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

[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.