A Bridge Between City and Country

Over at Front Porch Republic editor Patrick Deneen is picking a fight with so-called ‘post-modern conservatives’. He wants to have a debate between the (slightly tongue-in-cheek), “…anti-consumerist, CSA-loving, small town-adoring, pro-hand working, suburb-loathing, bourbon-sipping denizens of the “Front Porch Republic” against the McDonald’s loving, Starbucks slurping, dentistry-adoring, Wal-Mart shopping adherents of Postmodern Conservatism.” I am curious if there will be any takers.

The excellent group of writers at FPR are admirers of what I will call the urban to suburban to rural migration pattern. They like the idea of well-educated city dwellers heading off into the countryside to plant big gardens, raise chickens, make their own soap and interact with their new small-town communities.  They have been poked by more than one fellow blogger for the irony in their positions since many of them still live in big cities themselves. But their longing for something different is admirable.

I find myself in an interesting position to view this possible debate. I am a child of both sides and I have always found it to be a strength. Living in Louisville (aka the best city on Earth) is fantastic for someone like myself because we are surrounded by rural areas. There are parts of the Louisville Metro area where you would swear you were in the country and yet a 3 minute drive will present you with a Starbucks, a dry cleaner and a Barnes & Noble. I like living here because I can drive a very short distance to hunt on my uncle’s farm, let my Lab swim in a pond, gig frogs, canoe a beautiful stream, watch tobacco being pulled or kick the tires at a tractor dealership. At the end of the day I can blog, have an imported beer at a local pub, see a movie with my wife and take my kids to the YMCA for a swim.  For me that is the best of both worlds.

Growing up in a divorced family, my mother lived in a suburban neighborhood, while my father had a a small but beautiful piece of property in an adjacent county. While my dad’s property was only about 10 acres, we were bordered on three sides by farms of over 100 acres (fairly large for KY). Across the road were several more farms. Tresspassing wasn’t frowned on so long as you knew the neighbors and they liked you so myself and my two siblings and the neighboring kids all had a playground of roughly 600 acres.

Living in the city made me appreciate things like the public library, concerts, plays, architecture and technology. Having a weekly date with the country meant I learned to hunt, fish, grow things, how to feed a calf, how to ice skate on a frozen creek, how to butcher a hog and where to find tadpoles in the spring. I learned to appreciate a foreign world and I know I am better for it. But it also made me appreciate the opportunities I had in the city.

Often I think the world needs more people with a background like my own, being part city, part rural, as ambassadors between the two sides. The cities can help the rural areas and have just as much to teach them as the rural areas can teach us. maybe the link is the suburbs or the fringe rural areas. Those are the places where transplanted urban dwellers are often making friendships with old farmers. They are challenging conventional thinking by being willing to diversify their farming, partially out of curiosity and partially because they aren’t subject to three generations of attachment to a particular crop.

I look forward to this conversation between the FPR folks and the post-moderns. I just hope they are actually listening to one another.