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EVERYTHING THIS WOMAN SAYS IS TRUE. IT IS WORTH REPEATING. When I first moved to this part of the country in buying a ranch. A dream which I still love. I made banana nut bread for the neighbors. One greeted me with a gun so do not just stop at a country door. If I get a knock at the door I get scared myself that it is some clown on meth wanting to know if anyone is home so he can rob the place. Big problem in the country. I DO LOVE MY RANCH though it is when I leave my ranch and go to town that I want to move. YES WALMART IS ALL I HAVE to buy anything I need so I order most stuff on line too.
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Originally Posted by Mattie Jo
These things are never important to people in the big cities until after they get here, and then all they do is complain that there is no where to shop. I do most of my shopping online, and I really miss walking into a store and seeing all the goodies, touching them, seeing the views around a city. sitting in a cafe with friends. before you move here try shopping at walmart for a month and see how that feels. if it feels good then by all means you will love small town oklahoma. well, try it for a few months. (In a month i get to go shopping in eureka springs. I can't wait.)
doctors. in small towns you may not find good doctors, so you will end up having to drive to okc and tulsa for important things, like anything other than the cold for flu. and this is especially true when you are old, because you will get sent to tulsa or okc when you least feel like traveling. so whatever you do, move within an hour of a big city, but then if you do you may end up in traffic and in a city anyway.
we have a lot of diversity, but i really miss not seeing many asians, east indians, etc. and i really miss having good ethnic restaurants outside of mexican and chinese, which is really nothing like real mexican and chinese food. and i know the restaurants here are not good, because i have traveled thoughout mexico and been to china town s.f. often enough. but if you like steaks, barbecue, etc. then you will like it here.
schools. the teachers are more than likely good. i know a few of them. very intelligent. just can't get some, many, or a lot of the kids to stay in them, to even read books.
meth is big here. that is higher education for some kids.
good old boys politics. for sure. if you don't have money, that means, if you are not a doctor or a lawyer or even a realtor, and you have problems with any of the above people in those professions, just eat it. and if you are an outsider never get into a fight with your neighbor. i know of one woman that did. she moved into town from the country after they got even with her. so always be friendly to everyone.
oh, yes, the roads. we on city data talked one guy into moving here. he came; he saw; he wants to leave, and maybe he has. he hated our trashy neighborhoods, our very poor roads and freeways and wanted out. oh, well.
we have a lot of tornadoes. rather scary, and i got away from california because of the earthquakes. but there is no where to hide here because most places don't have storm cellars because it is too rocky to dig. speaking of which, if you love to garden, think twice, for every speck of dirt you dig up you will find rocks and boulders. and when you get all of those rocks out make sure you have lots of soil to fill in the hole.
if you don't care for culture, then you will be okay here, but that depends upon your idea of what culture is. i never went to the art galleries, plays, etc. in the cities i lived in.
very few jobs here too unless you live in the city.
but what we have plenty of is, ticks that cause tick fever (my dh and i have had it twice, and it never really goes away. if you get ill from something else it can pop up again.) poisonous snakes that kill, mosquitoes that are now bringing in nile fever, and if you want to walk in the woods, do it before it gets really hot because then you will have chiggers, and a chigger bite can itch for weeks on end, and you will think that you are going insane, and if you do go insane they will have to send you to tulsa or okc to a shrink. and if you wait longer than sat august, you will end up with stick tights (stickers) all over you, and, oh, if you walk into the woods it is best to spray yourself with that poisonous bug spray, the one that could damage your nerves. i think it has damaged mind because i am getting rather squirrely since moving here.
and the heat. it you travel here come in the hot summer months and see if you like this humidity. if you don't, then it is best to find another area.
but if you move to texas you will have to deal with fire ants. same in southern oklahoma. check off arizona, new mexico, and florida too. now fire ants are really ugly. i lived throughout texas, and i can tell you that if you live in the country you have to keep walking, because if you stand still for one second you are covered with those mean creatures. read up on fire ants before you move anywhere and see where they live, see what they do to animals and especially to people.
and texas has tornadoes, humidity, and in some areas people who do not accept outsiders. we tried a few small towns, all unfriendly. it also has a lot of diversity.
if you can afford to stay where you are, stay. or try oregon or northern california. but i will tell you now, you will never find a perfect place in the entire world to live. if you spent your life in washington you will not like the humidity and the bugs here or the tornadoes.
but what we have here is real friendly people and pretty country. when a tornado warning comes i just pretend it is not coming my way. when i dig in my garden, i end up in the chiropractor's office. we have a lot of good chiropractors here; we need them. right now my neck is winched from digging in our garden.
but if you are really brave, then come here, and you will be welcomed, but only if you don't talk about how you wish there was good shopping and good restaurants.
and last of all, remember, you have to live where it is cold to keep fire ants away. Here is a fire ant map:
Not only is the heat something to deal with but so are the ticks, chiggers and scary bugs. In the summer near Crowder,OK the tarantula spiders start crawling all over the roads in and around that area just before sunset. I have seen the same thing just east of Tahlequah and down in Pushmataha county.
we have had tarantulas in our house. i just place a jar over them and set them back outside. what is worse is the brown recluse spider. but after spending $300 to have our home fumigated i haven't seen any around.
