Hey Aldean, I was raised in a small town. Let me tell ya' 'bout it . . .

[AndyS]

Little town south of Houston. 2021 population of 8,000, probably half that when I grew up there.

My brothers thought it humorous to say things like, "I got problem with n***ers, Hell, everbody oughta' own one."

It was the days of separate but equal. Not a single instructor at the "trade school" had a Bachelor's Degree.

They loves them some guns. An acquaintance kept his protection gun in the dresser drawer. His teenage daughter doing a DIY drug detox put it to her chest and pulled the trigger. She lived because of his military training on sucking chest wounds. Where'd she get her drugs? I suspect raiding her Dad's stash.

When I was in high school one of my "buddies" got off on driving through "colored town" and shooting people on their front porches with his pellet gun. He later became a Texas Highway Patrolman.

The only radio reception is AM which is a sink hole of hate radio MAGA lies and propaganda. The only internet is 5 gigabyte/second satellite that costs $150/month so the kids "don't git much learnin'" unless they sit in the McDonald's parking lot. McDonald's? The only health food store in town.

They had a hospital but it's gone now, closed down. Just as well as I always thought the place should be burned down and the earth sown with salt so nothing ever grows there again. It was a shithole. My Mother in law was dying and the doctor, with food stains on his tie, told her two daughters to "git used to people dyin'". The Dr and I both got lucky that day. He didn't suffer a broken jaw and I didn't go to jail.

So yeah Motherfucker, tell me about small towns but do it from arm's length away. I'm all ears except for the fists dangling at the end of my arms.

[Goonch]

1. 👇👇👇👁️👁️

[MissMillie]

2. I still live in the small town I was raised in

I'd trade in the gun store for a bank and/or a grocery store any day of the week.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Greatest Page for your illuminating post, Andy! nt

[yardwork]

4. This is powerful, Andy. Thank you.

I grew up in a small town in central Ohio. I rarely go back - no family there now. I hear echoes of your post in the news from home, people dying young from opioid abuse, people's sons gunned down in their driveways. It's almost 100% white, so there's nobody else to blame, but they blame everybody but themselves.

[Maraya1969]

5. I heard about Biden's bill that will put WIFI in places that can't get it now.

[True Blue American]

72. I have free internet

Last edited Tue Jul 25, 2023, 12:22 AM - Edit history (1)

Thanks to that bill. There are no questions about income or a thing. Spectrum joined the plan. Other companies are doing the same.

[Maraya1969]

76. Wow. My internet costs over $100/month. And I don't halve cable

[Johnny2X2X]

6. Small town USA

Poverty, crime, drug problems. For every quaint country small town there are 3 that are run down and filled with all sorts of poverty related issues.

[relayerbob]

7. I moved around but lived in a lot of very small towns

And, yap, you've pretty much nailed it.

[griffi94]

8. I was raised in a small town, as well.

Just north of Houston. Polk County. Sounds about the same as where you were.

[prodigitalson]

47. wow

I'm just up 59 from there - well about an hour

behind the pine curtain

[sinkingfeeling]

9. I weep when I visit the small central Ohio town where I went to school and hung out. I was

raised on a farm about 7 miles from town. Back then there was a high school, car dealership, drug store, dry cleaners, 2 grocery stores, a bank, pizza joint, and even a tiny department store. Today, all those are gone. The library is still open due to one resident's care, but he's now 80. It still has a funeral home, but no doctors nor dentists. The high school is boarded up and the football field is vacant. Population is 2000. It's 'grown' slightly since 1990 as Columbus creeps nearer.

There's just nothing to keep people there.

[A HERETIC I AM]

42. I've got a question;

I’m curious how many of the family owned farms that surround that town you describe are still owned by the same families. How many have been bought up by larger corporations?

Every small town in this country had a reason for becoming a town in the first place, and the primary motivator was always a water source.

In the 1800’s the water was often captured for the railroads as well as servicing the population, but the real driver for the formation of the town was the agriculture in the surrounding area.

You needed all the things people associate with a thriving community because there was a population and production to support it.

Take away half or more of the population of farmers, and what happens?

Collapse, inevitably.

So again, I’m curious as to what caused the exodus of people?


