ever, space limitations make it a bit of the ridiculous side, my competing with all the library books, Government Printing Office pamphlets and the other publications devoted to retiring on a budget.
The purpose of this book is more to get you in the frame of mind to take this retirement step. To show you examples of others who have done it successfully. To give you that little push that will result in your getting off the treadmill and making a more satisfactory way of life.
But there is one thing I'd like to stress in this matter of retiring in your own home town. If you packed your things one day, collected whatever savings you had, and took off for Sarasota, Florida; Grass Valley, California; or Sante Fe, New Mexico, and once there started your new way of life, there would be nobody to look you askance. It would seem completely natural to them, as would any project you might develop in order to augment your income.
Ah, but in your own home town. What would they say if you quit your job? Your job as foreman down at the pretzel bending department of the biscuit company, where your father worked before you and his father before him. Would they think you'd gone stark raving mad when you announced that although you were only 25 years of age, you had decided to retire from the rat-race? Would the minister of your church come around to discuss it with you? Would relatives ranging from your parents to second cousins attempt to argue you out of it—contending that the natural state of man is slavery in a factory or office?
In short, would you be able to stand the guff from people who probably deep within themselves would love to do just what you've decided to do, but haven't the courage. And since they haven't the courage themselves they don't want you to have it. The mob instinct seems to be to hate anybody not exactly like the members of the mob.
We Americans have long prided ourselves on being "rugged individualists." Supposedly, we are all "rugged individualists." Perhaps it's just an optical illusion that the overwhelming majority seem to be just the opposite. Far from an individualist, rugged or otherwise, the average American today does not seem capable of standing up on his hind legs and asserting himself. He is scared to