Living In A Small Town? Not As Good As You’d Think

Race probably the right word to use, I’m guess the writer ment Nationality. I don’t want to stir anything up here, but from my experience sometimes the exuberant Italians don’t always mix well with resereved German/ Norwegians.

there’s a reason this town has a dwindling population.

I think in this case it had more to do with the ‘them’ vs. ‘us’ cliquish/clannish mentality of small towns. I mean, it didn’t help they first showed up in a Lexus with bling bling from Florida.

But Alex does bring up a good point, wonder if it would have been any worse if it were a family of a different race.

Obviously someone has never read Sinclair Lewis’ “Main Street.” The husband grew up in the small town, the wife came from Minneapolis. In other words, nothing new here.

Well by gosh what’s wrong, isn’t this the “Real America” that Sarah told us about?

Maybe they should move to Wasilla!

I moved from Puyallup, WA (a fairly well-populated city, even for that time) to a small town in TX (pop. 4000) about 14 years ago. It was a complete culture shock and it took YEARS before people in town started to accept us. Of course, it helped that my grandmother already lived there (we moved in with her after her husband’s death) and her late husband was a county sheriff’s deputy.

This town has had some growth up until the last year or so: it used to have only one stoplight. Now it has 4.

Not to be rude, and I know it’s common american practice. But the guy isn’t Italian, He’s American.

His family may be Italian and his background certainly but he’s american.

The only reason I bring this up is that I was born in Scotland an it bugs the hell out of me when someone who has feck all to do with the country and know nothing more than a mel gibson movie about it tells me how awesome it is to meet me because, you know, “I’m scottish too”

As for the point of the article, if you need to advertise and pay for new residents you probably don’t deserve them.

Ha, it’s like reading off a script for my own town: the narrow perks, Wal-Mart pilgrimages, and xenophobia. On the bright side, if you wanted to see history come alive you don’t have to resort to Civil War reenactments.

I have been trying to move to a small town for a couple of decades.

If any place were serious you think they would have set up a Monster-board type Job Search service for small towns by now.

Even Forbes magazine says that you need to subscribe to a local paper to move to a small town.

How the hell are you supposed to find a job in a small town newspaper that only comes out 1-5 times a week with no Sunday edition and apply to those jobs in a timely manner when the paper takes a few days to arrive on your doorstep?

Are you also expected to subscribe to HUNDREDS of small town papers on the off chance that one of these weekly rags is going to have something in your field?

Has anyone ever thought that maybe the reason everyone is not returning to small towns has to do with the idea that no one can find a job there even if one exists?

BTW – I spent my High School years in a small town and I can attest to the xenophobia also. I was abused endlessly and beaten weekly often at the direction and encouragement of the teachers and coaches.

PS – in my small town people were beaten for not being the right kind of white person.

If you use the pre-18th century definition of race, it is a racial difference: the race of Floridians is, in many ways, different from the North Dakota race. An additional factor: the urban race is different from the rural race.

@ mralistair
We know he’s American, but those small town minds (not all!) still see him as an outsider or (I cringe at this) foreigner. It’s unfortunate, but it seems to be going trend….even up here….I lived in a small Northern town and had my share of experience.

Hey, I’ve lived in this same small town for 15 years, and I grew up 15 miles from here, but I will never be completely accepted among those who grew up here. I just don’t care.

I happen to live in a rural area (the nearest town has a population of 300), where we see a fair number of immigrants from other parts of the country.. usually Chicago and LA.

I can tell you in two minutes whether an ‘outlander’ will merge into the community or not.

The ones who don’t make it are all about urban pride. They seem to think that people who live in large cities automatically know how to run the world better than people in small towns, and rarely miss an opportunity to tell anyone listening how to make [wherever they are] more like [wherever they came from]. It happens often enough to be a cliche, and our usual response (once they’ve gone to spread the light of civilization somewhere else) is, “if where they came from is so great, why did they come here (and why don’t they go back)?”

Let’s face it.. nobody likes being told how their home is inferior to somewhere else. Those of you who live in large cities would probably dislike someone who moved in from, say, Paris, and could be counted on to tell you how American food is crap at every meal.