On edit to add this;

I realize that 125 years ago it took a rather large crew to work a few hundred acre corn or wheat harvest, whereas now it takes what?….maybe 3 or 4? So I know much of the population that left the farmlands for the city did so because of mechanization, but what was the death blow, I guess is what I want to know.

[sinkingfeeling]

54. I really can't give you an informed answer. I haven't lived in Ohio since 1977 and just go

back for class reunions every 5 years. I always visit my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents graves at the same small cemetery. Just a handful of my classmates still live there.

[Glaisne]

66. I'll tell you what happened to many of these small towns.

Global free trade and open borders for jobs and money. Many small towns were built around a single factory or industry. Agriculture, timber, fishing, mining, coal, steel, paper, every kind of manufacturing imaginable. Every type of small business imaginable grew around these factories and industries to meet the needs of the people. Then came free trade, deregulation, mergers and acquisitions, privatization, big box stores, budget cuts, trickle-down economics, all pushed by conservatives primarily Republicans but also many Democrats too. These things eviscerated the middle class especially in small and medium sized towns. Right there with it was AM radio which was and is a sink hole of hate radio MAGA lies and propaganda. That put the blame for the declining fortunes of white, rural formally middle-class, small-town folk on the blacks, immigrants, "The Jews", "The Gays", liberals, Democrats anyone else not from their little, small towns that have become poor hollowed out shells of their former selves. Forever ignorant that the people they continuously vote for did this to them and continue to do so. The irony is that many of these places suffer the same issues and have many of the same problems as poor urban centers.

[True Blue American]

73. Wheelersburg here

But it has grown. Last time I was there I had trouble finding my Dads house. All the lots that were used as gardens now have houses on them. My Dad, an ex farmer had a huge garden, even sold produce.

[mountain grammy]

10. K & R and thank you.

[lastlib]

11. Sounds like you and I have the same brother....

His conversation is noun, verb, gunz/black people (he's not polite enough to actually call them that; I had to clean it up for DU consumption). Geez, I can't believe a flaming lib like me could be related to that--if you ask me, I'll deny it......

[SouthernDem4ever]

58. It's like being the Marilyn of the Munsters

and realizing it.

[AnrothElf]

12. Also raised in a small town ... in the mountains of Northern Colorado. And YUP!

I personally witnessed the white local cowboys line up and push everyone with brown skin out the back door of the bars... BOTH of them... ON MORE THAN ONE OCCASION. Lots of migrant Mexican nationals work the ranches, same as work farms in places where food grows from the ground instead of on four hooves.

The last time it happened was also the last time I visited either bar. I was 86ed when the bartender tried to take our friend Jesus' beer out of his hand. A beer that *I* bought him. I confronted her and called her a racist. She screamed "I'm half Mexican!" and I said, "Then you should know better!" so she attacked me, hitting me dozens of times in the face. All the brown people -- and us -- were still kicked out.

I remember hearing locals talking about killing the Clintons on a weekly, sometimes daily basis.

I was recruited to join some sort of white supremacist thing by this asshole named Russ who is thankfully now dead as a door nail. His argument was that the "Race War" was coming and I needed to arm myself. I told him if that happened, I'd be on the other side trying to kill HIM.

I could go on, and on, and on, and on...

When you're a white man, these "small town folk" tell you what they really think.

What they really think is sick, racist, sexist, violent, fascist garbage. They're morons.

Small town America is a sick place. It's only right and correct that they should be deprived of political power in a democracy.

[lambchopp59]

19. My parents moved me to a tiny CO coal minin' town

I was 11 years old. At 14, I got outed as gay by, formerly a "friend" who initiated a sexual tryst with me.
I was covered with bruises for 2 agonizing years there. It got even worse after local relatives of Westboro Baptist fomented hatred that was focused exclusively on me, since 2 other of their targets had killed themselves. After these creeps convinced my father to attempt a rather clumsy death trap for me...
I ran away from home at 16 and never been back there.
There isn't anything respectable about these well armed, idiotic fools. I'm frankly not surprised one bit a similar area sent Lauren Idiot Boebert to congress...twice.
Dammit I had tamped down the PTSD via therapy until the 2016 triumph of the Trumper dipshits, still trying to resuscitate the corpses of the bigotry brigade.

[A HERETIC I AM]

43. Jesus Bleedin' Christ!!

What a horrific tale!

”I was covered with bruises for 2 agonizing years there.”

I can’t imagine what that must have been like.

