I bought my first house in Concord, California, in 1963. I was the stereotypical proud new homeowner. The first Saturday morning, as I caressed trees, admired shrubs, delighted in details missed during the house-hunting inspection, I saw my neighbor puttering in his front yard and happily hailed him. No response. Figuring his hearing might be impaired, I filled my lungs and boomed a "Good morning, neighbor!" (Think Robin Williams in "Good Morning Vietnam.") My neighbor turned, looked at me briefly, and walked around the corner of his house. I was dumbfounded. I lived there five years and for five years he ignored me.

I bought my second house in a new subdivision. All fourteen families on our cul-de-sac made an effort to be neighborly. We were nearly all of a kind, young parents, and we happily introduced ourselves. Early on, even before lawns were planted and castle fences erected, we gained permission from the fire authorities, blocked the entrance to our street, set up BBQs and tables and chairs and a beer keg and a tub of soft drinks and had games and prizes for the youngsters, much food and camaraderie. "This will be an annual event!" we grinned. We had another block party the following year and then we sank into normality, waved as we drove off to work, exchanged pleasantries during weekend lawn mowing.

After I bought this old Ozarks homestead but before I had moved here, my caretaker left a smoldering campfire which later flared and started a yard fire in the dry grass she had neglected to mow--nearly burned the house, did burn the garage and about twenty acres of oak forest. The house was saved because Henderson Boatwright was returning from church, saw smoke from his house two miles away, drove here and stomped out the burning grass near the house. In his Sunday best. Then he rushed home, called the conservation department and neighbors, who all came and worked the rest of the day to kill the fire.

Two years ago our nearest neighbor, Rayma Carter, lost Mike--the epitome of a great neighbor--to a fatal heart attack while she was visiting her mother in California. By the time she was able to fly back home the house was spotless, clothes and bedding washed, food prepared. Soon relatives were being shuttled in from the airport two hours away. On learning of financial embarrassment, a handmade coffin was constructed and a handmade quilt donated to line the coffin. Small cash donations occurred. A heart-shaped memorial stone was cast and lettered in concrete. In the months that followed, groceries were picked up and delivered, firewood and kindling was dropped off, and, yes, many donations were simply hugs. All from neighbors.

In addition to helping to handle deaths and putting out fires, neighbors are good for big harvest jobs, picking up a few things in town, feeding pets and livestock during vacation, celebrating holidays, going fishing, explaining the life cycle of a bug that you'd otherwise import into your garden on grass clippings and leaves, telling jokes, sharing insight, receiving surpluses, pulling vehicles out of the ditch, borrowing and lending tools, raising rafters, discussing issues, attending summer potlucks and playing croquet and volleyball and horseshoes, commiserating over gardening losses, taking walks, bragging about the first tomato of the season, and showing where you have morels on your land in a place that you've been walking past for years.

Robert Frost penned the oft-quoted, "Good fences make good neighbors," but also "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." The town neighborhoods I most admire are those where yards flow one into another unobstructed, parklike, without territorial markers. When I pass such a sermon I always muse that good people must live there, confident, content, caring neighbors.

Country neighbors are more important than city neighbors. Homes are often far from sheriffs, fire departments, ambulances. City amenities such as trash pickup, delivery service and taxis are often nonexistent. Citizens are more independent of the system but more dependent on neighbors. This being an understood equation, rural neighbors tend to be civil and supportive even when there are obvious values and lifestyle differences, a ubiquitous condition in areas with large urban refugee populations. In such places, old-timers and newcomers learn from each other, but old-timers give more than they get.

You don't pick neighbors--they come with the territory--they're pot luck. And they're different from other friends because they stay close to you whether you like them or not. So dealing with neighbors is an opportunity for personal growth. If you can become an accomplished neighbor then you can become a vital part of your community.

Rayma had her auction yesterday. The tide of strangers slowly carried off tools, furniture, collectibles. The auctioneer worked on the raised front porch of the building Mike built to hold his collections, under the big sign with the brilliant rainbow swirled across it, the words "Rainbow's End" and "Mike & Rayma Jo." All the neighbors were there.