That goes double for the local conditions. If you can’t handle gravel roads, bad cellphone reception, two channels of TV on a good day, and the nearest shopping mall being 50 miles away, *don’t* *move* *here*. It isn’t like we keep any of it a secret. There’s a direct correlation between poorly maintained roads and $300/yr property taxes. If moving to the area was an informed decision, you knew and accepted the tradeoffs before you came, so please don’t bitch about them now. If you didn’t know about the tradeoffs, and therefore didn’t make an informed decision when moving here, we have no interest in hearing you whine about your own stupid mistake.

Another thing people from large cities tend not to understand is the loss of anonymity. If you live in Chicago or LA, you don’t know 99.9% of the people around you at any given time, and they don’t know you. If you act like an asshole to the clerk at the gas station, the clerk at McDonald’s will probably never know.

In a small town, you’re never more than about two degrees of separation away from anyone. I got a black eye in a rather silly way a couple weeks ago, and by the end of a week the voice through the intercom at the drive-through was saying, “so what’s this I hear about your eye?”

People who recognize that lack of anonymity tend to be a bit more guarded and private.. it isn’t so much unfriendliness as trying to control what gets posted on this week’s billboard.

There’s also a sort of standoffish politeness that comes from knowing you’ll see someone on a regular basis for the next fifteen (or fifty) years. Have you ever stopped going to a restaurant because one of the waiters was a little too aggressively friendly? Now imagine that there are only three restaurants within 50 miles. You tend to move slowly and carefully when running away from your mistakes is expensive.

Yeah, when I moved to this area I spent about three years nodding when nodded to, and not pushing the conversation. Those are the manners appropriate to this kind of place. After a couple years of not seriously pissing anyone off, and sharing the occasional friendly comment, the community decided it could be friendly to me without risking major trouble. Now everyone is teasing me because a little girl tagged me a good one by accident.

Events like that crop up over time, so the question is whether you have the patience to give them time.

If you aren’t willing to settle into a small community gradually, you’re basically demanding that a few hundred people adapt themselves to you, on your timetable. That comes across as arrogant and rude.. not the kind of person I want to be around for the next fifteen to twenty years.

Please don’t call them Italian. I bet they are not even Italian citizen and have been living their whole life in the US.
I can’t really understand why you call yourself a great and big nation when everytime you write about someone you specify which nationality one’s grandgrandfather was.

It was the same if they were any other American family living in FL and moving to North Dakota.

As an Italian born, raised and living in Italy I am very disappointed by that remark. You really believe all the Italians spend their time like in the Sopranos? Do you really think that after three of four generations grown up in the USA they are like the real Italians?

If you call them Italians what am I? An ape?

This is the first time Neatorama disappoints me.
Bad bad bad.

It isn’t the small towns that don’t like new people moving in. My husband and I moved to Albany, Ga several years ago. The people there are extremly clanish and just don’t like new people! Such snobs. Except for a few friends we were able to make, it wasn’t a pleasant place to live. The ‘old money’ kept people like us from ever being accepted. What a shame, Albany isn’t really a bad place to live. We moved from Albany as soon as it was possible, and will never go back!

I say if a town is dying, let it rot. If it can’t accept change and development, it’s better off living a self-fulfilled prophecy to go belly-up. But then again, you can bite the bullet and accept integration of outside influences to jump start its economy and growth.

Nah, on second thought, let it rot.

The comments by the author of this post has me thinking about Racism in todays society.

BY ENLARGE, I THINK the race card is pulled out as a way for people to find closure, or the way to make others pay for some injustice. “I didn’t get the job because they don’t like blahblah’s!”, “I should have known better than to trust a blahblah!”. It makes it easier to find a reason for why something didn’t go that persons’ way.

I’m not saying that is the case all the time, but that is what I see more often than not… Then again, I’m pretty sheltered, and think there is two sides to every story!

@Alex – I think “Asian Ceiling” is a case of opposite racism.. If there is such a term… Sometimes we just need to go with what is right, and not what is PC… I am white, and my wife is Indian(dot, not the feather).. If my son applied to a college and got beat out by another person.. well then he got beat fair and square… He should have studied harder… It’s not a racial thing, but the people who think that it is, are what I described earlier.. someone looking to place blame…

My family moved from CA to MT when I was 9. We embraced small town life, built our log home by hand, worked with the locals to learn local farming skills, and to fit in to our new community. My mom worked for the police department, dad worked his way up to the manager of the biggest company in town. I went to elementary school, Junior High and High School with the children of the locals, I went to slumber parties in their homes. I babysat their children and taught them to ride in the summer, and ice skate in the winter.