It’s little consolation now, but I’m glad you got out. And I hope you will forgive me for saying so, but fuck your dad for not protecting you better.

[lambchopp59]

60. No apology necessary

As I expressed to my closest sibling upon dad's demise: no I won't be in attendance at his funeral. I'd flush his ashes down the toilet.
My parents screwed me up badly. They were too busy fighting to pick up on my problems and I learned to avoid interacting with either of them. It was also shitty of the school faculty to willingly ignore that bullying wholesale in that ridiculously religous town.
I had sublimated the worst of it for decades. Then my nightmares attacked me until I was having hypertensive arrhythmia in the night. I actually lucked into a drug enhancec exposure therapy trial that although it repaired the nightmares, revived memories I'd long blocked out.
I came far too close to being the local Westboro influenced baptist cult's third suicide victim from that tiny town.
I've had to remain on blood pressure meds every day ever since Trump and it disturbs me tremendously these self righteous RW assholes ard working to re-create the bigotry, isolation and even genocidal madness all over again.
I'm one of the early statistic: 40 percent of homeless are LGBTQ .

[Aristus]

53. ...

[erronis]

20. Thank you. That was a good summation of the problem of these people.

Not all small town white people, but in some towns the maggots self-reinforce until they become toxic.

[AnrothElf]

32. True, not all small town white people.

My parents still live there. My dad will never move away. And he's as anti-racist as I am. That's where my sister and I learned it.

He makes T-shirts and bumper stickers that say, "Blue-Collar Democrat" and "Green-Color Democrat" and proudly flies the flag next to "Black Lives Matter". He's a local, and not afraid of a fight (figurative or literal) and has cut the worst of the worst out of his life.

Still. When I visit, I visit them, only. We eat in, because I see no reason to risk engagement with the scum that pollute that beautiful landscape. He's been there 50 years. He gets a "pass".

I don't WANT a pass. I know who those people are. I want nothing from them

[prodigitalson]

48. yeah, I too was raised by anti-racist southern white parents

open racism is way worse here than it was in the 80s or 90s even 70s maybe...since tfg gave them permission to act like they did before I was born

[AnrothElf]

49. YyyyyyyuuuuuuuuuP

I've lived in Blue bubbles my entire adult life except for those 5 years when ALL those stories happened. That was it for me. I decided not to "stay and fight"... For what? It was always like that. There was never a time when decent people were the majority there. It was always 90% racist scum with a few good eggs who, like me, eventually get chased out.

Only reason dad can tough it out is he cares about the wilderness and rivers. And just general inertia now that he's elderly. He's made it his hill to die on.

I prefer it here, 60 miles miles away, in a nice college town with a strong Blue streak. Close enough he can visit ME

[pirsquared]

23. Small towns are parochial. and tribal

We have a word: parochial.
It means unable to grasp understandings beyond your small town; unwilling to consider a larger world, larger communuity.

I once was in Rhode Island and met people who identified themselves as a member of St xx Parish; or St yy Parish; St zz Parish. One told me she had never been outside RI! Small world?

Small towns are parochial. And tribal.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

13. My in-laws are from a small town in central Illinois that's listed in Wikipedia when you look up ...

…”Sun Down Towns”

[Delphinus]

14. I've read

all the replies so far and am taken aback by this. I have dreamed of being in a small town but now I think not.

Each of your stories saddens my (already heavy) heart.

I am so grateful to each of you for your honesty. I'm glad you are here to share your story.

[rubbersole]

18. It sort of explains the fear many white people have about becoming a minority.

Doubling down on the hate.

[erronis]

21. There are far more decent people living in small towns than these noisy/nasty haters.

I do think that this should be part of anyone's "new home" search criteria.

Look at local news outlets (if they exist) and try to judge the character of the people and the town and the environment.

It may be possible to find some information on local law-enforcement activities to make sure you are comfortable with their tactics and outcomes.

I've seen several sites that rank cities on livability according to multiple criteria. Can't vouch for any of them.

Still - small town life is wonderful. Moved from the Wash. D.C. area to rural Vermont quite a while ago. Missed the big city activities for a few years. Now, wouldn't go back for anything. Small local theaters/playhouse, small local restaurants, somewhat less cost (not always.)

