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@ WNC Badwolf, Wow! Sounds Like the infrastructure there is pretty jacked up. Yeah we are better equipped to handle the snow here, but it doesn't always help thanks to funding cuts due to our 10bil budget shortage. I know the weather isn't gonna be perfect there, but I'm sick of living in a place where the sky is gray almost 6 months out of the year. I'd love to move to FLA, but my gf is steadfast against it and the cost of living there is ridiculous (not to mention I've heard some pretty nasty things about FLA schools too). I didn't even think about Cell reception, so thanks for bringing that up. Those last couple of paragraphs really hit home, sounds exactly like the way it is here. Nothing to do but drink, do drugs and have sex (that's one of the reasons I don't wanna raise my son here). That whole thing happened w/ my sis about 5 yrs ago. If you don't mind me asking, where did you get your info on JC TN? Is it first hand or by word of mouth. I've been looking very hard at JC TN as well. I can offer a piece of advice about your cable phone service. You can buy a backup power supply to plug your cable modem into, that way when your power goes out you don't lose your phones immediately.
@queenofbavaria I never said the numbers of teen pregnancy, drug & alcohol use in WNC is significantly higher, nor did I compare it to any other area, what I did say is that the numbers were quite high.
As I stated before, I do not have children of my own, but I do have a HUGE family, so I hear about their kids all the time. Every person in my family that currently has a child, gave birth to that first child before they turned 19. I have one cousin that had her first child at 13. Of all my cousins that are plus or minus 10 years of my age (somewhere around 25 cousins)only 4 of us graduated from high school, 3 of us went to college. I have 2 younger sisters. Neither of them graduated from high school, both of them had a child before 19 & neither of them have their GED. My father quite high school in the 10th grade, my parents were 16 & 17 when they married. Of all my grandparents on both sides of my family & going back as many generations as we know of. only 1 grandfather finished high school & none of them every went to college.
My family is not unique in this area. Most of the older families like mine who have been here for so many generations are just like that & the sad part is that each generation does not encourage the next generation to do better. The younger generation have the attitude of "if it was good enough for my parents & grandparents then it is good enough for me" so they just fall into line with the rest of the family, have their first child in their teens, get married in their teens & start their life. But in every family there are a few that for some reason do not want to follow in the family foot steps. They do not get married or ever have children & try to have a much better life for themselves. I am that person in my family.
As I have stated in other posts I am currently attending Asheville Buncombe Community college (better known as AB Tech) In most of my classes I am the oldest person by far, Most of my class mates are young enough to be my children.
I hear every day, younger students talking about some drug they just bought & want their friends to come over after class, I see them paying older students to go buy them beer or liqueur, I have even seen them drinking in the parking lots between classes.
I can not count the number of girls in my classes under 20 years old that have 1 or 2 kids. I also know many people in my classes that quit high school because they got pregnant, then later get their GED. One of my classes we had to pick a "hot topic" to write an essay on. A girl in my class picked teen age pregnancy in WNC, she chose it because it was something she could write from experience, I didn't get to read the essay but she told me how surprised she was as to the numbers of teen pregnancies in the mtn area of NC as compared to the larger cities like Charlotte & Raleigh.
Asheville & WNC in general is very marijuana friendly, that is no secrete. People are very open about it & quite often hold rallies & protest marches thru town in support of making it legal. You can not walk thru downtown without smelling it every where you go.
Almost every day in the paper or local news there is some mention of police finding a meth lab & shutting it down. Most of the time it is in someones home but every now & then a small business will have a meth lab in their back room or stock rooms & sell it like it was candy or some other normal product.
I am in no way saying that WNC has a much higher drug, alcohol & teen pregnancy issues that any other area. I am just pointing out that it exists here & that it is not just a small issue that you seldom hear about. It is a serious problem here.
When I talk to some of the teens I go to school with about it, the always say the same thing. "what else is there to do around here?" or "it's not like I got anything better to do"
There are very little organized groups, business or hangouts for teens all throughout WNC. Like many have said on here before, WNC is a tourist area. most things are aimed toward that, people what to take advantage of the tourism. Very few have interests in the residents.
Every year USA Today & Rolling Stones magazine puts out a list of the top 20 "party" schools in the country & every year at least one of those schools is somewhere in WNC. I can't remember but I think UNC Asheville is the school currently on the list & I believe Appalachian University in Boone is also on the list.
If you don't mind me asking, where did you get your info on JC TN? Is it first hand or by word of mouth.
With Johnson City being so close to Asheville it is almost like our sister city. I have known people who live there for many years. A lot of people move back & forth between Asheville & JC.
The people who are into the organic food, vegetarians &/or vegans, holistic, earthy lifestyle, health concerned, get into the outdoor sports like hiking, mtn biking, kayaking. They like having all the diversity of people from goths, hippies, yankees, red necks, hillbillies, gays, lesbians & trans genders & all those sort of things are the people who prefer Asheville & WNC. They are the ones willing to put up with high cost of living & low pay just to live here. They will do what ever it takes to make a life here.
People who are more interested in making good money, having a good home & pay a lot less for it. Like to have the chain restaurants & national chain department stores close by, people who like diversity in job opportunities & housing prefer to live in JC or somewhere out in that area nearer to Knoxville.
Both area have the same mtns, both area have a major interstate running thru it, both areas are just as scenic, both areas have places to live where you can have more of a city life, areas more of an urban feel & both areas have places where you can be off in the country & feel like there is nobody for hundreds of miles.
Which area is right for you all depends on what is most important to you to have in your daily life & how important is job, money & home is to you.
I wonder where you get this from. teen pregnancy (and so are drugs) is a huge problem everywhere in the US, I wonder, why the numbers should be significantly higher in WNC. I doubt it - but would appreciate some facts on this.
do you have kids youself or do you know tons of teenagers ?
@ queenofbavaria can you attest to anything WNC Badwolf said in the last post?
muhaha, sorry, no. All I have is second/third/fourth hand information - I don't live there yet (moving to Asheville this summer), but tried to do a pretty good research.
I am convinced, there are many locals who can contribute to this.
Thanks for all the info Tracey, I was actually looking at working in/around hickory and living in/around Lenoir. I wanna find a place where I can make a little more money than I am right now, and pay a little less for rent/utilities than I do right now
Make more money than in NY? Nope. Pay less for rent & utilities? Yes.
I know men who were used to making $25/ hour in car repair in the NY/CT area who were offered $12/hour here. This was for someone with over 15 years experience as a head mechanic.
Here in WNC there is very little funding going into road maintenance during the winter months. Smaller towns like Lenoir will most likely only have 2 maybe 3 snow plows for the entire town, then maybe 1 or 2 that will take care of the county roads (all the roads for the entire county that Lenoir is in) then state trucks will only take care of the interstate. That is how things work here in the mtns.
Oh so not true! I agree that Lenoir (Caldwell County) isn't as well funded for snow as other mountain counties, but good grief, our average snowfall is 12 inches! It snows an average of once per month in Caldwell County, and most of the time it is limited to the western communities. This year I have been very pleased at the snow and ice response and I live deep in the rural community of Happy Valley.
We get 1 inch of snow & schools close, business shut down, public services stop. Everything comes to a complete halt until the snow is almost completely gone.Power outages are very common during snow fall, ice storms happen often which will almost always guarantee power outages. I myself have been without power for up to 5 days from a small 2 or 3 inch snow storm. In the mountains on steep curvy roads snow and ice is a big deal. We don't want anyone, bus, student or parent sliding off the roads. Sure sometimes it seems silly, but the risk simply isn't worth it. You're also talking about the mountains proper. Caldwell County Schools do not shut down every time it snows. Road conditions are the deciding factor.
About the power grid, Blue Ridge electric is about the best power company I've ever lived under. I have lost power only twice in three years, once when a power pole was hit, and this year when a branch came down. This map is a helpful tool when power lines are threatened. 'Blue Ridge Electric Outage Map ' During the Ice storms of 2010 we never lost power once at my home.
Also depending on where you live, you may not have city water, you may have a private well, in which case if the power goes out then that also means you loose water. If there is a creek on your property it's not a problem. If not, a generator works quite well.
If you have central head or electric heat then no heat when the power goes out, It's ALWAYS good sense to have a back-up heat source. i use electric, wood, and a portable propane heater. Oh, and a camp stove too. No worries here!
cell phone service is hit & miss because of the mtns. I have no phone service at all withing 50 feet of my house.This is true for the mountains, but 99% of Caldwell and Catawba Counties have excellent cell phone service.
Don't think just because we are further south than NY that we have much better winters & life will be great. Being further south is meaningless when you live at an elevation of 3500 feet above sea level. Most of Caldwell county is at the 1500' level. I am in the foothills at 1800'.
Just to give you an idea of the temp differences there is in the mtns. I just checked on weather channels website. currently in Asheville the temp is 40, Greenville SC, 45, Lenoir 43, Johnson City TN 33, Knoxville TN 35, Endicott NY 23. He doesn't want to live in the mountains! The eastern 3/4 of Caldwell is Piedmont, the western 1/4 is foothills. It's only north of Kirby Mountain Rd that elevations climb 2000' the 8 miles to Blowing Rock. Plus the climate in Endicott isn't much different than it is here. The biggest difference is that HIS snow stays, ours melts! OP's average annual snowfall is nearly 75". He has 13" on the ground now . . . He's going to LOVE it here!
I don't know if that is still true or not for NC, but I do hear people bad mouthing the school system in NC all the time. I have no children, so I have no personal experience other than when I went to school here. I do know that the drop out rate in WNC is quite high, teen pregnancy is also quite high, teen drug & alcohol use is also high. The Catawba County Schools School District had a grades 9-12 dropout rate of 4% in 2008. The national grades 9-12 dropout rate in 2007 was 4.4%.
For most teens WNC is a very boring place, so they find other ways to amuse themselves, hence the pregnancy & drugsrephrase this to "For Badwolf, WNC is a very boring place . . ." I work with youth and the pregnancy/drug issues have nothing to do with boredom. It's no worse here than anywhere else besides the inner city.
Sweetie, you may want to move to Lenoir or Hickory. It's 10 degrees warmer down here, cheaper to live, more work in Hickory, gas is still 2.99, and you'll be out of those gorgeous mountains that you hate so much. It just doesn't do any good to "sit, soak and sour!"
Apparently I can't edit my previous message right now so I'll have to post another one.
1) UNCA is NOT a party school. So stop spreading rumors. In fact not a single WNC college is even on the list nor have I ever seen one on there (since 2002 when I started looking at colleges).
2)What exactly are you (OP) paying now to think WNC is cheaper than FL cost of living wise? When I was visiting in florida I saw WHOLE HOUSES for 500-600 plus food was much cheaper not to mention basics like toilet paper. People are desperate and renting uber cheap there. If you are using an online cost of living calculator, stop now. They are worthless. I've never seen one that was accurate. Now of course the keys aren't going to be cheaper....
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Striking a balance
