what it was. I’m going to chalk it up to tired eyes and poorly lit environment.

The thing about the rural south is that they don’t have zoos. Do you know why that is? I do. It’s because they let their bears, coyotes, bobcats and cougars just run around in the woods like they were born there or something. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, it just takes some getting used to, especially when you weight over 300 pounds and you occasionally smell like pork chops and gravy. I’m a human not an entrée.

To wrap this up, I love the South and I love the rural setting that I live in. The inconveniences are trivial compare to the benefits even when you almost run into “manbearpig” (Southpark Character) on a dark country road.