If Youre Going to Live in the Country | Page 7

the
purchasing power of those who sought escape from city congestion or
the restrictions of fifty-foot suburban lots. The gasoline age had done it.
It had married rural peace to rapid transportation. If you had to earn
your living in the city, it was no longer required that you and your
family live in its midst. A tranquil country home was yours if you
would reach for it.

SELECTING THE LOCATION
[Illustration]

CHAPTER II
SELECTING THE LOCATION

It is to be questioned whether any city dwelling family suddenly
determines to move to the country. Such changes in one's way of life
are not decided as casually as trading in the old car for a model of the
current year. Usually the decision to pioneer backward is reached so
gradually that those who take the step can hardly tell in retrospect just
when the die was cast. A vacation or summer in the country may have
put it in mind. Then a period of vague indecision follows when city and
country appear about equally attractive. Suddenly some chance
happening turns the scale.
A week-end invitation for cider making in the Hoosatonic Valley in
early November would seem harmless enough, but from it dated our
own determination to cease to be city dwellers. It must be admitted that
the stage-setting was perfect. A twenty-mile ride on the evening of our
arrival through the sharp clear air with a full harvest moon hanging
high in the heavens, while along the way lights twinkled hospitably
from the farmhouses that dotted the countryside. A bright crisp
morning and a breakfast of sausages, griddle cakes and syrup. This
would have been viewed with lack-luster eye in our overheated city
apartment but was somehow just right in this fireplace heated country
room with a tang of chill in the far corners.
Later we were to find that plenty of November nights could be raw and
stormy; that fireplaces could sulk and give out such grudging heat as to
make the room wholly chill. But none of this appeared on that
memorable week-end. It waxed warm enough at midday for all of the
outdoor pleasures that the country affords. We were in congenial
company and evening found us with a sense of peace and well-being
that more than balanced the loss of a theatre or dinner party in town.
We were guilty of the usual platitudes about "God's country and the
normal way to live" and knew they were that but didn't care.
However, there was no rushing around to get a place right across the
way. A whole winter went by, pleasantly spent doing the usual things.
Then came spring, a season that not even the city can wholly neutralize.
There were a number of seemingly aimless Sunday trips beyond the
urban fringe. There was considerable casual comment on various

houses in attractive settings. One charming old place ideally located on
a back road proved to be part of a water-shed reservation. Another
equally charming plaster house was "too far out." As we admitted that,
we realized that we had joined that not inconsiderable group who "want
to have their cake and eat it too." That is, we really wanted a place in
the country but we wanted it near enough so that the desk of the very
necessary and important job could be reached without too much effort.
Also the idea of an occasional evening in town was not to be dismissed
lightly.
Such humdrum items as railroad time tables were consulted. Having
decided that the ideal location would be one in which the time required
for train trip and motoring from house to station would come within an
hour, we limited our search to that section just beyond the suburban
fringe in Connecticut and Westchester County, New York. We had no
clear idea of the type of house we wanted, save that it be old and of
good lines. We looked with and without the aid of real estate dealers.
We deluged our friends already living in the country with queries.
We found a disheartening number of fine old houses, located just
wrong. There was a splendid, two-story brick house with hall running
through the middle. But it stood in the commercial section of a village,
its door steps flush with the sidewalk, and was hemmed in on one side
by a gas station. There was a neat little story-and-a-half stone house
with picket fence, old-fashioned rose bushes, and beautiful shade trees.
It had once been the parsonage of the neighboring church. Unhappily
the old churchyard lay between.
Now, we are not people who whistle determinedly when passing a
marble orchard at midnight nor do we see white luminous shapes
flitting among the tombstones. But daily gazing upon one's final resting
place, we felt might,