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Try mounting a large outdoor antenna either in the attic or outside on a tall pole with a good grounding strap. You could also get satellite TV. Satellite internet isn't cheap nor that fast, but it's faster than dialup.
When our outdoor antenna finally started giving up the ghost, my husband did a bit of research, got some cardboard and I think it was aluminum foil, may have been wire, and made an antenna that he put inside the attic hooked up to the antenna cable to the TV. We immediately got wonderful reception, and because of where we're located we get broadcast programming from two, sometimes three, different markets. Between that and Netflix streaming, we have more to watch than we would possibly have time for, and we get the weather reports from north of us and south of us, so we have a pretty good idea what's coming from where when.
And if the antenna ever develops a program (not likely because it's inside and protected)? He has more cardboard, and more wire.
All of the complaints about rural living (cell service, internet service, distance to stores, lack of advanced medical treatment, hunters, farming, lack of "diversity" or "culture") are all things that I, and many, others, have warned people who have never or rarely ever been out of urbanized areas about.
You can't move to thinly populated, possibly economically depressed, area and expect the same conveniences and services you get in the city/suburbs. The cost to provide them far exceeds the ability of the area to support them, whether as a public service or a profit making venture.
There's a reason why in many small towns the "Coffee Shoppe" is the gas station or the local diner, that's what the area can support. Same with everything else.
Don't move to a rural area expecting to recreate your urban lifestyle with a forested background.
As a historical note, many rural towns got cable in the 1960s. It was the only way the people could get TV reception that wasn't marginal. Where I live, 35 miles from Washington, DC didn't get it until 1987.
Mrs. NBP and I have raised 4 children in this small town. Three of them graduated from college (on just got out of high school). Two of them have remained here. One moved to an even more rural area. Only one betrayed the family by staying near Baltimore once she graduated from college.
Rural people are less paranoid that city dwellers, but they also die younger. This is mostly due to the lack of emergency services. Have an accident or a heart attack and chances are you will be dead before the ambulance gets there.
BS.
At least in my area, we've got 80 and 90 year olds that are still farming, ranching, and enjoying independent living. They don't need to work for a living anymore, but they look forward to their way of life and still are excited to see spring crops emerge and later harvest time, or raising their livestock.
True story: was at a birthday party for a neighbor, and was seated next to his 93 year-old Mother. She still is firmly in control of their sections of irrigated alfalfa production and one of the sharpest growers I know of in the area. She was bragging that she'd cut over 800 acres herself and baled over 32,000 small square bales herself. Yes, her grandsons hook up the equipment and service it so that all she has to do is head out to the field and get the work done, but she's not going to sit around and watch everybody else do all the work. She still lives in the house she and her husband built 70 years ago, and tends the gardens for much of her own produce, canning and freezing a year's supply every year ... and giving much away to her church members. She doesn't drive anymore, so depends upon neighbors to pick up stuff for her when they go to town; just about everybody in the area will check in on her to see if she needs stuff picked up or a ride to town for a medical appointment or other errands. She's pretty sharp ... has many tales of how the times were around here before electrical service in the 1950's and the steam trains that went by a corner of their ranch. They didn't have indoor plumbing and central heating until well after the electrical service made those conveniences possible.
She's only one of many similar older folk in the area. Yes, if they have a serious medical condition, help is not close in an emergency. Comes with the territory and they all accept that as a fact of life .... for most of them, it's been that way all their lives. Nothing new about that except that we've now got flight for life helicopter service which may be useful.
PS: I'm already past the age when most folk retire, too. Still doing all my own haying & mechanical work, and livestock operations with my wife. Planning on doing so for another 20+ years, and while I may be moving slower, I still get 'er done.
I think the OP was really trying to say that a rural area is really no place for a young person (18-21 I'd imagine he is) to start out in. Generally people today get their start in the city and then move to a rural area where they can telecommute. Seriously now, what can a kid that graduates high school do for work (work that pays a living wage of course) if he lives in a rural area nowadays? Where I lived it was either McDonalds or Walmart with gov't subsidy check.
You get your start in the city and then move to a rural area when you can telecommute.
I see a fair number of 18-21 year olds that are actively farming and/or ranching ... working for wages that supplement the other work they do, such as fencing, mechanical work, welding, plumbers, electricians, carpentry, roofing. Essentially, they've developed multiple skillsets and seek out the opportunities to make themselves productive.
I watched more than a few of my neighbors children grow up from tots to be responsible productive adults now with their own families. They appear to be happy and satisfied with their lives, even if they don't have all the trappings of conveniences, entertainment, disposable income and affluence that some of the posters on this thread deem essential for survival. From my perspective, they are some of the wealthiest people I know .... and they don't appear to be concerned that they don't have the same superficial values that many financially wealthy city folk have.