[haele]

26. Small towns are hit and miss when it comes to "small town values"

If there's a strong, honest community base, and little poverty, one can potentially have a Mayberry type small town, where all the normal nasty human undertones are kept in check (at least in public) because "decent people just don't act that way".

But most small towns aren't like that anymore, because, well - it's a sign of strength to be a loud, petulant asshole.

Small towns aren't any different than big cities. The only difference is that with less of a population pool to run statistics through, if 15% of the population are going to be angry or ignorant selfish authoritarian assholes, you have a much greater risk of being adversely impacted by said assholes in a small town population of around 10k than you would in a big town of 3/4 of a million or city of 2 million.

Haele

[Cosmocat]

70. I would put a fine point to this

There are a LOT of people in these small small towns who are otherwise decent people outwardly, but when push comes to shove AT BEST just stand back and let bad shit go down.

So, maybe you have about 15% who are outward authoritarian assholes, but there is a good 50-60% who are OK with them and what they do, or would do.

[calimary]

38. Big city girl here. Born and raised. And I like it.

I appreciate the perspective on small town life. For many, it’s an ideal, and I appreciate that, too. Personally, though, I just don’t think I could handle it.

[70sEraVet]

64. One thing I've learned about living in a small town -- it's a place where you can MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

We didnt move from Nashville a few years ago because we were tired of life in a big city -- we moved to a tiny rural Tennessee town of 300 people because we suddenly had an opportunity to buy an old, grand Victorian house in a serious state of disrepair for a very small price. And i was just about to retire, and didnt care about the local employment situation.
We started meeting people, started to get involved in things that needed doing in this town. I stepped up my involvement in the American Legion, I'm working on a couple of old African American cemeteries in town and an early one-room schoolhouse for the local black children before desegregation.
We put out political signs every election, and have been pleasantly surprised to have neighbors go out of their way to stop and tell us how glad they are to know that there's other Democrats in town!
Just wanted you to know that we have blossomed living in a small town.

[AZLD4Candidate]

15. I was raised in a small town of 115 people in the Catskills. I have no idea what Redneck Moron is

yapping about. His song sucks too.

He was on stage when the Las Vegas shooter started. He didn't pull out a gun and shoot back. He ran off the stage as fast as his chickenhawk gun-nut, redneck, coward ass could carry him.

[cannabis_flower]

16. I lived in a small city (Victoria ,Texas) growing up.

Not much different. We had about 40,000 then. Probably 60,000 now. And coincidentally southwest of Houston. I never considered having sex growing up because my mother knew everyone in town and I was pretty sure if I went to Planned Parenthood my mother would find out immediately and I certainly didn’t want to get pregnant.

I used to drive my sisters and brothers through the black part of town because it scared my sister and I thought that was funny but I never considered shooting anyone with a pellet gun. That wouldn’t be right. But I liked scaring my sister and I wasn’t scared.

I was appalled a few years ago when someone burned down the Mosque. But I was proud that the good people in town (probably some from out of town also) donated enough money to build it back better than before and the offender was sentenced to 25 years.

[Kali]

17. there are good and bad people everywhere

even the rural south. not that I don't ridicule my local towns, but still I wish we all could be better than doing the sweeping generalizations and demonizing of large parts of the people and country.

[LuvLoogie]

22. Similarly, "not all cops are bad"

But I suppose the percentages depend on whether you count the ones that look the other way.

[AndyS]

29. I have struggled for a lot of my life to find some way to

reach these people. They are after all my family.

The reason they have electricity is because of the Rural Electrification Act. The reason their parents live in their own homes is Social Security and Medicare. FFS the only things that make it possible to survive in small rural towns are Democratic Programs and Policies yet they all cleave unto Trump. And racism. And bigotry of all kinds. And guns. And a religion that fosters hatred.

So, yes there are good people that live in small towns and in the country but they are the minority and the rest foment and teach the only thing they know to their children.

Had a discussion with two brothers bitching about how the Gov'mint was interfering with their bizness. One was a civil engineer and the other an aircraft mechanic. I pointed out that without the government requiring licenses to do what they do anybody with a cheap cell phone could plot property lines and anybody with a drill and a pop-rivet gun could make airplanes. Steely eyed silence.

Not just ignorance but willful ignorance.

[erronis]

37. "Willful ignorance" They may not be stupid but they don't want to change. Well said.

