There used to be a lot more even smaller "towns" around here but by about 100 years ago they were already disappearing as business came to these bigger little towns.
Posted on 12/31/2013 5:23:13 PM PST by FlJoePa
On the 407th and final night of Lindsay Holy Family football, a mother bundled on the top bleacher looks out at the 35-yard line, where her son is writhing in pain.
At kickoff, Sherri Frisch had cheered so loud you could hear it across the field.
"Oh, we're gonna listen to that all night?" said one of the dads.
"Shut up," Sherri fired back. "He's a senior. I'm gonna be emotional."
Now, seven minutes into the game, she doesn't say a word, waiting for No. 99 to move his left knee. Waiting for Ben to get off the cold grass.
The image at top is Highway 91 west of Lindsay, Neb. This was the view from Holy Family's bus en route to the Nebraska Panhandle. Photo by The World-Herald's Dirk Chatelain.
Sherri had grown up watching Holy Family football, like most parents on this sideline. She had hoped the school's last season, even if it was just six-man football, would satisfy her nostalgia.
One game they scored 91 — then served the opponents dinner, a Bulldog tradition. One game they played 6½ hours from home — the charter bus left Lindsay at 7 a.m. and returned after 1 a.m. The last home game, they honored the school's best teams — 52-year-olds wore their uniforms and told stories till the lights shut off.
But the finale is turning into a disaster. The Bulldogs, 6-1, are running out of players. They came to Newcastle with seven in uniform, including one emergency sub nursing an ankle. They're gonna need him.
Ben limps off the field, removes his helmet and sits. Sherri descends the five wooden bleachers and joins her husband at a rope line behind the bench.
(Excerpt) Read more at dataomaha.com ...
The state and federal governments draw so much money out of these communities through taxation. Without a military base, seniors on social security, or families on welfare, the money just never comes back.
Responsible young adults refuse to bring children into a situation of decline.
Irresponsible adults get plenty of government money, though, and that feeds their communities at the expense of other communities.
The small schools in Florida concentrate on basketball. I don’t think they have six man football. At least I have never heard of it in Florida.
High school foosball and basketball are still a thing here in the rural towns of southern Michigan. Girl’s volleyball is big too.
some small towns are dying while others are springing up….
hehe
It’s a town of a few hundred with a Catholic high school? With another, larger Catholic high school not far away?
It’s a town of a few hundred with a Catholic high school? With another, larger Catholic high school not far away?
Not sure what the joke is, but having students attend catholic schools means the community doesn't even get back the $10,000/student of property taxes they pay for public education. They're being bled dry.
Hardly.
Unless a town has a military base, hospital, large public school, or other source of government money, it's doomed to failure.
Money is taxed out of the community and never comes back, reducing demand for local services, decreasing employment, etc.
When I graduated in 1956, we were in Class C -- the smallest towns with 11-man football. We had 62 boys in high school (9-12) and 56 came out for football. We were consistently one of the top Class C teams in the state -- and didn't have to travel more than 50 miles to any of our eleven games that season.
Nowadays, the school is in Class B, but plays 8-man football and sometimes has to travel 200 miles into the panhandle for a conference match-up. And it's the band that competes for state honors, not the football team.
At least, we haven't been consolidated...yet. And we're still playing football. But for how long...???
Seems miraculous. Why would an archdiocese run two high schools (one absolutely tiny) a half-hour apart in a spread-out county with 30,000 people? One for an Indian reservation?
I have a wealthy cousin who apparently tried to create a small town. I have no idea what he was thinking but it failed.
At first I noticed a large area had been bulldozed then cleared. Next, I noticed maybe 7 or 8 buildings were being constructed. They were nice little buildings but they were in the middle of nowhere.
Eventually I noticed a small restaurant opened in one of them and a lawyer had an office in another. Neither lasted more than a few months and now it is just a bunch of deserted nice little buildings.
There are some well written pieces on this page. The author should be congratulated.
Forgetting the farm programs?
Towns in America tend to be organic in the sense that they sprang up where they were convenient. Railroads and water were major factors.
The town where I grew up sprang up at the crossing of two railroads. Before long a grain mill sprang up along with a market, hardware etc. The town where I live now had a railroad and a river that was dammed to power a mill. My house sits on the site where the icehouse was when they cut ice out of the lake.
We were class A in Florida. At the time that was the next to largest class. They were AA, A, B, C, and D. Class A was the most common size.
There were two class D high schools out in the County. They both had excellent basketball teams. We beat them my senior year and it was considered an upset. Strange that a Class A team beating a Class D would be that.
We did have a great football team that year.
My home town was DeFuniak Springs, FL. It arose when the railroad came. It also became something of a resort town when the Chautauqua made it their Winter headquarters. Of course Chautauqua, New York was the Summer and main headquarters.
It had a population of 5200 when I was a kid back in the 50s and 60s and is still just about that size. A friend of mine who lives in Pensacola, married a much younger girl who was a model. She is taking college courses and one day they visited a couple of places including DeFuniak on a geology field trip.
She told her husband that it was the prettiest little town she had ever seen.
Huh? The parents are paying the usual amount of money in taxes and are additionally paying for Catholic school out of their own pockets. How is that taking away from the town?
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