Yeah, I just heard "Small Town" by John Mellencamp lol...but made me think about what it's like to grow up in a very small town.

So, were any of you born in a small town? If so, how small was it? How long did you live there? Do you look back on in fondly, or look back happy to have "escaped"? How many traffic lights did the town have? lol...

Or vise versa, have any of you moved to a small town as an adult? If so, why?

Byron said:

That looks like ALOT of Towns where I live Lets just say that my state of TASMANIA, Australia is NOT a very big place in itself
[Edited 1/18/08 16:44pm]

chillichocaholic said:

Dang it, I liked "Austrlaia" better ...

Lived on a Island where their was 2 farms and 16 house and u had 2 walk miles to get a boat 2 school each day. I loved the freedom, no rush life style was great as a kid.
[Edited 1/18/08 16:49pm]

The town I grew up in doesn't exactly qualify as a small town, more of a suburb of a suburb. I think of small towns as quite remote from urban areas, and my town was only a 40 minute drive to the city.
But there were dirt roads when my parents moved in (when I was 2) and a vegetable farm across the street. And many more in the area. I played and built forts in the woods, climbed trees and could be out even after dark in the summer until my mom yelled for me to come home.
As I got older, I had to ride my bike 5 miles just to catch a bus into Minneapolis. Which I did and got into trouble for.
But I was escaping to the city every chance I got. My grandparents lived closer to the city and my grandmother used to take me in with her fairly often so I got my first taste quite young. Once I got my driver's license, I was driving in every time I got to borrow the car (even though I wasn't technically "allowed" to). I moved to the U of M campus when I was 18 and while I didn't finish my first year of college, I had my first apartment in uptown at age 19.

It's much more of a respectable suburb now, and they're even putting in stop lights on the corner my parents live on now. It's crazy to see how much has changed.
I could never live there now. Strip malls and TGIFridays and having to drive anywhere you want to go cause there's nothing within walking distance. No thanks.

I was born in Brooklyn--nothing small about that.

But my parents own a house in Hope NY which is so small that it's just one road. The real small towns nearby were Wells a few miles north or the bigger Northville to the south. Wells in particular is a typical small town with a general store and one traffic light I believe. I used to spend a few weeks up there every summer when I was a preteen. I appreciate the experience more now than at the time. Now I can only make it back there for a weekend or two a year. The whole area is not as quaint as it used to be, but I still enjoy visiting.

Wells looks like the first pic in this thread. Hope, the second and Northville, the third.

pic edit
[Edited 1/18/08 16:57pm]

I was born in Brooklyn and soon after, my family moved up north into the suburbs. I consider the town I grew up in small, but in reading everyone else's descriptions of the small towns they lived in, I don't think it falls into that category I did move to a small town in upstate New York for a while for school. I think there were only 3 traffic lights and they were all on Main St. All of the other streets just had stop signs. There were a lot of cute, little shops around, a supermarket, and a movie theater, but not much of anything else was going on there

And I've been to Seymour, Indiana lol ...

CarrieMpls said:

I never lived in a small town, but I remember how my mom (and my friends' moms) would yell out our names after it got dark and say "Dinner!!", and we'd all go running home lol...I can't believe it when I think about it now, because I don't think any moms do that anymore, at least not where I've been living.

jess555ja said:

Was there a burger place there, and if so, what was it called? (they're usually something like "Burger Barn" or "Burger Stop" or "WhattaBurger" or something lol)...

I was born in the back seat of a greyhound bus.
Rollin down highway 41.

Byron said:

The only place where they had burgers was at P & G's.

Born and raised in a moderately big city...New Orleans


..but the military has brought me to these "teeming" metropolis' during my career...

Watertown, NY



Amberg, Germany


Mannheim, Germany


and last, but not least, Sierra Vista, AZ


[Edited 1/18/08 18:41pm]

I moved to Enid, Oklahoma as an adult. Why? Because my husband is in the Air Force and we had to. At first I was not looking forward to it. But, I have some of my best memories because of living there. I made lifelong friends and it was sort of cool living in a small town. There is something to that small town charm. The people were amazingly friendly, polite, and genuinely caring.

I was born in Brighton, not a small town, but moved to live in Woodmancote, a village in the Cotswolds, when I was about two and a half. I lived there until I was 18. It's not that big, ,but hardly small either considering it's right next to Bishops Cleeve, a larger village, and only 3 miles from Cheltenham, a town of 100k.

I've marked my parents' house on the map. This is pretty much all of the village.

I'm a real life "midwest farmer's daughter." I grew up on a FARM about 3 miles from a town of about 800 people in Iowa. I was jealous of the town kids because they could walk to each others houses after school to play--I was stuck on the farm with my brother and a bunch of cows and pigs.

