Small towns aren't one size fits all. There's a lot of difference. The town I'm from has 300ish people and hits every single negative stereotype imaginable. But an hour away there's a town of 1500 that is basically the poster child for good country living. I've also found they don't understand the physical toll working in certain trades can take. Also, driving an hour isn't considered a long trip where I'm from

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Kira Okah

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Driving an hour gets us to the next town, down by the coast. It's all villages and hamlets all the way there.

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I can play music as loud as I want.

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Norma

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and dance OUTSIDE if I want because there's no human to see and the animals just might join in!

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lifting your hand up slightly when driving as someone drives past even if you don't know them

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Roxy Eastland

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Maybe it's a UK thing because our country is so much smaller, but passing other vehicles on narrow country lanes with tall hedges because an inbuilt skill. Cars, buses, lorries, tractors and trailers. One thing I learnt was that if I was the one that had the nearest passing place not to try and reverse into it but to reverse past it and then drive forward into it. Much easier.

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Cornfields and woods are not scary!

Your way more likely to get stabbed or shot in a city.

It’s also possible to have guns and never shoot a living thing. I only shot at old TVs computers and targets.

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Teucer T

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Grew up in rural Alabama... Had a girlfriend from California visit... We turned onto the dirt road leading to my house, she took one look at the oaks covered in Spanish Moss and the ground fog and freaked the f* out... It took me a bit to figure out the problem.

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My grandmother lived on a mountainous farm for 30 years:

a neighbour's water supply turned black, turns out a sheep had fallen in and died. They fished it out and the local doctor said that as long as they weren't having any major issues, they'd be fine. They were unfazed by the event.

when selling the house to a family moving from an apartment block in London, they were asked about the plumbing. When they were explained to them what a septic tank was, the family decided to go out in the January rain at the bottom of the garden (basically a swamp at this point) and measure it themselves despite being told that yes, it was sufficient.

the family also decided that one of the fields was "too dangerous" for children because of a former mole infestation.

"this is a nice cut of meat" "His name was snowflake"

a conservation group has started a campaign for the rewilding of the Welsh countryside. As you can imagine, the farmers who use the Welsh countryside for sheep grazing are not happy about this, as it is their livelihoods.

they didn't lock their cars. The nearest house was a mile away. Who was around to steal it?

When it snowed, they just didn't leave the house. The pantry had enough food for at least a week.

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Roxy Eastland

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One thing in the Uk that I hear of (but luckily have never witnessed) is city dwellers moving to the countryside for peace and quiet and then complaining furiously about things like church bells tolling on a Sunday morning and noisy heavy farm vehicles. Yes, it's the countryside but it's also a real place where people are getting on with life, not some invented paradise nonsense.

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Wildlife is wildlife... Don’t call bylaw for: moose, coyotes, wolves, deer, skunk, raccoon etc.

Dogs bark. Your 4 lb chihuahua may not be loud but it’s 100% more barking than my 80 lb husky mix.

When it snows, road will be ploughed. It will NOT be a dry, black stretch of road but it WILL have less snow on it.

Wolfie1531 , Егор Журавлёв Report

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Well, it's very nice winter road on picture. Pretty straight, wide, no snowhills on both sides, looks like even no hidden holes and deep tracks...Makes me envy.

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You can just pee anywhere outside.

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Samantha Lomb

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You must be a man. That gets trickier as a woman, particularly with out any TP.

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That we need to have a car.

It's all fine and dandy that you want to be environmentally conscious (I do too), but where I live public transport is non-existent and it's can be several miles to the closest anything.

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Kira Okah

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Our car was written off a month before the start of lockdown. We very rural and are also keeping an eye on my partner's elderly father who lives even more rurally 20 miles away with only one bus each way per day. So we can't look after him properly and obtaining a stock of food before lockdown was a nightmare. Vehicles are such a necessity here.

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I'm not sure how "out in the country" it is, but I live half an hour north of a town with a population density of 15 per square mile. I actually moved here six months ago from Toronto. Since moving here, I realized how peaceful life can be. When I'm not working, I'm out on the farm with birds, pigs and horses. It's absolutely eerie, hearing all these different bird songs, and horses galloping and having a moose crash your party as opposed to a million voices, highway traffic and a methhead. It is so different in a positive way. While we are definitely social creatures, I don't think we were meant to be packed that close together, away from nature.

Also well water.

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Norma

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mmmm....well water....

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The backwoods bonfire Friday night high school party stereotype is 100% accurate. Now that I'm grown up, the same group now drinks on the pontoon boat every Saturday.

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Mimi777

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I can relate to this! I miss those high school bonfires and field parties.

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Having to travel down dirt roads. Hating life when the rains wash out said dirt roads. Wonder at your neighbors who first complain about the dirt roads with you then in the next breath say they would fight the county if they tried to pave the road.

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Leo Domitrix

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OMG yes. "Don't them county supervisors pave this road to raise my taxes!" (It's the other way around: Raise taxes to pave road.) And two days later, "County oughta pave this, sick of the ruts."

