Adjusting to small town life.

[LizzieMaine]

The people tried my patience aswell... I found them incredibly slow in line at stores, very chatty to passersby, and very slouchy lol

I don't think I'd say we're slower in small towns, it's just that we aren't in any particular hurry to get to wherever it is we're going. But the easiest way to *make* us slower is to try and make us rush -- small town folk are masters of passive-aggressive resistance. You crowd me on the sidewalk and I'm going to stop cold to admire something in a window.

 

[C-dot]

And trust me -- the gossip was terrible and so far-fetched is was almost comical.

My mother had an issue with that. People couldn't stay out of her business. One time, she walked in the house carrying her groceries when the phone rang. When she picked it up, the neighbour 2 houses down asked "What did you buy at V-mart?" :eusa_doh:

I don't think I'd say we're slower in small towns, it's just that we aren't in any particular hurry to get to wherever it is we're going. But the easiest way to *make* us slower is to try and make us rush -- small town folk are masters of passive-aggressive resistance. You crowd me on the sidewalk and I'm going to stop cold to admire something in a window.

It makes sense. I did keep my impatience to myself, it was just somewhat of a culture shock!

 

[Amy Jeanne]

lol

I can't repeat most of what was said about me here on the Lounge lol Only the part that I was a devil worshipper and had a huge altar in my bedroom. lol Their proof for this claim? I used to wear black nail polish!!!! I was HAPPY to leave that place. It was way overdue. For a few years after I left I would get panic attacks when I had to go back. Now, I see them for how they are and laugh.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Where I'm at I seem to get the worst of both worlds: the crowds and crime of the big city AND the almost claustrophobic overfamiliarity of a small town -- particularly in my neighborhood.

 

[Flipped Lid]

I grew up in a very small town. Yeah, every small town has its share of Gladys Kravitzes who are busy minding everyone else's business. Most people accepted it and just shrugged it off. The few disadvantages were a small price to pay and I cherish my smalltown roots. I had a storybook childhood and got a great education in our small school. I wouldn't have wanted to grow up anywhere else. That said, I'm in a big city now and enjoy the diversity and all the great things it has to offer. I've enjoyed the best of both worlds.

 

[W-D Forties]

I have never lived in a small town and although I have often fancied the idea, I really don't think I'd be able to hack it. I have lived in Liverpool then London and now Chester, and although it's still a city I find here to be quite provincial enough! I like lots of people and things to do and see.

Lots of big cities are actually like groups of villiages. When I lived in London I found the part I lived and worked in to be a strong, vibrant community, more so than where I live now, which tends to have it's fair share of snobbery. I do like the idea of a 'villiage' life, but I now recognise it's not for me.

 

[angeljenny]

I would love to live in a small town! The population where I live is around 18 thousand although that includes the local villages.

I love the idea of having a proper community and everyone knowing everyone else! I probably have a romanticised view of it but I would love to live in a little village out in the countryside.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

It's really great. Most times, if you aren't coming into town wanting to set the world afire and not knowing how to light a match, you'll be accepted into the fold fairly quickly. The best way I've found to fit in off the bat is to clean up the house and yard. If people see you want to pretty up the neighborhood, you're liked more, at least in my experience. Before you know it, you're family.

I would love to live in a small town! The population where I live is around 18 thousand although that includes the local villages.

I love the idea of having a proper community and everyone knowing everyone else! I probably have a romanticised view of it but I would love to live in a little village out in the countryside.

 

[superstarmegami05]

I actually moved from Kansas City to where I'm at now, also in Tennessee. I actually live in the middle of nowhere but I'm surrounded by small towns. Honestly, I'm not entirely happy where I'm at now but if I lived at least on the outskirts of one of those towns, I'd enjoy it much more. I miss the big city and being able to drive 20 minutes in any direction and find everything I need/want but I really don't mind the small town. I like the small shops and restaurants that are around. I'm kind of undecided about how everyone knows everybody else. It's kind of nice at times but I can see how people could easily get caught up in your business.

 

[angeljenny]

It's really great. Most times, if you aren't coming into town wanting to set the world afire and not knowing how to light a match, you'll be accepted into the fold fairly quickly. The best way I've found to fit in off the bat is to clean up the house and yard. If people see you want to pretty up the neighborhood, you're liked more, at least in my experience. Before you know it, you're family.

Oh I would be out there painting fences and planting flowers!

It wouldn't work practically here as houses in the villages are so much more expensive and I would have to learn to drive. Nice dream though - little cottage in the countryside!

Perhaps I am crazy but I like the idea of everyone knowing what was going on!

 

[sheeplady]

I grew up a mile and a half outside a town of under 200 people. I went to a rural centralized high school, in the next town over (6 miles away, about 300 people live there). I had friends who also went to the same school on the other side of the district, which was about 18 miles away from where I lived. Since then I have lived in a small city which was a true college town (30,000 people who lived there, plus 20,000 students) and now I live in the suburbs outside a medium city (120,000 people). I miss my little rural area.

