Posted on 12/07/2016 9:09:55 AM PST by Mad Dawgg
If you live or have lived in small town America would you be so kind and tell us about it. (For our purposes towns of less that 10 thousand in population but still have city services like Police and Fire Depts. etc.)
But if you would be so kind post your experiences BEFORE you read any others on here. The reason being is I am interested to know if there are trends in small town America that manifest nationwide and to see if they are something that most of us notice without being pointed out by others.
What I am looking for is the experiences of how your town was when you were a kid, and how the town is now and the differences you notice in day to day life there. Please give approximate dates and for purposes of not revealing too much personal info on the net narrowing it down to a decade should suffice. Also if you do not wish to name your town just note the State and or region.
Thanks in advance for any and all responses and the more you have to tell us the better it will be.
Oh, and 1 k-12 school. lol
Grew up and lived in small Appalachian communities in Ohio and West Virginia for most of my life. The Norman Rockwellesque memories of these places have been replaced with rampant unemployment, hopelessness, and drug use. Trump’s election is perhaps a last gasp for these areas. Sorry to be so gloomy.
The Waxhaws, very historic, lots of Revolutionary War history. Right on the NC-SC line. Pretty place, horse country now.
I grew up in a town of less than 1000. I still get the weekly paper. Recently, the city council meeting was consumed by the question as to whether the town dog should ride in the cab of the city truck. The mayor thought it unprofessional.
Same has happened to me, the closer in towns got built up, people love it out here, big houses, mini-estates, horses. So, it’s started happening here, too. “Gentlemen’s farms,” lol. Six acres with a pond, a Morton building, estate fencing and a nice house with three car garage kind of thing.
My little town has a rough history, people came here for liquor during the Depression, dance halls, rowdy. Many of the old-time locals still are, at which the novveau folks tend to be horrified.
I can’t think of a single town other than this one, with a liquor still on the town seal.
In one room it sounds like. 8>)
Presently in a small town — 7000 people, 200+ families. All family homes except for two apartment buildings. Husband was born here. Kids still walk to school. (GREAT schools) ‘’Downtown’’ is a drug store, sandwich place and a nails salon. Close by Starbuck and booze store.One main street. Memorial Day parade every year. HIGH taxes.
The biggest change has been going from conservative to liberal -— with the influx of New Yorkers moving in because of the schools and closeness to trains going into the city — 12 miles away the way the birds fly.
All in all — probably not ‘’small town America’’ as one would see in fly over country. You gotta problem with that??
Make it the official mascot. That should allay the fears of your mayor, who sounds somewhat prissy, lol.
The honor system is true. I used to go buy gum and candy (and cigarettes for my mom), and only sign an IOU slip. They sent my dad a bill at the end of the month.
You're not being gloomy, you're being realistic. WV is in dire straits ... 0bama has been particularly destructive to us. If Trump gets the EPA off our backs, it will help. Beyond that, we need some source of wealth, some industry, other than digging black rocks out of the ground.
My one observation over the last 10-15 years is that small towns like mine eventually get contaminated by the big city as more and more people move here who don't share the values of the people who grew up here.
It’s a beautiful place, in close proximity to a great deal of this country’s population. I’m surprised that the summer resorts aren’t more prominent. I know of The Greenbriar, and the ski resorts, Snowshoe and Canaan Valley. But, not much else. An economy completely dependent upon tourism isn’t even close to ideal, but it’s a foundation and a start while the productive economy in WV is reinvented and renewed.
“What I am looking for is the experiences of how your town was when you were a kid, and how the town is now and the differences you notice in day to day life there. Please give approximate dates and for purposes of not revealing too much personal info on the net narrowing it down to a decade should suffice. Also if you do not wish to name your town just note the State and or region.”
