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Really, how far away? Drag racing on a track or on the town's streets? Pot doesn't bother me,

It has a long established history of drag racing, on a track. Pot doesn’t really bother me, but it looks like it is, possibly, besides the drag racing, one of the main industries for the area. We are talking about a small town with like 5-10 or more dispensaries. Not some singular local head shop, but a hub that would draw people from outside of the community who are interested in drugs.

Got any liquor stores in the town?

No doubt,

The pot stores and the drag racing don't bother me (I live in a town with lots of liquor stores and a horse racetrack) but what else does the town have to offer? Mine has good shops, restaurants and cafes, excellent health care facilities, and good schools, plus employment locally and within an hour's commute to bigger cities. You need to look at the bigger picture.

I am. This is the community adjacent to the property. It is out in the country. There are a couple of other towns but they are definitely more of a drive, and they are not really large towns. The community is the drag strip and the pot stores.

My hubby is aiming to become an eccentric hermit I think, and wants to lose himself in a giant wooded acreage with no neighbours and doesn’t seem to care that there isn’t much around. He thinks if we get something cheap enough and big enough we’ll be good.

About the drag strip, I'd be concerned about general traffic patterns on race days. When we lived on the Monterey Peninsula, large events (golf tournaments, car shows, etc, and just 3 dat weekends) would mean that the traffic pretty well blocked huge parts of the area, while week days were pretty quiet. I'd be more concerned with the qualities of the school system than with pot shops.

It sounds like you and your husband are not on the same page with this move,

Nope. It’s pretty frustrating to be honest. And If I am honest, I am panicked about going somewhere isolated, for a very long time, perhaps permanently and with little possibility for income.

"but the closest town is a hub for cannabis stores...," and "the biggest returns are for drag racing which I guess is a big thing for this town ..." and "If I am honest, I am panicked about going somewhere isolated..." tells me that the real issue is the third one, and the first two are rationalizations. I'm not discounting your concerns about being isolated, but this is what you need to address with your spouse instead of raising issues that are unlikely to be real causes for concern. I live in a major metropolitan area with plenty of pot stores, for example; I don't worry about them, but I do worry about the folks loading up at the local liquor store. And unless people were drag racing past my house, or there was a race track nearby with a lot of noise, I wouldn't worry about that either.

We just have differing viewpoints on what would make us happy.

And I was wondering if my gut reaction would be shared by others. I think some of it has come from things I have experienced in life that I found a little traumatizing/made an indelible impression, because obviously other people don’t seem to feel that same no way Jose knee jerk reaction I do.

J Williams-

Your feelings about being isolated are entirely valid. Clearly there’s a big difference between you and your husband which has to be dealt with. To be clear about my previous comments: I don’t think you strengthen your argument about how you feel by raising other issues that aren’t on the same level, as they’re too easy to dismiss and would make your husband think he is making progress winning you over. Given the chasm that exists on this between the two of you on this issue, the only thing I can suggest is seeing a family counselor or arbitration (a very inexpensive service available in many communities). Having a third-party, neutral person present might allow you to succeed in resolving an issue that has escaped a solution when just the two of you are trying to resolve it.

Mr. Weedy and I have some common wants in a house, but also things that I want that he doesn't care about and vice versa. And we have one thing that is conflicting: he wants to live in the country with a big piece of land and no neighbors, and I want to be close to stores so I don't have to drive 20 minutes each way if we're out of milk.

Believe it or not, we have been able to find houses that satisfy all of our mutual wants, or individual wants, and our conflicting wants. The latter is the most difficult, of course.

Weedy Acres (2 houses ago) was on 7 acres but in a subdivision that surrounded a lake with commercial stuff within a mile or two.

Stable Flats (just bought last summer) has 2 acres, with farmland on 2 sides, perfect for Mr. Weedy. But it's just outside of the town, so close to everything I care about. We were watching houses for a couple years before this one checked the boxes.

There were a couple times that he tried to convince me that something out in the sticks would be fine for me. When he was unenthusiastic about something I liked, I tried to understand why, so that I could screen potentials more effectively. And it eventually worked out.

So I agree with others above: get an understanding of each of your needs, wants, dealbreakers, and priorities. Our agreement is that we both have veto power. Be patient, and keep looking. It can be stressful in the case of conflicting wants, but we managed to do it, so you might too!

Having been through a house hunting phase that lasted, on and off, for 4 years and intensively for 2, I can only say that you need to be very clear about your objectives. It has to be more than just getting away from where you are: it has to be about what what you are moving towards. In our case we were very clear that, as we hit the senior years, we needed to move somewhere that had better health and social services than the beautiful but remote little village we were living in. We also wanted to be close to supermarkets and shops because we knew we wouldn't be driving forever.

We looked at housing in 8 or 10 towns, getting a "feel" for each, over about a two year period. We finally made the decision to focus on one particular area, a strip of small towns about an hour from a major city. Add a further two years of househunting in that area until we found a property that ticked all our major boxes - single story, walking distance to everything we would need for daily living, close to doctors, dentists, physios, etc. Perfect? No. There were properties a bit further out that were more attractive, but we never lost sight of the proximity objective.

The point here is that you and your spouse need to be on the same page about what you intend to achieve with this move. Better opportunities for your son should be top of the list. Presumably, employment possibilities for yourself and your husband would be right up there as well. If the place can't deliver those (poor schools, no jobs) eliminate it. Don't get distracted by pretty houses or low prices if neither will achieve your primary goals.

Nothing to add about the need to be on the same page as your spouse. So, to answer the original question:

* Pot stores: Not sure. Are they just dispensaries or are they growing facilities. A commercial growing facility = no. Dispensaries = how many? If that's pretty much the town's only business, I'd pass but if it's only one or a small handful in an otherwise diversified town, it wouldn't bother me. Did you ever walk around in town and/or the property? If either reeks of pot, I'd pass.

* Drag racing: No. I want peace and quiet. Racing is noisy, not to mention some racetracks draw big crowds, which means too much traffic and all the other potential issues involved with big crowds.

It’s an industry. I wouldn’t doubt you’d get the whole enchilada. No problem with a community having pot dispensaries, as I have already said, but this appears to be only business in town, besides maybe a truck stop. So these stores are not for the locals, this will draw a whole crowd of people from miles and miles away. People have been smoking pot openly around here long, long before it was even “legal”, it was tolerated, heck I saw a group of people with a bong on a busy commercial strip, just hanging out, not too long ago. We are still figuring out the legalization thing. We aren’t even allowed to buy alcohol from any but licensed stores, grocery store sales are pretty new, you can’t even walk around with drinks outside, and you have to be careful with things like gallery openings. We still have our lingering puritanicalism, but it was hardly uncommon to see pot consumption just about everywhere, or to see some plants mixed into a tomato patch. We are funny that way here. Maybe it will be good for the community, like some places are known for fruit or cheese or something lol. To me, it sets off alarm bells. It is technically legal but we haven’t sorted out all the kinks.

Drag racing and pot dispensaries are the biggest draws to this little town in the middle of nowhere? I can’t believe people say that wouldn’t bother them. What’s next? Tattoo parlors? Bail bondsmen? XXX” gentlemen’s” clubs? Get yourself a good realtor and don’t give this “beautiful, historic, country house” another thought. Tell hubby he’s not Howard Hughes. Happy wife happy life.

"To me, it sets off alarm bells."

You answered your own question right there...

Walk to get your dope. What could be better? Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms should be a convenience store, not a government agency.