The advantage of living in the city is access to goods and stores. I can go to the grocery store and get in and out within 10 minutes if I am only buying a few things. I could go to the store in my PJs if I wanted and never worry about someone I know seeing me (I don't do that). If I run out of an ingredient, or want to make something on the spur of a moment, I can get in my car and go get it within a half an hour. Your neighbors see you when you are out in your yard and say hello, you can go weeks in a rural area without seeing your neighbors unless you go someplace to meet them.

On the flip side, I don't know my neighbors really well. People move around alot. There is a lot of noise, light, and weird smells (cars, lawn mower exhaust). People are just as nosy without the concern for your actual well-being (for the most part). People put out tons of garbage here, nobody has a compost pile or a garden. You can't have chickens. It's hotter here in summer because of the pavement.

Rural towns have their advantages: more freedom for children, more space, less people, and people are more concerned about what you do and what happens to you. There are a lot less drugs than here, purely because rural kids don't have the money to blow on drugs. On the disadvantage side: the schools tend to be poor (which means you must supplement your child's education), things are very far away (stores, hospitals), and people care what you do, sometimes too much and for too long (generations). It's very easy to get labeled in a small town, so you need to be careful what you get labeled with. Locally buying goods from elsewhere is more expensive.

Where I grew up people would say "If your cat crawled into the oven and had kittens you wouldn't call them muffins"- which means even your children aren't going to be accepted as natives. There were some people who thought they were kings and queens of the town because their families had lived there the longest (and they were rude to everyone just because their family had been there one more generation than someone elses). Most people were only really rude to people who came in from elsewhere and acted like they could do it better than us. They will make fun of behavior they feel is strange until they accept you, but people in the cities do that too (you just don't know about it as much). Be nice, ask questions, and watch other's behavior and find out where the local watering hole is. You have to remember that just like cities or neighborhoods having a culture, small towns have them too. People are afraid that you are trying to move in and revert their culture to something else and they need time to realize that you aren't trying to do that.

 

[PADDY]

I live in a village of around 300 people. I know most of my neighbours. We say hello in the street and wave as they pass by in the car. A number of my neighbours have a spare key to my house, so if I'm running late at work or have to go away, I can arrange for the dogs' to be seen to. I like that. We keep an eye on each other's properties and 'you know' if something isn't right pretty quickly. I never feel that I'm being intruded upon - maybe I'm lucky, but that's just the way it is.
I originally come from a small country place in Ireland, so I'm very much a bumpkin!! I have lived in big cities and worked there, and 'one adapts' accordingly, it's something we humans seem to be good at, 'adapting and evolving' to our environments.
The BIG SMOKE is under and hour's drive away, so if I do need my fix of theatre or a nice meal..etc, then it's accessible.
But I personally do enjoy being able to type away here with a dog on my lap (it can be done) looking out over fields and ancient woods at my back, maybe seeing a deer or a fox amble past and feel that nature isn't too far away and I'm not penned in.
Would I feel as comfortable out in a little log cabin in the middle of Wyoming, Montana, the Russian Steppes,, Argentina..etc, well the truth is, 'more than likely.' I have no idea why my character and makeup is like that, it just is and I accept it for that.
Having said that, when I went to LA and NYC, I enjoyed those places too for what they were. They were different, they had lots of things for me to see and do which I normally don't have a chance to do and if I had to live and work there, then I 'just would.'

There is something nice (and I don't take it for granted by any means) to have 7 miles of white sandy beach and dunes just five minutes away. Beautiful castles and rivers just 15 minutes away from me, yachting marinas just up the road on the coast, mountains within sight and only an hour away, great hills to walk in just half and hour drive, wonderful salmon and trout rivers..etc, etc. Plus my woods are at least 1000 years old and marked as 'Ancient' which I can go and walk the dogs in and my little corner village shop is open 7am to 11pm and provides most basics, as does the village garage opposite!

And because it's a small place, people help each other out, almost like an old medieval barter system. I lend someone my lawn mower then they lend me their power drill, I exchange home made jam for fresh goose eggs..etc

 

[kamikat]

I grew up in a suburb of a large city, I've lived in 2 different small towns, one small city and one large city. Of all the places I lived, the small city was my best experience. I really did not like living in small towns. I remember spending so much time in the car. If we wanted a special treat, say a movie or McDonalds, we had to get on the highway and drive 30min to the next town over. Heaven forbid, someone in the family needed new jeans or shoes, we had to drive an hour to the nearest town with a shopping mall. Even worse than that, was the fact that I'm allergic to milk and the local grocery store hadn't even heard of soy milk (25 years ago). In one of the small towns I lived in, we drove to the Post Office once or twice per week to pick up the mail. I hated not having a local TV or radio station for news/weather. We couldn't get anything with an antenna, so we had a big, old fashioned satellite dish and the closest local news we got was from Detroit, 2 hours away. I really hated that place.

