Before I get going here, I'll say this........I know everyone is free to move/live wherever they want, but some places just wouldn't seem to match what some folks are. Anyway, sometimes I just plainly get curious why a person, or persons, would move to where they moved to. Obviously, some cities/towns in the U.S. aren't for "big city people". If I lived in Los Angeles, one of the last cities I think about moving to would be Billings or Boseman, Montana, Sheridan or Casper, Wyoming or any other truly "Western" area. And, there could be problems between the people who relocated and the people who have lived in an area for years. For example: Norco, California is definitely horse country and a story about the town was in a magazine called Western Horseman. When I use to go there, back in the late 80's and thru the 90's for breakfast and a Team Roping Jackpot area (I knew the owner of the arena), there were no sidewalks. Where the sidewalk would've been was a dirt path on the main street for horseback riders to go down. Norco was known as one of the "cowboy/cowgirl" towns of So California. Norco also had one of the biggest pro-rodeos in the area. So, what happened? People from cities in Orange and L.A. Counties started moving there. First thing, they wanted to have the paths paved so their kids could use their skateboards. They complained about the smell of horses and nearby dairies. There was a real "feud" starting between the horse-loving/small town people and the "big city" folks moving in. We know a Senior couple that are currently moving to the Black Hills area of South Dakota. They are both the "big city" type and have nothing to do with a Western lifestyle. When I asked her on Facebook "did you bring your cowboy hats with you?", she wouldn't answer. I thought, can't take a joke, fine! So, what do you think? People can move to wherever they want, but if a person is a "beach" type of person, why on earth would they move to the mountains or if they lived in Boseman, Montana, why would they move to Chicago? I just don't get it.
I was always a city girl with a hubby that was an avid bass fisherman so we had a get-away place 300 miles north in what he called God's Country to where we escaped several times a year, a seasonal campground with a trailer with all the comforts of home. And when he retired we decided to close up the house and spend the entire summer up there. I had friends there and my best friend and I would amuse ourselves shopping and sipping coolers while the guys amused themselves drowning worms. It was a good summer.but a long summer becoming boring by August. We decided the next year to sell the home of 28 years and I refer to that as the year he dragged me kicking and screaming back up north. We bought another permanent mobile home but I knew deep down this was not going to work. Talk about snow, we were in it up to our eyeballs. January came and I had already arranged for a mover and told hubby I was going home with or without him. Me being the love of his life he decided it was in his best interest to go with me We bought another house, then the yearning for north came back. Another seasonal up north and back home winter to find that the person we hired to do lawn maintenance and check the house had not done the job. Weeds were 4 feet high in the back yard. So we decided to buy a mobile home south where it was easier to find reliable maintenance and have two trailers, one north, one south. Unfortunately that did not work out either and we gave up the place north and have stayed put.....for now. psssstttt - don't tell hubby but I have been looking online for the next move
If my children and grandchildren were not here in Louisiana and Texas I'd be living up in a mountain area with plenty of fishing lakes or near the beach. Love of Family is what keeps me living in a place that I would have never picked to live otherwise. For me it really is true that "Home is where the heart is".
We both love freshwater fishing, boating and "Western" stuff. To this day, neither of us can understand how we chose the area we currently live in. Somehow we thought we'd like it here. We both really miss Colorado, that is, parts of the Front Range/Eastern Slope. Rodeo's, big Bull Elk, Whitetail and Mule Deer among other things. Wife was raised in a small city, but after meeting/marrying me, found out very quickly what being around rodeo folks was like and learning how to shoot a rifle and pistol. She loves all of it! Her two previous husbands didn't like her wearing a baseball cap and I love it. One thing for sure, we definitely don't belong in Florida!
Reasons for our moves where always jobs and family...I'm a city girl and most of the places were big cities, except for a few small towns. Chicago is still one of my favorite places...minus the crime of course.
I always say that if you don't like where you live then go live where you like. And hubby and I will hopefully do that health permitting.
I really have no problem with wherever people want to move to, as long as the don't try and change the culture of the area. Chicago is Chicago and Bozeman is Bozeman. Two very different cultures of people.