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I can’t speak for everywhere, but where I used to live, the vast majority of gun owners didn’t own guns because they were some gun-obsessed redneck. They owned guns because police response time was 25-35 minutes on average. That and animals with rabies.

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oddkiddo

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I grew up that rural. People only had guns for hunting. And maybe only 10 % of people did that. Guns for “protection” from people is gun crazy.

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There are more than like five stars in the sky

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Driving and transportation. I grew up "out in the country" and currently live "in town", and I've spent time in major cities. When I first did traveling to a large cities, I would rent a car because I didn't want to get stuck somewhere. But soon learned that the car was more of a hindrance, when I could just simply walk to half a dozen restaurants or get a ride if it was further out. In a city, driving is a privilege and oftentimes a nuisance. In the country, driving is a requirement, something you need to sustain life. In a small town, you might be able to get by with walking/biking, but you'll spend a lot of time doing it.

If you live in town, you might be able to get pizza delivery. It'll probably be a Pizza Hut or Pappa Johns. If your town can sustain it, maybe both. If you want pizza from the third pizza place, you can call it in and go pick it up in your car. Same with Chinese.

The town might have a local hospital only 15 minutes away, but the rise of larger regional hospital systems may have shut down most of the services, so if you want to give birth to a baby in a hospital, that'll be the larger hospital 30-45 minutes away.

If you're having elective surgery during the pandemic, you need to drive 45 minutes one day for your consult, then drive up a different day for your covid-19 test, then 3 days after that for your surgery.

On the plus side, if you want to have a campfire in your yard, just scrape out a bit of a hole or put some rocks in a circle and build a fire. If you want to avoid a city-wide riot, the nearest one is 2 hours away, so you'll be fine.

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"Just vote" doesn't always fix things. You might have exactly one person running per position, and on the off-chance that you might have more than one, some of those other position candidates are all in a close network who ensure that they and their buddies are all that'll ever be in any position of power (and sometimes, opponents aren't really opponents, they just list themselves as opponents; Mississippi's most rural areas have BIG problems with this, especially when it comes to water management). Continuously doing this can eventually lead to less than 10% of a town's populace even BOTHERING to vote. And why should they? You have no choice.

When you compare this to larger elections (like a governor) where choices actually exist, you see how laughably unsupported a lot of the small-town candidates are who very quickly drop out with some excuse if they bothered to run at all.

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It's true here too. From Russia with love.

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Drinking and driving is more common cause the bar is so far away and Uber or Lyft are not a thing.

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Sasy

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No, nope, not something to list and even worse to add an excuse....walk or sleep in the car.

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I’ve been living in a busy street of Milan to move to Switzerland in a small town near the mountains. The silence in the night was something weird and actually annoying my first nights there.

So I’d say total silence around you at night.

Also nature smells : grass or animals for example

Oh and having actual animals in town like cows or horses.

Oh and... ok I’ll stop there and let the others talk

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Little Ms. Quirky

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i miss the smell of grass~

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How rural towns stay orderly with no police presence, little riches, and no crime: reputation. Since no one moves in or out, what you do today shapes your reputation for life.

This is why we don’t lock our doors. Locks don’t keep determined rednecks out. But being known as a thief for the rest of your life by everyone you know does.

Working as a pastor in a rural town was hard because those who needed counseling never came for it. If anyone saw a married couple go into the pastor’s office, the whole town knew forever you were having problems.

This is also why we loved yard sales, trading, and such. No one was willing to rip you off because they knew word would get around.

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Leo Domitrix

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Crime happens, but the state cops never get there in time for them to do much but fill out paperwork and nod and leave.

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Driving to the next town over with your friends for something to do, after-prom being a beer-filled bonfire party, your Tinder options are guaranteed to only be white boys in Bass Pro hats holding fish.

yeetmesomejuice , mclaughlin_greg Report

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Alex the awful German

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Great characterization! *lol*

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Quiet. Solitude. Slow pace. Peace of mind. Genuine smiles. Good neighbors.

There is an episode of Andy Griffith, where a big-city business type has his car break down in Mayberry. He's in a mad rush to get to his big meeting in Raleigh. Gomer can't fix the car, and his boss doesn't work on the weekends so the the business man can only wait. Which really isn't in his plans. He finally slows down and ends up enjoying his time in the bucolic setting of Mayberry, sitting on the porch with Aunt Bee and Andy and Barney singing old folk songs, napping and eating ice cream-even after Gomer has fixed the car. He slowed down and reset.

Being in a rural place means you take your time, there's no mad rush. You sit and listen to the crickets and the creek bubbling by you. You can hear your neighbor's kids laughing while they're playing in the back yard. Where I'm at, we can hear the bear dogs howl when they find their prey. It's a place full of manicured yards where just about everyone sits out on their porch of an evening and they wave at their neighbors as they drive by. Main Street is still full of Mom & Pop shops (which are closed right now, thank you Covid-19) and we have Christmas parades and music festivals and a summer carnival and our whole town comes together and honks their horns when the high school sports teams come back the conquering heroes.

