If You're Going to Live in the Country

by Thomas H. Ormsbee; Renee Richmond Huntley Ormsbee

Why do city-bred people betake themselves to the country? The surface reasons are as many as why they are Republicans or Democrats, but the basic one is escape from congestion and confusion. For themselves or their children their goal is the open country beyond the suburban fringe. Here the children, like young colts, can be turned out to run and race, kick up their heels and enjoy life, free of warnings to be quiet lest they annoy the elderly couple in the apartment below or the nervous wreck the other side of that suburban privet hedge.

The day and night rattle and bang of the city may go unnoticed for years but eventually it takes its toll. Then comes a great longing to get away from it all. If family income is independent of salary earned by a city job, there is nothing to the problem. Free from a desk in some skyscraper that father must tend from nine to five, such a family can select its country home hours away from the city. Ideal! But few are so fortunate. Most of us consider ourselves lucky to have that city job. It is to be treated with respect and for us the answer lies in locating just beyond those indefinite boundaries that limit the urban zone. With the larger cities, this may be as much as fifty miles from the business center; with smaller ones the gap can be bridged speedily by automobile.

Going to live in the country, viewed dispassionately as an accountant's balance sheet, has attributes that can be recorded in black ink as well as those that require a robust crimson. If you really want a place where you need not be constantly rubbing elbows with the rest of the world; where you can cultivate something more ambitious than window boxes or an eight by ten pocket-handkerchief garden; where subways and street clatter can be forgotten; your black column will be far longer than the one in red. But if nothing feels so good to your foot as smooth unyielding pavements; if the multicolored electric sign of a moving picture palace is more entrancing than a vivid sunset; you are at heart a city bird, intended by temperament to nest behind walls of brick and steel. There is nothing you can do about it either. In the country the nights are so black; the birds at dawn too noisy; and Nature when she storms and scolds, is a fish-wife. Possibly you can learn to endure it all but will the game be worth the candle? Without true fondness for outdoors and an inner urge for a measure of seclusion, life in the country is drear. Don't attempt it.

But for those who care for the cool damp of evening dew; the first robin of spring hopping pertly across the grass; or a quiet winter evening with a good book or a radio program of their own choosing rather than that of the people living across the hall; country life is worth every cent of its costs and these bear lightly.

Along Fifth avenue, New York, not far from the Metropolitan Museum, is a typical town house. A man of means maintains it for social and business reasons. But he does not live there. His intimates know that only a few minutes after the last dinner guest has departed, his chauffeur will drive him some twenty miles to a much simpler abode on a secluded dirt road. Here, he really lives. Whistling tree toads replace the constant whir of buses and taxicabs.

Most of us cannot be so extravagant. We are fortunate to have one home, either in the city or the country. Renting or buying it entails sacrifices, and maintaining it has its unexpected expenses that always come at the wrong time. What do those who live beyond the limits of cities and sophisticated villages gain by hanging their crane with the rabbits and woodchucks?

First, country living is the answer to congestion. Even the most modest country cottage is more spacious than the average city apartment. Life in such a house may be simple but not cramped. There is light and air on all sides. This may seem unimportant but did you ever occupy an apartment where the windows opened on a court or were but a few feet from the brick wall of another warren for humans? If the sun reached your windows an hour or two a day, you were lucky. In a country house there is sunlight somewhere on pleasant days from morning to night. That difference can only be understood by those who have known both ways of living.

In town, light and air cost money; along the rural postal routes it is as much a part of the scheme of things as summer insects or winter snows. And it may have a very definite bearing on the well being of all members of the family. Some suffer more than they realize from lack of sunlight. Frequently it is the children and, with many families, decision to move countryward is on their account. In fact, there be some, where father and mother, if they consulted their own preferences, would stay in a city apartment convenient to theatres and shops, with friends and acquaintances close at hand. But their small children lack robustness. The parents try everything, careful diet, adequate hours of sleep and all the other recommendations of scientific child rearing. Still the little arms and legs continue to be spindling. Tonics and cod liver oil fail to get rid of that pinched look, the concomitant of too little sunlight and too many hours indoors. In desperation such a family betakes itself to the country. The children weather tan. They respond to the more placid life and gradually gain the much sought after hardiness. Nature has been the physician without monthly bills for house or office treatments.

The children are not the only ones who gain. Healthy adults renew their energy and crave activity. Here opportunity lies close at hand. It may be swinging a golf club or going fishing. It may be such unorganized methods of stretching muscles and increasing breathing as pushing a lawn mower, raking leaves or weeding the delphinium border. All these sports and homely out-of-door duties and pleasures are nearby, many of them just the other side of the front door. Those classed as sports may require a country club membership but even this is on a more modest scale.

In fact, all potent are the economies made possible by leaving city or closely built suburb. House and land, either bought or rented, comes cheaper and is more ample. Along with this basic saving there are a number of others that help to leave something from the family income at the end of the year. Clothes last longer in the country and wardrobe requirements are simpler. Similarly, there is a distinct decrease in the money spent for amusements. When the nearest moving picture house is five miles away it is easy to stay at home. Going to the movies is not a matter of just running around the corner and so done automatically once or twice a week. Then there are such things as doctor's bills. While sickness, like taxes, visits every family no matter where it lives, we have found that we actually have less need of medical care living in the sticks than we did in town. Also the charges for competent care by both doctors and dentists are lower.