Those who grew up in small towns will laugh when they read this. Those who didn't will be in disbelief.
1) You can name everyone you graduated with. 2) You know what 4-H means. 3) You went to parties at a pasture, barn, gravel pit, or in the middle of a dirt road. On Monday you could always tell who was at the party because of the scratches on their legs from running through the woods when the party was busted. (See #6.) 4) You used to "drag" Main. 5) If you said the "F" word, your parents knew within the hour. 6) You scheduled parties around the schedules of different police officers, because you knew which ones would bust you and which ones wouldn't. And before Monday your teachers would know all about the party & who had attended. Maybe they even knew before and that could be the reason the party was busted. 7) You could never buy cigarettes because all the store clerks knew how old you were (and if you were old enough, they'd tell your parents anyhow.) 8) When you did find somebody old enough and brave enough to buy cigarettes you still had to go out into the country and drive on back roads to smoke them. 10) It was cool to date somebody from the neighboring town. 11) The whole school went to the same party after graduation. 12) You didn't give directions by street names but rather by references: Turn by Nelson's house, go 2 blocks to Anderson's, and it's four houses left of the track field. 13) The golf course had only 9 holes. 14) You couldn't help but date a friend's ex-boyfriend/girlfriend. 15) Your car stayed filthy because of the dirt roads, and you will never own a dark vehicle for this reason. 16) The town next to you was considered "trashy" or "snooty," but was actually just like your town. 17) You referred to anyone with a house newer then 1965 as the "rich people". 18) The people in the "big city" dressed funny, and then you picked up the trend 2 years later. 19) Anyone you wanted could be found at the local gas station or the town bar. 20) You saw at least one friend a week driving a tractor through town or one of your friends driving a grain truck to school occasionally. 21) The gym teacher suggested you haul hay for the summer to get stronger. 22) Directions were given using THE stop light as a reference. 23) When you decided to walk somewhere for exercise, 5 people would pullover and ask if you wanted a ride. 24) Your teachers called you by your older siblings' names. 25) Your teachers remembered when they taught your parents. 26) You could charge at any local store or write checks without any ID. 27) The closest McDonalds was 20 miles away (or more). 28) The closest mall was over an hour away. 29) It was normal to see an old man riding through town on a riding lawn mower. 30) You've "relieved yourself" in a cornfield. 31) Most people went by a nickname. 32) You laughed reading this because you know it is true, and you forward it to everyone who may have lived in a small town. I would not want to have been brought up any other way!
Posted by Barry Branscum (Member # 445) on :
That pretty much sums up "Clinton, Arkansas" with the exception of the cornfield...here it was just the bushes. Posted by Si Allen (Member # 420) on :
Hah! Ours was so small....we had to take turns being the "Town Drunk"!
(Or was it the "Village Idiot") ?
Posted by Janet Bakewell (Member # 725) on :
That brought back memories, Jane... Posted by Ken Holden (Member # 5653) on :
no cornfield--through the sceen door and off the porch. Got caught at the screen door--boy was I traumatized. Ken
Posted by Jill Marie Welsh (Member # 1912) on :
On my street, we could hear my aunt Sue holler at her kids, and they could hear my mom sneeze. Love....Jill
Posted by Sheila Ferrell (Member # 3741) on :
LOL Ms. Jane! That was great!
Our town was'nt 'one red light' small, but all the memories of gettin' out in the country to party was SO true 'cause EVERYONE seemed to know your parents and were FOND of telling them what they saw you doin'.... It was always a good idea to have older friends to buy yer ciggs and booze . . . ...all the teachers knew my perfect older brother >
The town has grown larger, (we actually got a small mall when I was about 10 . . .we got a super Wal-Mart about 8 years ago...) (We still don't have a movie theater . . .or a book store... ) but you still recognize almost everyone by face at least, and say hello or even stop and chat... Posted by Nancie W. Phillips (Member # 3484) on :
Funny how one could miss that kind of stuff... but ya do!
