I'm urban through and through. I decided to acquire some rural skills and sensibilities by taking a job caretaking on a country estate. A few years ago, I sat down to write about my experiences living in the country - mostly funny animal stories. So much wildlife, so little separation between indoors and outdoors, provided endless entertainment. The more I wrote, the more I recalled the effort and vigilance required to defend: our food supply, water supply, structure of the buildings, etc.
My brother-in-law, I'll call him Luke, is rural through and through. He grew up hunting, fishing and trapping with his brothers. My wife says the freezer in the garage always contained dead animals, squirrels rabbits, etc., that occasionally got eaten.
One evening, visiting Luke at his five-acre ponderosa (“I won't live anywhere where I can't fire a weapon on my own property”), I found him sitting on the front porch firing a 22 rifle up at the soffit. The carpenter bees had been eating up his house for years. In order to protect the beneficial insects, he didn't want to use poison. He has plenty of guns. So he decided to fight back with firearms. One can easily ridicule this behavior. Once, we brought a friend out to Luke’s for a music jam on the porch. After introductions and niceties, she asked him, “later, can we shoot some bees?” He blushed.
One afternoon I was out in Luke’s shop with him and his buddy, another country boy. Kind of all of a sudden, Luke grabbed a shotgun from the corner, went to an open window, took aim and fired. “Got him! Damn squirrels have been eating the insulation off of the wiring in my shop.”“It's really satisfying when you blow their heads off,” his buddy commiserated. One can easily ridicule this kind of talk and behavior.
During my time in the country I heard a loud explosion close to the house, and then the electricity went out. The transformer on the utility pole was charred and melted. When the guys from the power company arrived, one of them wandered around the area near the pole looking down, not up at the transformer. “I'm looking for the squirrel,” he reported. “Found it!” He stood there holding a very burnt squirrel carcass.
I don't know what attracts squirrels to electricity, but I've witnessed three squirrel-induced transformer explosions, and I’ve paid my dues crawling around in attics replacing gnawed wiring and futilely patching holes the squirrels had created.
Groundhogs destroy the foundations of the buildings. Foxes, skunks, owls, raccoons and stray dogs eat the chickens. Deer and every kind of bug eat the gardens. Mice, bees, and termites eat the house. Snakes in the water supply, crawling up the pipes into the bathroom; yellow jackets nesting underground that attack when you walk by their hole: these are a few of my favorite things.
Clearly we know by looking at election results and demographics that urban dwellers are generally more progressive and liberal; rural dwellers are generally more conservative and reactionary. A number of articles have emerged recently about the “conservative mind”, mostly concluding that conservatism is about fear. Who wouldn't be reactionary having to defend your home and surroundings all day every day. There's a lot to react to.
My argument, and I would love for some bona fide social scientists to explore this methodically, is that essentially the conservative mind, the rural mind, is defensive out of necessity. Then, the habit of defensiveness causes one to conceive, rather than perceive, threats. Defensiveness permeates areas not essential to survival, but activate the sense of survival. Right after Katrina, Luke, who lives thirty miles from the nearest urban enclave, acquired an assault rifle and a case of ammunition to defend against looters. When traveling, since he can't carry a weapon on a plane, he wears a large, heavy belt buckle and carries a sturdy sharp pen his shirt pocket - ready to rumble if necessary.
I'm a city boy. When I'm out walking the streets and some guy belligerently says, “hey man give me a quarter,” I might give him a quarter, or I might say, “if I had a quarter I'll be on the bus, not talking to you,” and then we’d both laugh. Luke would grab his belt and pen - except he won't go to the city: too many drug addicts, thugs, and rapists.