[Sympthsical]

57. The song is being used as an excuse to exercise cultural bigotry

Complain about the song, sure.

However, I think the reason this just keeps going and going is because it's being used as an excuse - a pretext to get the full hatred for people out there in a socially acceptable way. Like lancing a boil. Give people the ok, and they will go with it. Like when a Republican is gay, and suddenly all those LGBT allies have a lot of homophobic commentary always at the ready, just lurking around in the back of their minds. Any excuse for an ugly party.

It's kind of interesting. Kind of not. Ok, you hate people that are different. Fine. We got it. Oh, they're still going . . .

At present my favorite mode of story is "I grew up in a small town in 1873 . . ." Like so many of these stories are from 60 years ago for some reason. Do people know it's 2023? Have they been to a small town in the past five years? 10? 20?

I would never live in a small town - not my cuppa. There are problems in rural areas - clearly. But there's an image fixed in mid Twentieth Century reliant on cultural stereotypes and tribal hatred.

Bored. So bored. This isn't interesting. Having complex, nuanced conversations about rural America would be crazy interesting. Instead it's all, "Fuck the yokels! Heh heh, anyone else in my cloistered space agree with this common prejudice we all share?"

Boooooored. How is this conversation.

[Ohioboy]

24. Nothing against small towns

I just don't like jackasses that act like they are more virtuous than large towns and cities, especially when the small town courthouse he is singing in front of was the scene of horrific mob violence.

[librechik]

27. Remember the guy in CO Springs who took down the shooter at the drag club event

Yeah, a small town wouldn't allow that! You don't shoot up folks because they are gendered differently, not in THAT small town!

Everybody I know was thrilled about that citizen takedown. Even conservatives like Aldean.

[Straw Man]

28. The Myth of Mayberry:

People who think low population density makes them virtuous.

[tiredtoo]

30. What bothers me most about this song

Is it is divisive. We do not need anymore division in our country, we need unionization. "United we Stand, Divided we fall!"

[treestar]

41. +1 just read the lyrics

stupid straw men issues that don't really exist.

and that can happen anywhere, not just urban settings.

[maxsolomon]

75. Bugbears seem very real when you're in the Conservative Media bubble.

And most white rural Americans are in that bubble; there aren't many alternatives (though NPR exists nearly everywhere across the nation through repeater stations).

Rural America in general has an inferiority complex; they want to believe their 'values' (which are the same as nearly everyone's values) are under attack from degenerate cultural forces that will corrupt their children.

That stupid song (which Aldean didn't write) attacks leftist protest actions that occasionally have taken place in the last quarter century. They certainly don't occur often, and it threatens violent retribution for offensive non-violent speech. It celebrates ignorance and political violence.

Imagine if the writer and Aldean could see the protests in France over nearly anything, or even the one in DC on January 6th, 2021.

I need to go listen to a Steve Earle album now.

[DLCWIdem]

31. I guess my town isn't as small as I thought

We have around 20K population which I always thought was small. I am quite proud of my town. It's in the Northern WI and we live next to a liberal arts university. There may be a little prejudice but mostly people are ok.

[AndyS]

33. You said two things; WI as in not deep south and Liberal arts university.

One of the reasons I am not like the rest of my family is a liberal arts education and the military but that's a different story and part of my journey.

My engineer friends make fun of me. "Ya' want fries with that? I learned to make things what did you learn?"

"I learned to think."

[Warpy]

34. Any days of those innocent, fresh faced white kids

meekly doing their chores and looking forward to an ice cream social at the church are SO over. Kids growing up in small towns can't wait to get away and I don't blame them, mechanization is depopulating rural areas and their towns, never a hotbed of success in life, are now dying. If those kids are gulted or bullied into staying, they find a local pill merchant so they can numb out and cope with social isolation and hopelessness.

My problem with suburbanites like Sarah Palin and this Aldean character is that they're peddling nostalgia for the set of "Leave it to Beaver," not anything that ever really existed. Small towns worked hard for a living. Ward would have worn coveralls and June would have ditched the pearls and high heels the day after the wedding. Eddie Haskell would have been smoking his corn silk and rabbit tobacco hand rolls all by himself because Wally and Beaver had chores. Eddie would have hopped a freight out of town as soon as some girl said she was late, what was he gonna do about it? Wally would have gone to ag school but minored in something that got him a job in a city. Beaver tried to hold it together, but buying Wally out put him into deep debt and a couple of lean years wiped him out and he had to sell for pennies on the dollar to Con Agra or ADM, blaming himself and getting a meaningless factory job somewhere else and slowly drinking himself to death, his childhood erased and planted with alfalfa.

