A few years ago I was swapping lies with John Dixon on the liars bench watching late morning October traffic back up at the stoplight. I said to John,“ Isn’ t it amazing how many people want to come to Brown County?”
John was silent for a moment and then said,“ Just think, we live here.”
His answer led me to wonder if any of those visitors looking at us from their car windows had ever thought what it might be like to live here instead of visit? Had they ever considered it? Did they envy us, or just consider us“ quaint?”
Ask most visitors what led them to come to Brown County and you might get answers such as the fall color, the State Park, Nashville, the shops, the scenery, and the slower pace of living.
A very, very small percentage of those millions of visitors who come each year do actually end up living here. Our population grew in the 1980s at a rate just under 14 % and in the 1990s at about 10 %.
We are not as poor a county as we once were. We rank in the middle in terms of per capita income. One of our biggest negatives is the fact that we have the highest housing costs in relation to per capita income of any county in the state.
Most of our new residents first came here as tourists. We continue to get people choosing to retire here. We are also getting new younger residents with growing families who feel our county is a safer and better place for their children.
The County Planning Department has each resident applying for a new home permit fill out a questionnaire. One of the questions asks why they came to Brown County to live. Three principal reasons are: the scenery and living close to nature, the slower pace of living, and the kind of people who live here.
I believe the people of Brown County are our most valuable asset. We are a special breed. We are the most
58 Our Brown County • Jan./ Feb. 2015
Our
Brown County
~ by Henry Swain( 1918 – 2014) Reprinted from January 1998
patient people on earth. If you question that, you have never attended a public meeting on a controversial issue of change. We are a very independent bunch and considerable time is required to compromise our differences.
Brown County people are extremely generous and essentially kind, despite the paragraph above which might seem contradictory. We are generous with our money and our time. As an example, take the Fair board, the Extension board, the 4-H leaders who direct projects for over 400 of our youth. Over 50 people volunteer their time in those efforts.
Community organizations and individuals give over 35 awards of financial assistance to graduating seniors each the number continues to grow.
The Park department’ s softball summer program involves over 500 of our youth requiring many volunteers to say nothing of the time parents give shuttling their children to sport and school activities.
The No Name Committee Christmas auction and the EMT Thanksgiving dinner operations are almost totally infiltrated with volunteers. Add to that the Volunteer Fire Departments throughout the county. After someone is left homeless from a fire, they discover generous, often anonymous donors supplying aid.
Our service clubs and organizations such as the Friends of The Library donate hours of service to the community both in time and funding.
The Brown County Community Foundation accumulated millions from hundreds of donors. It has different funds from which distributions are made to charitable requests and scholarships.
Other communities have similar volunteers but in our small community the efforts seem more personal. There being no large urban community in our county, I believe we are inclined to think of our whole county as our neighborhood, as the name of this magazine suggests. Factoring in our often frustrating and sometimes frivolous contrariness, this is still a good place live, if you can stand it. •