I commuted home every weekend for 4 years of college to help with the livestock, helped barter our meat for the neighbors milk, eggs, vegetables and so on. When I graduated from college and got engaged to a local man his parents objected because I was a “Californian.”

We didn’t come in with big city “attitude” Mr.Stone, we were from a small (6K) town in Northern California. My grandparents were ranchers, my great grandparents were ranchers. It didn’t matter that I was not from Los Angeles, I was from California. We were outsiders. It didn’t matter that we contributed to the community, that we worked to be a part of our new city.

My parents worked hard for their successes, so we were outsiders that took the good jobs from locals. When we did things the hard way we were laughed at. When those things worked out it was dumb luck, or because someone “talked sense” to us. When things didn’t work out the way we planned we were stupid city folk. When they did it was because someone told/helped/showed/did it for us.

I think the “racism” discussion here is limited by perception. It isn’t race, it’s being different. Outside, inside, eye shape, skin color, education, dialect, accent and a hundred other factors all can be basis for exclusion.

Exclusion is power. It’s the small people in those small towns.

I think Occam’s Razor applies here. Relocating to a town of 240 people with money/land donated by said town and then opening a competing coffee shop(!) is a douchebag move.

I read the posts. It has nothing to do with race, nationality, etc. After moving to a small town some years ago from another small town down the road, I was never accepted and never will be. This small southern town is by far one of the most backwards places I have ever lived in, including living overseas. I honestly would never have believed how corrupt (yes!), and how wide spread that enforcement goes. No, you will NEVER be accepted in this small town. They love your money but above all please dont move here. They can barely tolerate your patronage in the stores even tho they depend on it for their survival. The younger crowd breaks into private property, but nothing will ever be done, nor will it change. Drugs, gangs and downright bullying of outsiders is accepted and encouraged. It has been allowed to go on for far toooo long. Stay away if you value your health.

I live in a very small town by the name of Jay up in North, Florida I come from the city. I love it. At first I was concerned being that I come from a Hispanic family. I was born and raised in Florida. The people in this area are true Southerners and are mostly blue eyed American’s. I must say I have felt embraced by Jay. They have an awesome Southern hospitality which I have never experienced where I am from. They treat you with kindness and respect. I have the best neighbors anyone could ever wish for. I truly do love it here. It is a very small town, very rural. I have to drive 30 miles to get to the closest city, which I don’t mind being that this is a very safe little town, very uncontaminated. I guess in a nut shell God has blessed me in abundance, I have never felt left out or singled out they all know I am not from here and they have accepted me. My accent sticks out like a sore thumb, I don’t have their beautiful Southern Slang. It’s funny because they like my Spanish accent. Figure that one out!Small towns are safer, less contaminated and awesome to start a family.
And the people watch out for you, and are EXTREMELY HOSPITABLE. This is my experience. I wouldn’t change living here. I have lived in big metropolitan areas such as New York, Los Angeles, California and Miami. Nothing compares to that small town feeling.

Well I don’t think their “race” has anything to do with it although I could be wrong – I don’t know the dynamic in this part of the country. I’m from a very very small town in Oklahoma and we definitely had that fear and loathing of outsiders. The demographics of the town were mixed racially, we had black families, hispanic, white and native american, but it was like that town was one group and everyone else was another – the town might as well have been their ethnic identity. I moved away after HS and a lot of the townies have added me to their Facebook friends but never talk to me – they post amongst themselves frequently but never repsond to my posts or anything. When I go back there occasionally (my parents still live there) I see people I spent all my K-12 education with and they pretend they don’t even know me!

I get along with black people in nicodemus kansas better than my town of alton east of there,
I know this one girl in stockton that was really nice to me, and always said hi to me, but alot of others are cliqish or unfreindly never call you or even act like they care,
Ive got to the point of feeling like I dont need friend’s or family,
i see a bum off the street and he is more friendly to me than others here in town,