They don't cry themselves to sleep every night agonizing over what they don't have, they are thankful and proud for what they do have; many have substantial sales volume businesses in the ag or ranching game. When you're seeing beef at the sale barn bringing close to $2/lb live weight and they've got 30-40-100 head out there on the pastures, maybe taking care of another 1,000 in a feedlot for an investor, or harvesting a couple thousand acres of alfalfa producing dairy quality hay at 4-5 tons/acre and it's worth $150-180/ton ... do the math, folks. These aren't nickel and dime businesses these kids are into. Three neighbors of mine have their sons working these types of businesses where they got them started with Dad's borrowed tractor/swather/rake/baler/stackwagon and there's Dad's semi-truck and trailer and forklift standing by to load them out to deliver the product. Oh, the trucking side of the business generates revenue, too. After paying the costs of production and land leases, it's not a bad living income. And it beats flipping burgers for $8-10/hr as a challenging job/business.
Many rural areas have now become booming areas now that Boomers are retiring .It bring need for services and just looking at who has wealth in nation ;one can see why. Modern hospitals .I know nurses and doctors who move to such locations and love the life it offers. Retiring of boomers taking their wealth with them is new reality.
I grew up living in cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg, Paris, Venice, Tokyo..
When we moved to US, I was VERY happy to live in an area where I am not bumping into people just crossing the road.
10 years later, I am still loving it.
At least in my area, we've got 80 and 90 year olds that are still farming, ranching, and enjoying independent living. They don't need to work for a living anymore, but they look forward to their way of life and still are excited to see spring crops emerge and later harvest time, or raising their livestock.
True story: was at a birthday party for a neighbor, and was seated next to his 93 year-old Mother. She still is firmly in control of their sections of irrigated alfalfa production and one of the sharpest growers I know of in the area. She was bragging that she'd cut over 800 acres herself and baled over 32,000 small square bales herself. Yes, her grandsons hook up the equipment and service it so that all she has to do is head out to the field and get the work done, but she's not going to sit around and watch everybody else do all the work. She still lives in the house she and her husband built 70 years ago, and tends the gardens for much of her own produce, canning and freezing a year's supply every year ... and giving much away to her church members. She doesn't drive anymore, so depends upon neighbors to pick up stuff for her when they go to town; just about everybody in the area will check in on her to see if she needs stuff picked up or a ride to town for a medical appointment or other errands. She's pretty sharp ... has many tales of how the times were around here before electrical service in the 1950's and the steam trains that went by a corner of their ranch. They didn't have indoor plumbing and central heating until well after the electrical service made those conveniences possible.
She's only one of many similar older folk in the area. Yes, if they have a serious medical condition, help is not close in an emergency. Comes with the territory and they all accept that as a fact of life .... for most of them, it's been that way all their lives. Nothing new about that except that we've now got flight for life helicopter service which may be useful.
PS: I'm already past the age when most folk retire, too. Still doing all my own haying & mechanical work, and livestock operations with my wife. Planning on doing so for another 20+ years, and while I may be moving slower, I still get 'er done.
You can't move to thinly populated, possibly economically depressed, area and expect the same conveniences and services you get in the city/suburbs. The cost to provide them far exceeds the ability of the area to support them, whether as a public service or a profit making venture.
Don't move to a rural area expecting to recreate your urban lifestyle with a forested background.
My entire region, other than a few incorporated suburban bedroom communities, is economically depressed. I viewed the surrounding countryside as being MORE affluent than the city, because it's not blighted by shuttered factories and decaying infrastructure. And indeed, my township is substantially more affluent than the town that serves as our county seat.
My background is the Northern Virginia suburbs. In the 1970s, so much of that land was textbook rural, even in bustling Fairfax County. Places that were farmland in 1980 became scattered subdivisions, which filled in in the 1990s, and became tony upmarket and fairly dense mixed-use communities in the 2000s. To me, the formula was simple: buy rural land within a few miles of the current suburban development-border, sit back for decade or two, and wait for property values to skyrocket, as development encroaches. Unfortunately that doesn't work too well in the post-industrial Midwest.
The VA suburbs of DC are not at all comparable to OH or PA, as you noted. Nor is the area of MD where I am. When we moved here 30 years ago from collapsing NWPA it was considered the back of the beyond. In that time the population has gone from under 30K to knocking at the door of 90K.
The difference is the jobs machine that DC was and continues to be.
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