Revitalize A Village and Move In Free
(Page 2 of 3)
January/February 1971
By Victor A. Croley
Much the same thing has happened and is happening to small communities. In horse and buggy days, ten miles was a long way to town and the nearest post office. Country villages were located roughly ten miles apart as a result. Now, with good roads and modern cars, it is easy to travel thirty or forty miles to the larger towns and small cities with their shopping centers and other facilities. So the countyseat towns get bigger and the little villages in between are gradually starved out and discarded.
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But need the smaller towns be abandoned? The opportunities they offer communes, flower children and other gentle souls fed up with the big city rat race are obvious. (Many of the vacated houses are proud structures 100 or more years old, built mainly of hardwood and—structurally—a lot more sound than the prefabbed, plywood units currently going up in today's urban slurbs. As for sheer quality of life, once you've experienced the luxury of living in a two story—plus full basement and attic—home with wide halls, high ceilings, spacious rooms, giant trees in the front yard and a grape arbor at the back door . . . you'll probably have some difficulty going back to the cramped confines of a single-level, slab house crammed into the treeless, bulldozed desert of yet another "modern "development. —JS)
Most of these smalltown abandoned houses can be rented or purchased for very little and many are available for taxes. A large number can be regally restored for relatively few dollars. Some absent owners might even pay a family to live in an old house rather than allow the abandoned property to deteriorate, become difficult to insure and a target for vandals.
Semi-ghost towns and abandoned farm homes offer some distinct advantages to a back-to-the-lander over, say, a raw wilderness retreat. Wells, septic tanks and cesspools are often still useable on the old properties. Their garden lots—mellowed from years of use and volunteer rhubarb, asparagus, horseradish and other perennials—can easily be brought back into production. Chances are bush and tree fruits will still be bearing or, with a little attention, will bear again. Good roads are already there for convenient coming and going and you'll probably find a few friendly people who, never having lost faith, will welcome a rebirth of the region.