Rayma will be leaving her house and forty acres Tuesday and moving to Utah. It's a nice house in a beautiful setting, certain to sell soon. I wonder what the new neighbors will be like.

It is 6:30 pm, Tuesday, August 18th, 1998. Carla Emery stands in front of 120 of us at the Ramada Inn in West Plains, Missouri, a town of a bit over 9,000. "I've never had such a large audience! It's true! You are the largest audience that has ever come to hear me speak. Thank you all for coming." Tears form. "I would like to begin with a word of prayer. Father in heaven, thank you for everyone who came, those who helped get me here . . . ."

Carla has a common appearance but a compelling presence. Part of her power flows from reputation, knowledge, experience. Part of it is a direct, open gaze. She is fifty-nine, taller than average, a matronly figure that leans slightly forward. Her dark blonde hair is secured in a pony tail. She wears a simple, long dress and sports shoes. No makeup, no baubles. Her voice is singular, has a sense of wondrousness, perhaps a carryover from the first years of her life when she was mute, when her parents thought she would never speak, when she perceived of herself as an animal because other children could talk and she could not.

Her first speech is titled Food Storage As If Your Life Depended Upon It. She thinks it might. She believes that the computer glitch known as Y2K--whereby computers become confused by a date they were not programmed for and shut down as their clocks turn to 0001, 01-01-00--will create serious disruptions in energy, transportation, communications industries. She asserts, "The only thing that doesn't work is no plan. And the best food plan is the one that is the simplest. The more primitive the better."

She talks fruits, vegetables, meats, nuts, drying, canning, storing grain. She illustrates how stored food can satisfy all dietary needs, gives detailed lists of foods for carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals. "If things get really bad, eat dessert first." We laugh. "It's true! Sugar has calories and will keep you going. Sugar does not go bad. Honey lasts forever; it is the simplest thing to store. Make fruit preserves with sugar. Make syrup." She tells us how to make pasta using flour, corn, beans, rice, peas, eggs. She ends with the words she began with: "The only thing that doesn't work is no plan."

At breaktime the audience surges forward, crowding her with questions, offering tattered books for an autograph, handing her money for a copy of her latest edition. A man presents his old copy for an autograph, buys another "for a friend," gives a fifty-dollar bill, says "thank you" and purposely walks away so she is unable to give him more than twenty dollars of change.

The second session is billed as How To Grow the Best Garden of Your Life. There is little new ground for seasoned gardeners but the presentation and story illustrations hold us. She draws a picture of a hundred-dollar greenhouse she saw at a sponsor's house in Minnesota. She tells of her grandma's dried peaches, how boys came home from a ballgame, began munching on the sweet pieces and ate the entire bagful. "The point of that story is to can peaches, don't dry them. If you do, don't turn your back on them!" She ends with a provocative subject. "Now we're going to get really earthy. Some people are uncomfortable with this. But we humans have a product that is wonderful for the garden. That product is h-u-m-a-n-u-r-e. Now, humanure, pig manure and dog manure all have possible health problems. Age solves the health problems. Let it age three years and it will be safe. The disease organisms cannot survive three years without a host." She tells of the Wisconsin doctor who not only uses humanure but collects his urine year-round in a barrel and uses it to spray his fruit trees. "He says do it before the buds open." I expect, but hear no snickers.

Afterwards, Carla is crowded with questioners and book and tape purchasers. She listens intently to each person and gives her response. She makes change out of her pocket. She signs books. Finally the room is empty but for three of us. The third is a woman who says she is compelled to become Carla's unpaid traveling companion. "You need help." They agree to talk tomorrow.

In 1969, Carla Emery was the married mother of three, living on an Idaho homestead. With money short, she decided to write a country cookbook. She figured that producing the book would take at most a month so she placed an ad in a magazine and started writing. Orders and checks piled up. Months passed. She cashed the checks. "For four years those cashed checks weighed heavy on my mind" until the book was completed. The first edition was mimeographed on colored paper, pages were punched and collated by hand, bound with ribbon. Now titled The Encyclopedia of Country Living, "Carla's cookbook" has sold over four hundred thousand copies and is in its ninth edition. Within its 8.5 by 11-inch, 858 small-print pages is everything a striving-for-self-sufficiency country dweller might want to know, from birthing children to zucchini recipes.

