A break from partisanship...

door open
Sumac, the South Carolina town you live in is so small that you have the security to go to sleep with the doors open? Wow.

JL, we probably couldn't find the housekeys if we looked for them. I can't recall the last time we locked a door. In fact, the door from the basement to the back yard doesn't even have a lockset. But then, we're miles and miles from any town, the neighbors are a half-mile or more away (and are all cool folks), and we have an impressive pack of dogs who take "Defense of The Realm" pretty seriously. The coons, possums, skunks, squirrels, porcupine, bear, deer, chipmonks, and assorted other critters seem to give the dogs great respect. So do door-to-door solicitors.

Timber, your dogs sound very partisan indeed.

I don't have keys either. Or rather, I have keys somewhere. But where?

dogs
Timber, sounds idylic. Yet I am a bone-deep city boy. I love urban centers and what they have to offer. At the same time I must periodically get away. When I worked in rural Mexico, it was the rule that houses were far apart and defended by extremely (viciously) partisan dogs--furry skeletons. Amazingly, the dogs were almost starving (on a diet of stale throw-away tortillas and what they could kill) but what food they got was from the owners of the property they guarded. But in my urban neighborhood people are taking all the measures they can to protect their property (not their lives) from barbarians. Leaving a door unlocked or a window open is tantamount to an invitation to burglars. Blockwatch is our real religion.

I'm downtown in a lovely port city with access front and rear from the street. I have no dogs nor cats helping out with defense. I have a daughter, but she is downloading music, and not available to me ever. There are squirrels, racoons and skunks aplenty (huge park nearbye) but my experience is they they believe this actually to be their home. We are at odds on the matter. There is also some divergence of view on sacredness of property between heroin addicts and myself. I do keep my place locked.

I have keys and deadbolts and use them always, though I remember growing up in a town in Upstate NY where we only locked the doors at night, and that was mostly Dad's way of enforcing a curfew. (His motto: "If you aren't here when we lock the door, I assume you've made other arrangements for the night.")

Today my parents lock the house any time they are not home. The times, they are a'changin'...

Tres

There are still lots of places (timber and tartarin's for example) and many smaller towns here in BC where folks don't lock their doors. In my old home town, folks now do lock where we didn't when I was a youngster, even at night. But population growth seems the key factor.

Although I was told I was an idiot, when I lived in Austin TX for about ten years, I only locked when I was going to be out of town for a while. Valuable stuff? Yes -- but it comes in the form of things like first editions, not the kind of stuff people look for in huge dusty bookcases. 13" TV -- over 15 years old. Pooter -- I'd miss that... Still I don't regard myself as particularly burglarable. I have been told that, here in the boonies, I should have a gun. But would I ever use it? Nope. Saw a coyote a while back which had the signs of rabies. Maybe I'd use a gun on him -- to put him out of his misery. I have neighbors, city folk, who've put in a huge, pretentious gate, custom-made with their initials. Now THOSE folks will be targetted by burglars for sure. My gate is standard ranch stuff, rusty, and definitely no initials!!

Pooter? What the hell is a Pooter? Would I want one? What's your address?

Do you think that maybe gun sales in the south would evidence a step decline if mail boxes came pre-shot?

That's a good one, Blatham. That and the road sign which the county truck comes out to replace so often I don't believe it. My Pooter? -- you can't have my Pooter. You can have the loose fan, though, which is driving me nuts. Whenever Pooter has been on for a while, it starts to growl. Don't have much of an address. Just come south a ways, cross the creek, go along about a mile uphill, look for the rusty gate.

Tartarin, you might try unplugging your pooter, opening up its case, and GENTLY, CAREFULLY vacuuming it out ... observe proper static discahrge precautions. A glop of dust unbalancing a fan blade often shows such a symptom. Of course, fans are dirt cheap, and easy to replace if the fan's bearing or motor is actually failing. Even at a shop, that's a quick, cheap fix.

pooter
Blatham,

He arrives....compooter

You yankees really ought to listen more often to the Queen speaking.

We don't want to chip our expensive dental work with all those marbles.

Well, the town where I grew up had a listed population of about 16,000 when I was in my early teens. Today (almost 30 years later) the population is listed as 11,000. So, some of the changes that have occurred have nothing to do with population growth and (I think) everything to do with an erosion in the values of the populace.

We don't lock out doors in my little town in Connecticut.
One of my favorite places in fact, is a little farm that sells eggs on the honor system. She has a metal box nailed to the wall where the customers leave their money after getting the eggs out of the refrigerator.

Diane

There are quite a few farms around here, which do such with vegetables, potatoes etc as well.

And from early summer onwards, you'll find lots of fields, where you can pick/cut [usually a knife is to found there as well] flowers fresh from the fields: pay what you think is okay in a box. (Well, they do give you some ideas what they think it should be :wink: )

Walter, there are farm markets such as you describe in Guilford, the little town I was referring to. There are 'pick your own' fields where you pick what you want and put the money in a container. All on the honor system.

It is lovely, but thank heaven New York City is only two hours away!!

Many farms here have roadside "honor system" produce stands at the ends of their driveways. The system works well. There is a Christmas Tree version of the practice too, almost always "Bring your own saw".