Posted by Kissymatina (Member # 2028) on :
#3 need to add "gas well" and christmas tree field to that list.
You looked to see if THE cop car was at the police station. If it wasn't you actually watched your speed & used turn signals.
Your school year started the day after the county fair ended, was always closed 1st day of deer season and at least 1/2 empty second day of deer season.
#30 cornfield or christmas tree field.
The pictures Rochon & Checkers posted here brought back memories.
Over 80% of your class skipped on senior skip day...and all ended up at the same party.
"The old wooden bridge" was and is a standard phrase in giving directions, even though it was replaced 20 years ago.
You've ever pulled off the road to let a convoy of trucks pulling cattle trailers go by...on their way to the barn fire. (The neighbors hook up the trailers & beat the firetrucks)
[ May 02, 2005, 08:39 PM: Message edited by: Kissymatina ]
Posted by Matthew Rolli (Member # 4089) on :
My home-town name sums it up:
Gratiot, WI yes pronounced Grass-Sh!t
Jane, you nailed it.
When my younger brother and I fought we'd tease each other by calling each other names like
"brush" my nickname, hated it then...still do. "plow" my brother now a regional seed corn salesman.
this was a great post Jane!
Posted by Russ McMullin (Member # 5617) on :
I grew up in a number of small towns. My graduating class was about 50, and it would have a class of 19 if I hadn't changed schools.
I remember going to school with two feet of snow on the ground. Close the school for snow? Not on your life. Take days off school for the deer hunt? It'd be a crime not to.
Posted by Michael Clanton (Member # 2419) on :
Barry, Clinton was a considered a "BIG" town by all of us in Leslie (pop. 501) I was actually banned from the Clinton Pizza Hut up until a couple of years ago.
No stoplights- only a couple of actual Stop Signs. Graduating class of 38- one of Leslie's largest ever. (a closeby town had "2" graduating) Learning to drive before age 12- in hayfields and dirt roads. Swimming in a creek (or "CRIK") not a cement pond.
Posted by Barry Branscum (Member # 445) on :
Why were you banned from the Clinton Pizza Hut?? Dould it have something to do with that inane manager??!
Posted by Steve Luck (Member # 5292) on :
I've gotta put a plug in for my old hometown of Bunker Hill, Illinois. Pop.12,00 (that was a bit inflated). Cruising uptown around the Lincoln Statue down to the Dairy Queen which really wasn't a franchise official Dairy Queen; we just called it that because they sold ice cream and food. I worked at the grocery store in the middle of town when I was 15 (parents had to sign a work permit) and it had 3 1/2 isles! We carried grocery bags to everyone's car back then. Paper routes when you could safely ride your bike from one end of town and back without worrying about being abducted or hit...squeezing in a quick game of basketball at someone's house on your route and still get all the papers deliverd before supper! Life was good. Sign-cerely, Steve
Posted by Si Allen (Member # 420) on :
This rings a lot of bells!!!
The Bad Old Days
My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and roll out pie crust on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.
My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes too, but I can't remember getting E-coli.
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool
(talk about boring), the term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.
We all took gym, not PE . . . and risked permanent injury with a pair of hightop Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.
Flunking gym was not an option, even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must have had horribly damaged psyches. I can't understand it. Schools didn't offer 14 year olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles.
What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Playstations, Nintendo, X-Boxes or 270 digital cable stations.
I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant 20, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger.
What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot. He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm.
Oh yeah . . . and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48cent bottle of mercurochrome and we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.
We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked, (physical abuse), here too and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.
Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks (remember why Tonka trucks were made tough . it wasn't so that they could take the rough Berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car with leaded gas.
Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent.
Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even know that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without automatic blade-stop or auto-drive.
How sick were my parents? Of course my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.
To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes?
We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!
How did we survive????