Long-divorced and with seven children grown and gone--"They're spread everywhere, all the way to Antarctica"--Emery is today a road warrior for self-sustainability. She does not have a home. She demurs, "No, I'm not homeless, I am 'multi-homed.' My homes are the homes of those who ask me to come to their community."

Carla lives out of her van and in the homes of those who sponsor her to speak in their communities. All her bookings are by word of mouth. "Sometimes people drive a long way to hear me speak and then they ask me to come to their town. Others tell their friends in other states. Some find me through my web site." She subscribes to a mail-forwarding service and collects mail every week or so. "I answer every letter."

She has been from Florida to Alaska speaking about gardening, preserving food, the condition of the American food supply, growing consumer dependence and vulnerability. She offers a six-hour writing workshop that she says is most popular among homeschoolers and their children. She gives instruction on how to make cheese and pasta. She once made pasta on the Johnny Carson show.

I later ask Marjorie Doss, of Doss Valley Farms, a bulk food business in West Plains, what Carla requires of her sponsors. "She told me that all she asks is 'a place for the meeting, a blanket on your sofa and a plate at your table.'" She pays the rest of her expenses with the sale of her books and tapes and a twenty-dollar-per-family fee for her writing workshop. The rest of her presentations are free.

We meet next morning before the writing workshop. Carla is frustrated that she cannot reach more folks with her message. "People don't realize how vulnerable they are. I feel so bad for people in inner cities. It's so sad." Her eyes moisten. "It's not just the Y2K thing, look at what happened with the ice storms in the Northeast. Look at the floods. Look at the hurricanes. It's not just natural forces. A few big companies now control our food supply. They control our food supply. And the poisons they're using . . . . We're getting so much of our food from Mexico and from South America where they are allowed to use DDT and all the other pesticides and herbicides without any controls." She sighs and slumps. "I wish I could do more."

The writing workshop is attended by 49 children and parents. At 62, I feel ancient and wonder if, as Carla said, I would learn something new about writing. I do. She covers fiction, non-fiction and poetry--rhyme, rhythm, meter. "Poetry is the music of the spoken language." Outlines, topical, narrative. Problem plus solution equals story! She tells personal stories to show story structure: the opening hook, the turning point, layers of development.

She has the students choose subjects and hand them in. She selects three at a time, tells us to pick one and then do "wild writes," getting as many words on paper as possible in one minute, then two, then four. We scribble furiously, break our records. Phew! "Writers have to get words on paper. Don't worry about grammar or sentence structure. That comes later when you put on your editor hat." She pantomimes putting on a hat and assumes a stern face. Kids laugh. She shows the structure of limericks, divides the children into teams and challenges each team to write more than the others. I write my first limerick, using her given name:
Carlotta the teacher was great,
She taught us the stuff that we hate,
She lectured and pranced,
She gestured and danced,
She came here to be our sweet fate.

In spite of the major apple polishing, I receive no gold star. Afterwards, Carla talks to the lady who wants to help her. They agree on a time and place to join. She packs unsold materials into boxes, students carry them out and I pack them into her overloaded 1984 Plymouth van. Someone asks if there is room for two watermelons. It takes some doing to fit them in. Satisfied that all is aboard, Carla slides behind the wheel, smiles, waves and drives away, heading for the next people who have asked her to come.

Carla's mailing address is 3152 Parkway #13-221, Pigeon Forge, TN 37863-3340. Her home page is http://www.carlaemery.com .
 
 

If you seek traditional community then flee the city, escape the suburb. The primary perverter of community is bureaucracy that usurps people helping people. After crime rates and school conditions, desire for strong community is the most common motivation of urban refugees. They are often unhappy with what they find. 

