Adjusting to small town life.

[fortworthgal]

I grew up in an area so tiny and rural, it couldn't even be considered a small town. Heck, the small town was 15 minutes' drive up the 2-lane road to buy groceries! There were 23 people in my high school graduating class. I definitely grew up in the country. I did move into the small town when I was 18, and lived there for several years, and I loved it. Definitely a slower pace. Now I live in the big city. There are many things I like about it - the arts, museums, variety of stores, being able to go to the grocery store at midnight... but I'd go back to rural country life or a small town in a heartbeat.

 

[Miss Sis]

I live about an hour by train out of London, in the 'burbs. No idea how big the nearest towns to me are, but they are easily accessible by train or car. We have a canal and a huge Army Range that is like a giant park five minutes walk away and I love it here.

We know our nearest neighbours to say hello to and have a brief chat, but nobody is poking their nose into your business and that's the way I like it. I like the anonymity of the 'burbs.

 

[angeljenny]

It's nice, but sometimes gets out of hand. When I was in High School, Mom and Dad knew what I had done before I was done doing it. Sometimes through the old small-town rumor-mill, you learn stuff about yourself you never knew, if you know what I mean!

It was a bit like that with my school. I went to a village school rather than the local one and the shop keeper and the pub owner both knew the headmaster so there was no getting away with anything. Plus there were all the curtain twitchers watching everything!

The town I live in now is supposed to be rather gossipy but I don't think I do anything interesting enough to get mentioned!

 

[SomeRevolutionary]

I miss the small town living some times. We moved from a very small town in Oklahoma to California when I was 13. I'm 23 now and I still have moments where I don't know how to function because everything is so big and so crowded. The upside to big places, though, is it doesn't take forever to get to the mall or something. Back home you had to go 45 to an hour to get to the nearest mall. The town only had one up to date movie theater, and even it didn't get all the new releases so you'd have to drive an hour and half up to the city to do a midnight release.

 

[george]

I've lived in this town all my life, besides that I've started going to school now and so spend about 8 months of the year in Boston. My town is probably too big for many to consider small. Its population is around 17,000 now and if I didn't have access to a car I'd be stuck (not really within walking distance of anything besides houses), but it's a decent place to raise a family, which might be why my family picked it as their place to live. The bottom line is that it's "home," I enjoy being here. It's the most familiar place for me.

Of course, it's western MA, so growing up and thinking about going to college, a lot of people wanted to go out to Boston to do it. I was one of the seemingly few who actually did. And I honestly love Boston. It's probably the biggest city that I feel comfortable still calling a town, it just has that kind of feel to it. Of course people from even bigger cities (of which there are plenty, as Boston isn't particularly huge, as far as cities go) hate it because it's not a "big city" like they know, there's not a solid grid system going on, the roads have curves and lead different places. I always thought it gave the place character, myself; not that Boston lacks character otherwise.

Once I'm done with school I have pretty much resigned myself to fate. Wherever my work takes me is where I'll go. Whether that means working at a hospital in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago, whether that means being a small town family doctor that everyone in town goes to, or whether that means something in between, I'd like to think I'll be happy. I read this book for a history course once, it was called Nature's Metropolis, and it revealed to me just how connected a city is with the smaller towns that form its hinterland; city and country aren't as "seperate" as people generally think, in the grand scheme of things, despite how people talk about them. There are stereotypes of each, but living in the city for most of the year for two years running, those stereotypes have been broken so often that I don't even know what to make of them anymore. People say city folk aren't as friendly, and then you have the bus driver and myself spontaneously chatting and talking about my school's hockey team one game night. No matter where you go, city or small town, if you come in with these kinds of expectations about how life will be, I think you're likely to be surprised.

The more tangible differences, such as proximity to things like malls, supermarkets, etc. are obvioius, however. Those are expectations you can make and they'll be very real. I'm buying what I hope will be my first real fedora when I go back to school because there are shops in the city where I can maybe find one. No such thing out here in the smaller towns of western MA, at least to my knowledge. But things like that aren't enough for me to say that the cities are better than the small towns or vice versa.

 

[Tango Yankee]

As I've said elsewhere in the Lounge, I grew up in a small town of about (at the time) 52,000 people. The town is South Gate, a suburb of Los Angeles. Of course, I didn't have anything to compare it to but it seemed like it was pretty small town in a lot of ways. The first street we lived on we knew just about everyone it seemed up and down the three blocks between Tweedy and Southern, and on the streets around the block. Everyone looked out for everyone else. We kids had the run of the street after school and in the summertime. Later, when we moved near the city park, we spent a lot of time there without adult supervision. The rule was "come home when the street lights come on."

