There are times I'd like to move....

I grew up in Berks County. It's the kind of place that 20 years ago could make you feel like a country bumpkin, a citified folk, and a hardcore suburbanite. All while living in the same neighborhood. Depending on where I went outside of the county had a lot to do with which moniker I felt most applied to me. When I went to college in upstate New York, the townies made me feel like I was pretty citified. On the other hand my classmates from Long Island and NYC made me feel like a hayseed chewing bumpkin.
So what is the purpose for my rant about perceptions of Berks Countians abroad? When I was younger, a person described this area as the best of everything in one small locale. City and country spaced not too far from one another. Good shopping with rolling farmland and peaceful hiking pretty close by. Now a days the shopping is eh. The farmland has tan vinyl coated McMansion crops growing out of it and some of the hiking backs up to these housing farms.
I guess I can live with this.
What I am fast realizing I can't live with, is the crime in this area. The city of Reading is a cesspool. Parts of it always have been, no matter what anyone tells you. But as the years have passed since my childhood, the cesspool has grown and sewage is overflowing into the burbs' and the country.
Last weekend an elderly woman, in an area I called a stomping ground as a child, was raped and beaten in her own home. Arrested for the crime was a neighbor of hers. His house is located no more than 100 yards away from the basement window of her home, that he broke into to commit this heinous and unforgivable crime.
I don't live in this particular neighborhood. But we are not too far away from it. We've walked it many, many times. I rode my bike there as a kid. My only care in those days, to get a grape Slush Puppy from the Chink Shop. Which was once located down the road from where this monstrosity lives. Even though the alleged perpetrator was caught. This crime makes me scared and very sad. I can't stop thinking about that poor old lady and the magnitude of the violation she endured.
I know in my heart that anywhere we move there will be crime. But lately in this area the crime is getting a little too close to home. Since I had Nicholas I have minimized my news exposure. Simply because it fuels my already paranoid state. What I need to remember is while vermin like this exist everywhere, I can't let it stop me from doing and going and enjoying. That just became a little harder this past weekend though.....