When I pulled into Pennington, NJ the other night, maybe 45 minutes before I was due for dinner, I parked at the elementary school and went for a walk. Around 6, it was 75 degrees and the sun was headed down. I walked past all these beautiful old houses, people were out walking their dogs, it was lovely. It was hard not to think about the possibility of spending more time back up here after Mary and I become empty nesters, maybe splitting time between NJ and NC.
In my brain's next breath, it was hard not to think about people excitedly hustling off to Texas and Florida for, what? On the one hand, property taxes are a real issue and are a true pain in the ass in the northeast and I guess if you have to live in one place dealing with snow sucks too. The northeast does indeed has some governance issues to sort out, for example in New Jersey autonomous fire precincts which have the ability to levy taxes (on top of state, county, and town ones). And it has old infrastructure which costs a lot of money to maintain.
But in many ways old infrastructure beats new infrastructure. Driving through Texas last summer felt like being in one big construction zone. It was kind of dreadful. The fact is that if you have the right things near you (friends, books, guitars, garden) you don't need to be driving around that much. I vote for the Northeast.
No comments:
Post a Comment