Since then I've lived in a variety of towns and small cities. The smaller towns or villages I lived in were in Germany and England. One of my favorite places to live was Sawtry, Huntingdonshire, UK. A small village on the A-1, maybe 10-15 minutes from Peterborough for a city, about the same for Huntingdon for a market town, and in Huntingdon I could catch a train to London and be in Kings Cross in an hour. When I first moved in the neighbors were a bit leary of me. I was in one of the two largest houses on the close, and I was a single guy. The tenants before me, and the ones before that, etcetera, were USAF families biding their time until they could get base housing. That meant they didn't put a lot of effort into the front garden (or the back, for that matter.) First thing I did upon moving in (to really mess with them) I put out a pair of pink plastic flamingoes. Then I started working on rehabilitating the front garden. That really got them to accept me. I lived there for four years, and loved it. The neighbor's cat from across the street adopted me as soon as I moved in, and would come over and paw at my front door until I let him in. When I came home from work I'd see his face appear in their bushes as I stopped out in the street, and by the time I backed in to my driveway and parked he'd be at my front door waiting for me.

I could go to the pub and see my neighbors, have a pint or two. Didn't do it often as I hated dealing with the smoke, but I would probably go more often now that the law has changed on that.

Now my address is for a small town, but the reality is that I'm rural. I like having 10 acres, my wife likes having the house her grandparent's owned, but I really want access to decent Internet service and a bit of culture. If anyone saw the A&E documentary "Hillbilly Heroin", that's the county I live in. I worry that my fire and medical responders are "volunteers"; not that they aren't professional, they are--but it takes long enough for a squad to get to the house from the station; add the drive time from wherever they are to the station and the time mounts up; then you're talking close to half an hour to the nearest hospital. The policing is done by county sheriff, and now that I mention it I can't remember when I last saw a sheriff's department car go by the house. I do see the Ohio State Troopers go by often though, as I'm on a state route.

The immediate neighbors to the south of us are nasty, but fortunately are gone through the winter months. The house to the north of us has been empty for years. This isn't a "neighborhood."

All things considered, if I had to live in Ohio I'd rather it was in a small town near Columbus or the Cinci-Dayton combination, though I prefer Columbus. But seeing as how my wife and I both work for the same company down here in southern Ohio I don't expect that we'll be leaving any time soon.

If I could live anywhere, I'd move to Medford, OR. Medium-size town, lots to do, beautiful area, great weather, and a short plane ride to SF, Seattle, Portland, etcetera. I love it there. *sigh*

Would I go back to southern California to live? Not for anything. It's way too crowded these days, and the last time I was out there visiting family I was struck by how worn out Los Angeles and it's surrounding towns/cities are starting to look. Of course, it has been over 30 years since I left to join the Air Force, but still it was unexpected.

Regards,
Tom

Cheers,
Tom

 

[Tango Yankee]

I still have moments where I don't know how to function because everything is so big and so crowded.

Welcome to the Lounge, SR! I see from your location that you are in Long Beach. I lived there in the late '70s through mid-1980, down on Sixth Street between Alomitos Ave and Cerritos Ave. The last time I was out there I went by the old place; across the street from where I lived is now a parking lot for the Museum of Latin American Art. All the new shopping downtown, the restaurants, the light rail into LA; none of that was there. I used to come home from a graveyard shift at a factory and change, then ride my motorcycle to the beach and go to sleep in the sand as the sun came up. It has changed a tad since I left!

Cheers,
Tom

 

[Phineas Lamour]

I lost my cell phone two days ago at a park. Someone found it and called my wife from my phone. Today I got it back! In the place where I used to live I would have never seen it again.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

That's a great story! It's refreshing to hear of that kind of honesty.

I lost my cell phone two days ago at a park. Someone found it and called my wife from my phone. Today I got it back! In the place where I used to live I would have never seen it again.

 

[sheeplady]

I lost my cell phone two days ago at a park. Someone found it and called my wife from my phone. Today I got it back! In the place where I used to live I would have never seen it again.

That is wonderful!

Today I was actually thinking about the issues with living in a small place, and I think one of the negatives of small towns are the politics. The township I grew up in (in New York State, villages, towns and cities are organized into townships) always had some half-baked weird plan on the back burner. Like when they wanted to prohibit farming, except for horses and dairy cattle. It is a rather thankless job with little pay, which is one of the reasons why I think it attracts people who only want the status (but perhaps are too strange to be successful in larger places).

