In praise of NH and the 20 minute ride to everywhere

My parents are coming to visit in a few weeks.  It’s always good to see them, and for them to see their grandchildren, and I’m looking forward to the visit.  I remember a few years back when they came up to visit, they asked where things were.  It has become a running joke that the answer is that almost everything, is “20 minutes away.”  The shopping mall?  20 Minutes south.  There’s another one 20 minutes North, too.  The Home Depot?  20 Minutes – East or South.  Lowes is 20 Minutes South or North.  The Daycare?  20 Minutes East.  Restaurants?  20 minutes, both national chains and local eateries, every direction.  WalMart?  20 Minutes, North, South and East.

I am not a native of New Hampshire.  No, I’m not even a native New Englander.  In fact, where I grew up, green trees were planted in the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street.  Most were either silver maples or birches.  We were lucky, though, we had another maple on the front lawn and a big poplar in the backyard.

I grew up in a crowded first-tier suburb of Buffalo, NY.  Less than 2 miles away, and you were in the city limits.  On one corner of my street was a small tool & die shop, on the other end there was a rail yard and our backyard ended at a 2-story high warehouse wall.  I bounced tennis balls off that wall well into high school, pretending to make the game-winning diving grab in the World Series or the winning serve at the US Open.

In 1998, I took my first “real” job in Arlington, VA and I lived in Northern VA for the next 4 years.  It was unbelievably crowded and busy, even by the standards I had known growing up in the rust belt suburbs.  In 2003, I moved to New Hampshire, looking to simplify a bit and find what my wife and I felt was a better environment to raise a family.  For both of us, it necessitated leaving behind more lucrative careers in favor of a lifestyle we could enjoy more.  My wife, a native of Northern Massachusetts, was excited about the move.  I was not so sure, but I knew that the D.C. area was simply not my speed.

Over the past eight years, I’ve come to realize something:  that although the small metro areas and, therefore, much smaller economy in the area have a lot of career disadvantages, I’m still hard-pressed to think of a much better place for raising my children.  For one – things are simple.  The town we live in doesn’t even have a traffic light or a 4-lane road.  For another – there’s just so much that they can be exposed to.  Within an hour’s drive, we can be up on a mountain, at a sandy beach or rocky coastline, fishing on an inland lake, or down in Boston - one of the great big cities of the world and all it has to offer.

All of which are things I didn’t experience a lot of growing up in a blue-collar town with a devastated economy.  I didn’t see the ocean until I went on a trip to Florida with a college friend when I was 20 years old, or a Major League Baseball game until I was in my thirties.  I’ve been skiing once in my life, and I never learned to ice skate.  Since coming to New Hampshire, I’ve had an opportunity to experience it all, and share it with my children.

Not to say that it isn’t without its shortcomings.  Like anywhere else, folks can be a bit quirky and even standoffish at first, but some of that is to be expected, I suppose.  Nonetheless, you have to admire a place where everything is just 20 Minutes away.