People who are deeply sentimental about small towns are like Gen Xers deeply sentimental over the 1950s. You can bet they never lived there.

[treestar]

40. +1

[erronis]

44. You've nicely written about the real reality - not the T.V. stereotypes. I think I see a mini-series

in this reality...

[Warpy]

45. Heh, a lot of people think I missed my true calling

by not writing the final season of all the saccharine false nostalgia crapola on TV.

[hatrack]

55. I hear the Hallmark Channel is looking for writers . . . .

Think of the subversion you'd be able to sneak into the plotlines about small towns just chockablock with the True Meaning Of Christmas!!!

[Glaisne]

67. Yep,

too many people nostalgic for a 1950s sitcom version of reality that didn't really exist. Small towns existed for a reason, as a canal port, a railroad stop, a factory, an industry, a crossroads, etc. When industry moved overseas to cheap labor, lax regulation countries and consolidation bought up all the local small businesses, those small town started to die. Right wing hate talk radio was there to lie and propagandize to the residents there on who to blame for their change in fortunes.

[Demobrat]

35. I have lived in big cities all my life.

Born and raised in Chicago, moved to LA at 22, then San Francisco where I stayed.

I have such a romanticized perception of rural/small town life that it’s unthinkable to me that people claim city folks look down on small towns.

Everybody knows everybody? I envy that so much. Access to nature? The only birds and animals I see on a regular basis are sparrows and squirrels. House pets don’t count.

When I was a kid I dreamed about what it would be like to have a tree house. Not many of those in Chicago. And horses? I was a teen before I ever saw one in real life. I even think cows are romantic.

I always thought rural people were the lucky ones. Even now, yes I know there is an opioid epidemic. Small towns may not have escaped but they’re not alone. There’s racism? They’re not alone in that either.

I know I sound a little disingenuous here, but still…this city girl has never looked down on small towns and I don’t know anyone who does. People come here for jobs because they have to. Not because life is better.

[AndyS]

56. Oh Demobrat, I understand exactly what you say.

I grew up on a small family farm a few miles outside that town I wrote about. It was an idyllic life. As a child I wandered the fields, woods and streams around me. I learned to love all the critters that walked swam or crawled around me. I actually had a horse that I rode to herd farm animals. A jug-headed mustang named Maxie. Those memories and the way I lived move me today and is one of the reasons I took up photography. https://andyshanks.smugmug.com/

Still that doesn't change the hearts and minds of the people who are isolated there and feed on each other's insecurities and fears. It is an incestuous world like a snake eating it's own tail. I was one of those people until I left and found the other side of reality.

I lived a life surrounded by beauty, hard work, responsibility and all the things I posted in the OP. I've spent a lot of my life trying to reach the hearts of my own family. So far without success.

I will say this though; all the grandchildren are pretty far left. It may only be another generation or so until things change. Sad to say we just have to wait for the older generation to die off.

[OldBaldy1701E]

63. If you had grown up in a place where everyone knew everyone...

You may have a different opinion. I personally hated it. Because you are judged by your name. Anyone in your family that ever did something that the town found odd or bad, you were lumped in with that. "Oh, well, he is one of those XXXX and none of them turned out worth anything." It was horrible.

My home town was 495 people when I was born. Those who list their 'small towns' with populations over 10,000 are very funny to me. I left it for one main reason. I am a liberal, gay artist. There was absolutely nothing there for me but horror and prejudice. That same town is all but dead now. The few businesses on Main St. are barely hanging on while most of the buildings sit empty. There are collapsed houses on Main as well. It looks like a ghost town. It is sad. But these places are bringing this on themselves. There is little to do about the crashing plane when the pilot is the one purposely steering it into the ground.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

36. Whatever you do don't let Aldean see this

Link to tweet

[area51]

65. love it. n/t

[treestar]

39. the upside of everyone knows everyone else

can be balanced with the downside of everyone knowing everyone else.

My dad grew up in a small town - as kids, they played anywhere, and other parents could speak to them about doing something wrong.

