Village Squire, 1975-01, Page 21Country
Person/
City Person
Why do some people love the city,
others the country?
Every other day some expert is telling you that by the year 2000
we're all, or nearly all, going to be living in the big city.
Frankly, I don't think it will ever happen. It's like saying that if
a baby keeps growing at the same rate he does between birth and
one year, he'll end up being a huge giant. It just doesn't happen.
Still, the trend to big cities has been going on for a long while
now and will likely continue for some time. I sounded off about
the bad things of city life one time and I had a lady from the city
get quite put out with me because she'd moved there from a
small town and thought it was the greatest place in the world to
live. And for her, probably was. For me, and many others, it
wasn't.
There are two distinct kinds of people, I've discovered over the
years: the city person and the country person. That's not to be
confused with the city dweller and the country dweller. Some
people living in the big city are in misery, just as some people in
the country can't stand it either.
Nearly all our popular fictions seems to have been written by
people who grew up on the farm or in small towns (by that we
mean of populations less than say 40,000) and couldn't wait to get
out. We've got good examples of it here in our own area with
writers like Harry J . Boyle who just couldn't wait to get out of the
small-town life. He's made a lot of money since recalling the good
times of growing up in a small town but his characters are always
ready to leave for the city.
It's strange that though writers like to be alone, indeed have to
be alone when it comes time to write, nearly all are city people.
Certainly, the city is where the action is, but writers can live
nearly anywhere and still be published in the city. But they don't.
The image these image -builders give is that there are only two
kinds of people; those who live in cities and those who wish they
did, or are too stupid to be able to make it in the city.
It's an image that's phony of course. Just as is the idea that a
lot of us in the country have: that everyone in the city just can't
wait to get out of the city to live. Indeed, there are many in the
city who would rather live in the country. I remember in the office
where I used to work there was a man who was always saying how
he d like to quit work and go and set up a little business in a small
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town somewhere, I left, and don't know for sure, but I'd be
willing to bet that he didn't. He was a talker, not a doer.
I'm not really sure he was even a country person at all. but a
city person romanticised what it would be like to live in the
country.
But there are people who are miserable in the city. I was one of
them. The idea of going to the city,•of course, was very romantic.
You leave for a big city like Toronto and all the visions of all the
sophisticated city propaganda flash through your mind: the
swank apartments, the exciting night clubs, the parties, the girls
in sexy attire just waiting for you to look their way (just substitute
men if you're female and the dream stays the same). There's
supposed to be something exciting about the sky -scrapers and
there really is, the first few times you see them. You try not to
look like a hick from the small town, but it's awfully hard not to
look up at those huge towers. But, after a while, they're not so
exciting. They are, after all, just steel and concrete and glass.
And what's worse, inside instead of the exciting, stimulating jobs
that the city myth promotes, the jobs are often dull and tedious.
And for many people with the fell of the country in their veins,
life in the cramped houses, or worse still, in the high rise
apartment complexes, is pure hell. The fact that there seems to
be no privacy. The cramped quarters. The fact that there never
seems to be silence but over everything is the steady beat and
hum of the city. These things can drive a country person batty.
But these Are the very things that make living in the city
exciting for some people. They love the constant turmoil. Unlike
country people, they don't mind, or even enjoy the fact that they
don't know their next door neighbour. They enjoy the special kind