looking for free firewood in grove city/Darbydale , Ohio

[fixit1960]

I can see your point. I'm glad I have enough room to store a chainsaw, rake, broom, shovel and the clothes needed to do outside labor and cleanup. When I have traveled to help friends and families in towns this allows me to be able to help them out. I was just going on personal experience in general.

My sister lives in Northern Indiana and when he home was hit by a tornado the out pour of help from the community of neighbors was amazing. Neighbor farmer took the equipment out of his barn and it became a holding site for the strewn posessions of neighbors hit. Non effected neighbors walked their properties and the effected came to reclaim some things when they had time. In contrast, friend at works brother who got hit had people come from out of nowhere and take things off his lot that was his. He lived in mid size city and confronted one and the guys excuse was that his insurance should cover it anyway so he can just get new stuff. Different mindset.

My cousin who started a van conversion company in Indiana saw the devastation on a newscast of a woman who lost her home to Katrina. They contacted the station an got with builder to build a way better than she had home. They brought in dumpsters and told them to clean the site of all the small stuff and they would bring in heavy equipment to do the rest. When Steve went down 2 weeks later he found them staying in a tent and nothing had been done and dumpsters were empty. Asked why and said she was waiting for the equipment and crew to show up. He was NOT happy and told her to put forth SOME kind of effort. Not much was done but they built it anyway. They did an awesome job with the house and he didn't want any news coverage. A year later he went down and was sick. House was trashed.

There are good people and bad everywhere. Personal experience is all I have to go on though.

The issues you mention here are exactly why I am hesitant to donate to a lot of charities. I have seen people given brand new items and found out they were pawned for money.....maybe to buy drugs, who knows.
Not a very respectful attitude towards those who donated it to them. I heard first hand examples of the Katrina episode also. It seemed a lot of those folks just sit and waited for someone to come in and do it all. The sad part is it's our tax dollars in many cases that is used to buy it/build it. To my way of thinking it further perpetuates the problem. The relief coordinator should come in and say okay, we'll do this, but you have to do this first. I believe it would make the recipients more respectful of what they have received. It would go along way towards making them more responsible. You know, they would have some skin in the game.....

We see it in the Boy Scout Troop all the time, if you show them how to do it and supervise, they feel like they own it. It lasts longer and they have a sense of accomplishment.
Do you suppose we could do that now similar to when the government had the WPA and CCC back in the 30's. Or has it gone too far...

 

[Wannabe123]

On the lines of that post, my opinion is people in the country are generally more helpful and friendly than those in a town and those from a town are generally more helpful and friendly than those from a city. There are always exceptions.

The trouble usually arises when someone from the city moves to the country to avoid all the nastiness, and then brings it all with them. Moving to a "quaint" postcard little town sounds cool until you show up in your Lexus and start making demands, and find that a half hour drive to a Wal-Mart just doesn't suit your upscale lifestyle.

 

[svk]

The issues you mention here are exactly why I am hesitant to donate to a lot of charities. I have seen people given brand new items and found out they were pawned for money.....maybe to buy drugs, who knows.
Not a very respectful attitude towards those who donated it to them. I heard first hand examples of the Katrina episode also. It seemed a lot of those folks just sit and waited for someone to come in and do it all. The sad part is it's our tax dollars in many cases that is used to buy it/build it. To my way of thinking it further perpetuates the problem. The relief coordinator should come in and say okay, we'll do this, but you have to do this first. I believe it would make the recipients more respectful of what they have received. It would go along way towards making them more responsible. You know, they would have some skin in the game.....

We see it in the Boy Scout Troop all the time, if you show them how to do it and supervise, they feel like they own it. It lasts longer and they have a sense of accomplishment.
Do you suppose we could do that now similar to when the government had the WPA and CCC back in the 30's. Or has it gone too far...

Another great post.

I like how some countries (I think Switzerland and Isreal but not sure if that's right) have mandatory military service for something like 2 years. Get young people into real work situations. So many of the younger generation now graduate high school and have never had a job or participated in any organized sports/groups. These kids have no chance at the real world until the spend a LONG time at the school of hard knocks.

If they reinstated WPA/CCC there would be a mass uprising by the city folks about how this is torture and nobody should be forced to "work".

 

[svk]

The trouble usually arises when someone from the city moves to the country to avoid all the nastiness, and then brings it all with them. Moving to a "quaint" postcard little town sounds cool until you show up in your Lexus and start making demands, and find that a half hour drive to a Wal-Mart just doesn't suit your upscale lifestyle.

You get high earning people who move to the country and expect things to operate "their way" but also low earning people who think if they move to the woods they can do whatever they want.

 

[Wannabe123]

True. Not all transplants are bad folks, it' s just the ones who wish to change reality to suit their impression of how it ought to be. Come to think of it, that covers a lot of problems in the world, don't it?

 

[Kevin in Ohio]

The issues you mention here are exactly why I am hesitant to donate to a lot of charities. I have seen people given brand new items and found out they were pawned for money.....maybe to buy drugs, who knows.
Not a very respectful attitude towards those who donated it to them. I heard first hand examples of the Katrina episode also. It seemed a lot of those folks just sit and waited for someone to come in and do it all. The sad part is it's our tax dollars in many cases that is used to buy it/build it. To my way of thinking it further perpetuates the problem. The relief coordinator should come in and say okay, we'll do this, but you have to do this first. I believe it would make the recipients more respectful of what they have received. It would go along way towards making them more responsible. You know, they would have some skin in the game.....

We see it in the Boy Scout Troop all the time, if you show them how to do it and supervise, they feel like they own it. It lasts longer and they have a sense of accomplishment.
Do you suppose we could do that now similar to when the government had the WPA and CCC back in the 30's. Or has it gone too far...

My widowed aunt moved to town into a smaller home. They had some high winds and blew some limbs/trees down so we went over. She didn't ask, we just showed up when my cousin said She was effected by it.

We start sawing, raking and loading and she was out there helping us. She is in her 80's but refused to not help. All the while the neighbor who had damage as well kept peaking out his window. When we were about done after a full day he comes over. In his mid 30's and starts to chit chat. He then proceeds to ask if he could borrow our truck to haul his away. I looked at Dad and asked the guy if that was HIS truck in HIS driveway. He laughed and said yes, said it was brand new and he didn't want to scratch it up. I said nothing and again he asked not taking the hint. I then told him we had some other elderly people to help who had no means of moving it.

This has not been a one time thing as you can see. To me, actions speak louder than words. My thinking has always been do all you can for yourself before asking and when people see that, they will be quick to realize WHO you are.