Funny you mentioned alcohol. When I was home, the biggest moonshine bust in state history happened when a fire was reported on the property of “Popcorn” Sutton”, a guy who’s made Moonshine all his life. Well, they found around 750 gallons of the stuff in his barn. Unbelievable. Many of his neighbors said it was kind of silly that they were bothering him since there’s such a crystal meth problem elsewhere.

Strange (or not so strange) thing about dry counties, there are far more alcohol related car accidents in dry counties than wet counties. The ditches along the roads from the Cave-in-Rock ferry into KY were filled with empty beer cans. Dangerous driving. We finally found out, from one of the natives, some guy in his trailer about half mile up the road was selling. Had to keep an eye on his porch light. White light meant he had beer, yellow the hard stuff for sale. Didn’t ask about the red light.

All three cities I visited were drastically changed. All showed fresh growth and development. I’m not sure how I feel about this. It seems that there’s a lot of out of staters coming in. I met people from virtually every state in Nashville. A waitress at Cracker Barrel was British. Some areas which had previously been literal ghettos, like East Nashville were getting yuppified. Homes that used to be 40-50k were 100-150k.

Something I found distasteful was the enormous amount of mega-mansions being built in what was once farmland. Flying into Nashville, you could count 10-15 brand-new housing developments alone. These all had asking prices of 250-350k, which sounds cheap to people from other states, but totally unfordable to locals. So there’s a sort of a newcomer/oldtimer misbalance scenario.There’s still such a massive price difference between much of the Southeast and the rest of the country that you get the feeling that there’s a sort of reversed in-migration occurring.I saw a lot of out of state license plates. I’m not a big fan of gentrification. But I suppose that’s unavoidable.

But that said, it was nice to see all of these places developing so nicely. The cool thing is that you could still drive 10-15 minutes out of any of these cities and be in the country. Old, normal sized homes and farms are still reasonably priced, and the freeways except within the immediate confines of the cities are relatively light in regards to traffic.

As far as KY, we spent a day up there. It’s crazy how totally different it is from TN. There seems to be signifigantly more poverty. Some of the small towns I saw as a kid look exactly the same. Secondly, it was desolate in the area we visited which is sort of freaky after living in the Bay Area. The TN/KY border had about 20 liquor stores.It makes no sense that most of KY is dry because KY makes such a massive amount of bourbon, Vodka, and liquor.I’m not sure I could live there either. It does get a lot colder up there. I had forgotten about the humidity. It was in the 70’s when I was there, and it felt pretty humid. But I sort of miss that. Believe it or not, TN has had warmer winters for the last 4-5 years ( at least where my parents live) than the Bay Area. Call it global warming or whatever, but I recall as a kid, it snowed maybe once a year. It hasn’t done that in years.

As far as teacher’s salaries, my Mom has taught for 30 years and makes a little over 50k. My dad makes maybe 35k. That doesn’t sound like much, but the pics I have of the home I grew up in was paid for with a lot less of a salary than that, and even now, my parents could still afford to buy what they have at the present value. So You have to look at salary versus the cost of living.There’s still a large delta.

Anyhow, I had a good time there. I think next time I’m going to investigate Johnson City, TN, Memphis, and maybe

My wife’s folks came to Alameda during WWII and returned to Kentucky when my father-in-law retired from the Port of Oakland. It’s beautiful country but there are several factors that keep me from retiring there. Number one is Crittenden County (where Marion is located) is a dry county. In order to stock up on adult beverages we had to drive to a ferry crossing at Cave-in-Rock Kentucky and take a very slow ferry across the Ohio river into Illinois. Lot of hassle to sip a tall cool one. The other major factor is the weather. It gets too damned hot and too damned cold. I grew up in Colorado and had all the weather extremes I ever care to experience.

School teachers in the Marion school district start out at $23,594 and the highest possible salary in 2008 for a teacher of 20 years with a Masters plus thirty hours above a Masters is $50,200.

Thanks for sharing.

I really enjoyed your photos. It looks like there’s some fine hiking to be had there. Thanks for posting them.

Susan

Why? Because maybe I like to suggest ideas that aren’t on the shelf. Of course I expected such a reply. My post was meant to draw a honest, direct comparison between California and another state. This can be used to make a number of conclusions. Either one can look at it and say

” Hey- there’s some good ideas there… let’s try and apply some of those to California, or my own CA town”
or-

“Hey, you know what? It sure sucks that my commute, mortgage,and never-ending budget problem concerns and so on all kind of suck… Maybe I should consider all options for the welfare of me and my family.Is California really the best choice?”

Or perhaps the response I’m sure most think here which is:

“California is the best state in the whole country, everybody else in all the other states are losers, so I guess I’ll go have some fun and patrol around with my little protest sign over the latest round of BS the state has to offer me.But that’s ok, because that’s called progressive politics”

Anyhow, as mentioned, I did this to perhaps show others what else exists out there and how that California is just one of 50 states, of which many have totally different lifestyles and cultures of their own, of which may or may not be of benefit to you.