He could run errands for his mom, like going to the post office or store, since they were in walking distance. School was in walking distance. As a teen, he got a part time job with the paper, in walking distance.

But you hear of people leaving small towns to go to college and then not going back, because the opportunities then are in the cities. And people leaving them due to gossip, everyone knowing your business and thinking they have a say.

This song is like the one about how country boys know how to survive - how come the rural and small town types feel like they have to tell us off every once in a while, warning us that we are their inferiors and should recognize that.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

46. Emmett Till visited the small town of Drew Mississippi in August of 1955, and never made it home

Link to tweet

[Initech]

50. Small towns are small because no one goes there.

I live in Los Angeles. I visit places like Seattle, Phoenix, Detroit, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Denver, San Diego, Honolulu, and DC. Would I ever go to Pickens, South Carolina or Council Bluffs, Iowa, or Robstown, Texas? Not on a bet. Yeah these MAGA types can act as tough as they want, but I can guarantee a lot of us aren't going to those small towns anytime soon.

[Demobrat]

51. I would visit those places in a hot second.

Any time I can experience life with without freeways and skyscrapers I’m there.

[hunter]

52. A relative of mine once explained small town life from a high school kid's perspective.

The only thing to do here is drinking, fucking, and finding ways to kill yourself... fast or slow.

She escaped.

Romanticizing small town life in the U.S.A. is insane. Everyone living in rural areas, especially anyone sixteen or older, ought to have multiple opportunities to escape. We ought to be subsidizing those opportunities and not just for the military service or college grants and scholarships for young people.

A few rural raised kids are going to feel at home as farmers, ranchers, miners, and outstanding members of some conservative religion, but not everyone rural-born is going to fit in, and even if they did there might not be any actual making-the-world-a-better-place-work for them.

They'll be lost.

So here's some meth. It'll make that existential crisis go away. You'll be a super hero, yes you will. In your own head, for a short time.

My grandparents all rejected rural living and were outcasts in the communities they left behind. The one thing they had in common was they didn't like taking care of cows. And frankly, taking care of cows isn't anything anyone should be forced to do. Dairy products and cheap hamburger are not among the necessities of human life. Same with bacon.

The funny thing is my conservative ancestors arrived in America as outcasts of equally bleak rural Europe, some of them forced out by economic systems that found sheep more profitable than tenant farmers, some of them forced out for their pacifist religious beliefs.

My first immigrant ancestor landed in Canada, before the U.S.A. was a nation, transatlantic fare paid by the local Lord and Lady who no longer wanted any unpleasant peasants stinking up their land, but not so cheap as to hire goons to beat and rape remove them. Go to America! It'll be great! Here's your golden ticket! Good luck!

My last immigrant ancestor was a mail order bride to Salt Lake City. She didn't much like sharing a husband so she ran off with an Army guy and established a homestead. It was off-the-books U.S.A. policy then to favor homesteaders who were not-Mormon, and they'd flooded the area with lonely not-Mormon single men precisely for this purpose, hoping to reduce Mormon political influence.

[tosh]

59. And that satellite internet...

is TOTALLY worthless in heavy cloud cover, and specifically HURRICANES.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

61. Thanks Andy!

Excellent post!

[Trueblue Texan]

62. Sounds like the town I grew up in...

Galveston County...horrible place to grow up, no matter what your skin color, but the darker your skin the worse it was.

[Snooper9]

68. So you must be one of the younger ones on here having Internet as a kid

congrats!

[Renaissance Man]

69. Small Towns

The nepotism and corruption in small towns is exponentially worse, as well.

I've found that many people who find small town life as something to be admired don't inventory the huge negatives that exist in these places - limited quality job opportunities, rampant opiod use, outdated public utilities, small tax base, small GDP, the level of gossip that consumes so many people (who have very little to do as is), limited recreational opportunities, etc. They've really been in a death spiral since we normalized trade relations with China and once NAFTA was enacted.

Since that death spiral, anyone who remotely wanted to seek better job opportunities have flocked to large cities and mid-sized cities and college towns.

The positives about small town living (if you live near waterways) are outdoorsman activities (like fishing and hunting). Outside of that, you really don't have much.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

71. I spent a bunch of years in small towns

What was going on?

