It took me seventy years to get here but now that I’m here in the middle of nowhere, I suppose the proper thing to say is the wait was worth it. However, I won’t. Won’t even come close. Instead, I say, “Why couldn’t it have happened about a half-century earlier?”

Well, it didn’t happen earlier for the same reason a lot of people don’t do exactly what they want to do all the time. Didn’t have enough money when I was 20-years old to last the rest of my life. Yeah, I had to work. So, I had to live where there were jobs. That means around annoying people as well.

After all those years of putting up with neighbors, rude people, violence and going to “command” events against my will, I was finally able to leave the big cities behind me.

My wife and I came to Apache County Arizona to a 40-acre property off the electrical grid and with the nearest neighbor about a mile away. With our solar and wind system along with a propane generator used mostly for pumping water from the well, we and our six dogs get along fine. The internet provides me with a view of the rest of the world plus our television and my rocking chair serves me well.

I think it’s safe to say I’ll never move again. If any life event comes along to muddy the waters, well, I tell people that’s why “they” invented suicide.

It’s refreshing to take a walk at the 6,000 foot level or dilly-dally doing nothing but enjoying the quietness and the view. No more listening to neighbor’s yapping dogs. Only my own but that‘s OK because only my wife and I can hear them.

Speaking of neighbors and yapping dogs, I had one who had two. Mighty glad when the family moved. Maybe I had something to do with it. I like to think it was I who prompted their decision to get away from me.

Barking dogs are just as bad as yapping dogs. Big dogs bark, small dogs yap. Ill mannered dogs whether yapping or barking have the same effect on me when I’m trying to sleep. Even my own dogs.

Unruly kids are no different than yapping and barking dogs. Once had a neighbor girl three or four years old who threw small pea-size stones from our front yard all over our driveway. Man, did her father get mad. Not at the girl but at me. Even called the police. Whew! The old man didn’t like me giving the kid’s mother my video taping of the event.

Mom and Dad claimed I am some kind of a pervert (prevert as Archie Bunker would say). The good policeman told Mom, Dad and all the other neighbors, who gathered apparently to see me carted off in cuffs, I was OK. He told them one can always video record activity on one’s own property.

Another happy ending. I slept very well that night and the family moved out a few months later.

Yes, I enjoy the country. Never was a willing joiner. Had to join, of course, to earn a living but that’s about it. When going to a big party in some classy hotel I was the person who looked for an empty meeting room to sleep until the event was over.

Naw, I exaggerate. But, I do not exaggerate when I tell you I do - really do - enjoy the isolation of country living. I’m the happy card carrying reclusive of Arizona.

Thank you for putting up with my talking about me, my favorite person. It’s just that when I find something I like, I boast.

But, the good news is I won’t do much more boasting. I promise. You see, we are born with a fixed number of words. I have used a lot of them during the years. Now, I have to conserve or I’ll run out of words before I die.