 

[olive bleu]

But I personally do enjoy being able to type away here with a dog on my lap (it can be done) looking out over fields and ancient woods at my back, maybe seeing a deer or a fox amble past and feel that nature isn't too far away and I'm not penned in.
.... Beautiful castles and rivers just 15 minutes away from me, yachting marinas just up the road on the coast, mountains within sight and only an hour away, great hills to walk in just half and hour drive, wonderful salmon and trout rivers..etc, etc. Plus my woods are at least 1000 years old and marked as 'Ancient' which I can go and walk the dogs ...

That sounds absolutely lovely, PADDY. Rural life, is something entirely different again.. i seem to like the extremes. As much as i enjoy city life right now, the part of my old home that i do miss are the farming and fishing villages. I do miss my Grandfathers farm animals and the wildlife. If i could look out my window and see rolling fields or the forest again..that would make me leave the concrete behind I understand what you mean by the bartering system as well. When i go home to visit my Aunt, most of the food she puts in front of me was gotten from a neighbour in exchange for one thing or another...You are very fortunate.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As much as I enjoy small-town life, I'd draw the line at living in a car-dependent town. One of the things I really like about where I am now is that we're an hour away from the nearest Interstate, so mall/freeway culture hasn't really taken over like it has in so many other places. I've always lived within walking distance of downtown, never out in the rurals, and the thing I really *don't* like about modern smalltown life is that the all-purpose downtowns are being suffocated by shopping centers.

 

[Phineas Lamour]

Nice to see other people enjoying the small town life. I have been accepted here pretty well so far. Even though I do dress a little differently and listen to different music. The only people I have really met in the three months I've been here are the people I work with. They have welcomed me to town and treated me nicely. It isn't so small of a town where there is no fast food or stores. We don't have a shopping mall but there are a few grocery stores. And a Wal-Mart.(I have not been in a Wal-Mart in over 4 years)but there is one here.

 

[Pompidou]

I've lived in a small town all my life. All it's really meant is that everything fun is a 40 minute drive away.

 

[IndianaWay]

Except for a 4 year stint in Texas and southern California, I've lived near the same small rural Indiana town (population 900-plus) all my life. My wife was an "import" I met at college - she was from the mountains of New Mexico so the flatlands of Indiana were a real adjustment for her. We moved back to Indiana 20-plus years ago and I don't think she had any issues making friends in our community. We made the Mayberry jokes but along with joking about it, comes kind of a warm feeling of connectedness.

It's a great place to raise a family and I'm thankful for that. Have to mention the gossip concept - there was a line in "Hoosiers" where Barbara Hershey's character said something about, "I missed knowing that people's private affairs stayed pretty much their own." I disagree - the gossip thing exists, and people do talk. But the flip side of that, if there is real trouble, most of those same people are right there to help.

There are places that are fun to visit, but this is home.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

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!

Perhaps I am crazy but I like the idea of everyone knowing what was going on!

 

[sheeplady]

lol

I can't repeat most of what was said about me here on the Lounge lol Only the part that I was a devil worshipper and had a huge altar in my bedroom. lol Their proof for this claim? I used to wear black nail polish!!!! I was HAPPY to leave that place. It was way overdue. For a few years after I left I would get panic attacks when I had to go back. Now, I see them for how they are and laugh.

That is the one highly negative thing about small towns, is that they can get very negative rumors started about people they deem as strange. And, in my own personal experience, a lot of it has to do with religion. In my high school, there were a few evangelical christian students and teachers who actively made anyone who wasn't an evangelical christian's life pure hell. In particular, they hated other christians the most, but they'd tell and mock anyone for going to hell, verbally and often physically. At one point, they beat up a fellow student (very badly) for being a Catholic, because "Catholics aren't Christians."

It actually took me moving away and a lot of time reflecting on religion to realize that not all evangelical christians were mean nasty people, that is how vocal a few of my fellow students were- it led me to stereotype. (Interestingly enough, I was not raised Christian, but I was pretty much left alone because I had read the bible and could argue different points.)

As far as the diversity of small towns, that really depends on the small town. Some of the villages near where I live are quite diverse, as that is where the migratory workers that worked in this area (mainly Blacks, African Americans, and Latinos) settled in the 1950s and 1960s. Other towns were started as free-towns for escaped and freed slaves in the 1800s and therefore still have a large minority population. The great thing about these towns is that they are integrated, unlike most of our cities in upstate NY. Which means rather than the inner city being predominately minorities and the suburbs predominately white (which leads to segregation as far as schools, housing, and neighborhoods) everyone lives in the same neighborhood and goes to the same school, etc.