Moving to the country from Minneapolis

After living in Minneapolis metro area for almost 20 years I decided along with my lovely bride of five years that it was time to move out and live a slower, simpler style. Things were falling into place and falling apart at the same time, we could feel that this was happening by our design or by force so we better try to steer the ship on a course to our liking.

I had just lost my job in the telecom industry, our interest rate on our mortgage just went way up and we could no longer refinance due to employment and credit problems. We were living in the north side of Minneapol,is (Mpls) in the not so nice hood of Camden. We had enjoyed a hedge of protection from major crime for the last five years but now it was as if the city that we had always loved had turned against us. The police chopper was flying over my house almost every weekend now, drive-by shooting killed two children just two blocks from my house, our family van was stolen by local youths and taken on a all day joyride. (I actually chased them down with my truck on my way home on day and recovered my own stolen vehicle.) The city was trying to force us to pay a fine for garbage someone left in our ally, pay a plumber to fix the curbside water shut off valve so they could turn off our water, pay a huge fee to register our dog as potentially dangerous dog. On top of all that my backyard was a barren wasteland that refused to grow, I had laid new sod two years in a row countless bags of grass seed, the earth rejected all my offerings.

It was time to get out of town so I loaded up the truck with 1 dog, 2 cats, 1 wife, 1 baby and five years of stuff. My wife is a saver of things so I had been covertly disposing of items for months in prep for this day, every week on garbage day I made sure both cans were full of something to lighten the load. Eastern Wisconsin was our destination close to my wife’s parents. Rural Wisconsin here we come!