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.
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.