If you're thinking about moving from the city to the country, answer this questionnaire to see if you and the country lifestyle are compatible before you make the big move.

Some 60 years ago, my mother, with more enthusiasm than skill, would bang out a tune on the piano called, "How you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paree?" It was a tune from her girlhood after World War I. It turned out Paris didn't have much to do with it. Masses of humanity wanting to make some cash for a change decided to move to the city, where all the jobs were centered and along with them retirement benefits, city services and a crowded, work-place atmosphere that banded them together.

Now three generations of city dwellers, having built the cities up to bursting overflow, are saving up money and moving back to rural land. A catchy song for these times might be the theme from Green Acres, a '60s TV show about a pair of deluded city people who decide to reap the rewards of country life. It was a cute comedy of errors.

Thinking about this inspired me to make up a questionnaire for city dwellers planning to return to the land. If you should know a couple of these, please have them fill this out carefully, taking their time. They can check their qualifications for rural living against the experts via an answer list at the end of this questionnaire. These experts have been there, done that.

Questionnaire

1. What are the seven rural elements?
2. What wildlife are you prepared to enjoy?
3. What is "fresh air?"
4. How dependent on electricity is your household?
5. What do you plan to do with your trash?
6. How much dependence do you place on dialing 911?
7. Do you know where water comes from?
8. Do you understand the law of sewage?
9. What is your definition of "roads?"
10. Do you know why squirrels store nuts?

Answers to questionnaire

1. Earth, air, fire, water, DUST, DUST and DUST.
2. You should have an appreciation for ALL wildlife, which will include snakes, coyotes, foxes, groundhogs, moles, skunks, deer and more mice than you have ever seen in your life. Plus all the birds you will ever want to watch, including buzzards, crows, cow birds and several million starlings. Insect wildlife will outnumber all other kinds and will want to live with you.
3. Fresh air is equal amounts of allergens, pollen, limestone, fertilizer, natural animal products like methane and, of course, the previously mentioned 99.9 percent DUST.
4. Rural electric service is subject to a number of interruptions, not associated with the city variety. These include lightning, beavers chewing the poles, eagles building VW-size nests on transformers and ice storms that make roads impassable to repair crews. If you depend on electricity for anything essential (like opening cans) you should have a generator the size of a garbage truck, which brings up...
5. Remember that trash is the only crop that grows itself and has no marketplace. The average couple produces a little more than two tons of this stuff a year (add a ton for each child) that city folks stack at the curb and forget. Unfortunately, you won't have a curb. As Harry Truman said about city limits, "The truck stops here."
6. The number 911 in rural areas means 11 more than 900, as in fence posts or hogs in the operation just upwind of your place. If dialed on a phone, it will put you on the county waiting list of service people who are already spread out like a picnic lunch and will get to you when they can, maybe Thursday.
7. Water beyond city mains is, like garbage, your very own property, and it's a good idea to keep the two apart. What pride you're going to take in your deep well, one of life's more important guessing games! You will find yourself watering the lawn a lot less and awarding trophies for the longest time between flushes. You will also find out that except for $100,000 bulls, lightning is more attracted to well pumps than anything!
8. The law of sewage, from the plumber's manual, states--to clean it up a little--that sewage does not run uphill. What it does at rural homes is it lurks in rusting septic tanks where it spends a lifetime, along with every animal on your place, threatening your water supply. Congratulations! You are in charge.
9. Is it anything like Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken?" Good! What you get is the road less tended to. Washboards, gullies, exclamation points and quaint bridges dot these roads, which produce more dust than a world convention of jitterbugging mummies and create more flats than a 6-year-old fiddle player. You may also want to design and build your own snowplow and ATV in case you ever want to leave your house for anything in winter, like, say, something to eat.
10. Squirrels store nuts because they have to go a long way and take their life into their paws every time they have to leave the den to get groceries. You may spend more time on your grocery list than the letters you write to the road commissioner. Your grocery list, by the way, should include every single item at Wal-Mart and your local MFA Agri Services Center. You won't want to make two trips.

That ought to whittle suburban encroachment down to size! Now I can get busy on my article on landowners' rights. That should take, oh, two minutes, tops.