As some of you know, we are moving to Manhattan, KS, where Suzanne has taken a job as Senior Development Director for the College of Human Ecology at K-State University, her alma mater. Our house is on the market and we’ve begun to get lookers. Oddly enough, the thing that most of them mention as their reason for not being interested in the house is that they hear a lot of noise from I-435, which is about a block away. Now, I’d be willing to bet that most of these folks don’t even notice the noise when they are sitting at some swanky restaurant patio over in Mission Farms or downtown near the Crossroads Art District. But, yes, I’ll admit that it can get loud on occasion. To try to allay their fears, I wrote piece about the noise that we are leaving on the table with other information about the house. Here it is:

OK, if the road noise is turning you off, don’t worry… our neighbor’s stereo will drown it out. No, just kidding; you can’t possibly play Lawrence Welk that loud.

When we first moved in, we thought we’d hear I-435 ALL the time. Inside, outside, it would be all the same.

So, just take a minute and listen. Hear anything? Not much inside, but yes, you do outside. Trust me, after a week or so, you won’t notice it a bit, even when you are sitting on the deck, enjoying that glass of wine or iced tea (especially if you’ve had more than one glass of tea, wink, wink). Really. The stupid cardinals and blue jays fighting will be all you hear. Oh, and the squirrels. And kids playing in their yards. And moms and dads walking their babies (man, those strollers can get loud). And yes, our neighbor’s dog gets excited sometimes, but we haven’t had a door-to-door salesman since they moved in.

Bottom line, the neighborhood more than makes up for whatever you think you might hear. We’ve got great neighbors who look after each other (a couple of weeks ago, I went over to Westlake’s to get something for the house and while I was there I got a call from my neighbor across the street who had noticed my garage door was up but there was no car in the driveway; apparently, I had forgotten to put it down and she was concerned so she called me while I was there just to make sure everything was OK; she works for the NSA, by the way; see, that’s more important than any so-called road noise; you can ignore the noise, but you can’t ignore the neighbors; well, now, I don’t want you get the idea they are nosey….). We have neighborhood get-togethers a couple of times a year and even shovel each other’s driveways when one of us has a broken leg, or at least a fake cast.

Don’t pass up a chance to live here just because you think you’ll be disturbed by the eighteen wheelers and motorcycles racing at midnight ;-). We don’t even hear them any more. We do hear Johnny Rowlands’ helicopter reporting on the 5:30 traffic backups on the Interstate, though. But you get used to that, too.

Peace (and quiet)