I Am a City Kid

I was born and raised in a city, Elizabeth, NJ. Elizabeth was a city of about 125,000 people and divided into several distinct areas. The Hill, The Berg, the Port and the North End were enclaves of lower to middle class working people. It was a typical city. As cities change rapidly, I have no idea how things are today. Perhaps I will visit and see.

I was educated in a high school with 1200 other kids. I went to a commuter’s (no dorms) college in a nearby city, Newark, NJ. With about 300,000 residents, Newark was the largest city in NJ. My college was in the part of the city going through many changes. Buildings were being torn down to make room for the college’s expansion and new businesses. Other parts of the city were being torn down to clear areas of rubble from the riots of the late ‘60s. I moved many times during the next decades, but always to another city.

I finally moved out of the city to an unincorporated area of North Florida near Gainesville in Gilchrist County. With more cows than people, Gilchrist was my first experience with rural living. We owned a one acre lot with a small cracker house. The structure was built of cinder blocks, had one window air conditioner and a carport attached. We converted the carport into a master bedroom with a second bath. We removed most of the falling down wooden pole shed and used the remainder of the building for storage. We also put a pool and studio behind the house and had the sliding door from the kitchen open onto the pool deck. The house was in the country, but we were not quite there yet. I used to stand in the middle of the paved road in front of our house and look both ways. In one direction I could just make out the blinking red light at the closest intersection, about a mile away. In the other direction the road went to the horizon with no interruption. We were not farming or even growing a garden. Our blueberry bushes had berries, but most went to the birds. We spoke of the farm life, but had to wait ten years before starting a real attempt.

After Florida, we moved to a small town near Dallas, Texas, and lived there for a decade. The small rural town went from rural to suburban to downtown during those ten years. We lived on a dead end road off a dead end road, but the main drag, just one quarter of a mile away, was scheduled for upgrading to a six lane, divided highway. My wife and I decided to move to what would become our first retirement home. We moved to a farm community about 40 miles north of our old home and well into the rural life.