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Despite such frictions, the Dooleys have made a happy life for themselves, finding friendships with other outsiders. Last summer they decided to retreat from Wilmington, buying an acre parcel in Sycamore Glen, a subdivision full of newcomers on what used to be a farm outside town. (More than 500 new houses have been built in the Wilmington area since 1995, and 1,000 more are planned.) Mike and Ruth are designing a two-story brick house with a deck overlooking their wooded backyard. But they're arguing about whether to put a front porch on the place. Ruth wants one. Mike doesn't, because their new subdivision has no sidewalks or street life. "Who wants to sit there and have people drive by gawking at us?" he asks. Sycamore Glen isn't a town at all, just a scattering of houses--a smaller, friendlier version of the suburb they came here to get away from.
THE FARMER
Kent Pickard unlocks the gate to one of his cornfields--one that abuts Airborne Express's vast shipping complex. "I'm right in the middle of it," says Pickard, 52, wheeling his old pickup through the gate and down a dirt road that ends at an Airborne fence. "From 4:30 in the morning, the airplane takeoffs are constant. Sometimes it shakes the ground under my tractor. Sometimes I think the tractor is coming apart."
Noise is the least of it. Aircraft exhaust killed a wheat field next to the runway, Pickard says, and several years ago, Pickard's cattle came down with a mysterious affliction--heifers losing weight, their eyes pale and blank. His veterinarian finally traced it to the water supply, Lytle's Creek, which had been contaminated with ethylene glycol from Airborne's de-icing operation. Local environmentalists have met with Airborne's lawyers, and the company is studying the problem. But with winter here, the de-icer is flowing again.
Pickard is a realist. A Quaker missionary's son, he didn't try to fight Airborne about the contamination; he started watering his herd from the city's supply. His son works in Airborne's maintenance shop, and Pickard himself makes extra money plowing snow for the company. He can use the cash, since the 15 parcels he farms, comprising 58 acres he owns and an additional 1,400 he rents or leases, net him just $9,000 a year. "Basically, you have to be numb," he says. "You have to accept what is good and shut off what you can't do anything about."