View of part of the farm where I grew up:


This pic is from 2006, the cattle yard is literally about 200 yards from our house. (You can see the other side of the same timber from the first pic way in the back):



View of my town from the west (it's those white buildings to the right of the highway in the distance):


I lived there until I graduated high school, then went to college in Des Moines, the capital and largest city in Iowa (pop. 300,000). It was as far away as my parents would allow! After college I promptly moved to Chicago, now I live in New York. I always knew that I would live in a big city, I often felt like somehow the universe messed up and stuck me in the small town. People thought I was weird because I wanted to study art and learn French and I listened to rap & hip-hop. Even now when I go back they think I'm some wild, crazy person because I have my nose pierced, wear 3 inch heels, and live in the scary New York City. (By NYC standards, I'm completely boring! )

There were 29 people in my graduating class, and we had all pretty much gone to school with one another since Kindergarten, so the guys were more like brothers than potential boyfriends. There are no stop lights in my hometown, no fast food restaurants, movie theaters, etc. There is one bar, one diner, and one pizza place (again, none of which are chains). We had a burger place called The Valley Drive In--but it didn't have a drive-in movie screen, you just drove into the 'valley' to get to it. We called it the VD. lol. They were only open from March through September and it was one of two hotly contested employment opportunities. (The other was lifeguarding at the pool, which I did.) The closet city (Sioux City, pop. 75,000) where we would go for all that stuff was 45 miles away.

On one hand I hated it there---I got in a lot of trouble at school because I didn't have enough to do, I wish I could have taken AP classes or had more choices. Everyone knew all your business--you couldn't even drive through town without it getting around. There wasn't much to do for fun--we drove around and got drunk, or when to whomever's parent's were out of town house and partied; climbed the water tower or grain elevator, or drove to Sioux City to go to the mall or a movie.

The good things were that I probably would have gotten into a lot more, and more serious trouble if I had grown up in a big city with more temptations and rougher crowds. It was cool at our school to be involved in extracirricular activities and get good grades, so I played varsity basketball, track, etc. I would not have made the teams in a bigger town.

I guess I look back fondly, but I sometimes wish I would have grown up somewhere with more culture and opportunities. I don't keep in touch with most of my classmates, but when I go back to visit my parents we (the friends) have an unwritten understanding that we meet up at the bar. And it's just like no time has passed--in a good way.

I think it is easier for someone who grew up in a small town to acclimate to a large city than the other way around. I think if you took most New Yorkers and plopped them in the middle of nowhere (e.g. my hometown) they would freak out. Everything except the bar closes at 11pm and there is no delivery.


ps. The photos you posted, especially the last one, look like they really could have been taken in my hometown.

.
[Edited 1/18/08 19:57pm]

yep! born raised and still live in a small town.
the town I live in now has about 1200 people in it and I do in fact live on a dirt road
I'm about 40 mins from the nearest small city and about 1 hour 45 mins from Boston which is still a small city in comparison to most other cities. I have to drive 30 mins minimum to do anything...groceries, shopping, work... but that's normal to me.
I went to a regional high school that 3 towns went to....my graduating class had 75 kids in it. the whole school, 9th thru 12th had less than 500.
I love it.

That's one helluva story, Devoted lol ...29 people in your graduating class ...was your hometown called Mayberry, by chance?

I love reading everyone's stories lol ...and the "one place that sells burgers", that connects everyone's stories ...

Keep 'em coming...

I was born in and raised right ouside Detroit MI - 1st 20 yrs of my life

I moved to a small town of aprox 850 people in western NC and have lived here for 23 yrs. My children were born and raised in this small town. I wanted my life and my childrens life to be more removed from the crowds and lifestyle I grew up in. I love it here and larger towns are an easy drive away.

I was born in a small town (population 3000) about 25 miles north of the city I grew up in. My dad moved us when I was six months old to take a job here.

So while I was born in a small town, I grew up in a medium-sized city.

I was born in a small town, lived in some even smaller towns. Seems like they all keep growing up around me.
Got a pretty sweet set-up on about 20 acres near town now. I'm good til the neighbors sell out.
That and the city is only an hour away.

Those are some nice pix of them towns there.

Byron said:

There's no way in heck I'd allow any child of mine out for hours at a time unsupervised. Especailly considering this started for me as early as age 5-6 or so.

Not real small but it was small enough.

Our house was on the border of Elkton, Md and North East, Maryland

My back yard was a state park. It was nice to be outside and explore all day in the woods. We were really close to the Chesapeake Bay. Best of all worlds trees, beaches and open spaces.

I grew up in an area in Nebraska that is called the Twin Cities, or the Valley of that area. It's two cities seperated by the Platte River. Scottsbluff/Gering Nebraska. I lived in Gering, went to school in Gering, but was born in Scottsbluff.

Population of Gering as of 2000, 7,751

Population of Scottsbluff as of 2000 14,732

The area I grew up is home to the Scottsbluff National Monument, where you can find wagon tracks, and names written on the Bluff, from the men and women who used this Bluff as a landmark on their way to California.



I loved living there, it's the normal small town kind of life. Where us kids would spend time at the pool or riding our bikes,or hanging out at the skating rink and every July Oregon Trail Days would come, and there would be parades, and a carnival. I loved my childhood in that area. All my family lives there, my kids were born there. And I had the same Dr since the day I was born. He delivered me and all my children.

I lived in this area all my life up until 11 yrs ago when I moved here to Oklahoma

Nope. I was born in Montreal.

I love the village I am from. Especially the last picture is very dear to me, due to reasons I don't feel like divulging here on Org, but it was a surprise to find, while searching for pics of my village, a picture of the place that probably means more to me than any other place in the world. It resonates inside of me, that place.