Debbie, what part of oklahoma do you live in? it is nice you have a ranch. good you have a computer to use when shopping. amazon.com is wonderful.
one of my friends gave up on chickens for this reason, but maybe it was raccoons.
yes, where do you get black walnut hull powder and how good is it really? maybe i can use it on myself.
debbie, get guineas. you have to buy them young and keep them in a cage until they can protect themselves, but usually they can get away from predators. they will eat your ticks. get a martin house for mosquitoes if you have them.
Just cleaning out the chicken coop in the middle of the day coyotes took down 5 chickens while I was cleaning the coop. I sure learned a lesson about those coyotes.
The coyotes are so much bigger now and not as rangy looking as I remember from when I was younger. And they're not nearly as afraid of people. One the other day in the horse lot just stood there and stared at me from a couple hundred yards.
one of my friends gave up on chickens for this reason, but maybe it was raccoons.
yes, where do you get black walnut hull powder and how good is it really? maybe i can use it on myself.
debbie, get guineas. you have to buy them young and keep them in a cage until they can protect themselves, but usually they can get away from predators. they will eat your ticks. get a martin house for mosquitoes if you have them.
Raccoons are terrible about getting into stuff!
On the black walnut hull powder it was my sister-in-law that got me to trying it. We just put a teaspoon or so in with the dogs' food. The dogs don't seem to mind it but these dogs would pretty much eat about anything. I was pulling off one or two ticks a day from each dog. I think since I've been using the powder I've pulled off maybe 2. Pretty good to me and kind of comparable to Advantix which is what I used last year.
Turns out there are folk remedies for people associated with black walnut hull powder. I haven't tried any myself but I did read some stuff on the web about it after I had some decent results with the dogs.
I was pretty skeptical about it and still am actually. I figure the ticks will figure out some way around it.
I had a friend once that had guineas. They were a loud bunch. But he swore he never had ticks.
The coyotes are so much bigger now and not as rangy looking as I remember from when I was younger. And they're not nearly as afraid of people. One the other day in the horse lot just stood there and stared at me from a couple hundred yards.
Me too, they walk away from you like they could care less. at night they go crazy with their howl and then my dogs start to howl back, so, we will shoot a shot in the air and then there is dead silence!
I livein the hills 20 miles west of McAlester. The "old boy town" of McAlester is the only shopping for milk or anything and when you get to the town the only thing you have is a super walmart. A few other stores but not carrying everything I need. I feel like I need anger management when I am grocery shopping.
I got mine from Amazon but you might be able to find it at a health food store. Turns out it has some human uses for various things.
It was just easier to use Amazon than it was to go looking.
Thanks, i will look, and you made my point exactly, hard to find things here, amazon has everything.
i have learned that it cost more than $10 for a round trip to Muskogee, and even if you go you may not find what you want, but you can go on amazon and get shipping for the price of spending all day looking for it and far less.
On the black walnut hull powder it was my sister-in-law that got me to trying it. We just put a teaspoon or so in with the dogs' food. The dogs don't seem to mind it but these dogs would pretty much eat about anything. I was pulling off one or two ticks a day from each dog. I think since I've been using the powder I've pulled off maybe 2. Pretty good to me and kind of comparable to Advantix which is what I used last year.
Turns out there are folk remedies for people associated with black walnut hull powder. I haven't tried any myself but I did read some stuff on the web about it after I had some decent results with the dogs.
I was pretty skeptical about it and still am actually. I figure the ticks will figure out some way around it.
I had a friend once that had guineas. They were a loud bunch. But he swore he never had ticks.
thanks. naturopathic doctors give it to people to get rid of worms. wonder if it works for heartworms. i just spent $150 on medicine for my cat and dog for the next 4 months or so.
of course you can pick up black walnuts here and grind your own. ha.
Me too, they walk away from you like they could care less. at night they go crazy with their howl and then my dogs start to howl back, so, we will shoot a shot in the air and then there is dead silence!
I livein the hills 20 miles west of McAlester. The "old boy town" of McAlester is the only shopping for milk or anything and when you get to the town the only thing you have is a super walmart. A few other stores but not carrying everything I need. I feel like I need anger management when I am grocery shopping.
and where did you live before oklahoma? that area of oklahoma is really pretty.
i thought that they would have more in mcalester and krebs than that. at least here in tahlequah we have a college, some nice restaurants, and some nice stores, and i say "some." and at least we have a health food store and reasor's grocery, which is where i shop since i can't stand walmart unless i have to stand it. but reasor's has a great health food section throughout the store as well as some other nice foods.
thing is, i really like these good old boys here. i grew up in a cow town in california, and so i am more used to country people than i am city folk, and when i finally remarried i went back to my hometown and met a guy there, and now we are here. i just want eureka springs to be where fayetteville is located or better yet, where muskogee is, so i could go visit.
McAlester has the basics but did lose some of the nice shops during our recession. It takes me almost a half an hour to get to McAlester. Before here I lived in the Northwest corner of IL. It was dairy country but they had more to offer. As I've said before I love my ranch and area is pretty and I couldn't have afforded this in any other State. MY problem for me it is the hot summers, ticks, chiggers and not much in common with those that do live out here. I drive to Church into McAlester and have been going to the same one for years and they are nice but not family. I am just telling the original poster what he/she may run into in moving to this part of the country. Of course they call this area Little Dixie which I thought was cute at first but what it is a place run by a few people. I think you know what I mean. Stipe country!!
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