I grew up in the small town of LaFayette NY (’70s onward). (Was actually elsewhere earlier, but remember little of it.) Had it pretty darned good ... wasn’t until decades later I realized that describing the characteristics make it sound downright poverty-stricken, even though we were pretty well off: grew half our food, burned wood for heat, rarely watched TV (and upgraded that to a VCR+monitor), made & repaired clothes, made apple cider & maple syrup from our & neighbors’ trees, almost never ate out, brown-bagged school lunch, often rode bikes miles to activities, skied out the back door, camped every month (snow or not). Culture/ethnicity was absolutely “American rural” from seriously poor to humble-but-well-off, with a good percentage of Native Americans (bordered a reservation).
Now live in Cumming GA, suburban life. Small forest in backyard. All the above points are much more “modern” (though I’d rather go back). Hard to find a modern home without an HOA. Culture/ethnicity is dominantly well-off (middle to rich) white, good contingent of other ethnicities, with strong poor Hispanic presence. Population is exploding here, very soon area will be off your list (if not already, depending on how you define “town” which I’m technically just outside the border of). County has been dubbed “sixth most redneck in GA”.
Now to read other descriptions, and see how the thread coalesces for a better answer.
My town has more than 10,000 people but it strongly resembles the painting you posted. It has little industry but is healthy because it is what is known as a “bedroom community” (which does not mean that everyone is busy sleeping around, it means that people live here but work elsewhere /s).
The town I grew up in is under 10,000 people and I have occasion to visit now and then. When I drive through the streets I walked as a kid, it depresses me every time. The businesses on Main Street are mostly gone and the few that remain are dismal. Empty storefronts everywhere where it was once the typical small town Main Street out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The homes where I used to deliver papers are run down as the older generation has passed on and the new owners do little with them. Crime and heroin are big problems. It is painful to know what it once was.
Half of the stories involved missing pets and animals knocking over garbage cans with unsecured lids. LOL.
I’m fortunate enough to be in an outer, exurban town within commuting distance to a city. Drive ten miles further and it’s really dismaying, what has happened. Formerly thriving, proud towns are falling to their knees. But for the grace of God, it could be me, stuck there with little prospect of selling my house for anywhere near what it should be worth, dwindling employment prospects and the town going to seed.
For me a town of 10k wouldn’t be small. Grew up in a town of about 600. No stop lights, no flashers, had some old stop signs at a couple intersections that were yellow instead of red.
Everyone knew everyone. Biggest issue was there just wasn’t a lot of work. Earlier in the towns history there had been a couple places in town - paper factory, tomato canning place...by the time I was born they were all gone. Cheese factory is still there, but they don’t make anything but small batch now - outside that its just a little storefront. There was a cafe, a drug store (since closed) grocery (since closed), 3 gas stations (only 1 open now I think), a small bank branch (also gone now). Lumber yard burned down, grain elevator’s all shut up for going on 50 years.
I used to joke that there were 2 bars and a liquor store to balance the weekend out with the 3 churches.
The 3 churches, cheese factory storefront, a gas station, cafe, one bar, and the liquor store are pretty much all that remain outside the post office now. People rent some of the other for odds and ends to try to make ends meet - small motor repair, etc.
At one point there had been a skating rink (roller) and a theater, but the town went through a fire and a couple floods in the early 1900s and that all changed.
A lot changed when they consolidated the school with other nearby towns.
But the people were always nose to the grindstone, don’t complain about your situation (though they always did lol) and get your work done. Fair amount of gossip. No one thought twice about someone defending themselves or their family/friends.
My best bud’s mom had a big cast iron bell. We’d ride our bikes everywhere often all the way to the river bottom - no matter where when that bell rang it meant his supper was ready and time to get home (quick!).
Parade on the fourth even as small as it was. Volunteer fire dept. No cops - at one time there was a town cop, but it didn’t ‘work out’ so instead the deputy sheriff would come by once in a while - definitely on Saturday night so the ‘teens didn’t get out of hand’.
