The controversy around Jason Aldean’s “Try that in a Small Town” got me thinking. What are some things that you wish you could do in a small town that you just can’t?
I was in the mountains, Hendersonville NC I think, trying to find a place to eat after 7 pm on a week day. Was impossible.
Can we define a small town? The ones in his video have populations of around 150k which I would argue isn’t a small town. That’s a little over the combined population of seven counties were I live or about 165% of the combined population of all 11 “major cities” in the Eastern Kentucky Coalfields. I say anything much over 10k in population doesn’t qualify as a small town.
Oh man, having grown up in a small town (one stop light, baby!):
Be visibly neurodivergent
Be visibly gender nonconforming
Not have worry about someone at the doctor’s office/hospital who knows your family breaking HIPAA
Be able to just be an anonymous person in public, and not Jody-Anne’s cousin’s kid
To not be reliant on owning a car
I hate that for you. But you speak to the lack of social services that are typically not available, which is a pro of living in a large city.
Two light town here. It’s not just social services. Hell, with sizes, sometimes (not always) they have it a bit easier in certain regards for the common services due to reduced workload (YMMV: it’s been a while since I’ve been back).
The bigger issue is lack of exposure to anything non-conforming. Not enough people simply being people in slightly different ways. Makes it easy to fall into tribalism, as well as no one wants to shake the boat when someone says something racist (for example).
Walked into a small town restaurant the other day. Literally everyone looked up from their plates to clock who it was. Beat them all with the game. Caught a few Peter gazing as a consequence.
For a lot of people, it’s getting out. Moving is expensive and they can’t get enough work at the Wal*Mart or the prison, and all the other employers have gone out of business or offshored their labor. That’s why a lot of people enlist in the military.
I was raised in a town of around 200 people for much of my life. The biggest issue with towns like that is that theres very little in the way of civilization in those areas as a small population cant support much. All this town had is an elementary school, a post office, a church and one small business that burned itself down once because they worked with a lot of varnish and solvents.
The town was closs knit, fairly quiet and laid back which was nice but the town was not at all self sufficient. Anyone that was not content with outdoor activities driven by your imagination would be bored to tears.
