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"Oh, the joys of country life!" or the horrors, depending on one's attitude; I grew up in town, but we always had land out in the countryside. "When I grow up, I'm going to live in the country, not in some stupid town, where all there are is people. I want horses and cows and sheep and." Be careful for what you wish, you may get it.

I wasn't about to settle for some old falling down country house, not after working so hard to earn the money to buy anything I wanted, in the deserts of Saudi Arabia. No, I was going to build a dream place, and engineer out all the problems I associated with country living. I bought hundreds of acres of unimproved grassland, with virtually no fences or roads, and went to work writing checks and hiring workers. A year later, we moved into a 4000 sq. ft. rambling ranch house, with a new road to the house and a well that provided us with all the water we could use.

My mother-in-law called when the first blizzard hit, asking if our water was frozen. She associated country living with water freezing on really cold nights, from her experience. "Nope," I answered proudly, I engineered this to not freeze no matter how cold it gets. Over the years, she decided I was a pretty good engineer, I think, since all the things she associated with farm life had not come to pass. I didn't mention the things which were real problems, though, like the electricity going out and no water since the pump was electric.

Fire insurance was triple what it was in town, so we got together as a community, and formed a fire station, with volunteer firefighters and a used fire truck, virtually donated by a nearby city. We might could have bought a new truck for what we spent on mechanical repairs of the truck, but it lowered our insurance rates.

A drought lowered the water level and many of my neighbors' wells went dry. We laid pipelines and brought water from a new lake nearby, contracting the city to treat the water for us. By the time we finished, the drought had broken and the rain was washing out the roads.

The small school was about to lose its accreditation as a movement to consolidate small rural schools into larger systems nearby. We worked hard at upgrading our school, which got me involved, and I served as temporary cook, bus driver, repairman, roofer, playground equipment builder, ticket taker at ball games, concession stand operator and welder at different times, oh, and PTA president for one year.

My private road washed out. My well filled with mud, once, a grass fire burned my well house and the plastic water well casing fell too far down to retrieve; and that was just one year. A horse got entangled in a fence, sheep had broken legs, dogs were bit by rattlers or moccasins, and cats took over the stables as they bred like rabbits. That was the next year.

I built a swimming pool with the help of my son and three of his high school friends, then went to the Emergency Room with a suspected heart attack, but it was just muscle spasm from dehydration and electrolyte deficiency. Note: don't build a 20,000 gallon concrete pool in the middle of July with just some high school boys to help.

I live in town, now. I loved living in the country and having horses, but I'm just too lazy to do the hard work of living where it's less convenient. I thought the hard work would be plowing and harvesting, but I was wrong; it's the other stuff that wears a person out. Now, if I want milk, I just go to the store, not to the barn to milk a cow.

Oh, the joys of city life!

Learn more about this author, Will Kester.
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