Tales of the Old West (from the Old Eastern Bloc)

There's an Old Western saying: "Wide open spaces don't breed no chatterboxes."
I love those old pithy sayings.  Were people really more witty in the past or does it only seem that way to me because I'm aging and out of touch and don't always get young humor?
In any case, I bring up the Old West because often life in Obedin makes me think of it. The old ways. Ways people have lived for centuries and found it utterly unremarkable until modern Westerners come and stand around taking photographs while speaking some brand of Italian.  
It's really easy to romanticize rural life.  I've been guilty of it a time or two myself.  But the reality is that it's tough. Well, it's not tough if you don't like to bathe or are indifferent to the possession of a full set of teeth in your mouth. In that case I suppose its like life in any other setting.  But if you like to bathe and have all of your teeth (heaven knows we modern Americans are obsessed with both bathing and dentistry) then it's tough.
When we came in '99 Mircea was a baby and we had to get all of our water out of this well:

Take home lesson: when faced with the prospect of hauling water this way it's remarkable how quickly you can decide that your own stench isn't really rank enough that it can't last another day or so.  Or how soon you decide that shaving your legs is a highly overrated task.  Or even that your infant is pretty okay without a diaper on because it's sure easier wiping off a bare bottom than scrubbing out a bucket full of nappies.  I only had to endure the water-from-the-well thing for a short time.  I'd really like to think that if it were a permanent situation I would have learned to buck up and get with the program of weekly bathing and properly diapering my child.
Another thing: as much as I hate cars (and I hate them) it's funny how you find you don't mind them so much when it's 4 degrees outside, you have a 15 km journey ahead and realize you left the house without your gloves.  Cause riding in an uncovered horse-drawn wagon under those circumstances is nothing like watching Henry Fonda driving Linda Darnell around in one, no ma'am.  It kind of blows actually.
Our next door neighbor has a horse-drawn wagon.  As a treat when Sharon, Kelly and Todd were here he took them for a ride in it.
Happily it was a sunny day: no gloves required.

What was it like? There were moments wherein someone discovered that lo and behold, their hemhrroids had not in fact gone away and someone else thought maybe they would invest in a sports bra the next time they decide to take a turn in Nonu's wagon.  But there were moments of delight and total gratification such as when Luci grabbed the reigns (that is to say, Nonu allowed him to grab the reins) and yelled "yee-haw!" and took off down the road like a bat out of hell and left us all in the dust.  It wasn't the fact that he likes to go fast (he's a boy) or the dust he kicked up that was so awesome, it was the sheer joy in his face and the fact that for the first time he's taken an interest in horses as opposed to Lambroghinis and BMWs.

For us, these were just day excursions; little diversions to amuse ourselves and our guests. The fact is I got to jump out of his wagon and go inside to use my indoor plumbing.  And later that day I could go to the store in my Volkswagen.  These facts alone disqualify me from making too many more generalizations about what rural life is really like as a day to day existence or how desireable it would be to permanently live that way.  I don't really live a rural life, I just live in a rural area.  And as the old Western saying goes:  Polishing your pants on saddle leather don't make you a rider.