Happy Birthday!
Mar. 8th, 2008 12:36 pmPlease join me in wishing a happy birthday to ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
coil_kitten! ^_^
coil_kitten! ^_^Mar. 8th, 2008
On Where I've Lived
Mar. 8th, 2008 08:49 pmI've had the great fortune to move around the state a bit since not too long after I first moved out on my own. This has led to some interesting insight on living in a "city" versus small town and medium town.
I grew up in Nashua, which is a small city but really one might successfully argue it's just a suburb of Boston. My family rented most of the places where we lived so we grew up looking out our windows into someone else's. Something that I was accustomed to when I was younger was having a corner store near wherever we lived and not driving/walking far to get to shopping or services. There was also public transportation in the Citybus and the various taxi companies.
After Nashua I moved to Ashland and lived across from Squam lake in a seasonal cabin during the off-season. It was really interesting renting a place with beach access on a lake, but sadly I didn't really take advantage of it much. The biggest things to freak me out were the lack of street lights and the distances one had to drive to get to anything. There were no corner stores and it took miles to get to limited shopping and services. I also learned the reality of living in rural New Hampshire without a car. It meant if you weren't living in the center of town you were out of work and unable to find what you needed. There is no public transportation. There's nothing in walking distance except nature.
From there I moved further north to Lisbon. If I thought the Ashland/Plymouth area was small I was in for a treat. Yes, I was fortunate to be "downtown" this time, but I was further north and I really grasped the tenacity of northern winters. I was just about half a mile down the road from the "supermarket" in town. In the winter I found myself without a car and in need of groceries on a VERY stormy day. I decided to walk to the store. I got two houses down before my legs were absolutely pained in parts and numb in other parts from the extreme cold. The wind made it almost impossible to walk. I had to turn around and go hungry for the night because I couldn't walk down the road, even as bundled up as I was. Nothing was open all night, and barely anything was open late. I remember one night running low on toilet paper and having to drive all the way into Littleton (something like 10 miles) just to buy toilet paper on a cold, stormy winter night.
Moving back to Plymouth was a blessing. I was at least within short driving distance from shopping (as limited as it was with a Hannaford and an Ames) and lived near "downtown" and could walk to a couple of stores and plenty of restaurants (mostly pizza, subs and Chinese). At some point there was one rather unreliable taxi company that opened and their prices were borderline extortion. The only "bus" was the campus shuttle which at the time only stayed on campus, which isn't really all that big. At least then I had conveniences again and there was a gas station with a store open 24/7 across the bridge in Holderness. I could walk to most of what I needed, including work, school and food.
After graduating college we ended up moving to New Hampton. We were still convenient to I-93 and still had a restaurant and a 24/7 gas station in town, so there was some choice. There was technically a store on Main Street right down the road from us, but it really only catered to New Hampton School students and had really odd hours, if they were even open at all. We were now commuting to work 15 minutes each way and had to time our shopping with our work schedules because if we didn't, it was a 15-minute drive either to Plymouth or Bristol to go shopping.
After that we moved to where we are now. Ellsworth is the second smallest town in the state of New Hampshire with a whopping population of 82 last I knew. We have lots of trees and dirt and rocks and water. The main road through town is dirt for several miles and currently is only one lane because of the massive snowfall we've had. Part of the road is unmaintained for winter travel and while we normally have to travel a few miles over to Thornton to bring our trash to the recycling center, in the winter we have to drive all the way into Plymouth and back around to Thornton which ends up being somewhere around a 20-mile one-way trip just to get rid of our trash. We have no services. Our police are the State Police. Our fire service comes from one of the neighboring towns. Our town clerk operates out of her house for two hours a week, and only limited services. Registering a vehicle requires starting at her house and then going to Plymouth to finish the process. There are no corner stores, public transportation, gas stations, shopping or restaurants. There's no business in this town at all except maybe for a couple of people who might work from home. It's been an interesting lesson in appreciating having some services handy.
I grew up in Nashua, which is a small city but really one might successfully argue it's just a suburb of Boston. My family rented most of the places where we lived so we grew up looking out our windows into someone else's. Something that I was accustomed to when I was younger was having a corner store near wherever we lived and not driving/walking far to get to shopping or services. There was also public transportation in the Citybus and the various taxi companies.
After Nashua I moved to Ashland and lived across from Squam lake in a seasonal cabin during the off-season. It was really interesting renting a place with beach access on a lake, but sadly I didn't really take advantage of it much. The biggest things to freak me out were the lack of street lights and the distances one had to drive to get to anything. There were no corner stores and it took miles to get to limited shopping and services. I also learned the reality of living in rural New Hampshire without a car. It meant if you weren't living in the center of town you were out of work and unable to find what you needed. There is no public transportation. There's nothing in walking distance except nature.
From there I moved further north to Lisbon. If I thought the Ashland/Plymouth area was small I was in for a treat. Yes, I was fortunate to be "downtown" this time, but I was further north and I really grasped the tenacity of northern winters. I was just about half a mile down the road from the "supermarket" in town. In the winter I found myself without a car and in need of groceries on a VERY stormy day. I decided to walk to the store. I got two houses down before my legs were absolutely pained in parts and numb in other parts from the extreme cold. The wind made it almost impossible to walk. I had to turn around and go hungry for the night because I couldn't walk down the road, even as bundled up as I was. Nothing was open all night, and barely anything was open late. I remember one night running low on toilet paper and having to drive all the way into Littleton (something like 10 miles) just to buy toilet paper on a cold, stormy winter night.
Moving back to Plymouth was a blessing. I was at least within short driving distance from shopping (as limited as it was with a Hannaford and an Ames) and lived near "downtown" and could walk to a couple of stores and plenty of restaurants (mostly pizza, subs and Chinese). At some point there was one rather unreliable taxi company that opened and their prices were borderline extortion. The only "bus" was the campus shuttle which at the time only stayed on campus, which isn't really all that big. At least then I had conveniences again and there was a gas station with a store open 24/7 across the bridge in Holderness. I could walk to most of what I needed, including work, school and food.
After graduating college we ended up moving to New Hampton. We were still convenient to I-93 and still had a restaurant and a 24/7 gas station in town, so there was some choice. There was technically a store on Main Street right down the road from us, but it really only catered to New Hampton School students and had really odd hours, if they were even open at all. We were now commuting to work 15 minutes each way and had to time our shopping with our work schedules because if we didn't, it was a 15-minute drive either to Plymouth or Bristol to go shopping.
After that we moved to where we are now. Ellsworth is the second smallest town in the state of New Hampshire with a whopping population of 82 last I knew. We have lots of trees and dirt and rocks and water. The main road through town is dirt for several miles and currently is only one lane because of the massive snowfall we've had. Part of the road is unmaintained for winter travel and while we normally have to travel a few miles over to Thornton to bring our trash to the recycling center, in the winter we have to drive all the way into Plymouth and back around to Thornton which ends up being somewhere around a 20-mile one-way trip just to get rid of our trash. We have no services. Our police are the State Police. Our fire service comes from one of the neighboring towns. Our town clerk operates out of her house for two hours a week, and only limited services. Registering a vehicle requires starting at her house and then going to Plymouth to finish the process. There are no corner stores, public transportation, gas stations, shopping or restaurants. There's no business in this town at all except maybe for a couple of people who might work from home. It's been an interesting lesson in appreciating having some services handy.