You make some very good points, @Cody Fousnaugh. We're having that sort of a problem here, where people moved to a pulp and paper mill town from Massachusetts, for the most part, and immediately began a campaign to close the mill and open a national park, which will devastate those who were born and raised here. Before leaving office, Obama designated a National Monument, and we're hoping Trump will reverse that before it turns into a National Park. Other problems they brought is a demand for municipal services that has brought the tax rates up to where many of those who worked their life here, and retired, are having a hard time paying their property taxes. Little by little, they object to pretty much everything that people do here -- hunting, snowmobiling -- and it kind of makes you wonder why they moved here. In large part, that was true in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas with the "Winter Texans," retired people who would come there from the cold weather states for the winter. The RV parks and the restaurants like them, but too many of them had an attitude that assumed that everyone there was lucky to have them. A group of Winter Texans came into a restaurant where I was eating once, and complained to the waitress about the people at the next table because they were speaking Spanish, and they thought that was rude. Hello, you're ten miles from the Mexican border, where nearly everyone who was born and raised there speaks Spanish as a first language. Also funny, is that they often assume that no one around them understands English so they will talk about people as if they couldn't hear or understand them. Despite being ten miles from the border, most people there attended schools that were taught in English, and are quite capable of knowing that they're being insulted.
I lived in South Western Ontario Canada all my younger life working in different factories and running up north every chance I had to go fishing. Doing the camper, trailer, think too. When I planned my retirement I thought to sail the Caribbean so I needed to learn how to sail. Once I retired I left Canada and started sailing and noticed the costs of doing this increase every year and the fear of a major problem which I did not have the money to repair all based on a pension. Finally waking up to the idea that this will come to an end and my pension was not enough to live in Canada. I decided to live somewhere my money will be enough to live on and ending up in the Dominican Republic I found it. There is possible lots of other places which I could have choose and the difference in language is a challenge also the mindset of the people I found I had to change and now I am very comfortable in my retirement.
I grew up in northern Idaho, and even back in the 50's and 60's, we had people moving there from Southern California, and they wanted to change how everything worked in Idaho. It was basically the same thing as you are describing in Maine, @Ken Anderson ; but it started happening way back when I was growing up. Now, some of those early Californians think they are native Idahoans, and they grumble about the newer people coming in from wherever they come from. It is just the way it goes, it seems like, although hard to understand why people move from somewhere they don't like living to somewhere that they want to enjoy life, and then they want to start changing everything at the new place they moved to. I would have never even considered moving out here to Alabama if my daughter, Robin, was not living here; but now that we are here, I really like it. I would not want to go back and live in the colder climate and the snow ever again, even if we didn't have to drive much of anywhere when the weather was bad. If I could live anywhere, I would move to the West Coast, and live in Astoria, Oregon. I stayed there several times when I was selling insurance and working in that area, and it is just beautiful out there. The ocean beaches are close by, the weather is normally not really hot or really cold, and it is just the right size of town, not too large or too small. Actually, I think that I would like living almost anywhere along the Pacific Coast; but Astoria is just the best of everything to me. If you have ever watched the "Short Circuit" movies, then you have seen Astoria; because that is where it was filmed.
We'd never move back to So California, even though my wife's two sisters and nieces live there. My wife, and she told me (admitted it to me) that she can not say "sorry, no" to her older sister. If we lived there, my wife's sister would have her doing all kinds of things for the "mentally unbalanced" other sister. Wife and I have often said just how nice it is not to have any relatives around to contend with involving problems. Not only that, but we just aren't "So California" type people anymore. Florida can be a nice place to live and retire in, but, like so many places in the U.S., retiree's must have money. There are parts of Florida that are cheap to live in, but who wants to hear police car sirens and a police helicopter overhead every-other night. We don't go to the beach that much and the saltwater and brackish water here have sure took a toll on our boat. So much, we had to put some real money into repairs/replacement of some things. In Colorado, and other states where there is only freshwater lakes, boats don't get all the corrosion problems.
Look at this: When I visited Billings, Montana for a month, I stopped by the downtown library. Now, to let you know, I did have a California license plate on my truck. When I came out of the library, there was a note stuck under my windshield wiper that said "If you plan on staying in Billings, get a Montana plate. If not, get your a** back to California." There are some states that hate seeing a California plate. A California plate, even if the people are from northern California, reminds too many people in Montana of Los Angeles...........and that's one city in the U.S. Montana people don't like. Well anyway, the following week, a murder suspect, out of Palm Springs, was found by law enforcement at a weekly motel in Billings.
Can someone please explain to this Canadian why some States don't like seeing California license plates on a car? I don't get it....Some of the nicest people come from California.