Posted by Russ McMullin (Member # 5617) on :
AMEN Si!!!
Posted by William DeBekker (Member # 3848) on :
So true Si and Thanks for the memories Jane. Forgot a few.. I just Heard a new Song on our Great Local AM radio Station. "Air Supply- All out of Love" They thought it was a new release.
And as for Directions I still use references. To get to our shop Turn North at the main Stoplight(9th Street) and go to the first stop sign and Turn left at the park and were the big Grey house on the corner with the Brown Shop in the Back.
Si, I can also remember being Swatted by he principle. I think I can file a Law suit now for all the mental anguise it caused me and years of Therapy.. I still have Nightmares from that "All I Hear is MR.DEBEKKER then SWAT another mark on my rear from his damn yardstick."
We also separate the Transplants from the Natives by still referencing Ben Franklin's, Woolworth's and JCPennys
Posted by jack wills (Member # 521) on :
I n Smithville,just outside fo Hanna City, where we would go and watch movies on Saturday on the side of a corn crib, we would also make tobogans out of corogated tin and sometime challenge each other to ride the down a hill standing up! So much for snowboards..........we were ahead of the curve.
Havin'REAL FUN at the farm life.
CrazyJack
Posted by jack wills (Member # 521) on :
P.S. Remember the Blue Racers...?
CrazyJack
Posted by Murray MacDonald (Member # 3558) on :
ALL of the above, but what's a "stoplight"? MUR
Posted by jack wills (Member # 521) on :
People out here do not know what a morrel, is (sponge mushroom). I actually found some one day while making an install in front of a big office building in Sacramento...Hmmm! Imported Dirt? Sasafrass Tea.........
Swimmin' holes
CrazyJack
Posted by Suelynn Sedor (Member # 442) on :
Yes, and now my kids are growing up in that same small town...pop 1000. We have a theatre, swimming pool, curling rink, hockey rink, ball diamonds, golf course, subway, curves, a brand new school, a couple of grocery stores, a couple of convenience stores and some great restaurants. The cost of living is low, and so is the crime rate...life is good!!
Posted by Jon Butterworth (Member # 227) on :
My test for my Driver's Licence at 15 consisted of a couple of road rule questions over a cup of tea and the comment "Yer mother wouldn't allow you to drive a car unless you could ... how is she anyway?"
Posted by Jane Diaz (Member # 595) on :
Jon, that reminds me. When I went away to college, 40 miles away, I used to get bank statement in the mail and the girls on my floor (from Chicago) used to get a charge out of them. The bank would always include a note. "Hi Jane, How's school? Saw your Mom and Dad yesterday....." Those Chicago girls couldn't get over that. "That's from your BANK?!!" Posted by Bobbie Rochow (Member # 3341) on :
Anyone remember the Roleigh (sp?) man that sold stinky products? He used to give us Chicklets in a tiny cardboard box.
We used to hook out & got to the limestone quarries with a keg of beer.
Snow days? One time the whole neighborhood got together with shovels & piled the snow across the road, sure the bus wouldn't make it through, & there it came, pushing the snow out of the way.
How bout the times when all the neighborhood kids had to get together at ONE bus stop? Now they stop every 50 feet & let someone off! What is the matter with the kids these days? Are they afraid to walk to the neighbors'?
Posted by old paint (Member # 549) on :
i recived this card from one of my old freinds, and he had seen my house in pa before it burned down, maybe this is way he sent this one. this is almost identical to the house/grocery store my parents bought back in 1950. http://country-art.com/ca/american_made.htm Posted by Russ McMullin (Member # 5617) on :
I remember in one little town if you bounced a check the bank would spot you the money until you could get in there and make a deposit. They would call you up and tell you about it. It's no big deal these days because there is overdraft protection.
