I can't say Craig's experience is typical, but I do know some areas where you drive half a mile or less off the highway (even 138 that connects 95 to Newport via the University of RI), you would think you were in Deliverance country. Three generations of dead pickup trucks around a collapsed shed and all the refrigerators etc.
I now live in rural Virginia. It's the same here, except you can see it all from the highway. The roads are trash receptacles. The woods are full of derelict farm equipment (that's why they are now woods . . . too much junk for the farmer to till around so it goes wild. And when people move away they leave their houses to fall down. Hundreds of early 19th century farm houses -- and older-- just sitting there, moldering away. Quite a few other houses too, and mobile homes. And, believe it or not, school buildings.