[geeks] Castoffs?

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: Erie Patsellis <erie at shelbyvilledesign.com>
" 
" Funny thing, I grew up in W. Mass, and everything you'd ever need was 
" pretty close by, at worse a 20 mile ride or so. Now, living in Rural 
" Illinois, we have one (imagine it, as hard as it is) grocery store, an 
" IGA (locally known as thieves are us..) and even with gas prices where 
" they are, it still makes sense for my wife and I to drive to the nearest 
" med. sized city (Decatur, IL) about 40 miles one way to do our grocery 
" shopping. It's not unusual around here to drive 50 or so miles if you 
" want a decent paying (not really...) job. I used to drive 80 miles to 
" work, one way. When I lived in W. Mass, that would be like driving to 
" Boston from Springfield, every day....

with one difference -- at a guess, rural il doesn't have the
population or traffic density [or general road confusion] that eastern
ma does.  there must be several million people living and/or working
within 80mi of boston, and we've been paving cowpaths since 1620...
total ma pop is ~6M, heavily skewed toward the coast.  80mi reaches
well into nh and ri and even slices of me and ct.  manchester - nh's
biggest city - is only 53mi from boston, drive time 58m.  providence
ri is 50mi, 56m.

the population of the entire 13 colonies in 1776 [as we approach apr
19th] was only 4M.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought