Maybe Oliver Had It Right

I'm referring to Oliver from the show 'Green Acres'. Lately I've noticed more and more how different life in the city must be from the burbs or the country. Just by the limited time I spend in and going through parts of Baltimore, I can see where life has got to be vastly different.

The first thing you notice going through this city is all the strange items laying everywhere. There is furniture on the sidewalks. There is a big truck tire lying on the corner of a main thoroughfare that has been there for a couple of weeks. There are trash receptacles everywhere, but they are rarely filled and the ground around them has piles of trash. There are even garbage bags tied up and leaning on small dumpsters that have the lids opened and it's obvious that they are empty. ??? I guess it's not cool for city people to throw the bags into the dumpster; they just have to get them to it.

It's OK for the stuff to cover the sidewalks though. I've figured out why no one moves those things out of the way. People don't use the sidewalks anyway. They just walk in the street. Even when we are driving by, they don't step out of the way. They just keep walking along and we have to follow them until we can get around. Or, if they are heading toward us, we have to stop so we don't hit them until they move aside. Then we get the evil eye for having the nerve to drive on the street they were using as a sidewalk. Maybe we should drive on the sidewalks? This is no exaggeration. It happens every day.

The drivers are the same way. They just stop and have conversations for hours, not at all interested in who is waiting behind them. Or they park in the street and come back whenever. Or they just stop and block traffic by deciding to do a U turn or a 3 point turn without warning. (It would seem that city cars aren't equipped with turn signals either.)

Along those lines (sort of) the city people I've had more than 2 conversations with do act differently than I'm used to. They seem to believe they are owed pretty much everything and they shouldn't have to work too hard for anything. The ones I've worked with certainly have this attitude. It's nearly impossible to get them to do anything productive without being there to look over their shoulder to make sure they do it.

I've also noticed that there are many, many restaurants around everywhere. People in this city like to go out to eat. That's not a bad thing. I love going out for lunch or dinner. I'm just amazed that the folks I've talked to here seem to do this as a general rule and staying home to cook isn't the norm. That's got to be expensive.

Another thing is, at least in this neighborhood, there is a church on every other block Churches everywhere you go. But the murder rate is out of control. The murder rate in this city is 5 times higher per capita than New York City and 3 times higher than Los Angeles. I heard these stats on the radio recently and I guess I wasn't really surprised. You have quite the dichotomy here. All the churches and all the killers. Maybe the killers feel bad and need the churches for confessing before they go back out and do it again? Seems strange to me.

The bottom line for me is, this is an OK place to visit, but I could never even consider living here. It's too foreign a lifestyle to me. I don't know if these things are common to all big cities or just this one, but for me, they can keep the place.