Community includes nongeographic groups. I belong to a vibrant Internet community of individuals seeking or living country life. My rural upbringing instilled the sense that community is interdependence, giving and receiving service and support, reciprocal obligations and care. Taking it home, old-fashioned community seems possible only for those who live near each other. Taking it to the trees, complete community includes non-human residents because human well-being is affected and effected by all living things.

I am tempted to say that traditional communities have served their purpose, their day is gone, long live community--to say that old-fashioned community is found now only in "Mayberry RFD" reruns and Garrison Keillor's imagination. But remnants of traditional community still exist in small towns and agricultural and mining areas far beyond a city commute. 

Characteristics of strong community include high voter turnout, large PTAs, strong attendance at school games, fewer bureaucracies than service clubs, low taxes, clean streets, infrequent yard fences, and large church parking lots. Other clues include food co-ops, volunteer fire departments, neighborhood restaurants, taverns and stores. Sidewalk passersby meet your eyes, smile, say something pleasant. Merchants and bank tellers greet you by name. What you don't see are parking meters, threatening signs, large law firms.

Community is strong in Pipestone, Minnesota (pop. 10,000) where one-third of high school students played in the band sent by townspeople to the 1994 Rose Parade. Community is dynamic in agriculturally-based Stephenville, Texas (16,000), home of Tarleton State University, three radio stations and two newspapers. Community is unique in Ashland, Oregon, (16,000) known since 1935 for its Shakespearean festival that draws 360,000 yearly attendees. But beware, tourist magnets strengthen local economies but impinge on residents' lives. L.L. Bean and "Beansprouts" weekend shoppers overwhelm local conditions in Freeport, Maine (7,000). 

City citizens tend to be liberal and sophisticated; rural folks tend to be conservative and predictable. In cities, diversity is a given; in small towns, sameness is extolled. If coming from a city, you may find ruralites provincial, unimaginative, boring. Urbanites and ruralites often have a different take on environmentalismÑyou may judge ruralites insensitive. Rural youngsters may address you as ma'am or sir. Your children may find this strange.

My wife and I live in an Ozarks farming area. Our immediate community is a seven-family neighborhood three miles long plus a network of friends living within about an hour's drive. For groceries and hardware we drive to a town of 700, that populous because it is our county seat. Town dwellers comprise a typical no-secrets village community. The square around the courthouse presents the bank, hardware store, insurance office, doctor's clinic and the Ford dealership. Within one block of the square is the supermarket, the feed store, the Chevrolet dealership. The "package store," as liquor stores are discreetly called in the Bible Belt, is well away from downtown. On most Saturday nights you could safely stroll down the middle of Main street.

When I first arrived I was taken aback by friendly greetings on the street, strangers speaking my name. A bearded newcomer from California was instant news. The second time I appeared at the bank, the second time I went to collect developed photos at the drugstore, I was addressed by name.

Understand your needs before you seek strong community. Do you really want to live where your flaws are well known, where conformity is encouraged, where you are always a newcomer? Helen and Scott Nearing made every effort to become a vital part of their chosen Vermont community and failed. In Living The Good Life they exasperated: "Every community demands conformity to its laws, expects the acceptance of its customs and folkways, and prefers to have none but native sons at its firesides."

Understand a community before you subject yourself to it. Learn local focus. Places experiencing strong in-migration from cities often have two communities, old-timers and newcomers. Newcomers who purposefully left cities nearly always bring city mind-set with them, attitudes that amuse or irritate natives. 

Please don't buy into a community on the cheap. Resentment is strong from Washington to North Carolina toward newcomers who avoid community involvement. You buy house and land but you earn community. Work your way in. Use your eyes, ears and muscles at least ten times as much as your mouth and your money. 

The biggest mistake urban-to-rural migrants make is moving to a community that is wrong for them and then wasting their time trying to change it. Consider carefully your desire for strong community and how open or closed you want it to be. 

We are scarred by modern conditions and must work hard to leave wounds behind as we enter real community. Find yourself a fit and then tred gently into that good new life. 

Heartwood- HC 78, Box 1105, Zanoni, MO. 65784
Phone (417) 261-2610

E-mail us with any questions or suggestions.