I grew up in the same small town as I'm living in now, after a brief move to Florida and then back, as it just wasn't home.... We're in a very small town, or I guess you'd call it a village as it's Broad Brook and actually a part of East Windsor which is a town in the northern part of Connecticut.
We grew up without locked doors, locked cars, while walking into neighbors houses with a quick knock and a Hi. Things have sure changed. We all lock our doors, day and night, and our cars? With the car theft rates and the price of gas, we've even been considering a locking gas cap, as we've seen people with them. Why do things have to change this much? This is not a better America...
The town's not really much bigger - builders have been stopped from being issued building permits so we'll keep our farmland, as with the current price of gas and grocerys, we will possibly 'need' that farmland to produce a lot of food. Our town did something that I've never heard of.. they went and looked back and back through their rules and such from years past and found one clause that allows farmers to keep their farmland and not pay taxes on it, the town will pay them, but it'll be theirs still. I think that's really nice what with all the building going on in other towns. People care here. I bet you'd like it ;)
We're small enough so that if you go grocery shopping (we've got two grocery stores, one's big, one is small) you'll always bump into someone you know and end up chatting for awhile. The cashiers and other store employees also know you and will stop to talk for a minute. We're fortunate enough to have all four seasons, in all their glory though we're not too excited about lots of snow, once for the holidays on each, then as far as we'd like it, it can go. Never does that though - and we're used to it, the newly colored trees right now, the oranges, reds and yellows mixing in with the grass and shrubs that are still green.
We've got one High School, both our son and I went to it, I had the "huge" class, about 100, he had a normal one, under 70. I hear this year it'll be another big class, 100 again. It's nice that things don't change all that much here.
What do we have to do? Well... we've got a Walmart! lol And a movie theater, they took down the local drive-in and I'll always miss that. Other than those things and the grocery stores, we've got each other, and we know and help all we can. That's what it's all about, isn't it?
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Comments: 26
my neighbours here are great we don't lock our doors here either.
One of our children lived in Florida for a year while attending school there. While there he had the terrible experience of being mugged. You don't realize how violent and personal a crime is until it happens to someone you love! He wasn't hurt badly. I imagine he inflicted a few bruises on his three attackers as he is a big guy and strong. He fought them in order to get away as they intended to take him with them to his bank and force him to take money out of his account with his ATM card.
I can't help but think that his will to overcome came from a strong self concept fueled by a loving family and the sweet, simple childhood and adolesence that he experienced while growing up in a small town. Well...I like to think that anyway. He still lives in a city but hopes to someday be able to come back home, buy some property here and live happily ever after in our little town.
Now I'm in Minnesota a few miles away from Crafton California where there are over 700 kids there in first grade now and they even have a Jr. College up in the hills there. My sisters just sold the house there for $365,000 last year. Things have changed somewhat in rural Southern California, as well as in St. Cloud in the last few years. I could never go back, as it's all gone now. We didn't even have locks on the doors to lock.
I grew up in a small midwestern town. Now I live in the city of Orange, CA. The southern California region that I live in has about 20 million people living in an area about 100 miles in diameter.
As others have said, I think the small town environment was a great place to grow up. I go back there to visit family and friends every year or two. But I would never move back there. Start with the weather...the winters are awful, the summer is so muggy you take a steam bath when you walk outside, but you can't spend much time there because of the mosquitoes. I spend half my life outside in California...in my backyard, at the beach, in the mountains...and I do it year-round.
But it is the cultural life that I would miss the most...concerts, plays, fine restaurants, etc.
My small town is a nice place to visit...but I sure wouldn't want to live there.