I spent nearly 15 years of my life around the DC Beltway and I came here to this little town (and few other little towns like it before I settled here) and I wouldn't go back to that grind for any amount of money. The peace of mind and the connection to my community are too precious to me. Yeah, I sacrifice some income to live where I do, but you know what? It's worth it to me. I still live a comfortable life and I don't have to worry about all the things that are going on outside my door when I lay down at night. This place is home. It's roots. It's where I look forward to returning when I'm gone on vacation or a work trip.

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Teucer T

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There os really no reason to hurry in cities either. I never really understood why people were in such a rush just to end up standing in line for a half hour.

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Live in a village of about 2000 people which is about an hour from the nearest biggish city. It's 99% peaceful and 1% boring. I think that living someplace small means you tend to be more self sufficient about finding your own entertainment. You don't have movie theaters or bowling alleys or things like that. We have a gas station and a couple of diners and an ice cream shop that is open in the summer.

Folks tend to go fishing more, do more hiking, camping, and backyard bbq. I also think that we tend to be more fanatical about our high school sports, they are the only game in town really.

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Bill

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Don't forget going upto camp. It may be a tar papered shack

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I grew up in rural Colorado and we would never lock our house IN CASE SOMEONE NEEDS TO GET IN. Weather at high altitudes is brutal. If a neighbor hit a deer they would be able to shelter in our house instead of walking miles to theirs. Or a lost hunter or whatever.

Also most of what's been said here already. Monthly trips to the store, deep freezer full of meat, that type of thing. And shooting guns off the front porch of course.

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Flash Henry

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I don't think anyone in my town ever locks their doors. If someone's door is locked, they up to something sketchy.

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1. How much you are at the mercy of the elements. (the wind seems stronger, the snow deeper, the driveway impossibly long and difficult to clear)

2. How every project turns into multiple long trips to the hardware store (that is 35 minutes away, unless you have an emergency at 1am, and then you're heading 90 minutes away to the 24 hour store there).

3. The value of consistently good internet connections

4. How cool it is to cut down trees that are on your property.

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5. How fast you learn to be calm when you hubby is cutting down that huge tree and it doesn't want to go down. Because all your nerves and screams do not make a difference with cutting sounds and earmuffles. Just stay really far away and wait!

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I grew up in the country... graduating class of 24. Went to college in a smaller town.

After college I moved to Denver.

If I had heard that people picked up their dog poop anywhere in the world, I would have laughed.

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LOttawa

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I have a home in the city and the country and pick up the poop regardless of where I am.

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Driving 2 and a half hours to get somewhere like a mall, or a specialist, is normal.

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Bill

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3 to the nearest airport. You leave before 130am to make a 6 am flight

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Here young people generally still like oldies music instead of modern music. Not even ironically, they go wild for Status Quo.

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Yep. And modern trends are a bit not so modern. )

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The same thing that Europe can't understand about the US. No, we can't just have a $500 million high speed rail network serving the 15 people who live in Northwestern Iowa.

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Diana

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Well in Germany they close most railway stations in smaller cities. And if you are lucky to have one, there are no high speed trains. If you are lucky it is a regional train once or twice per hour that sometimes is on time, does not have working toilets or air conditioning/heating or doors and needs a lot of time to get to your destination. Just spend 3 hours traveling 90 km with one of those on sunday

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I live near Yosemite and we get a lot of people who don’t know how to drive in the mountains.

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Dave van Es

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I live in a city. There are plenty of people who don't know how to drive, period

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Depending on your area, seeing large tractors (preferable green ;) on the roads is not anything amazing. I'm just trying to do my job.

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Teucer T

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Depending on your area, the tractor might even pull to the side to let you pass.

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Having a wendigo eat your cousin that was a pretty weird BBQ

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Rose the Cook

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????

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This doesn’t go for all small town, but the one I live in there is no law enforcement. We fall under the jurisdiction of a neighboring town but it’s like 45 minutes away. So the people out here just deal with incidents on their own. To be honest though, it’s pretty rare that any instances occur.

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J. F.

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Somewhat relateable. In our village we have a police room where once a week a cop from the next town (15 km away) sits in for 8 hours. We have two doctors, a vet and a small firefighter station (voluntary force) though

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Leaving guns/knives against the wall by the front door. Not like handguns. It’s common for a full length 12 gauge to be the welcome mat.

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Leo Domitrix

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If you live in bear-moose country, you may need a shotgun to get to the barn. And we all have hunting knives. I still have mine. That'd differnet to a pocket-knife. Depends on region.

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That the second amendment is for folks that need to protect themselves when a policeman is 30 minutes away.

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Leo Domitrix

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Only 30? Dang. That's civilization right tthere!

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Outdoor freedom. You can do whatever you want out here. No cops. No neighbors. Hell its like the Wild West. No permits or regulations. No permission slips. Wide open backroads through the country with windows down and a little Hank Williams Jr. Can’t beat it with a stick.

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Grumble O'Pug

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This is what gives country life a bad reputation

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