MOTORCYCLE riders spend lots of time exploring the back roads of rural America. Over the years these inveterate two-wheeled trekkers have witnessed the steady atrophy of small towns and the abandonment of farms.
Thousands upon thousands of empty stores with dirty windows and fading signs wait obediently on empty streets in rural communities scattered across America. Farm houses formerly alive with the flap of wash and the scuttle of children, dogs and chickens now sag relentlessly back into weed-covered yards.I ride past farm houses much like the one I lived in as a child. I see my helmeted reflection peering curiously into the darkened windows of dry goods stores and cafes that once bustled with activity familiar in my youth.
There may be demographers and sociologists who ride motorcycles and cruise America's back roads with a full understanding of these rural hauntings. Population shifts due to changing economic opportunities, and that sort of thing. I'm sure of it.
But the rest of us are accidental demographers and untrained sociologists. We ride the back roads to avoid the 18-wheelers, Camaros, Town Cars, hurried tourists and all the rest who push their hot, heavy machines angrily along boring over-engineered highways. The free-lance demography business is a bonus that accompanies the pleasure of exploring rural America.
Professional demographers have released a new study that shows Americans are moving back to the country by the millions. This trend began in the 1970s. But it got sidetracked first by the farm crisis in the 1970s and then by heightened overseas competition in the 1980s, according to the study by Kenneth M. Johnson of Loyola University in Chicago and Calvin L. Beale, senior demographer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
America's rural regions have gained 2.6 million residents from April 1990 to July 1995, according to the researchers. Most of those new rural residents came from metropolitan areas.
But the movement back to small towns and country living does not mean a return to family farms. The trend is caused by Americans who have given up on big-city life. New country residents became exasperated with the crime, traffic jams, taxes and all the expensive hassles of urban life. Many became equally fed up with suburban life.
Any back-roads biker could have told you that. The most scenic and exotic rural communities and countryside are being taken over by city folks who bring their urban lifestyles with them.
One of the most attractive parts of Texas, in this Texan's opinion, is the Texas Hill Country. For as long as there has been a Texas, Hill Country land was dirt cheap because it was dirt poor. Too many rocks and too little soil. But it is tree-covered and scenic. And city folks don't care about dirt. They buy organic compost.
Little Hill Country towns with abandoned stores that used to support the needs of hard-scrabble farmers now have fancy restaurants, stained glass shops, art galleries, dance studios, riding academies, antique shops, organic food stores and more foolishness than any small-town Texan over 50 could ever imagine.
Land prices and Montessori schools shoot up, quickly followed by taxes. City folks who flock to the newly discovered little towns for weekend outings often decide to join the authentic country lifestyle. Before long there are traffic jams.
But long before traffic jams clog our revived rural communities, we two-wheeled, back-road demographers have ridden off on less traveled roads. We prefer to ride the old roads and commune with the ghosts and descendants of authentic rural America before it is violated a second time.