One sure thing to this day is the county fair was always in our town, despite not being located centrally, it just was. Carnies and the big black horseflies would come in the week prior and leave the week after. You could hear the demolition derby on Friday night all the way out to the countryside if you decided to do something else.
It’s hard going back - having traveled you’re accepted, but still not an insider. Oh they’re proud as hell of all those that ‘make good’ and ask after you and brag constantly. You want to share what you’ve experienced but you don’t want to come across bragging either. They want to know, but they don’t want to pry or feel like they’ve missed out. I’ve talked with my family and closest friends about it - they agree it’s an odd situation and that I haven’t missed on my assessment.
I don’t miss driving 1/2 hour to get to a fast food place or any other shopping. I do miss the smell of the hog farms when the wind comes out of the northeast, and walking down the middle of the street of an evening with no sounds but the crickets and the hails coming from the front porches leading to hour long conversations.
We didn’t have the fancy setup in your picture for christmas - just some wreathes, big plastic candy canes, and some tinsel to hang up at the downtown doorway stop on the telephone/power poles.
I’ve often thought, if I was ever in a high enough position that cost wise I could convince someone to put in some production there, they do work hard. But during one of my recent visits I’m not so sure folks back home would want it. They put in an interstate nearby that had been planned for 40 years finally and all anyone had to say was how they didn’t care for it and farmer xxxx lost his land and home (he was well compensated). They want to change you can see it in their eyes, but they also don’t want to change and hold back.
I do have a feeling though with some of the upcoming production methods that there is going to be a change in how things are delivered and it will allow us to move back into those small towns. 3-D printing, the internet, some of the quick-change processes in image transfer, robotics, recent agriculture discoveries - I could see those creating a move away from the population centers and back to a smaller community. People already work remotely in a lot of capacities....
So yeah I’m from a small town, but 10k - pshaw - that there’s a county seat or one of them community college cities.
Oakland is a town in Fayette County, Tennessee, United States. In 2010 the population of the town was 6,623,[4] a gain of 417.8% since 2000, for the largest gain of any municipality in the tri-state area of Memphis TN-MS-AR.
The thank you sign from Trump is still up in front of the county Trump office. The Christmas decorations have been up for a month, though some here from Memphis prefer happy holidays. We have a locally famous bell ringer at Kroger.
I hope this answers what you need.
The honor system is used in the small town I live in here in Maine (roughly 2,000).
A farm stand in late summer down the road has a metal box with a slot attached to a long table with a tarp for a roof.
You buy the tomatoes and cucumbers and other produce you want, and put the correct amount in a slot in the metal box.
The small tomatoes are in small clear plastic glasses with a price attached, usually 50 cents per “glass.” The bigger tomatoes have price stickers on them. Cukes are one price no matter the size.
Another home further down the road has an unmanned produce stand just off the driveway of a home. Off the driveway is a half-shed loaded with all kinds of produce, and they even have a small refrigerator built into the half-shed which is open in the front and has a wooden roof.
There is a scale for weighing the tomatoes, lettuce, cukes, etc. that you want, and plenty of price lists. There is a tan plastic coffee can with a green lid; it’s load with change and paper money, and that’s where you pay and make change. There are vegetable gardens all around the house and a large greenhouse behind the home.
This time of the year, there are a number of roadside stands with people selling hand-made Christmas wreaths on the honor system, made with local balsam tips.
I live in a small exurban bedroom community town now, but grew up out in the middle of nowhere at the foot of a mountain, where the closest town was a good ten miles away and didn’t even have a stoplight. Some of my childhood recollections seem a little weird now, as if maybe I dreamed it or saw it in an old movie. I distinctly recall Wall’s Rolling Grocery, it apparently had started up in the Depression, ran a route all through the backroads of the county, staples, grocery items, had a freezer for ice cream for the kids so we reacted sort of like city kids would upon hearing the ice cream truck music. No music with Wall’s, we just heard the clattering of the old engine in that big old converted bus, rusty old thing, had to have been from the forties.
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