Posted by Barry Branscum (Member # 445) on :
My little bank still does that for me...of course I NEVER run dry... Posted by Louie Pascuzzi (Member # 1373) on :
I do remember in our town the Buster Brown shoe store would send all the kids birthday cards and a coupon for a free gift next time we would come in. The Marcus Dairy Bar also sent out birthday cards with coupons for an ice cream cone.
I have to say , one of my favorite memories was sneaking into the back of the milk truck in the summer when the milkman was making deliveries and making snowball out of the crushed ice that they used to keep everything cold.
The biggest change in our town is when they tore down the Great Danbury State Fair after I think 103 years and put in a mall. Progress sucks!
Posted by Dawn Ellis (Member # 3529) on :
After I left the small town (Ndola, Zambia) I grew up in for a larger city I arranged to meet a friend in front of a department store. We didn't meet up because I didn't know that a department store could have more than one entrance.
Posted by Kelly Thorson (Member # 2958) on :
Earlier this spring one of the houses in town burned down. We hurried home cause there was a 10% chance it was ours.... now there are only nine houses left.
I loved raising my kids here, one day I received two phone calls in a row saying a strange car had picked up my kids - all in the time it took for my parents to pick up the kids and drive the 1/4 mile access road into town.
That is the greatest thing about small towns - we are all family Sometimes we fight like it too Posted by Don Coplen (Member # 127) on :
My town was so small that every time somebody died or was born, the town signpainter was sent out to the town limits sign to change the population number.
Posted by Bill Preston (Member # 1314) on :
Why change the population number?
Around here, every time a baby was born, some guy left town.
BTW, when I was a kid, our town was so far removed from mainstream traffic, that it took 'til Monday night to hear Grand Old Opry. And, the moonshine came over the hill in quart jars. An odd job was totin' 100 lb. sacks of sugar through the woods.
bill preston
[ May 04, 2005, 12:13 PM: Message edited by: Bill Preston ]
Posted by Peter Schuttinga (Member # 2821) on :
A while back we visited my wife relatives in Gladstone Manitoba (Happy Rock). The main drag in town was shared with the railline. Town has a few stores, a motel, a RCMP office(occupied one day a week), and a legion. Our truck's waterpump went on us when we arrived there. My wife's uncle phoned the parts store in town, but it was closed (6:30 pm on a Friday night). Her uncle took me in his truck into town, checked at the store, then went to the owners house, where he was mowing his lawn. The man stopped what he was doing, hopped into the truck with us and we went to the store. He had all the parts, but couldn't take visa, didn't have interac yet, and there were no bank machines in town, and the bank was only open a few days during the week. The store owner said no problem, I know Bruce (uncle) is good for it. We drove him back to his house and then we returned to the uncle's house to fix the truck. Now that was a great introduction to that small town feeling.
Posted by old paint (Member # 549) on :
the town i lived in was so far from anywhere people used to ask how to get there and i would tell them you drive to AVELLA, PA. down main street, stop, make right, cross the bridge, make a left, when you come to the Y stay right. now you drive your car a mile...park it. rent a mule for the next mile, the 3rd mile you walk.....and the 4th mile you SWING IN ON GRAPE VINES!!!!!now thats back in the boonies. i was so far in the boonies...i got a diploma for BUS RIDIN!!! i got on a bus at 7:15 am, it drove 18 miles which took till 8:45am. on the way home i was on the bus at 3:15pm arrived home at 4:45 pm!!!!!
Posted by Sheila Ferrell (Member # 3741) on :
OP!!! "i was so far in the boonies...i got a diploma for BUS RIDIN!!!"
Posted by Chuck Churchill (Member # 68) on :
My home town was (and still is) so small that both of population signs are on the same post!
Posted by bill riedel (Member # 607) on :
Just one square mile, that is the size of my town. Years ago we had many empty lots and small lakes. Now the lots are homes and condos, some of the lakes were filled in. It was great knowing almost everyone. The part about not being able to do wrong without your parents knowing before you got home was something else. Kept the vandalisim way down.
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