My best friend and her sister were being raped by their father on a routine basis. Nothing was done about it in the two small towns we all lived in, despite reports to the authorities. Even white women learned early that the word of a white man was always more credible than anything they had to say.

Ministers molesting congregants--adult and child alike--was a day ending in Y. Did I mention that few of these towns had any Catholics, never mind a Catholic priest to do the molesting? Of course nothing was done about it. To make things worse, any kid who spoke up was accused of lying and treated like she or he was the criminal for "lying about a man of the cloth."

The (white) man next door beat his wife every day that I can remember. I know, because I could hear her screaming and crying about it every day when I came home. The only person who ever tried to do anything about it, my stepfather, nearly got killed the one time he tried to intervene--and the cops almost arrested *him* for it, not the wife-beater. "That's between a man and his wife and yew stay out of it." We moved, even though we couldn't afford it, because we couldn't stand the suffering anymore.

I witnessed another friend's stepfather haul off and punch his wife in the face. The kid was too small to do anything about it. All he could ever do was run out of the house and cry. It happened a lot, and nothing was done about that, either.

A "small town" sheriff blackmailed closeted but very powerful (banker, newspaper editor, major employer executive) homosexuals in the town so that he could do corrupt stuff like rip off speeders, put people in jail without charging 'em when they made him mad--lots of ugly stuff like that.

Friend of mine tried to kill himself with a handgun. Another mutual friend happened to drop by, and yanked the gun away. Nearly lost a finger over it.

Three kids were shot to death at a fast food restaurant. Never solved. In a place where everybody knows everybody's business when it comes to stupid bollocks, and bragged about how they took care of their own compared to "city folk," somehow nobody saw nothing when it mattered. That's how we all knew that they know who did it, but it was somebody from a "good" rich family. So they saw nothing.

Guy down the road had a "thing" for black women, and just took what he wanted, never mind what the women wanted. Nobody did anything about it. Black women--they're all asking for it, right?

Cops openly beat up brown *and* white teenaged boys on the side of major roads for offenses like being brown/having a long hair and lighting a cigarette when they rode by the pig. In the 70s. "They asked for it," was the typical response from the small town adults. Nothing done about it until a pig finally crossed the wrong kid, in front of the wrong witnesses. Parent was well-to-do, sicced the family attorney on the cop shop, and won a huge settlement from them. That kid wasn't hassled anymore, or not so much. Poorer kids weren't so lucky.

So this stupid tosser doesn't have a leg to stand on about what goes on in small towns.

I'm safer walking in any big city than I ever was in a small town.

[DBoon]

74. There is a reason big cities have thriving LGBT communities

They were driven out of their small towns they were born in. Some were kicked out and disowned by their parents.

[llmart]

77. I got a chuckle out of you saying your "small" town had a population of 8,000.

I grew up in a small town. Population at that time was about 665. Today the population is 1,665. Now that's a small town and I believe that when people talk about small towns, they're not talking about the suburbs of a big city. My town was as rural as they come. Situated right on the shores of Lake Erie it was nursery country because of the climate and soils. It still is. There was a school and a post office and a couple of bars (of course). There was no grocery store. No expressway. You had to drive to the next town over, about 20 minutes away to buy groceries. It was 100% white, though the nurseries brought in Puerto Ricans to work the farms.

As with all things, it had it's plusses and those were the wide open spaces us kids could wander for hours. None of the farmers cared if you played on their property. A farm behind our house had a huge pond and I learned how to skate on that pond and my brothers took a handline and hook and fished the pond. The owner's house wasn't even close enough to the pond to see us, but he wouldn't have minded anyway. We went to school with his kids. I am an outdoors nature lover to this day because of all the hours spent outside in my youth. Having said that though, we were relatively poor because my parents didn't own property and weren't farmers. My father would drive into the city whenever a job came up for him. The older I got the more stifled I felt there. I was one of the smartest in the class of 70 and I wanted to have access to more subjects but they never offered them. I found the library in the next town over and my mother took us there every weekend. The library was my saving grace. It made me yearn for a wider world. I couldn't wait to leave that small town. For most of my life I've lived in a suburb that had more amenities and was closer to a city that was large enough to have access to a variety of services that I never had as a young person.

I still have a nostalgic yearning for the small town of my youth, but I've been back and honestly, I know I could never live there again.
I went back for a reunion once and they were still talking about old high school teachers and getting together at the one diner still in town.