By Heidi Kurpiela

I never knew what country living was until I started coming to Buffalo State College. I just knew that’s how I lived; that anything other than that had to be better, that the city, of all places, would be better. Especially the city, especially since all my life I’d wanted to run off to the city to live the hip life.

Must be a ‘North Collins’ thing

That’s the name of my town—North Collins. When I visit my childhood friends at Fredonia State College, (where most of them now go) their roommates all write off our quirks as being “a North Collins thing.” I will argue it’s a country thing. The country rubs off on kids the same way the city does. It’s just easier to brand someone a bumpkin than it is to stereotype a suburbanite.

If you’re unaccustomed to it, spring in the sticks may seem like the opening night of a “Star Wars” movie— everyone comes out of the woodwork. But if you’re used to it, it’s a reassuring and exciting time to do something healthy outside, like play with your dogs.

I can try to describe it:

The smell of manure in the evenings, the taste of grapes right off the vine, the murmur of four-wheelers in the woods, the bugs that bite ankles and elbows and the creeks that cut through the back of all our yards.

In the country you walk across the road barefoot to get the mail and your mother keeps peanut butter and birdseed by your front window so the birds will flutter and chirp like they do in “Snow White”.

You fall asleep across your trampoline at night watching shooting stars make streaks across the sky like blueberry swirls in low-fat yogurt. It’s a loud night, asleep outside on a trampoline; crickets might as well be an orchestra; raccoons paw the weeds looking for compost piles; and wild dogs yell back and forth at each other like honking horns.

In the morning your nose is slicked with dew and you’ve sunk to the center of the trampoline, piled on top of the sisters who’ve slept beside you. These are the things you think about when you’re from the country and you drive across the Skyway into Buffalo on your way to school.

But you get sick of drinking Genny in the woods with your friends and the fireflies you capture in mason jars at night usually die the next morning. You can only know so much of everybody else’s business and the sight of rebel flags in certain houses quickly grow old and distasteful.

Take a tour sometime

I do enjoy the city. I enjoy the diversity, the restaurants to choose from, the purple gift shops on Elmwood Avenue, the dark theater houses, the sidewalk joggers, the discarded copies of Artvoice and Thursday at the Square. I’ve never in my life had so many choices, and all within biking distance!

It’s a culture change I’m sure many country folk have experienced. I mean it’s practically a fact of life, the Springville Wal-Mart doesn’t carry everything, you’ve got to trek out to the Northtowns every once in a while just to break up the landscape. But do city folk—and this includes suburb folk— ever venture out to the country?

Families often take vacations by the lake or retreat to an Allegany State Park cabin for a weekend. This is perfectly entertaining. Some of the best times I’ve had were holed up in a tent, during a thunderstorm at Allegany State Park.

But there’s more to the Southern Tier than state parks and snowstorms in towns you’ve never heard of. If you ever find yourself hanging out in North Collins try something fun from these spring/summer activities.

• mud bogging
• dirt Biking
• horseback riding
• throwing a party in the woods (bring tents)
• going to pick apples
• playing hide & go seek in the corn
• picnic by the waterfalls
• country/folk concerts under the village gazebo
• pond swimming & fishing
• campfires in grape fields
• rummaging through haunted farm houses
• reading in a tree
• football as the sun sets
• fish fries at Uncle Frank’s Restaurant/Bar
• watching the go-cart races at the Langford Speedway

And we have one of the biggest tractor pulls around

There’s this thing that really puts North Collins on the map and it’s the Langford Tractor Pull, which is the Western New York Championship Tractor Pull. It’s usually the first weekend in August, along with a country jamboree to kick off the night before the pull.

The reason I give it attention is because it truly is the epitome of country living, as far as country living goes in North Collins. If you wish to genuinely experience rural life, then attend this tractor showdown.

It wasn’t until I started coming to Buffalo State that I really appreciated my home. I was a sarcastic kid who thought my life was a big Jeff Foxworthy joke. When hanging out with my Hamburg friend I’d constantly goof on my life in the boonies. One day I told her, I’ll go to school in the city and live in a hip apartment above a fruit market or something.

She looked at me funny and laughed. She told me that all her life she had wished she’d grown up in North Collins; that she used to tell her friends at school that she spent the weekend playing hide and go seek in the corn and racing mopeds down the grape rows. She told me all her friends were jealous and that she was jealous of where I lived. Why else would she continue to run through my muddy fields, scraped by pricker bushes and perfumed by cow manure?

Maybe that’s when I decided to stay in NC, at least for a little longer.

I never got that hip apartment above a fruit market in Buffalo; instead I commute to school from North Collins twice a week. I have one more year of college to go before I leave this town, so until then I’m just a small-town dork happy to have hailed from the home of the Langford Tractor Pull.
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