In the worst case scenario you end up with what has happened locally in a nearby village. Two politicans are going after a single position, there have been private investigators hired, lawn signs have been stolen, public records have been rummaged through, and slander and mudslinging has commenced. All for a job that pays $54,000 a year, with a little fame attached. Of course, not all small place politics are like this, but sometimes it seems the lower the stakes, the larger the mudbath.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Would I go back to southern California to live? Not for anything. It's way too crowded these days, and the last time I was out there visiting family I was struck by how worn out Los Angeles and it's surrounding towns/cities are starting to look. Of course, it has been over 30 years since I left to join the Air Force, but still it was unexpected.

One of my biggest gripes about living in Southern California is that there is no real sense of community. As it's more or less a transient society here, people are less rooted. Sadly, I get the sense that a lot of people, whether they come from other parts of the country or other countries, only see California as a place to make money and not as a place to settle and put down roots. I've noticed a lot of people here, once they retire or have otherwise achieved whatever financial goals they've set for themselves, want to eventually go back to wherever they came from. Psychologically, their bags are packed and sitting by the door even though they've been here for many years.

 

[PoohBang]

I think it depends on where in LA you live, and what you make of where you live.

If you go to the local stores often, you'll start to see the same people and if you get involved with your community, then you'll see that you have a community.

If you do just focus on making some dough, then yes, you'll miss out.

 

[Yeps]

I have never been in a small town for more than a couple days. I grew up on the edge of civilization rapidly swallowed by suburbia (I remember the farm behind my house becoming a highway then a group of houses, and recently the last farm shut down and is becoming more McMansions). I can't stand it. You can't get anywhere by walking, and there is no public transportation to speak of.

Living in DC, or right on the edge of it, I really like, despite it not being my favorite city. I loved my summer in Rome, and was already starting to get a feel of how neighborhoods in a city can function like villages. My barrista knew me and had my coffee and pastry ready for me every morning and generally the neighborhood I was in was extremely friendly and interesting.

As I said, I have never really known small town life, but I imagine it would be preferable to suburbia. I have a hard time figuring out what wouldn't be. That said, I can't think of anything I would be able to do to support myself in a small town. There are not many opera houses in small towns.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I frequently joke about this but L.A. seems to be the only place where visiting team fans outnumber that of the home team at any sporting event even though very few are actually from out of town.

 

[Phineas Lamour]

As I said, I have never really known small town life, but I imagine it would be preferable to suburbia. I have a hard time figuring out what wouldn't be. That said, I can't think of anything I would be able to do to support myself in a small town. There are not many opera houses in small towns.

We have a playhouse here, but no opera house. http://www.ccplayhouse.com/

 

[PoohBang]

I frequently joke about this but L.A. seems to be the only place where visiting team fans outnumber that of the home team at any sporting event even though very few are actually from out of town.

LA only has two teams worth mentioning... Lakers and Dodgers. And Lakers probably outnumber the Dodgers by four folds.

I think the visiting team itself outnumbers the clippers fans...

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

At one time the "opera house" was a feature found in many a small town even though it's highly unlikely that opera had ever been performed there. It was generally used for everything from political meetings to performances by traveling stock companies.

Shiner, Texas

Auburn, Nebraska

Eureka, Nevada

 

[Yeps]

Well, then. If someone can act as impresario, I see a good small town tour of the USA coming up. These "Opera Houses" need to earn their names.

 

[Tomasso]

I frequently joke about this but L.A. seems to be the only place where visiting team fans outnumber that of the home team at any sporting event even though very few are actually from out of town.

Don't forget Miami which has a huge amount of transplants from the Northeast Corridor and Chicago. The Dolphins v. Patriots MNF game last night in Miami sounded like Gillette Stadium.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

I moved from Florida to a small town in Tennessee. In some ways it is like time travel. There are still pay phones here, people use cash, and write things on paper. The "downtown" area doesn't have any buildings taller than a few stories. People here leave things outside, even at stores and businesses. I went to the courthouse to get a license plate and there weren't even guards or metal detectors. People even have gardens and can their own food. I think I fit in much better here. Has anyone else had an experience like this? I think everyone should try small town life at least once. Especially the people of the Lounge.

Yes, for a few years I lived in a small town like what you describe, they even had a store that was left open all night after they officially closed for the day, with a "cash" can on the counter for you to pay for what you took.

My Mother lives here in Michigan up north in a small town. They tend to be closer as neighbors and watch out for each other. I think small towns have more of a good feeling to them. More laid back and enjoyable.